RDM Melee (Renarudo Style)

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: RDM Melee (Renarudo Style)

I've been in infini-chain parties with two bards, only gotten intermittent ballads because they were too busy pulling and dispelling and keeping up a double set of melee buffs. MP was tight sometimes, but I managed with just 4mp/tick 80%+ of the time. It is not strictly necessary to have ballads to maintain that kind of chain, though I will grant that the rest of the party was composed of excellent players.

You still concede you had intermittant ones and two BRDs, which could be enough in some cases in between converts. Exceptional, decked-out melee also help out quite a bit and well, you had TWO BRDs and were not meleeing.

Murhpie's contention was that you could get by just fine one 3MP a tick and melee. At least, that's what I think he meant by, "Its not true."

In any case, it can't be denied that a RDM with Refresh+Ballad x2 has a PT with higher chain potential. They could get chain #10 or Chain #200, but they're have less downtime in any event.

[Murphie]

Re: RDM Melee (Renarudo Style)

I never have to take a knee (or sit on my bottom -- I am a Taru after all) in a party that is going well, even if I'm the only Refresher there. So while my parties may occasionally take a break, it's not because I need to rest for MP.

[Aksannyi]

Re: RDM Melee (Renarudo Style)

I never have to take a knee (or sit on my bottom -- I am a Taru after all) in a party that is going well, even if I'm the only Refresher there. So while my parties may occasionally take a break, it's not because I need to rest for MP.

{word}.

This is very much the truth for me, as well, unless something goes wrong - I mean, hey, links happen, right? Those are the times when a bit more MP than usual gets expended, what with Sleepage and trying to kill them a bit faster and all that jazz.

In parties where there is only one or two mages present, it's so easy to maintain your MP that it's almost sickening.

[Caspian]

Re: RDM Melee (Renarudo Style)

The few parties I've been in at that lvl (mainly Bhafthicket and Caedarva), maintaining MP was never really a problem. A few times we had a SMN/WHM main healing/occasionally DD'ing, a brd, and 4x melee. Several times mp would dip pretty low, but next mob we'd just take a flesh, where noone is really losing hp, and maintain the chain just fine. When we started getting into chains of 30+ at around 73 or 74, the only thing preventing us from keeping chains up, were the occasional time we'd kill a mob too fast and the next mob came too late, or a bad ws or two in the same fight, just barely losing out on the chain.

[WishMaster3K]

Re: RDM Melee (Renarudo Style)

You guys are hilarious.

May I point out that this thread is called "RDM Melee (Renarudo Style)," therefore direct any flaming towards me and my methods.

TY for realizing that from my limited tests, BBQ, that I effectively came to the brief conclusion that:
A) In ToAU areas, the scenario that myself and Hyrist posted isn't "optimal" or "achievable"
And
B) In RoZ/CoP areas, the mobs are wildly stronger

This has more of an issue to deal with mob balancing than anything, but it's unlikely SE will do anything about that since the community at large doesn't complain.

I'll post my parse from today up later (at the moment I'm writing this entry from my SKIII...) but I pretty much fought 5 T-VT Heraldic Imps with Squid Sushi and +29 Acc, and I came away with 83% accuracy.

What it seems to me is that I won't be able to hit the 90% range until I get past 40ish Acc+ and I have capped sword skill.

And at that point, I'll be so much unlike 96% of RDMs that they won't be able to follow in my footsteps, nullifying the guide before it starts.

But I'm sick of Imps, to be honest. I'm gonna aim for Sea Puks tomorrow and see where that lands me. I already know I can't "solo" Mamool Ja like I want (I'll have to sleep them when my buffs drop), so I'll hold off on those.

But I'm glad you guys are thinking and stuff. I'm just shocked that everytime I refresh there is a new page....

Anyway, as long as it's a community effort, keep it up!

[Murphie]

Re: RDM Melee (Renarudo Style)

You guys are hilarious.

We try.

[Taskmage]

Re: RDM Melee (Renarudo Style)

I wasn't meleeing, but I was usually close enough to the party to have melee buffs land on me, and as others have said I'm lucky to get three ticks on my butt per hour between maintaining refresh and haste cycles. Maintaining a working supply of mp is difficult but possible in a good party with only refresh+sanction and converts, even without full recast merits.

I think it's entirely possible that the party would've been on better or at least equal footing if I had been on the front line with my sword out against non-skoffin mobs. The increase in kill speed would be slight, but the decrease in my available mp would be slight too. It seems workable enough that I'd definately want to give it a try myself before dismissing the idea.

[Icemage]

Re: RDM Melee (Renarudo Style)

I never take a knee in merit parties on RDM. If I ever need to, there's something wrong with the party. I get ~1050MP from Convert these days, and with 3 merits in Convert recast, that's an extra 1000ish MP every 9 minutes.

Ballads are nice, but not necessary. Give me any backup healer and I'm golden, even with no Ballad support at all.


Icemage

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: RDM Melee (Renarudo Style)

This has more of an issue to deal with mob balancing than anything, but it's unlikely SE will do anything about that since the community at large doesn't complain.

I think only a handful are acknowledging mob balance is much to do with the issue. People cried because of how hard CoP and RoZ mobs were, now they're too easy and while more viable for RDM to melee, they get grossly overshadowed.

Thing about the ToA mobs is really that there's only a handful that are really easy to kill, many of the mobs are kinda hard or have some gnarly tricks up their sleeve (like stipping you naked or aggroing on JA and WS). I like how they shook things up with mob design, but its clear with some mobs they didn't go far enough.

Mages could use a few more mobs to nuke at the levels we see colibri. They also need to add more non-chimera type mobs so BSTs have more to charm, etc.

But I'm sick of Imps, to be honest. I'm gonna aim for Sea Puks tomorrow and see where that lands me. I already know I can't "solo" Mamool Ja like I want (I'll have to sleep them when my buffs drop), so I'll hold off on those.

Puks are T, so there will be good damage, but they'll go down really fast. Have you tried soloing BLU Mamool though? They're pretty soft, though they could get you with that Radiant Breath attack... so maybe /DRK for them if /NIN is worth giving up.

But I'm glad you guys are thinking and stuff. I'm just shocked that everytime I refresh there is a new page....

Its the power of controversial topics flavored with BBQ. I just think its funny I agree with RDM melee in concept, its just I get flamed for disagreeing in execution.

I would like to request - for the sake of Wish Master's OP and returning this to a productive thread - that the topic itself see little revision, I'm sure it will be happening anyway. I apologize for starting the derail and being a little snide in some of my commentary, even badgering. But whatever the case, I didn't resort to swearing, direct insults and namecalling.

I still maintain the position that the current state of the game and community trends are very prohibative to RDM melee and there are other, more effective ways to play it in EXP.

Maybe its just me, but I think of RDM and BRD as luxury jobs with little expense. To that end, I feel obligated to play in a fashion that makes a PT comfortable. But when I'm paying to play a support role like COR, I think I am justified to play in a style more to my liking, but I'll still find ways to think of the PT first regardless of that.

I don't melee in merit because I know the PT will kill just fine without me. If I did melee, I wouldn't see the same EXP per hour as I'm often the sole support class. I just pull, Light Shot and buff at 75. That's not appealing to a fair share of CORs, but it does get better EXP per hour and, in time, they'll probably come around to pulling in this fashion. But it is a player skill.

[Murphie]

Re: RDM Melee (Renarudo Style)

I apologize for starting the derail and being a little snide in some of my commentary, even badgering. But whatever the case, I didn't resort to swearing, direct insults and namecalling.

I have no regrets.

You're forgiven, however.

[Hyrist]

Re: RDM Melee (Renarudo Style)

(For a side note, I've made my efforts to ignore BBQ for the most part out of an effort NOT to reduce this topic to a flame war. Please, if you are finding difficulty restraining yourself form personal attacks on BBQ then it is better to just ignore this thread or BBQ's posts.)

Staying on topic...


Ren, I'm not sure it should be necessary to push too much further from 80% accuracy on this issue. Try to keep it into perspective that we're a support, not a DD.

Before we even contribute via Meleeing, we've uped the damage output of the party Via Haste and Dia, this is something a DD cannot do. Damage dealers cannot (with the exception of Warcry, Absorb Spells, and BLU's debuffs) make a major contribution to the endurance and damage output of a party. Therefore, they have to focus their efforts in squeezing every ounce of damage and accuracy out of themselves.

For a support class, such as Red Mage. One can more than get away with 80- 85% melee accuracy simply because of the methodology being used here. Unlike DD classes in burns, where you are blowing your WS at 100% all the time. That forces them to try to gain that TP as fast as possible. That's the real issue around stressing accuracy.

When it comes to the support role, you're going to be holding that TP until the opportune moment to use it to skillchain anyways. A 20% miss rate isn't going to factor in as badily when you're most likley to blow WS at 120%-150% to begin with.

So don't fret too heavily over your accuracy. If you're managing 80-85%, you're doing acceptable levels for a support role. If you can push further without harming your other support duties, go ahead. But do not force yourself to play be the same standards as a job class who's meleeing is their entire focus; You'll fail.

When it comes to the issue of how often per monster you are weapon skilling, in a burn this should not be an issue. There are twice as many melee/dd in a burn party as there is for balanced party. You should be able to open up for most of them. This means you do not necessarily have to open up for the same person.

As a support, you're simply not going to keep up with a DD. Your focus should be what is the most you can achieve in a 10 minute span, not compare ourselves to a DD's accuracy. If you can do in DoT and skillchains equivalent to what you can do in magic bursts in the same 10 minute time-frame (and we're talking nukes as used in support, not trying to be a pseudo blm, that's no different than trying to be a melee DD.) then you've reached your goal. Chances are, you can do that without any trouble if you create 2-3 skillchains in 10 minutes, provided you open for a ws that hits for 800+.

Again, trying to surpass that standard may cause you to hurt your support role in other ways, don't do it unless you are convinced you can push farther without screwing yourself up in the process. That's the mistake every 'melee RDM' makes.


We're re-writing the book here Ren. No one's taken this approach this extensively before, which means we can't be going by the 'old books', so to speak.

I'll write up other issues as they pass. Thanks everyone so far for their helpful input and especially Wishmaster for his data gathering.

[Murphie]

Re: RDM Melee (Renarudo Style)

(For a side note, I've made my efforts to ignore BBQ for the most part out of an effort NOT to reduce this topic to a flame war. Please, if you are finding difficulty restraining yourself form personal attacks on BBQ then it is better to just ignore this thread or BBQ's posts.)

Totally. I let him get the better of me for a moment there, but I'm over it now. His baiting will no longer work, and I'll keep my posts productive.

Thanks for your contributions, Hyrist.

[tdh]

Re: RDM Melee (Renarudo Style)

Did I miss a few pages or did somebody seem to take a complete about face? Just curious. O.o

Back to the business at hand. Last night I went in a huge push towards getting Savage Blade. I geared up, shot out to the Tree, and on the way up to Steelshells I found another RDM who was on the way up to Skill Up as well. Asked what skill range he was in, and if he wanted to team up. I figured if we had two RDMs, I could get more work done since I wouldn't be recasting Stoneskin every 10 seconds.

Fortunately, the RDM was on the way to meet a NIN who was leveling his Throwing skill and working on his Heart Snatcher latent. So now I had a full on tank, could save MP, and Skill faster. I figured now would be time to toy with the melee RDM idea.

So I had a NIN who was Dual Wielding Daggers and Throwing quite a bit, a RDM/NIN with dual Swords, and myself as RDM/WAR. Acc+48 and I actually ate Squid Sushi, but if my casting was low that round, I had no problems keeping up with one of the other two to close Distortion with Vorpal Blade. I made sure I always had Stoneskin/Phalanx up, I Hasted myself, and took turns Hasting the NIN. I also made sure the mob was Slow II'd, but didn't bother with Dispel as it was a Skill Up. So ever couple of rounds I expended a decent chunk of my MP. With all my Acc gear, my Elvaan MP, WAR sub, and no MP food, I had high 500MP to low 600MP. It lasted me just fine with all the casting I was doing.

Now a Skill Up is much different than a Burn party as you're trying to keep the mob alive for as long as possible, but we had a few Chain #4s with non-stop pulling and Skilling. NiN never once used Blade: Jin, but with Defender and Vorpal Blade I was able to pull hate from damage alone on a few occasions, all while wearing absolutely no Attack gear. (Didn't bring it since I wanted to lower my Atk for Skill Ups.)

Now I acknowledge that this isn't the kind of situation W3k and Hyrist are working on, but I think it does weigh in that it could be done. Decent Acc, solid TP gain, and making my MP last. I mean that is what this is here to prove right? ^^

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: RDM Melee (Renarudo Style)

(
Before we even contribute via Meleeing, we've uped the damage output of the party Via Haste and Dia, this is something a DD cannot do. Damage dealers cannot (with the exception of Warcry, Absorb Spells, and BLU's debuffs) make a major contribution to the endurance and damage output of a party. Therefore, they have to focus their efforts in squeezing every ounce of damage and accuracy out of themselves.

Sleep Bolts, Acid bolts (Defense Down, stacks with Dia) and WAR, DRK, THF and RNG can use them. There are also Demon Arrows (Attack Down, stacks with Bio) and Kabura arrows (silence). Then there's the Evasion Down from Mezraq and various other weapons with poison, silence, slow, and various Down effects.

BLU can use Diamondhide and PLD can use Rampart for AoE Stoneskin, not unlike SMN.

BLU also has Healing Breeze and Magic Fruit for curing. And many physical spells have enfeebling effects.

Dragoon - mage sub = healer wyvern = cheapest Cure IIIs in the game

Spirit Surge allows a DRG to remove 100 percent of an ally's enmity via Super Jump and the other Jumps have debuff effects.

DRG's Angon also has Defense down.

THF gets a form of Dispel in merit called Aura Steal, taking a mob buff and placing it on themselves.

SAM has a merit ability that transfers 100 TP to an ally.

That Ninja guy. He debuffs (OMG!)

Beastmaster - the unsung crowd control job! I knew there was a reason I didn't bring sneak oils to Fei'Yin! Charm, Leave, Charm, Leave.

Ranger - Shadowbind (strongest bind in the game)

Corsair - Let jobs borrow other jobs' traits, uses Quick Draw to make enfeebs proc hard and nukes rock hard.

PUP- it punches, it nukes, it arrows, it vokes, it enspells, it enfeebles, it... doesn't get invited to PT.

...

Yeah, melees do nothing to help with endurance, enhance damage output or support their PTs. It's all RDM.

Really, THF, put that Xbow down, you're fooling yourself, man.

[Celeal]

Re: RDM Melee (Renarudo Style)

IMHO, overall experience point in a exp. party is determined by the following order:

1. Downtime.
2. Damage output over time.
3. Pulling.

The order matters: take care of party's downtime 1st, then find ways to raise party's speed of killing the mob, and finally try to pull the mob at the best rate at which the party can handle.

If the RDM in the party already fullfill his task of:

1. Reduce downtime to zero. (usually Refresh, backup cure, slow, paralyze, etc)
2. Raise party's damage output over time. (usually Dispel, Haste, Dia, etc)
3. Sleep link/adds.

If the RDM completed point #1 and #3 in above, and already taken care of Dispel, Haste, Dia (point #2), I think it is logical for the RDM himself to contribute damage output directly, via physical means (melee) or magical means (nuke).

I am not saying RDM should forgot his primary task and turn himself into a weak DD. If the RDM fails to do his basic function, he should not even think about melee or nuking.