RDM Melee Guide Post 03/08 Update

[Icemage]

Re: RDM Melee Guide Post 03/08 Update

ya normally when I tank even with my cap sword and merits I cant hit worth a crap, I would use just an earth staff if I didnt have genbu's Shield. However I still believe even missed attacks add to eminity. Haste gear is nice to have, however not specifically required. Warlock Chapeau/Deulist Tabard is a must as it let you fire off spells quicker. Eminity Gear is needed for any tank (which still leads me to belive why blink tanking is so prefered) RDM is able to equip the 3rd most eminity + Gear behind PLD and WAR which gives us a decent amount to chose from +12 IIRC.

Say what?

Uh... seriously... just... no.





That right there shows +14 enmity, not counting things like Hades Earring, Mermaid Rings, Warwolf Belt, etc. that many jobs can use.

You seriously, seriously, SERIOUSLY need to do your homework before you make uninformed statements like this.


Icemage

[WishMaster3K]

Re: RDM Melee Guide Post 03/08 Update

I have +30 Enmity as PLD. And Sometimes I have trouble holding hate post 70.

I like to think of myself as a good tank, but when the WARs let lost with 1K plus Raging Rushes, it urks me that I have to Cure Bomb to get hate back.

Then again, to be fair, they told me that since I'm a good tank, they felt comfortable going all out.

:-/

And to dispute your "casting time" theory, if that were the reason, then you wouldn't see an influx of melee in TP burns who don't want to take the time out to cast Utsusemi, because "it throws off the parser." They'd rather takes hits to the face and be down in Red HP, knowing that someone is going to either take hate from them or just knock off a huge chunk of HP from the mob and kill it.

God dang MP sinks..

[MrMageo]

Re: RDM Melee Guide Post 03/08 Update

Im not debating wether or not PLD or WAR make better tanks, and I am not saying RDM is the epitemy of tanking. It is situational and possible. SAM does not have the kind of damage mitigation PLD/WAR/RDM/NIN have so I would never ask a sam to tank anything ahead of one of those 4 jobs.

I seriously doubt that melee know how to properly cast spells, with the exception of a good NIN or PLD.

As for the casting technique itself you must cast at the start of the attack animation(as soon as your charecter moves to swing). As the game logs your hits before it shows them, the delay caused by the animation is instead used with spell casting. Doing it at this time and this time only resaults in uninterupted attack cycles. If you do it after the start of the animation (after the first hit, or during the second hit) The delay caused by the animation resaults in additional carry over of spell casting prolonging the next attack. Basically your having the game preform 2 functions at the same time, resaulting in zero delay caused by spells.

[Icemage]

Re: RDM Melee Guide Post 03/08 Update

Im not debating wether or not PLD or WAR make better tanks, and I am not saying RDM is the epitemy of tanking. It is situational and possible. SAM does not have the kind of damage mitigation PLD/WAR/RDM/NIN have so I would never ask a sam to tank anything ahead of one of those 4 jobs.

Seigan + Third Eye say hello.

RDM is a decent enough defensive job, especially when /NIN or /BLU, and there are indeed times when it can pay off (as evidenced by Square-Enix's amusing little Absolute Virtue trailer), but you're not backpedalling fast enough from your claim of RDM having the "3rd most enmity gear". Are you going to provide some proof that RDM has more enmity gears available than Samurai, or would you like to retract your claim?

I seriously doubt that melee know how to properly cast spells, with the exception of a good NIN or PLD.

I have no idea where you come up with this stuff. 95% of my HNMLS consists of people with at least 3-5 jobs at level 75, most with a mix of job types. And pretty much everyone in my LS knows how to maintain Utsusemi.

As for the casting technique itself you must cast at the start of the attack animation(as soon as your charecter moves to swing). As the game logs your hits before it shows them, the delay caused by the animation is instead used with spell casting. Doing it at this time and this time only resaults in uninterupted attack cycles. If you do it after the start of the animation (after the first hit, or during the second hit) The delay caused by the animation resaults in additional carry over of spell casting prolonging the next attack. Basically your having the game preform 2 functions at the same time, resaulting in zero delay caused by spells.

Please. Stop. Posting. Garbage. That. You. Have. Not. Properly. Tested.

Attack delay is calculated on the server side. What your client does has very little to do with when your character attacks; the only thing that can sometimes hose you is client-side animation delay preventing you from initiating other actions while you're still in the middle of a spellcasting animation, but that in no way affects your attack cycles as far as the server is concerned, except insofar as the act of spellcasting itself puts a hold on your attack timer.


Icemage

[Celeal]

Re: RDM Melee Guide Post 03/08 Update

As for the casting technique itself you must cast at the start of the attack animation(as soon as your charecter moves to swing). As the game logs your hits before it shows them, the delay caused by the animation is instead used with spell casting. Doing it at this time and this time only resaults in uninterupted attack cycles. If you do it after the start of the animation (after the first hit, or during the second hit) The delay caused by the animation resaults in additional carry over of spell casting prolonging the next attack. Basically your having the game preform 2 functions at the same time, resaulting in zero delay caused by spells.

Regardless how the game's client or server manage the delay/timer, all clients synchronize their game's clock with the server. MrMageo, since you are not the ones who implements FFXI, what you stated, are your own assumptions.

There is nothing wrong with RDM's melee, but there are stuff that needs to be corrected in your post.

[Callisto]

Re: RDM Melee Guide Post 03/08 Update

OK, I finally sat and read this thread fully against my better judgement.

I usually stay out of threads like this because there is so much stupid shit put out in so many 'guides' and I avoid flaming people on forums.

That said, don't take this personally, but Jesus H. Fucking Balls.

As for the RDM-DRK comparison. I have a hollow earring because being a RDM requires an utmost respect to gear. It is very expensive, and often takes alot of work to aqquire peices. Any RDM who has not spent an equal amount if not more on his/her melee set vs casting setup has no business even thinking about melee.
I have spent nearly 1.5mil on my gear so far and I am still missing a few key peices SH + PCC come to mind.

Main: Joyeuse (2x hit 45% of the time)
Off: Genbu Shield (for aesthetic value)
RNG: N/A
Ammo: Phantom tathlum
Head: Ogre Mask (+10 ATK)
Neck: Wivre Gorget (ACC +5)
Ear1: Accurate Earring (ACC +2)
Ear2: Accurate Earring (ACC +2)
Body: Nashrima Vest (+4 ACC, 2STR)
Hands: Wise Gloves (ACC+3)
Ring1: Woodsman (ACC +5)
Ring2: Woodsman (ACC +5)
Back: Amemt Mantle (ATK +10)
Waist: Life Belt (ACC +10)
Legs: Wise Barconi (ACC +1)
Feet: Ogre Ledelsens (ATK +10)
Total ACC +: 37, ATK +: 30

I'm not trying to be rude here, but your setup is OK at best. You could be getting a lot more of every vital stat by changing some things around, you have a good while to go, so don't talk about other people not being able to discuss RDM without certain gear setups.

This is not an attack on you, but many of the RDMs who frequent these forums, especially the ones who legitmately discuss melee RDM on a regular basis, include myself and Arkaine for starters have much better melee sets than this, so avoid talking down to people in terms of gear.

Main: Joyeuse
Sub: Sentinel Shield
Head: Walahra Turban (+5% Haste)
Body: Scropion Harness (+10 Acc)
Hands: Dusk Gloves (+3% Haste, +5 Attack)
Legs: Volunteer Brias (+6 Acc)
Feet: Dusk Ledelsens (+2% Haste, +4 Attack)
Neck: Peacock Charm (+10 Acc)
Waist: Life Belt (+10 Acc)
Finger: Woodsman Ring (+5 Acc)
Finger: Woodsman Ring (+5 Acc)
Ear: Suppanomimi (+5 Sword Skill, enhances Duo Wield)
Ear: Brutal Earring (enhances Double Attack, Store TP +1)
Ammo: Tiphia Sting (+2 Acc, +2 Attack)
ACC+ : 48, ATK+ : 11, Haste + 10%, Sword Skill +5

This really is not that desirable of a set for anything over EM. You're seriously underestimating the amount of Acc+ that RDM needs before it is viable to move to a Haste build, and the Attack/STR of this set is pitiful. A 'better' set can easily hit +50 acc and +59~ Attack with a decent chunk of STR thrown in, and probably cost less than this and be easier to obtain.

I also wear about +12 eminity gear which helps me hold hate even with missed swings.

While the amount of emnity needed can vary depending on setup/execution, this is nowhere near enough to be taken seriously for tanking, especially with this:

RDM/NIN tanking on its own is a little more difficult and dangerous. It requires you to cast elemental ninjutsu, followed by a teir 3, it burns about 360 MP to establish hate, once it is established, you need to spam bind,sleep,blind,dispel. Using Cures to cure yourself, It assaults your MP pool pretty bad but If you keep your head on your shoulders you can go 5-6 fights in a row before convert stabs you in the back.

If you are at all using Ninjutsu or Tier III nukes as a RDM/NIN tank, you're doing it very wrong. Refresh's 3/tick alone is enough to nearly be self-sufficient, if you have 5/tick from Dalmy/Chapeau then you really shouldn't need further support in terms of MP. If you do, you're really not doing things correctly.

[MrMageo]

Re: RDM Melee Guide Post 03/08 Update

Seriously your going to say I am tanking incorectly ? You just started to tank ive been doing it for a while now. I think I know how to hold hate from melees and mages TYVM. You were holding hate from a WHM while the rest of your army beat on the adds. So please before you say I am doing it wrong try tanking on something that is being pummeled to death from all sides and still hold the hate.

As for that 2nd equip set up It is better than mine, I hit 80% on Pots and Dolls, and about 75% on colibri. That set has me smoked in terms of ACC, by about 11 which equates to an aditional 5-10% ACC. While yes more ACC is good, more swings Is paramount to DoT, so I dont see haste as a bad thing.

I wasnt talking down to people in terms of gear I simply said It is very expensive, you'll need to put as much if not more money into melee gear then you did with mage gear. If you took that as offensive I'm sorry. I lost a bunch of my gear to Lord Docster before he left garuda, he borrowed several peices of gear for a fight then hoped servers. Most notebly my SH, and PCC which I am now trying to replace. (0/6 in UO sucks dick)

Im not offering a end all way to play RDM as a Melee There are many different ways to go about, ATM id say i 75-80% of the full potential. Which is 75-80% more than the majority of people that talk about RDM melee like they know something about it.

All the information I have has been tested a ton of times, every time i get a new peice of weaponry I go test my cast timing because it throws it off. So yes I know I can cast and not delay my sword swings. I tested the rigors of Tanking as RDM/PLD in campaign, Try tanking there and holding hate while 12 othe people beat on the mob. Its good practice for learning all your hate control techniques which included magic bursting.

Im not trying to re write the book I am offering "MY" experince when it comes to RDM melee. Ive been doing it off and on for about 3 years, and know what I am talking about in regards to it. There are infinite ways you can combine gear to be effective I am not going to list every possible way to gear ones self, its meerly a guide line, a building block if you will. A reference point as to what has worked for someone else and what could possibly work for you.

As for the SAM thing ill concede the point it may get more +Enimity gear then RDM, but i still stand firm that a RDM should tank certain situations ahead of a SAM.

Everything I put is situational, much like our job it various from what we equip to what subjob we use, this isnt a you must rdm or your lol post. It is a reference tool to how to do it affectively.

Again I will talk about the spell cast/ melee thing.

It does not reset or pause your timer. The calculations still go through. If you cast over your delay It simply restarts the timer @ 0. You may notice a pause where you dont attack, but it is just the timer catching up from the skip cause by the spell. alternativle look at it like this

Attack 0 seconds
Refresh 4 second cast

-4,-3,-2,-1, 0,1,2 (spell cast timers)
0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 (weapon delay)

the delay that appears to be the "Pause" in the timer is acctually not a pause but a re counting of time. so to speak. If the cast timer is within the bounds of the delay it affects the next swing by 2 seconds or 4+2 = 6, since there is a 6 second delay there is virtually no effect, save a second or 2 for operator error.

*This is based of timing your spell casting to the exact time you will swing which is very hard and meticulous*

now lets do it with haste and refresh
haste 3 seconds, refresh 4 seconds

-4, -3, -2, -1, 0, 1, -3, -2, -1, 0, 1, 2 (timers with spells)
0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 (delay duration)

Here you see the delay again
refresh rests the timer to -4 count it up to +2 would be the interval of the next swing. However you casted Haste in its place, reseting the clock to -3, now you need to tack on the delay interuption of +5 (-3 for spell, 2 for the over ride of delay) , puting you back at +2. You see now @ +2 you are acctually at 11 seconds instead of 6 seconds like you normally would have been.

*Again assuming you cast with your first swing. Also assumed you ran Refresh/Haste back to back*

You can go out and try it for yourself, get your delay to 6 seconds and try it. With spells that fall under your delay you will get no "real" change, It will run it the same as it normally would, with spells that fall over your delay it will be paused.

Lets look at single handing the joytoy, its got a delay of 3.73

refresh

-4,-3,-2,-1,0,1,2
0, 1, 2 , 3, 4, 5, 6

Since refresh is a spell that runs over the delay, the count is pushed 2 seconds back from cast to sword swing.

Using haste

-3,-2,-1,0,1,2
0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

This spell is really finicky and pretty much impossible to squeeze in, I have done it once and that was with a stop watch to get a feel for the timing. More than likeley this on will go off at the 1 second interval. However considering the delay this does make sense.

[Yellow Mage]

Re: RDM Melee Guide Post 03/08 Update

Okay, seriously folks? Why am I still the only one ignoring this guy?

[Callisto]

Re: RDM Melee Guide Post 03/08 Update

Seriously your going to say I am tanking incorectly ? You just started to tank ive been doing it for a while now. I think I know how to hold hate from melees and mages TYVM. You were holding hate from a WHM while the rest of your army beat on the adds. So please before you say I am doing it wrong try tanking on something that is being pummeled to death from all sides and still hold the hate.

You don't need to be a WHM to know that Cure IV spam is playing the job wrong, and you don't need to be a PLD to know how hate mechanics work.

Also, you missed the part where I continued to tank the rest of the fights after the full alliance joined in, without trouble holding hate, and this is without emnity gear. I lost hate to DD's exactly 4 times in those fights, and 2 of them were because I was on the ground KO'd, the other 2 were to very large Chi Blasts, and I regained it quickly.

You could generate the same amount of hate as a Thunder III with just a few Blind casts, in not much more time and for a fraction of the MP costs, telling someone to nuke w/ Tier III's for hate is just bad tanking advice. I haven't done it much because my LS has good tanks and RDMs aren't generally needed to tank, but they let me try it finally when we were short. That doesn't mean I'm unfamiliar in the slightest with how hate works and what is effective for getting the most of it in a hurry.

As for that 2nd equip set up It is better than mine, I hit 80% on Pots and Dolls, and about 75% on colibri. That set has me smoked in terms of ACC, by about 11 which equates to an aditional 5-10% ACC. While yes more ACC is good, more swings Is paramount to DoT, so I dont see haste as a bad thing.

Unless you miss 30% of them. If you aren't already hitting over 85%, switching out Acc for 10% Haste is actually netting you less DoT, especially when you're giving up a chunk of Atk as large as 40 to do it. There's more to DoT than swinging often. Again if this is your idea of 'good' then go for it, but it's not mathematically correct and bad advice to do so.

And don't think we're picking on you, pretty much anyone of us who has posted RDM guides has had them picked apart here, that's why you post them on forums.

[MrMageo]

Re: RDM Melee Guide Post 03/08 Update

Wow good input YM you are on your game today. I dont even know how to answer that question. Maybe It is because your butthurt from what I said in the refresh 2 post. Maybe Its because people dont really care, I know I dont. Why dont you go troll along in someone elses forum or head over to all so you can karma bomb people who speak indiferntlly to what you feel is right. If you want to ignore me why come to my threads, It's pretty simple.

[Callisto]

Re: RDM Melee Guide Post 03/08 Update

It's like Evion is all grown up and level 75 now.

[Vyuru]

Re: RDM Melee Guide Post 03/08 Update

RDM is able to equip the 3rd most eminity + Gear behind PLD and WAR which gives us a decent amount to chose from +12 IIRC.

Not true, I can hit +13 enmity that Rdm can't touch, then I can also use the +enmity accessories.

I seriously doubt that melee know how to properly cast spells, with the exception of a good NIN or PLD.

I am a melee with only one job to lvl 75 and with neither of those two jobs leveled above 15 and I know damn well how to properly cast spells >.>

As for the casting technique itself.....

The delay of a scythe is a bit over 8 seconds in length. It would be easy to cast just about any spell inbetween swings according to your theory. However casting spells as a Drk does increase scythe delay even if the spell was used as you say you should cast. Go to any Drk forum and ask them, it's been proven a long time ago that casting spells does increase weapon delay.

I tested the rigors of Tanking as RDM/PLD in campaign, Try tanking there and holding hate while 12 othe people beat on the mob.

Tanking in Campaign is absurdly easy because almost no one else is trying to get hate, that isn't a real test.

So please before you say I am doing it wrong try tanking on something that is being pummeled to death from all sides and still hold the hate.

It's a pity that you're on a different server because I'd like to see just how well you hold hate against a real DD, and how well this rdm/dnc of yours works.

As for the SAM thing ill concede the point it may get more +Enimity gear then RDM, but i still stand firm that a RDM should tank certain situations ahead of a SAM.

Sam/dnc with a Soboro makes for a sick tank, I may disagree with you there.

[MrMageo]

Re: RDM Melee Guide Post 03/08 Update

As i stated multiple times throught my post RDM is Not a DD, adding attack is redundant to adding ACC and haste. The more you hit and the faster you hit are the keys to RDM melee not hiting, for 50+25. Minimum 30 damage is all you need to be effective. I am pushing 40 with my attack gear (str+ merits) I would happily exchange my ATK gear for Haste gear if it meant I was hitting 10% faster.

As for tanking, yes blind, bind, sleep, etc are very good hate tools. But if your able to drop a Burst on a mob why wouldnt you. If you look at my post I showed its what works in my setup, I didnt say Its what works all the time. RDM/NIN is mighty nice tank, but RDM/PLD is even better. But I wont get into that until there is a dedicated RDM tanking topic. Hell RDM/WAR could out tank a RDM/NIN.

[Vyuru]

Re: RDM Melee Guide Post 03/08 Update

Okay, seriously folks? Why am I still the only one ignoring this guy?

Because I don't want new Rdm coming to these forums and not seeing SOME kind of discussion about these topics.

Maybe It is because your (Edited for your protection!) from what I said in the refresh 2 post.

Kindly back off a bit. It has already been well established that you are making some wild claims with little proof backing them up which greatly reduce your credibility, so don't be surprised when someone makes that kind of a comment.

[Callisto]

Re: RDM Melee Guide Post 03/08 Update

I was holding through Tornado II, Aeroaga, and everything else just fine, it's the same rules as every other tank. If a BLM drops a Burst II 3 seconds into a fight after a PLD just started building hate, hey guess what? Dead BLM, and a RDM casting Thunder III would not have made the difference.

And I'd loooooove to see you tank a real mob as /WAR. RDM/PLD is great for JoLove, but kind of useless outside of that. Get us some shots of you tanking Sky Guardians, Sea Jailers, or HNM as /WAR.