Opinions On WHM/RDM After Level Cap Increase

Hello everyone. I'm thinking of working on my WHM as second main after my PLD. Currently I have my BLM as a sub almost set for 75 WHM. I didn't start SCH yet. I'm also leveling RDM as a sub for my PLD.

My concern is, what you guys think that if RDM has a future potential as a sub for WHM. I don't like to level many jobs all at once, I take things slow and try to learn and test every details of jobs I play. Sure I will start SCH soon or later, however leveling RDM as a sub is my priority now that I think it fits PLD perfect with its future potential after level cap increases.

If RDM will also fit WHM as a sub after lvl 80-82+ I would hit 2 birds at once. Please share your opinions about WHM/RDM 80-82+ levels. Thank you for reading.

It will be probably be better than /blm but I'd say /sch would still be better most the time

I don't think WHM/RDM will have nearly as many uses as WHM/SCH. I think with Accession coming out, being able to Hastega, Regen IIIga, and for oh ***situations, Penury or Celerity + Accession + Cure V, /SCH will prove to be a far more superior sub-job.

I think you'd benefit more to having SCH leveled for a SJ for WHM, and keep RDM as your BLM and PLD SJ.

tbh I'm not sure. It comes down to:

Light arts, Accession & Sublimation

VS

Refresh & Convert

For soloing, I'm pretty sure /rdm would be better, but I can't think of much that'll beat out /sch in party situations.

Of course I could be horribly wrong having not levelled either job yet, but that's my 2 cents on it.

Depends if they gimp convert/refresh as a subjob.

No they didn't gimp convert refresh as subjobs. They said they were buffing main job refresh.

Anyways the entire point of /rdm would be convert + refresh.

So you really gotta ask yourself self does convert + refresh beat the mp you'd save from light arts and sublimation conserve mp and whatever you use your strats on.

So /rdm everyone 10 min you should be able to convert for net of 800 mp if you make a convert gear set. You should cast refresh 4 times on yourself netting yourself 440 mp. Then say sanction/sigil + auto refresh body should net you another 400. For a grand total gained of 1640 every 10 min. Which averages out to 1312 in a 8 min time period.

So for ease of math I'm going to assume the whm has around 1200 hp (Don't realy know how high it will be but I believe elf base hp is already higher and assuming the person isn't wearing silly convert hp->mp gear). So it will sublimation. So they will reach full sublimation at 300 mp in 7.5 min. And then can reuse sub in 30 sec so 8 min cycle. Should also have same sanction/sigil + auto refresh bod for 320 gained in that time. For a total of 620 mp gained every 8 min.

Now in that 8 min you can get off 4 penury Cure Vs (normal cost 540mp) for 272 mp. So that leaves you with 348

Light art's is 10% reduction. Conserve mp trait is on average 7%. So on average you will save 16.3% from them combine. So you can cast 415mps worth of spells with what is remaining.

Meaning in that 8 min period you can cast 955mps worth of spells /sch. While /rdm can cast 1312 mps worth of spells. Of course this is assuming no pre-charging and just maintaining. If you pre-charged /sch get's another 358 worth of casting in. And if you burn into your mp you get awhole bunch more for the short term for /sch. And as you get more outside refreshes /sch will benefit more. And just getting refresh from a rdm (especially since it might be more than 3) will add alot to /sch vs /rdm. Also fighting anything aspirable really really throws things in /schs favor.

Now of course that's just mp recovery. Doesn't factor in doing cool stuff like AOE cure Ving for alot less hate than curaga IVing. Rather more efficient too if you getting most of the pt. AOE regen IIIga. Granted that means you aren't using penury but if you are actually bothering to do that chances are this is even more efficient anwyays.


And AOE sandstorming pt with desert boots!

Quote Dasva (cuz my quote button wont work)

"And as you get more outside refreshes /sch will benefit more"

But u cant cast refresh on a sch with sublimination up, so that would nullify part of the reason of using /sch vs /rdm wouldnt it? Unless your talking ballad, then it would benefit both

I was talking ballad and evokers roll.

However it applies to refresh. Though in a different way on top of the efficiency thing.

Since obviously refresh >> sublimation if you are getting refresh from someone else that just takes off one of the things that was in /rdms favor.

Or to put it this way. On average having a rdm cast refresh on you would save you 128 mp in an 8 min period. Having refresh casted on you instead of using sublimation gets you 180 more mp in that 8 min period. Not to mention /sch will use that extra mp more efficiently

Really? I could've sworn they said something about adjusting the effects of subjobs to keep them balanced or something.

They mentioned each job specifically.

For rdm they said something along the lines of they know that having everyone be able to use the job defining abilities is whack but that they intended buff refresh and work on rdm somehow but were scared to overpower it or some lame anti-rdm line like that.

Don't remember hearing anything about gimping any subjob spell or ability. Hell they even mentioned lowering sekki's lvl so you can use it /sam. I'd have to pull up the fanfest stuff though to get it all

Ok those have already been changed a little lol


Can read the rest at http://www.playonline.com/ff11us/event/vanafes2010/.

Still looking for the transcript that mentioned higher potency refresh

Most likely they will make convert at 50% effect~ , so /sch would be still better, and maybe /rdm for solo purposes or when you there isn't a rdm around.

I'm just more worried about how BLM, WHM and RDM will be useful as main jobs later on, as they pimped SCH so much, and at 99 it will be more pimp.

blm- The joy of black magic is that of blast, blast, blasting your enemies away-even if you don't always survive the battle-and we plan to further explore this path.
To that end, black mages can look forward to adding Meteor (strength and attributes yet to be determined) to their spellbooks in the none-too-distant future!


whm-We intend to explore new ways to allow these recovery specialists to thrive in their established role, while working to alleviate the hectic demands placed upon them in battle. Also under consideration is an ability that would allow white mages who have performed their healing duties well to unleash the occasional attack without expending their precious MP.


Already posted rdm up there. Misery is pretty much useless

That also doesn't get into blms will still have higher elmental magic and better gear. In fact the difference will probably be greater. Plus gogo blms weathering and klimaforming themselves lol.

Or that rdms will still be the debuffers of the universe and can just /sch themselves for pretty much all benefits.

whm can also still /sch too. Not too mention even at 49 misery is pretty much useless and solace is only about 1/2 as useful as on whm main. And of course esuna/auspice/sacrifice.


Anyways the world isn't ended. The whole preamble to the job adjustments talked mostly about trying to enhance the way jobs already were while maintaining balance between them. Which is likely part of the reason between the gradual increase to 99

Speaking of Klimaforms... would this be considered as the 1st time another job can use a specific job's "Artifact" once the level cap is broken?

Pretty much since the others are just job specific equipment. Granted it's the 2nd time there has actually been one that was useful more than 5-10 lvls after you get it lol

ahmygggggga my opinion on opinion!

The /RDM versus /SCH comes down to 1) Refresh vs. Sublimation and 2) Convert vs. Stratagems. Let's work out some typical situations in math and see which is better. Assume you're recasting everything as soon as timers are up, e.g. you refresh yourself just as refresh was wearing off. Let's look at performance over 10 minute block of time.


1. Over 10 minutes, /RDM you will have executed exactly 4 Refresh cycles on yourself, have gained a total of 600 MP while spent a total of 160 MP, for a net benefit of 440 MP.

Whether sublimation can beat 440 MP is based on your HP. If you were to match Refresh, you would need to lose a total of 440 HP which would take 660 seconds, or 11 minutes, based on 2 HP/MP loss/gain per tick (3 seconds).

But unless you somehow have 440HP * 4, or 1760 HP at level 80, you cannot gain all that MP in a single Sublimation round; you must use Sublimation twice or thrice to get all that MP. If you use sublimation twice, each time collecting 220 MP (and only needing 880 HP), you'd have 2 segments of time, each 30 seconds, where Sublimation is down, so you can only match Refresh's 440 MP/10min in 12 minutes.

If you have more HP, you collect more MP per Sublimation, but you do not gain it faster. Imagine you had 10,000 HP at level 80; you could sublimate a total of 2,500 MP, but it would take 21 minutes. In that 21 minutes Refresh would give you a net MP gain of 9,167 MP!

tl;dr Refresh will always beat Sublimation in terms of MP gain.

Now there are intangible benefits to Sublimation such as the ability to be woken up from sleep which cannot be overlooked. On the other hand, you can Refresh other members (such as a Paladin) which you cannot do with Sublimation. These things cannot be so easily quantified.

2. Convert versus Strategems. Strategems have many more uses than Convert does; Celerity has saved my taru butt when I needed quick Repose recast or to put up my Stoneskin pronto many times. But to compare apples to apples, let's compare only Strategem's MP saving abilities to Convert's MP regenerative abilities.

You would save MP by using either Penury on an expensive spell, e.g. Cure V, or Ascension on an enhancement, e.g. Haste. You only have one charge every 2 minutes. The biggest MP saver will be Ascension-Haste assuming you need to haste a majority, e.g. 4+, of the party. Ascension haste will require 4 charges in 12 minutes, cost 160 MP, and save you a total of 480 MP if you had to haste 4 people, 640 MP if you had to normally haste 5 people, and 800 MP if you were to manually haste the whole party.

But 4 charges in 12 minutes leaves you with 2 additional charges to spend. Assuming you used them to Penury-Cure V (the biggest Penury MP cut outside of Raise), you now save an additional 135 MP. So at worst, Strategems save you 615 MP every 12 minutes, and at best save you 935 MP every 12 minutes.

Hold on! With /SCH you're also saving due to Light Arts for an additional 10% MP saving, and with Conserve MP gives an average savings of 7%. Let's not consider Aspir which could be more, but you're not always fighting Aspirable mobs. So long story short, /SCH saves you anywhere between 720 MP to 1094 MP every 12 minutes.

Looking at Convert, to match that MP/time you'd need only 600 to 912 HP. Easily doable right? Consider toe cost of curing yourself out of that hole, with say Divine Seal + Cure V. In order to match Sublimation you need to gain 735 MP to 1047 MP, meaing you need 735-1047 HP to beat /SCH. Again, easily doable.

tl;dr Convert will gain you more MP over time than all the best MP savings of Penury and Ascension

Personally I love /SCH and would still use it in a meripo for the incredible convenience of Ascension-Haste. And in meripo, you only need to have a net MP change of 0 to keep the chain going indefinitely, meaning it doesn't matter if you're gaining +100 MP overall or +10,000,000 MP over all, the point is you never lose MP for the entire course of the meripo.

However the math shows that /RDM wins in terms of MP gain for the situations shown.

- In theory you can cast 4 refresh in 10 min, that not means you will have time to cast it (buzy with cure, na, /heal, buff,...). And 2 min 30 is the time of duration... you forgot the time of casting. Imo it's more 3 refresh + (maybe) 1 not full.
- You count the mp given by refresh like if we was always not full mp, unlike sublimation which can be used even when you are full MP.
- If you start to refresh other members, you lost MP.
- You count the refresh from /rdm with 3 MP /tick. Atm you dont know how much it will be.
- Same with convert.

Even if they said (they dont) that they will not gimp refresh and convert from /rdm, look pup and the A- H2H skill...

Atm it's too early to say anything about /rdm vs /sch. Stop BG...

lol you have no idea what they'll do. Just because they said one thing at some press release doesn't mean they could easily change their mind.

And btw the the mp gain is kinda secondary, regenga, stoneskinga, all na-ga, erasega (without count haste ga cause we dont know atm) are enough usefull alone to say /sch > /rdm. Sublimation, conserv MP, light/dark art (without count aspirga, sleepga and klimaorm(ga)) are just bonuses ;)

It's not like if /sch was not good to save MP like other actual subs are :P

You can time it so that you begin casting a few seconds before it wears, and it lands exactly when old refresh wears off. This way there is never any down time, except miliseconds, where you do not have refresh. Yes it is possible, at least with Windower recast timers right in your face. I do this with haste currently (well, when I'm in the mood to be so efficient).

No I don't, but it's the best assumptions at the moment given what we've been told. What's the point of this thread if we can't assume basic things like this?

If you're referring to the rigorous math done on BG, what's wrong with that? I daresay it is the anal-retentive mathematicians of BG that got us today to the point of 20k/hr+ parties. People would still be wearing O-hats and ***wacking crabs, and thinking setting up Distortion is the pinnacle of skill. Say what you want about BG's drama, but there is nothing wrong with doing basic arithmatic and maybe some algebra to gage the merit of one tactic versus another.

You also don't mention that sometimes you will have to end sublimation early because you need the mp now too. Using hastega isn't really good for anything but saving a little amount of time. You'd have to hit at least 4 people just to be more efficient then just using that charge for penury cure IV.

I'd rather AOE cure and give stoneskin then stoneskinga usually.

They also said they were going to give PUP A H2h But ended up giving them a B+. Not a huge difference but still different then what they said.

Things can change from when they announce till when its actually active.

I wouldn't underestimate this advantage. Haste has a relatively long casting time, almost as bad as Regen III, even with haste gear on, e.g. Blessed + Goliard. Every time you begin to cast Haste, you open up a window in which case you cannot Cure. Even for trivial things like lolibri, there have been times when Pecking Flurry goes off just as I begin casting Haste on someone. Then everyone else unloads TP and it's Pecking Flurry again...For more "srs bsns" all that time you're casting Haste is even more crucial.

If danger were not an issue, saving yourself the time of a full haste cycle gives you quite a bit of time, 30sec-1 minute depending on your haste set up, to /heal with SS on.
Penury+ Cure IV = 44 MP saved, no more than 1 extra Haste saved. Perhaps you mean Penury + Cure V, which saves 67 MP, 1.5 Hastes saved. It's not that hard for Ascension+Haste to beat that. You probably thought Penury+Cure V saves 135 MP, which would be 3 Hastes saved.

This would be a good choice if there's a lot of damaged HP everywhere. If everyone is taking damage, this is probably not a casual situation like meripo. For a serious fight, yeah, I agree. In fact, in a serious fight where you're more concerned with keeping everyone intact rather than maintaining ~0 net MP loss as you would in meripo, the savings of Light Arts would be enough reason to choose /SCH over /RDM.

To clarify, I am merely comparing the advantages of Refresh vs Sublimation and Convert vs Strategems in the limited situation where your main concern is MP. There are numerous merits for both subjobs outside of this domain, ones not so easily comparable numerically or even qualitatively. My analysis was as apples-to-apples as you can get with these two jobs. If you'd like to argue about other situations that's perfectly fair, but you can't argue that in terms of the limited scope of MP generation alone for casual play /RDM doesn't win.

I assume SE will gimp convert to a 2:1 ration, seeing how they have gimped a few abilities allready when used as a subjob (souleater, medidate).

My guess is that \sch will be superior over \rdm allmost allways.
Light arts will save you alot of mp over time alone.
Refresh will be kinda irrelevant seeing how RDM is getting a new refresh spell, and you will want that over the old one.

Convert alone probably would'nt be better than \sch even if you get it ungimped.

klimaform is the sch af weapon there is a quest for it doubt u can use it as /sch

course i can be wrong

Convert will mean the WHM has to put a Cure IV on themselves, which could mean taking hate a lot of the time. With a good Enmity- set (Basically stacking Crow or Raven gear) it might be a bit more feesable however Id still say due to utility from other SCH Ja`s it will remain preferred.

Run to 25 feet away.

I think you forget making it accension doubles the casting time and mp cost.

Or like regen III. When on rdm I try to mix convert around my buff cycle and just throw on a composure regen II lol. Not like convert cure IVing really gets me hate generally more just cause it's rediculously efficient and funny