Jack Of All Trades: A Guide To Red Mage

Murg would be better if Deathblossom wasn't such a meh WS. Not having any sort of TP scaling or fTP transfer leaves it in a very bad place compared to Savage, CDC or the various magic WS's like Seraph.

I didn't of Maxentius! That leads me to another question, wouldn't dagger or sword be better for the skill + scaling?

Keep in mind that while you do get more tp/hit wearing a higher delay weapon, you also attack slower...because delay.

For example with Murgleis + Ternion, capped haste, dual wield, etc. your delay is ~130. Switch that to Maxentius and your delay goes to ~166. This doesn't seem that large, it's only 35ish delay? Except that's a ~27% increase in your delay, and your TP/hit goes from ~80 to ~90, an increase of ~11%.

Maybe this increases your x-hit, maybe it doesn't, that's quite difficult to judge, especially in a dual-wield build with a lot of multi-attack. The delay, however, will definitely make your attack rounds quicker.

Again...definitely recommend using a calculator rather than guessing, if you're looking for actually optimal answers. If you're just looking for random guesses, then just put on whatever makes you feel good.

It's using a Murgleis to Death Blossom, you're literally just doing it to feel good.


It will definitely be more accurate. But with Composure, Malignance, and Distract III that is not an issue until you are fighting terrible things. The good thing about MLs is that you get 1 skill per level so while you're never going to turn that D into a B like Sword or Dagger, it's not going to keep falling further behind because the rate increase is the same.

The attack component on the other hand is just how RDM always is, bad. Could the difference in skill matter for damage? Totally, but it's your offhand damage so it's much less relevant than your main hand.

When you're actually using Maxentius for Black Halo in the main hand, you really want buffs from others if you can get it. If you can't, the WS is still getting +50% from the weapon which is completely bonkers. Beats True Strike handily when you're dual wielding.

i only use Styime for Frazzle on 1 basement boss, usually the Jester since i only do 5 bosses, CS styime and open with frazzle 3 than everything u can still land first cast

Distract III lands almost every time at first cast on Jester, if you open with Frazzle III (which also lands first cast), so using Stymie on G for Distract III is kinda pointless.

Got another probably noob question but, sroda tathlum for sanguine blade worth it? Does it work on it? I use ghastly r15 but I saw it somewhere used.

Same for seraph blade and whatever else tbh

It only procs 10% of the time, but when it does, it's definitely a nice boost.
It's also very nice for AE and for enspell builds in general.
So yeah, given its ridiculously low price, it's definitely worth it imo.

Sroda works on Enspells and magical WSs. It's +25% damage, 10% of the time. When you're using it for Seraph/RLB and it goes off and you SC then it's a very large and noticeable difference. When it goes off on Sanguine Blade you just think, wow that's way too much damage for 1000 tp.

Ghastly is consistent and good. Sroda just makes big numbers show up that make you feel fancy.

Sroda maths out as +2.5% average damage. This is in a separate, additional multiplier to anything else, so it's a pure +2.5% to your total damage. Anytime you can afford the hit to Magic Accuracy, it's your best option.

Ghastly Tathlum +1 and Oshasha's Treatise add stats that you already have plenty of in the rest of your set, so the gains from those are relatively dimished. They're still better options than Sroda if you *really* need the Magic Accuracy tho, but those cases are exceedingly rare once you're geared well enough.

So yes, Sroda is really good. However, it's not a very high priority item due to that Magic Accuracy thing, so don't worry about buying it unless it's one of the last pieces you need. To give you an idea of priorities, I'd get it before Orpheus's Sash, but not before Pixie Hairpin, Malignance Earring, or Freke Ring.

Yeah I imagined, I already owned one for blm so I'm trying it out now.

speaking of orpheus I don't have a duelist neck +2 but only +1, could in theory purchase the +2 but was thinking of trying to save to orpheus since I can't see anything else I can upgrade realistically that I do need, I suppose neck is much more important at +2 than the sash?

I'm terrible at keeping money once I get to a certain threshold I just upgrade gear but really not seeing much gil worthy stuff on my rdm anymore, I should have everything else besides ea body +1 since I only have NQ but then again my sortie group does melee mode and if I need heavy magic I'm on blm or sch, so not sure...

So yeah, orpheus or upgrade duelist to +2 from +1?

Duelist +2 vs +1 isn't a huge jump. Neither is Orpheus unless you're within 10 yalms.

I love both pieces and they are both worth the money if you play RDM. If you're the kind of BLM that like to abuse mana wall and get up on things for extra nuke damage or cata/earth crusher, then Orpheus is divine. Same if you're NIN diehard.

Tough decision. Neck +1 to +2 is +5 Magic Accuracy, +3% enfeebling potency, +3 INT/MND, +5% Enhancing/Enfeebling Duration.
Orpheus is comparatively a much bigger bonus, but *only* to magical WS or to nukes in melee range. So if you don't find yourself a lot in situations where magical ws are THE tool, it might not make much sense.

Personally I'd do neck+2 before sash, but you have to *** your current needs to decide what would give you the bigger benefit.

bro i dont need to Frazzle to Land debufss,..,.. its for the Magic damage from Sc's and seraph blades, thats why i always go for Styime Frazzle

Yeah tough choice as Lili said, especially cause I do melee on blm and sch, play COR and BLU when needed for ls/events and also use NIN albeit rarely... sash should be better for my account but maybe not for the rdm itself.

I'll think about it more, really tough choice.

Thanks for the help on RDM tho, still learning. I need to try and solo D/VD the wyrm god for crep. cloak sooner or later so I can use all the gear I got for some good, odin too maybe...

In the end, a RDM's primary role is debuffing and casting long-lasting enhancing magic so I think +2 neck is a clear winner. That's another Embla Sash or half a Telchine piece and half a Snotra Earring.

Also farming Shinryu for cloak might be one of the least cost-effective things you could do in-game.

If you do not have a Twilight Cloak already, you may want to farm that first so you at least have access to Impact while farming for the Crepuscular Cloak. Just remember you need to blue proc the original fight to get the drop.


I would argue that RDMs are expected to carry their own weight for DPS, in sortie and more damage would likely be better than a small buff to duration and potency. However, if the group the RDM runs with is a melee setup, an Orpheus Sash is not likely to help that much.

I feel the enhancing role for rdm has also kinda fallen off, at least for anyone not you. Refresh isn't nearly as coveted anymore, and I don't feel like anyone ever looked for one for haste.

I feel exactly opposite.
Haste II allows to replace March with different song and cap haste with Honor. Opening slot for song is pretty important with Aria, because without minuet support it's usually wasted and becomes the SV only song otherwise. Refresh is still welcome on RUN, PLD, gsword DRK etc.
Phalanx II is also great if someone has set for it. Phalanx II casted on my BLU gives me 70 damage cut, which can be really massive damage reduction. It also do wonders on RUN with Embolden.

Must be playing with pretty sick people to have aria

Can replace aria with something else. Haste II is still valuable, theres just more alternatives available now, but at a cost, march takes up a slot, geo-haste uses up a bubble,

For normal stuff probably doesnt matter, but if you wanted to min-max haste II frees up some space

Herculean Etude is in general a nice song for the majority of dds, not all equally alas.

When aria is not accessible or wouldn't be beneficial, can use that instead

It's certainly worth more at a higher level. For me, I can count once where someone had a phalanx set macro. Likewise, most would see another dd as more valuable than saving a march.

I would hazard a guess that this place is more dedicated than the norm. I'm not expecting people to have a hybrid set or meds, let alone all of the minutia. I remember when sortie first came out, after getting a feel for it, I warned people that d mobs hurt and should probably be in dt. Long story short is I looked forward to deletes one shoting someone

Dumb thought or question: but for segs - if you had a pld as tank, could a rdm/whm or rdm/sch handle all the healing with the pld? Or too dicey? If this was viable, might be interesting?

Been there, done that on rdm/sch - barwatera and enwaterga are useful and I had enough MLs to have Stona, otherwise I'd have done /whm.

Doable. Better than whm or sch? No. Fun? No. Viable to fill that 6th slot in a pug, or to fit that one friend that only plays GEO SMN and RDM? Totally. Useful if you're doing NMs cuz Dia3, but not much reason to prefer it otherwise.

I agree with all of your points. In fact, I also like to incorporate how strenuous a strategy is to the support players too, especially with events that are just daily zerg-fests.

Some short-sighted people like to blurt out "but we get full clear every time" ....no, they don't. Not in a week or month. And if they come close to that, than their healer is asking to change jobs or has one foot out the door. If you've done 10,500 segments per run, you're golden. If you can do more without making your support want to quit, I mean, what's better than that?

Since it's been mentioned in the last posts, what is the deal on Shinryu D/VD for a solo RDM?

I guess only geo trusts, RDM/NIN, enspell (element?), lotsa debuffs, full meva TP set, and a specific set for Holy Waters for when Shinryu unavoidably will land Doom on you?

Would love to hear detailedly how to tackle this so I can give it a try or two and see if I can make it.

There's a writeup on the wiki, could be a good place to start.

The writeups on the wiki are a bit old.

I do Shinryu D RDM/NIN solo+trusts: Valaineral, Lilisette, Mayakov, Qultada, Monberaux.
Excalibur+Gleti r30, want to keep KoR > Savage > KoR going as much as you can. Bursting Aero/Fire at the end can be a nice chunk of added damage.
I used to use Oden but at ML50 I now use Red Curry Buns.
Full buff, Enaero or Enfire if it's Icesday, Barblizzard/Barparalyze, Gain-MND, Shock Spikes, Stoneskin+Utsusemi for pull.
Haste II, Refresh III, Phalanx II, Protect V + Shell V on all trusts - Monberaux won't overwrite if everybody has, and he's too slow to do it at start before Shinryu wrecks everybody, unless you get lucky with a para proc which isn't that uncommon, but still unreliable.
Sleep, full debuff, and I mean FULL, do everything, but leave Silence > Poison II > Dia III for last so you maximize Silence duration - Kaustra can hurt. Can change Gain-MND for STR once you're done debuffing.
Try to position trusts to that Valaineral is in front and everybody is behind/to the sides. You stand in front but a bit to the side.
Dispel Mighty Guard everytime he uses it.
Monbro's Holy Water has a surprising high chance of removing Doom, and it's AoE, so if he can stay alive he's by far the best healer for this fight because he can aoe remove both Doom and Paralysis.
Exca's AM goes a long way to keep you alive and reduce the amount of cure/sanguine you need to do. If Monbro dies, put up Regen II cuz he won't be overwriting it with his shitty one anymore.
Rest of the fight is pretty straightforward. Mayakov's 10% Haste Samba makes up for the lack of songs to cap haste, Valaineral and Lilisette will spam their AoE cures until they die which means you can focus on damage until their departure.
Sanguine Blade as needed.
There's effectively a DPS check for Silence, if you can't kill it before buffs start expiring it becomes really hard to land everything again and keep going, but it's doable. High Nyame helps.
Doom is annoying and it spams it sometimes but it's easy to deal with, just makes you lose time.
Keep Remedies handy to remove para when Monberaux bites it.
Qultada will die first, hopefully not before he does Chaos Roll.

You can do VD with the same setup/strat but the fight becomes significantly longer so I don't bother.
RDM/DNC also works and dps is a bit higher cuz Box Step and you can remove para yourself without having to use remedies, but keeping up Haste Samba and Box Steps eats up valuable TP that you could want to use on an emergency Sanguine Blade instead.
A friend on GEO/WHM makes the fight immensely faster, Entrust Haste caps your delay, Cure IV/Curaga III, Attune/Frailty, Paralyna, Cursna, can kill VD before Entrust expires.

I believe that's all.

You can also RLB > Seraph > RLB forever. The fight is just maintaining debuffs so you can dps and remembering to bring meds. If you make a set for holy water, then doom usually goes away in just 1. /NIN bring a ton of Remedies. /DNC bring a couple just in case. You can beat it either way. Pancea aren't required but it's nice for getting rid of stat downs.

I haven't done it since before they let you use brews in there. It was long but not that hard then, there is better gear now. It should be less challenging.

Next month is extra HP for trusts, they might live long enough to give buffs.