Jack Of All Trades: A Guide To Red Mage

Actually, I think if it were those 4 it would be pretty easy to do Dia/Bio and Enfeebling Effect 5/5.

Macc is great, and we always need it, but an extra 5% (assumed) bonus to slow/paralyze/addle/frazzle/distract would be imo impossible to pass up.

Enfeebling duration might be nice, but I agree with whoever above said we don't need Enhancing Duration, unless it is maybe Composure Effect, but even then, a boost to enfeebling would be too important to pass up.

I agree, personally. But having a potent Phalanx II to cast on melees and mages would have certain benefits, too.

But let's not get ahead of ourselves with merit speculation. SE has been good to RDM lately, but they might just fail us like they failed NIN.

Even if they did fail us, giving us 5/5 of every merit on top of what we already got makes us pretty clear winners compared to practically every other job so as long as they don't randomly nerf anything, I'm happy.

Agreed, but the merits will still be something new to take into consideration if the choices aren't obvious.

TP Bonus + or WSD+ when using Enspell2s.
Accessionable!

enfeeble duration +1 second/merit
enhancing duration +1 second/merit
+2acc/merit with composure up
keep 2% of hp/merit upon convert
saboteur -3 second/merit

They're going to make Dia III 1 merit level and have one of the categories "Dia Potency"

Merit levels only effects the duration. It would be pretty awful of them to make it last 30s.

Shoooosh! They'll hear you! (Bad enough NIN got that nonsense...)

Realistically we'll probably see four relatively generic options which are mostly based on our JAs and not repeated elsewhere as JP bonus or under Merit 1.

If I had to make a guess:

Saboteur Effect: Increase duration of enfeebling magic while under the effect of Saboteur by 2% per rank.
Composure Effect: Increase magic accuracy while under the effect of Composure by 4 per rank.
Spontaneity effect: Increase the chance of nullifying MP cost of the next spell cast while under the effect of Spontaneity by 10% per rank.
Phalanx effect: Increase the amount of damage reduced by Phalanx by 1 per rank.

dont most merit options follow that they only effect level 75 and below JAs? doubt youll see anything related to sabo/spont

Ah good call, completely slipped my mind. Disregard my speculation then.

Well the merits could just be emotes and we'd still call it a win. So I really don't care what they are right now.

Gentlemen, I bring you:

• Dia III will become: Enfeebling Duration+

• Slow II will become: Macc+

• Paralyze II will become: Enhancing Duration+

• Phalanx II will become: Immunobreak Chance+

• Bio III will become: Enspell Damage+

• Blind II will become: Acc+

These are the new merit categories. I have no info for the potency other than that I am confident that Macc will be +5 per merit. (Dunno if Acc+ is tied to composure, it's written the same as Macc+ so I doubt it.)

EDIT: Oh and just to be clear, that's the merits. We have 0 idea on how the augments will be placed or how they will work... so hold on to your panties.

Oh no... too many choices. Send help.

Actually, after taking the time to actually look at the pieces that go along with the merits, the answer seems pretty clear.

Enfeebling Duration and MAcc+ are both on the Headpiece which makes both options pretty attractive as Vitiation Chapeau +3 is basically tops in most instances.

Enhancing Duration is on the feet which means it will be inferior to Empyrean Feet so that's out.

Immunobreak Chance will be on hands which only have MACC so I probably wouldn't bother with that one personally.

Enspell Damage and Acc+ are on the legs and likely require you have them on while using enspells in order to get the benefit. Probably also not worth it.




So I think, for me at least, the clear option is 5/5 for MACC and Enfeebling Duration.

I'm thinking Enfeebling Duration+ required and either Macc+ or Enhancing Duration+, but lean towards double Duration 5/5. (I make do without that Macc+25 now, I can live without it tomorrow.)

Unless you have Crocea Mors (or just do a lot of melee), then drop the Enhancing Duration for Enspell Damage. Composure+Empyrean set makes things last forever already; so might as well pump up the Enspell.

Depending on the values, I'll either get MACC/Enfeebling duration, MACC/Immunobreak chance, or Enfeebling duration/Immunobreak chance.

There is no reason to get immunobreak if you haven’t already gotten macc. Immunobreak just lowers the macc requirement to land an enfeeble, so if you’re relying on it, the macc is going to be more useful

That's now that Immunobreak is at all. Immunobreak has absolutely nothing to do with magic accuracy other then you need to pass a MACC check for it to proc in the first place. What Immunobreak does is lowers a monsters built-in status ailment resistances, those pesky percentile resistances that don't care what the casters MACC or the targets MEVD is.

It works like this, assuming I was casting Paralyze II on a target that had 50% Paralyze resistance. I cast the spell and it does the MACC checks like normal and I pass all those checks. It then does a check against that 50% Paralyze resistance, I fail that check. What happens now is it does a third check to see if Immunobreak procs and if it does then the 50% Paralyze resistance becomes 40% (we don't know the actual amount reduced). If I cast Paralyze II again and the same situation happens the resistance would be reduced to 30% and so forth until I land the Paralyze and the resistance resets back to 50%.

Maju is a prime example of this as he has something like ~90% Blind resistance. The first cast ~might~ make it past the resistance but it's not likely, instead you need a good 2~3 immunobreaks for Blind to finally land. An ES Sab Frazzle III didn't change this at all but makes it virtually guaranteed that the caster will pass every MACC check leading to more Immunobreaks.

Edit: I will admit that you make a fair point. It isn't exactly the same as macc. My personal experience is that I don't get any help. I don't get Focus or anything when I am trying to land really important debuffs, so I generally would never be in the position to just take immunobreak merits. I would need those macc first to get my hitrate up.

That being said, Immunobreak procs...... often. I've not parsed it or otherwise seen how often, but if I had to guess, it is close to 50%. If the merit category just gives chance to proc, I still don't see it as very useful. If it increases the potency of immunobreak, it might be worth it.

Do we know what the potency is now? Is it a flat -10 resistance per proc?

I would add, that if something takes a bunch of immunobreaks to land a debuff, it generally isn't worth spamming to try to land the debuff. There are a few exceptions where the fight meta requires it like Maju or the new Odin HTBF, but generally, your time and MP would be better used elsewhere if it is that resistant.

Just for clarity, as merits are designed for 75. Has there been a single mob in the entire game under 119 that has the immunobreak feature? (I know that some zones mobs are defined as "99 with inflated stats")

That's their big argument for what they chose as new categories, but immunobreak is completely unfit to fill that requirement.

It's pretty much a given we will no longer have "one size fits all" merits and will need to remerit depending on what kind of content one does (if you care about best performance). Situationally we did have to change merits before, but not to this extent as Dia 3/Paralyze II/Slow II were the best choices.

Enfeeb Duration / Enspell potency prob standard.

Enhancing duration instead of enspell for mules?

The only category that I think we can all agree is "required" to 5/5 is Enfeebling Duration.
Everything else is based on situation and taste. (Though Immunobreak seems worthless to me in light of Macc... and Acc shouldn't be an issue now.)

Also: can we take a moment and say thank GOD that there's no Phalanx potency? It'll be so nice to have Phalanx II use the Phalanx formula... aka be at 5/5 potency.

I tend to expect the Enspell+ to be super low, like +1 each, maybe as high as +3. I suppose at +3 or higher it would become worth swapping in over Taeon Tights thought not Carmine Cuisses in cases where you need the dual wield.

Really don't see any reason to ever use the Enhancing Duration merits as Lethargy Houseaux has Enhancing Skill and Duration that I just don't see Vitiation Boots ever eclipsing with merits.

Maybe. But I think we can throw "at 75" out the window. Macc+25 would have been redic. HP+250 would have been even more so.
So it wouldn't be out of the realm of possibility that it's enspell+5 per.

Though I agree that it's most likely +3. Maaaybe +4.

All mobs that have status resistance like that have immunobreaks, and yes, that includes lower level mobs.

Uh, why are you looking only at the gear slots? You can benefit from merits even without using the associated gear that goes with them.

For me I'm not really seeing much appeal with Enfeebling Duration at the moment when most things die quicker than the enfeebs will last or will do an annoying remove to remove them anyway. For the content that doesn't like a wave3 dynamis boss I'm on haste duty for an entire alliance anyway, so seems like it would be better to have the Enhancing Duration.

Will probably merit enspells for the damage though since I tend to melee a lot on RDM, hoping it's potent.