All For One, And More For Me: A Guide To Red Mage

I need the following:

-Help with Weapon Analysis (I am currently doing this)
-Help listing all the magic spells RDM has access to, their effects, level obtained, possibly forumlas (currently working on)
-Help creating and inputting gearsets into the guide (I haven't started that)
-Link to a good and easily customizable RDM lua for GS users
-Link to a RDM spreadsheet

I can probably post it once I get the weapon analysis and gearsets done, since that is what most people are after, and finish the spell list and other stuff later. Once posted, people can post suggestions, fixes, etc. I want to finish today or tomorrow.

If I may make a suggestion (sadly I am not versed enough to provide this, merely to point out the possible desire for it!)- could this aforementioned sticky .lua actually be two, one that is Mote-include dependent and one that is not? I know some players are very used to the staples of his designs, while others prefer the ability to customize. I'm sure we can find some RDMs proud of either to use as "scaffolding" for sticky .luas.

(Mine are convoluted as ***and are in the process of cleaning-not to mention lacking some features that I look forward to seeing what others do)

It's revenge for being able to afk for all but like...4 of 2100 job points. -Bubble. Bubble. Entrust-bubble. Alt+tab to porn. Check bubbles before point of no return. Recast bubbles. Make sandwich-. Worst part is people that play GEO are so lazy that a hand wash before sandwich is optional. Only joking though. Old school job hating imitation.

Decided to Afterglow the Excal, and halfway through clears for Sequence. Excal however seems to be a great choice for solo DD. Haven't used much in party situations.

Hi - hopefully this hasn't been answered elsewhere in the thread:

As a newly returning player, how do I gear up RDM? I've been doing alluvion skirmish for telchine and some taeon, but other than that I literally have empty slots because the character is very new.

Is this gear still relevant if augmented well? Escha stuff seems intimidating and a ways off.

Edit: Other than sparks gear which I have, as well, no accessories, etc. Unsure what content I could even hope to complete to start filling different sets up.

Are you saying you literally have no accessories?
You only have sparks armor/weapons?

Yes. I have nothing apart from sparks gear, weapons, and two telchine pieces.

Should I just buy some stat rings off AH? Not sure what my options are.

STR DEX MND INT

For nuking:
Get 2 NQ shiva rings, they're solid and only ~100k each.
Stoicheion Medal(neck) good AH nuking piece.
Salire Belt, good AH nuking piece.
Witchstone(ammo) decent AH nuking piece.
Toro cape, good AH nuking piece.
Could go kill the NM for moldavite earring, could get a hecate's earring from abyssea(harder to get). Could buy a Friomisi Earring off AH, it's a super good nuking earring.
NM: http://ffxiclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/Mysticmaker_Profblix
Chatoyant staff or eminent wand

Healing:
Sirona's ring from AH(BIS)
Ephedra ring(only thing better is HQ and it's a mil instead of 20k
Tempered cape from AH
Roundel earring from AH(basically BIS)
Korin obi for healing(in the name of science) or a bishop's sash(ah)
Inquisitor chain(neck) is pretty decent for healing(AH)
aredan earring(AH)
Chatoyant staff(if using light weather and /sch to heal), light staff if not

Melee DD:
2 ifrit rings for savage blade/death blossom
rajas from COP for tping
sparks dex/acc or str/attk ring are ok for tping, could just use ifrits if you want to be cheap
Peacock amulet(lol) for neck, i'm sure argus is up on your server
Dynamic belt(+1)(AH)
Brutal earring from limbus
suppanomimi from zilart quest(if dual wielding)
hasty pinion +1(ammo) for tping or oneiros pebble(100x cheaper)
espial gear in slots you're using wayfarer, better than wayfarer for melee
Buquwik cape for savage blade, can TP in it
Atheling mantle for TPing(from abyssea) or attacker's mantle(ah)
TP bonus moonshade earring(WOTG final mission) for any WS

Enfeebling:
Leviathan ring x2 is good
AF3 neck from abyssea
Salire Belt
AF3 cape from abyssea or swith cape or tuilha cape(AH)
aredan earring(AH)

You're going to want full AF3+2 gear and cape from abyssea because enhancing duration on you and others is insane.

This is all assuming cheap/easy to get stuff I guess. If you're doing current content and/or getting carried there's a lot better options but there's some good quick AH gear on this list.

edit: Added chatoyant/light staff
edit2: fixed Salire Belt name and tuilha cape

That's a really comprehensive list and great starting point for me, thank you so much

It's mostly super cheap easy to obtain AH gear too! Or story gear.
No problem.

Gearing up my melee rdm and generally not a melee player so I have some very dumb questions probably.

Using Colada atm, but working on completing my Murgleis trials. No Sequence yet.

Questions:

• For Savage Blade I should focus on WSD, STD/MND

• For CDC go DEX and crit? Does WSD not affect cdc?

• Is fotia belt/neck useful for any RDM ws (cdc,savage,deathblosson or requiescat?)

• If I have a DA/TA/QA+ gear, should I swap it out on all WS builds? or do certain weaponskills benefit from an extra DA hit procing?

• With regards to offhand, it was mentioned upthread Ternion +1 is 3rd place with blurred knife +1 and dem. dengen +1 in the top 2 spots respectively. Where would Mandau slot it? Is it worth building that set?

Thanks in advance.

Savage yes, focus on STR/MND, and Weapon Skill Damage. Fotia Neck/Waist are good choices here.

For CDC, focus on Crit Hit Rate%, Crit Hit Damage+, and DEX. Weapon Skill Damage does nothing for it. In addition, the Fotia Pieces don't help CDC either. Something like a Caro Necklace is about the best we can get on RDM. Ignore this. Fotia Pieces are fine choices for CDC.

I don't typically aim for trying to fit multiattack in my weaponskill builds on RDM. It comes down to trying to maximize either WSD or Crit, depending on the WS in question, then the relevant Stat (DEX, STR, MND, w/e), and if some multiattack comes through great.

I offhand a Ternion+1, and absolutely love it while mainhanding Sequence. Its a huge boon to TP building. Offhand Mandau is going to be completely worthless. You'll notice that the "top" choices for an offhand weapon for RDM all have one thing in common: multi-attack. I did toy around with Murgleis mainhand/Sequence offhand (for the extra STP), and while AM3 was up it certainly had a place, but I don't ever melee mainhanding Murgleis any more...it just pales in comparision to Sequence or AG'ed Almace, especially when it comes to your Weapon Skill numbers.

Also, I really have a hard time believing that Demersal Degen+1 outparses Ternion+1 in the offhand for a Sequence user. Blurred+1, possibly...but unless you're rocking that dagger for another job its hard to justify that expense for melee RDM when Ternion+1 is so close.

*sidenote, squirrel moment: The other RDM sticky is a little more active these days. Still good info here, but you might get more responses in the other thread.

Fotia pieces most certainly help CdC, because it has fTP transfer, and they far outperform stuff like Caro Necklace.

Multi-attack gear is very good for Chant du Cygne, though usually not quite as good as Crit Rate or Crit Damage given Temper II.

this is all wrong. weapon skill damage works on cdc, but it's like any other ws and only applies to the first hit. fotia pieces are the best items you can get on cdc due to the ftp replication.

My apologies, Geriond is quite correct. I'm now wondering who I trusted years ago regarding CDC rather than just looking it up myself.

Addressed my *** on the fotia pieces, but wanted to clarify why I said "Weapon Skill Damage does nothing for it". yes, of course it affects the first hit, but why oh god why would you ever gear WSD on CDC when crit rate/crit dmg are going to affect ALL hits when they proc? This is why I jumped ahead to "does nothing" when of course it will do something, albeit very little in comparision.

When it comes to my comments on the Fotia pieces, bash away!

because he might think it actually does nothing, especially judging by how he asked the question.

I have been comparing various offhand choices on spreadsheet and I've yet to find anything beating ternion HQ for sequence/savage build yet.

I'm getting str path nibiru blade quite close thanks to all that stp/acc/attack/str though.

Raetic Kris +1.

What would rdm bis tp and ws set set for almace/kclub and chant du Cygne

Not using kclub.

You want to offhand Thibron (or Sequence) and wear full Malignance 5/5. Stack as much Acc/STP and go to town?

As a RDM, you'll have lots of multi-attack with Temper2 (~36-37%?), which will take precedence over your 'extra' KClub swings (Max of 8 attacks per round). This makes the KClub largely irrelevant for RDM, unless you choose to not use Temper, load up on STP in a ridiculous manner, just to see your maximum number of WSes / minute go up (with a questionable drop in accuracy, and a ridiculous amount of TP-feed).

It was already discussed and proven (by Austar's sim) that Temper II + KC provides slightly better attacks per round than KC without Temper II. That being said, KC as offhand for CDC seems questionable. CDC has replicated fTP so every hit counts, that includes offhand hit and it's multi-attack proc. Accuracy with KC might be too low during WS to land those hits and KC base damage will also lower damage from those that lands.

Curious as to why this thread was chosen for the question. Not saying it's a bad thing... in fact it gave me an ide... wait... yup it was an idea! Maybe not a good one though...:

We have a random question FFXI related thread as well as individual sticky guides for the jobs. The random question thread is a billion pages long and sucks to try to go through that info (even with the search function) and arguments always dilute the guides. Perhaps someone smarter than me can implement a random-job-related-questions thread and we can keep guides as guides?

Just throwing that out there.