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

Holy ***, I never thought SE would use that kind of mechanism. It explains a lot of what we've been witness's and how different strategies seem to result in different results. Is it possible that this damage reduction might also include a magic accuracy reduction / resist rate increase? That could easily explain the ~60% numbers people are claiming immediately after a big MB.

I am not entirely sure as to whether any m.eva is granted, but my hidhaegg results make me strongly believe that it isn't. Note also that the SMN bursts used for the original 60% claim were of a much much larger amount of damage(over 50k i assume, versus my <15k tests). My main questions now are:

1. Can I receive a penalty higher than 20% if I target more level-appropriate monsters and use a higher tier nuke as well as actual gear?

2. Is the penalty calculated by monster HP% dealt, or simply by flat damage dealt? I want to think it's flat damage, based primarily on my experience that when using a large group in a HP-scaling fight, the penalty still effects them more than a small group doing a similar proportion of damage.

If it is flat damage, the 20% 'cap' may be solely due to the relatively low damage used in my testing. My next test target will have to be something with a large damage taken bonus if I want to avoid the variability in magic bursts. I plan to try the VWNM qutrub to see if I can reproduce these results using much higher damage nukes.

In the event that the penalty is calculated by using flat damage amounts, or perhaps damage amounts based on monster level, it's a pretty terrible design decision for the prevalent hp-scaling model.

As a side note, where practicality is concerned, this means you could potentially increase damage by leading with your weaker bursts and allowing it to reset before the stronger volley of bursts. Need much more data regarding timing to be conclusive, but interesting thought.

Damage fluctuates too much and hate is too annoying to use the qutrub as a target, trying to decide on a better one. Would much prefer something that doesn't require magic bursts to get up into that high range since the built in variance makes measurement much more difficult.

It's all good, I'm sure this we'll all get a better grasp on this mechanic. This is some weird ***that SE must of ninja'd without telling anyone. The original "anti-BLM spam" adjustment happened a decade or so ago and you've already demonstrated that somethings changed.

This actually makes sense, though. People have been MBing skillchains made with Immanence and then talking about the nuke damage reduction two nukes later. Why wasn't the first nuke nerfed because of Immanence'd casts? Probably because they didn't do enough damage.

That said, the effect can be dramatic at low damages as well. I recommend using Crom Dubh to test on.

See that's the funny thing cause we've spammed him using

PLD
WHM
BLU
BLU
GEO
COR(or another GEO)

GEO does malaise + accumen and the COR does Wizards + Evokers or the second GEO might add something (not really important)

The BLU's spam light nukes with the occasional Fire, Thunder or Wind. The light nukes we use are Blinding, Rail Cannon and Diffusino ray with my occasionally running and doing Retinal after he does a TP move.

We don't notice any sudden drop in damage from a single nuke, we certainly do notice a cumulative building up resistance to light if both of us spam our nukes together, which is why we separate it out a bit. After about 10s that buildup goes away. This seems to correspond to the old "timed BLM nerf" that happend a long *** time ago where SE made it so all monsters build resistance to an element if it's used a lot in a short period of time.

We could be witnessing two different mechanics in play. The first being the normal effect and the second being one specifically designed to counter a group of BLM's blasting on a SC. They may of implemented it when they buffed SC's awhile back and we just never really noticed until lately.

Funny enough, when I first asked about details about what was happening regarding the resist wall on BG, I was pretty much told I was an idiot for not knowing about the changes they made 10 years ago(no actual testing was shown, just some off-hand anecdotal stories and eyeballing from 2008 era). Funny to see that they probably did make some ninja changes and the assumptions used to dismiss me kept us from really knowing what was going on until now.

That happens sometimes amongst our community with how secretive SE can be.

The changed back when were well known about and they are easy to notice when chain nuking of a single element. And those like myself who frequently play in mixed groups, will rarely see the sudden resist spikes because our MBed nukes tend to be spaced out. We are all on different connections with different lag, different fast cast sets and different start times so the nukes don't always arrive in the same 1~3s window. Makes things like this notoriously difficult to sort out.

I don't have much of the means or patience to test this stuff, but it's pretty interesting. I'm wondering if the % is not HP based, but level based, specifically the level difference. Compared to Kirin/Kouryu, would some of you guys be keeping track of nuke numbers on something like Plouton? Some of the WKRs might be decent for testing too, unless I'm completely misunderstanding the criteria for a good test subject.

I'm also curious if this is limited to magic damage of the same element, and if you could bypass it to some degree by using other spells when possible. I think I've also heard it mentioned that Lunge/Swipe aren't affected, nor do they contribute.

Plouton is what had me really confused before Escha tier NMs were added, since our MB volleys on it tended to look "normal" and the low # nukes chalked up to a resist. But I realized it's just Plouton taking insane amounts of magic damage that the person hitting the first 99K is probably really doing 200K(but nerf'd to 99,999), which explains why we'd often see 1-3 nukes in the 70-99K range during the same window.

With that said, even Palloritus exhibits heavy resist wall traits. For example, I usually have to do a Helix2 all by itself at the start of the fight on the end of the first SC, because if any nuke comes before it in the "second window" it will do ~8K instead of ~17K.

Anecdotal or not I don't think the mechanics have changed at all throughout the years albeit I 100% agree with the lack of any formal testing throughout the years. That magic resist buildup came around the same point that melee was beginning to be more a favourite for ws spam and not skillchains. Only a handful of fights where nuking was relevant were grand wyrms and even then due to level difference and the overall power of gear you rarely noticed. That and the amount of nukes that would be cast on said target might be less than half of what we see now in one MB volley. Altogether it took the power creep of adoulin, change to nuke dmg base and magic burst for nearly all the community to even care about this.

The 99,999 limit is just a text termination limit not an actual damage limit. The damage value is still sent in a packet and parsers do record it and you can look at it. I think Bryth has the actual damage cap at something like 131K as it's a 17-bit value 2^17).

It could be that Pluton / Perfidian might have special damage mechanics too. I've never noticed a severe damage reduction either and we've frequently taken an entire party of nukers to them before.

Just going off the tests Comeatmebro did on hound NM and compared to Tachi's test shows there's a massive difference between the -60% we're often seeing now and the -20% cap Comeatmebro hit in one of his tests. For all we know the cap back in 2007 was capped at -20% and they recently changed it to -60% to go along with the massive changes they made to magic damage, which is why people shouldn't have assumed everything was exactly the same as 10 years ago and why I initially asked on BG if there were any ninja nerfs made by SE at the time.


I'm fairly sure it's been confirmed by multiple people that the cap is indeed 99K, except for multi-hit things like barrage.

Yeah, it's actually 99k. The theoretical display cap was 2^17. I thought they just fixed the overflow and picked 99k for fun, but it turns out they actually nerfed all damage dealt to a 99k max.

My follow-up on that would be if we know what part of the cumulative magic dmg resist is in the equation on dmg. Is it truncated to 99,999 then applied the buildup reduction or is the theoretical dmg then reduced from the buildup. Vagary bosses would lead to believe the latter is in effect. Unless they share a whole seperate mechanic for damage.

Oh wow so it was a nerf, damn that kinda sucks.

Not to play amateur moderator or anything, but I feel like we should continue this discussion in a new separate thread, cuz this is a RDM guide. Would be good to have the findings in a proper place, too.

How does a max augmented malevolence and culminus compare to rdm staff nuking options?

Question on enfeebling. For landing Enfeebling Magic does the Enf skill play more of a role then Magic Acc. I am asking because atm I use befouled crown and with macc +20, mnd/int +33, Enf skill +16; and am wondering if using the Carmine +1 head with +38macc, 26int, 41Mnd(if augmented with +20mnd over the +12 macc), enf skill +11 would be better for certain spells.

Magic Accuracy

So i can have 1 skill but +400 macc and land a spell then from what that says. Ok thanks

hey can anyone post new sets im trying to figure out how to get 600+ enfeeb

With max enfeebling gifts and merits you will have 476 enfeebling skill. Let's look at max gear slots available:

quartz tathlum +1 - 4
vitivation chapeau +1 - 22
incanter's torque - 10
enfeebling earring - 3
augmented aptus earring from ASA Battaru Royale - 2
vanya robe - 20 (not recommended since empy body gives way more benefit)
lethargy gantherots +1 - 19
globidonta ring - 5
irrwisch ring - 4
augmented ghostfyre cape - 10
rumination sash - 7
psycloth lappas - 18
skaoi boots - 17

That brings us to a total of 617. If you want, you could use arendsi fleuret so you could remove vanya robe and use empy body instead, or use a staff with mepthitis grip (probably better option since arendsi fleuret has lower magic acc skill). Might have trouble getting skaoi boots, so you will probably go with medium's sabots since they are easy to get from sinister reign.

The Grioavolr(staff) has a potential Enfeebling Magic +16 augment.

thanks this is very help full

Someone have a new DD set ans WS set with al thsoe new item and weapon ?

Helooo everyone! I have a question for the Red Mage mains on the forum!

What is the most common role that you find yourselves in as far as Reisenjima Gaes Fete, SR, and Vagary?

I am strongly considering Red Mage, but given the job's versatility, I would like to know what I would be doing with Red Mage and if it's worth developing as a 3rd job. I'm a Puppetmaster main and I use my Puppetmaster almost exclusively for tanking in end-game. I also have a strong Dancer for Melee DD. I really like jobs that are versatile and lean toward melee damage more than magic damage.

I haven't seen too many Red Mages lately, but one Red Mage in my LS is almost always DDing with Temper II, en-spells, and inundation. Given the popularity of Geomancers for their unresistable debuffs and buffs, is melee damage Red Mage's strong point right now? Or is it still better to focus Red Mage toward support for end-game? If so, why is that?

We use RDM in a lot of Reisenjima fights mainly as a healer/debuffer.

Of course they don't have death so their nukes won't be needed but frazzle 3 is amazing along with stymie on quite a few NMs.

Whm is certainly a better healer, but for the most part a RDM can heal a single tank just as good without any worry while also debuffing.

Lower tier they can melee things such as T1 though wouldn't be as good as a dnc or blu.

So endgame rdm you won't really be doing DD at least on T2 and above but more debuffing and healing, but having a DD set for melee and nukes is beneficial

After some research and testing, I've come up with these sets for my RDM. Note this is trying not to rely heavily on HQ Abjurations,very high level content (T3 Ru'Aun, T2+ Reisenjima, high level Unity), REM weapons, or perfect Reisenjima/Skirmish augments. Also keep in mind, these are made on a kind of poor man's salary. A lot of it can be obtained easily solo farming, very low JP, and/or in small groups. Feedback would be appreciated.

ItemSet 342278
Idle set focusing on Refresh, Regen, damage to MP, and some DT. Body can be any Refresh+2 body.

ItemSet 342280
Fast Cast set that caps both Fast Cast and Quick Magic without the main/sub (I actually think it's covercapped either way). RDM gets FC max trait and gifts so you can drop pieces as necessary.

ItemSet 342281
My personal favorite. Caps Cure Potency very easily (without the main and sub!), lots of cure cast time - pieces, and TONS of healing skill. Vanya and Kaykaus are both Path B since Cure Potency is capped anyway. Adjust pieces as necessary.

ItemSet 342285
Enhancing 500 set. One of the few sets that relies on Skirmish/Ghostfyre augments. With job points, you can drop the Vitivation Body for a Telchine Body with max Enhancing duration augment. With max augments and JP in the enhancing duration, it reaches almost an additional 2 minutes. Not sure what this set looks like with Lethargy+1 set for Composure bonus.

ItemSet 342288
Enfeebling set. 557(?) enfeebling skill with max augments on Ghostfyre and all gifts. Seems kinda low to me but it has a decent amount of magic accuracy as well. Maybe put Chironic Legs in for Immunobreak.

ItemSet 342293
Drain/Aspir if subbing BLM or SCH. Laughably low compared to what they can achieve on their sets with practically the same gear but better than nothing and actually respectable numbers.

ItemSet 342291
Nuking set. Basically swap in any pieces that are equal or better (Merlinic/Amalric/well augmented Helios).





I didn't include a melee set because I'm still working on those.