Jack Of All Trades: A Guide To Red Mage

That's pretty much how it was at 75 cap, too. They just slowly released slightly better gear every so often and made us upgrade specific slots at a time. The only difference is that the power creep wasn't as massive at 75 as it is nowadays.

So, nobody asked for this, but I did some extensive testing since I wanted to find out how our weapons fare against each other. I pretty much have all-around RDM BiS aside from Karieyh Ring (+1) and DM augments. I went to Woh Gates and parsed pretty much every relevant RDM weapon combo against each other on Apex Toads to determine which one has the highest potential DPS. And the results are pretty interesting.

tl;dr:

- Multistepping Murgleis/Thibron/Ullr with Accuracy gear is pretty crazy and I can't find any good targets to parse on without killing them before the second CDC/Light can go off (80k-100k missed damage). Zduhac died too quickly and was kinda annoying with the Terror. Higher Apex mobs are quite annoying too and probably too weak to Light. Suggestions are welcome, but might be difficult to compare results to the other parses.
- R15 Almace/Tauret is pretty far ahead of any other solo DD options (aside from multistepping)
- Maxentius/Thibron beats Naegling/Thibron
- Orpheus/Ayanmo Hands+2 add about 80-100 DPS over regular TP gear when using Crocea C.

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I tried to keep most things as similar as possible between parses, with the biggest variable being COR rolls due to their randomness. But I parsed for a relatively long time with each weapon combo, so the overall numbers should be fairly accurate.

Notes:

- Apex Toads only
- Trusts: Joachim+Ulmia for reliable Marches, Yoran-Oran
- Food: Sublime Sushi (any setup without Thibron could have used Attack/MAB food instead for Toads, but I kept this identical as there are more evasive targets out there). I was probably capped regardless of food and setup thanks to Distract 3, but I didn't want to risk it.
- 100% uptime Idris BoG+EA Fury/Frailty, BoG+EA Idris Acumen/Malaise for Sanguine; Entrust Torpor for overkill capped Accuracy
- Samurai Roll + Chaos or Wizard's Roll
- opened every fight with Dia 3 + Distract 3 regardless of weapons
- "Alli DPS" is the true DPS for each weapon combo, minus the 0-1 DPS from Atheria/Joachim. Any skillchain damage not by Aerix was incorrectly tracked by Scoreboard for some reason, but it's still part of my personal DPS (I assume it's Enspell damage that was accidentally tracked as SC damage). Aside from Aerix, nobody was doing any real damage. Joachim was just throwing his weak pebbles and Atheria only cast Dia 2 to tag mobs for GEO bubbles.
- I'm going to exclude posting my gear sets here so the post doesn't get too bloated, but I can post them on request. Same for average WS numbers.
- 33% TA Temper II

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Savage Blade > CDC > Empyreal Arrow > Savage Blade > CDC (Gain-DEX)

R15 Murgleis + Thibron + Ullr + Wave3 Accuracy gear:

No useful parse here, unfortunately. Opened fights with Dia3/Distract3/Inundation, but every Apex Toad died before I could do the final CDC for double Light, which would have been an additional 80k-100k damage finisher. I parsed about 5580~ DPS before I gave up due to targets dying too early.

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Chant du Cygne Self-Light (Gain-DEX)

R15 Almace + Tauret:


Path C R25 Crocea + Tauret + Enspell gear:


R15 Murgleis + Almace:


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Savage Blade (Gain-STR) & Black Halo (Gain-MND)

R0 Sequence + Raetic Kris +1:


Note: Sorry for the short parse duration. It was tedious keeping up MP even with Murgleis convert. If requested, I can go back and try to do a longer parse, though.

Maxentius + Thibron + Wave3 Accuracy gear:


Black Halo actually synergizes surprisingly well with Temper 2. The extra hits benefit from the +50% BH damage and make the WS spike really high--plus RDM's MND gear is excellent. Average WS damage was 2k+ higher than Naegling/Thibron SBs.

Note that the DPS would actually be a bit higher than this, as a lot of the time I ended up WSing Apex Toads that died from the first BH hit, making me deal only 31k~ damage instead of my usual 37k-44k+.

Naegling + Thibron + Wave3 Accuracy gear:


R0 Sequence + Tauret + standard TP gear:


R0 Sequence + Kraken Club + Wave3 Accuracy gear:


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Sanguine Blade (Gain-MND)

Path C R25 Crocea + Tauret + Enspell gear:


Note: Apex Toads apparently have -25% MDT which I hadn't taken into account properly (see the next page in this thread for more info). Crocea's real DPS would have been ~7400 if it hadn't been for the MDT. But take this massive DPS with a grain of salt as almost all NMs will have a certain amount of MDT too.

Hope you guys find this useful!

This is very welcoming news considering it was my first RMEA back to the game as my go to weapon for BLU and RDM but with others showing it lags behind basically all options on BLU I was a little disheartened.

Glad to hear what I am using for RDM is the best option for what I do most. However, I am still surprised considering those I asked online have unanimously stated Naegling beats out Sequence which both beat out Almace but I've never seen the tests done. So thank you for proof and for disproving the hivemind.

Glad you found the data helpful!

If I had used my standard TP gear with full STP/TA, then Naegling/Thibron would certainly have done much, much better--although I doubt it would have beaten Almace as not even Sanguine Crocea managed to do that (which had 4k+ more average WS damage in addition to high Enspell damage and low acc/fast TP gear).

In any case, at the Accuracy levels of my standard TP gear my offhand would almost never hit anything in relevant content (read: Ambu, Dyna, higher end Geas Fete), so I figured there was no point parsing for faceroll fights.

Huh, there's nothing "hivemind" about these statements as the test results are pretty much the same.

Almace: 4.9k + 1.4k from SC.

Sequence: 5.5k before you run out of MP, test didn't include a build without needing MP though. So I assume once MP is out it will drop....alot.

Naegling: 5.3k dps in max acc gears.

So naegling having the highest dps potential out of all 3 is not an incorrect statement. It just didn't address specific situations like solo light with CDC or short fights that makes raetic +1 usable.

It's probably more of an issue of people didn't be specific when they ask about weapon hierarchy because in ffxi everything is situational.

If you asked "between almace, sequence and naegling, which weapon is best on RDM" then it's not incorrect to answer naegling.

If you ask "which weapon is best when you solo DD" or "which weapon is best in short fights" then almace and sequence+raetic become correct answer.

***is situational, basically.

Edit: just noticed that the test did include none raetic build with sequence, which is only 5k. So the statement that you mentioned, naegling(5.3k) beats sequence (5k) beats almace (4.9k) is correct.

The parse for Sequence+Tauret is actually 5.2k DPS as the Skillchain dmg isn't real SC damage (zero SCs went off) but just separately tracked damage due to a parsing error. And Maxentius/Thibron is higher than Naegling too at 5.4k DPS.

"Alli DPS" is the full DPS for each weapon type, minus the 0-1 DPS from Joachim/Atheria.

So while Maxentius > Naegling > Sequence for RDM, they're all fairly close to each other. Much closer than I was expecting before I started parsing, honestly.

In any case, it's rather ironic Maxentius is so good for us, as BLU is more of a Club user than RDM and I think RDM doesn't even get BH natively. But since RDM always gets to WS with full TA, we can abuse it similarly to how BLU does with R15 Tizona/AM3 and Expiacion.

Would you mind posting the gear sets you used for these results Aerix?

ItemSet 353571

- Taeon Chapeau: STR/DEX+7, Accuracy/Attack+20, Triple Attack+2%
- Taeon Tights: DEX+10, Accuracy+25, Triple Attack+2% (I need to reaugment these sometime)
- Taeon Gloves: STR/DEX+7, Accuracy+20, Attack+20, Dual Wield+4
- Cape: DEX+20, Accuracy+30, Attack+20, Store TP+10

ItemSet 365035

- Cape: DEX+20, Accuracy+30, Attack+20, Dual Wield+10

ItemSet 366480

- Carmine: Path D
- Cape: DEX+20, Accuracy+30, Attack+20, Store TP+10, PDT-10%
- Used Telos over Regal Earring because I consider Store TP+5 more valuable than Accuracy+5

ItemSet 353572

- Taeon: Accuracy+20, Attack+20, Crit Rate+3%, Crit DMG+3%
- Cape: DEX+30, Accuracy+20, Attack+20, Crit Rate+10%

ItemSet 353574

- Chironic: STR+9, Accuracy+5, Attack+5, WSD+4% (unsure if better than Jhakri+2)
- Cape: STR+30, Accuracy+20, Attack+20, WSD+10%

ItemSet 366778

- Chironic: STR+9, Accuracy+5, Attack+5, WSD+4% (unsure if better than Jhakri+2)
- Cape: MND+30, Accuracy+20, Attack+20, WSD+10%
- Atrophy Tights +3 would be better at Attack cap, but it's hard to pass up the massive Attack on Viti. Tights +3

ItemSet 366779

- Chironic: MAB+48, MACC+18 (slightly better than Amalric feet+1)
- Cape: MND+30, MACC/MDMG+20, WSD+10%

Needs a fixer upper. Not possible for both crit rate and dmg augment on a piece of Taeon.

I have both on my pieces. But you’d have to choose the Dex or Crit

sets.precast.WS['Chant du Cygne'] = {

ammo="Yetshila",
head="Taeon Chapeau",
body={ name="Taeon Tabard", augments={'Accuracy+19 Attack+19','Crit.hit rate+3','Crit. hit damage +3%',}},
hands={ name="Taeon Gloves", augments={'Accuracy+19 Attack+19','Crit.hit rate+3','Crit. hit damage +3%',}},
legs={ name="Taeon Tights", augments={'Accuracy+18 Attack+18','Crit.hit rate+2','Crit. hit damage +3%',}},
feet="Thereoid Greaves",
neck="Fotia Gorget",
waist="Fotia Belt",
left_ear="Mache Earring +1",
right_ear="Mache Earring +1",
left_ring="Begrudging Ring",
right_ring="Ilabrat Ring",
back={ name="Sucellos's Cape", augments={'STR+20','Accuracy+20 Attack+20','Weapon skill damage +10%',}}}

Edit... my cape sucks.

I might have misspoke slightly, point is, he's got 4 separate augments listed for his Taeon.

One is leaf one is dusk so yes they can.

I think he’s just showing the options available

He didn't do that with the first set he mentioned in his post, which has three pieces of Taeon.

It was a mistake--that piece of Taeon doesn't have DEX augmented on it, only Acc/Atk/CritRate/CritDMG. I edited my post.

btw chironic slippers need to be 6~7 wsd to beat Jhakri+2
i asked this few months ago and boshi replied that.
also regarding Sanguine Blade ( MND 50% , STR 30% ), it has INT dSTAT , and there were a discussion about MND vs INT, can anyone put some light into that plz, currently am using INT on cape.

Pretty sure it was discovered that INT is better if you do not have Crocea path C. If you do then MND takes over.

I tested both Baetyl Pendant vs. Duelist's Torque +2 and Gain-MND vs. Gain-INT before I started parsing with Crocea Path C.

Baetyl Pendant beat torque by 1-10 damage depending on mob level (with Acumen/Malaise) and Gain-MND was several hundred points stronger than Gain-INT.


Is that 6-7 WSD including any STR/MND or without?

I think wsd 6~7 regardless of str/mnd.

Thanks for the parses, I definitely need to keep working on ambuscade weapons to try those out. I don't have a geo or cor available to try it, but don't frogs resist magic (75%)? Then again, every target will have some biases toward certain weapons.

Toads are normally magic resistant, yes, but Apex Toads seem to be the exception. If consistent 41k Sanguine Blades were actually subject to resistance and only a fraction of the normal damage, then RDM would probably be dominating everything in the game. :P

I chose Apex Toads as target because they are tanky, have zero TP moves and seem to be neutral toward pretty much every damage type.

I'm confused about the Maxentius/Thibron thing here. Is Thibron a placeholder for something else? Why would you ever do anything with that sword?

New meta is 99% wsd and 0% white damage. tp bonus is gigantic.

Naegling, Maxentius heavily favor using WS at 2k+ TP. Savage and Black Halo fTP also jump up dramatically at 2k+ TP.

TP-bonus +1000 gets you there in half the time -- provided you can sacrifice the acc.

don't forget that lovely moonshade earring (you DID do the right augment, didn't you???). meaning can WS at 1750 for a 3k TP weaponskill. very broken for Savage Blade. That's why CORs go nuts about the TP bonus gun because they can get that TP bonus without losing any melee accuracy or stats or iLvl.

Ah, didn't realize one of the augment options was TP Bonus +1000. That makes a TON of sense now.

Wouldn't Sequence/Thibron be an extremely efficient Savage Blade set up? With the earring that's 3k Savage Blade @ 1250 TP, right? Or is the damage bonus of Naegling just too good to pass up?

Savage Blade fTP scaling drops off sharply after 2k. From 1k to 2k it increases by ~156%, but from 2k to 3k you only get a ~34% increase. So intentionally waiting until 1750+1250 TP isn't worth it.


You'll rarely get to WS at exactly around 1000-1250 TP due to TP overflow, wasting the excess TP Bonus. Additionally, as mentioned above the scaling after 2k TP falls off sharply, so Naegling's SB+15%/MND+15 beats out the extra TP Bonus because Naegling's bonus applies to all attacks and not just the first hit.

SB's damage scaling drops off dramatically after 2K TP.

First hit