Jack Of All Trades: A Guide To Red Mage

Assuming if your spamming CDC, wouldn't Degen +1 win out in DPS over ternion or Puk? All these offhand choices for RDM going to make my head and gil implode.

We were talking about


Crocea off-hands. CDC is a totally different thing but I'm somewhat confident Almace+Ternion +1 is best for that.

Kinda? DEX+10 would increase the mod for Chant du Cygne.
However Pukulatmuj is giving 1% TA to Temper. (I guess you could do both, but TP resets are obnoxious for DPS.)

But that's it. You're better off offhanding Tauret or Naegling for CdC. Cause +30 attack and 15 DEX are gonna beat 10 DEX and 10 DEX alone. (especially for the attack starved jobs like RDM)

If you were thinking about the OA2... lolno. OAX don't proc during WSs with the lone exception of Mythic AM.

EDIT:Crocea Mors has either the highest DMG or the second highest DMG RDM can get in the mainhand (idr which but I think it was #2). Doing a gain DEX instead of MND for things that resist light and darkness or are physically weak can still be an optimal source of damage for Crocea Mors. (though obvs not as good as elemental WSs)

To my knowledge OAT (occasionally attacks twice) can't proc on weaponskill, so weapons like Demersal Degen +1 are really about speed to TP, and provide little to no benefit on WS.


From: BG Wiki OAX

I see, but the OA2 allows you to gain more TP over the fight (and ignoring the TP lost on cast) to allow you to weapon skill more. This is a pure damage over time question rather than a what does more damage on CDC.

Not exactly. For a 0JP RDM, the OA2 in the offhand would be a decent increase in extra attacks. But once you get Temper II (let alone equipping Crocea Mors), OA2 is severely gimped by the extreme amounts of Triple Attack Temper II gives RDM. As you can see, this is because any Triple Attack proc blocks out any OA2 proc; not to mention TA adds 2 extra hits while OA2 only adds 1 extra.

Which again, pushes Pukulatmuj over Demersal Degen.

Aaah I didn't know about how the multi strikes prio procs. Thank you for the link. Would Degen +1 do better in any situation over Puk with enspells active for a Master RDM, feels weird for them to add Degen and Puk with those types of augments but then again who knows why SE adds some things.

You still get quite a lot of OAX even with temper II. Especially wearing Malignance. Yeah its lowered significantly, but you cant simply cross it off. It will still add probably like 0.25 attack per round or something.

Might be a decent dps boost for non rdm melee that happen to have ifrits enfire buff. Maybe 700 a swing since the base amount of damage ifrits enfire gives is so high (higher than rdm main actually).

In short: no.
In long: There's not a lot of reason to use either in the offhand TBH. Especially not when factored in to their cost/timesink.

• When you want Enspell damage only: you're using neither Crocea Mors or any iLv offhand, you're DWing 1dmg 180delay joke daggers.

• When you want max total DPS: you're using Daybreak in the offhand to do max Sanguine and Seraph blades.

• When you need to swap to Gain DEX for CdC for whatever reason: you're offhanding Tauret for the delay.

Pukulatmuj gives you a boost to your overall enspell-only damage (which is the other main reason someone would sub Tauret)... but the fact that enspell+ on weapons is only for that weapon...
I suspect that Pukulatmuj is going to beat Tauret for enspell-only damage increases, as increasing the offhand enspell's damage by such a large amount should beat the slightly faster delay.
But either way, its not really optimal when compared to Daybreak as the offhand.

Unless I missed it, I'm still waiting for someone to math out R15 Ternion offhand for Sanguine offhand and for CdC/Savage offhand.

Ternion was best with Almace for CDC spam before Ternion had augments and remained best unless you needed the acc of Tauret. The 4% TA is a powerful stat that affects TP Gain, overall white/enspell damage, and can proc within CDC.

Now that Ternion has a higher damage rating, and accuracy, it's pretty well secured as best CDC spam offhand. The 5% ws damage is only worth maybe ~100/150 damage or around abouts on the first hit within CDC. It'd be worth roughly 300 dmg tops in some of the more best case scenarios (50k cdc).

If you want to compare Almace/R15Ternion against Almace/R15Degen, the Ternion off-hand will land something like 13.5% more hits (a result of the lower delay and 4% TA) and make about 7.3% more TP than the Degen. White damage will be very similar between these two options. With the Degen you're attacking a bit slower, which results in the loss of some Almace triple dmg hits, and in exchange you're getting the boosted enspell off-hand hits.

For something like Sanguine, I'm thinking R15 Ternion's 5% WS Damage will make up roughly 30% of the difference that existed between Ternion & Tauret on a per WS basis. Tauret will still land more powerful Sanguines, but Ternion now closes some of the gap and still maintains its frequency of WS advantage. I can't speak to a definitive answer to which is better overall from a purely dps perspective at this moment, but it's something I'm looking at, too.

I can say that Ternion would be better in a survivability perspective since more frequent Sanguines mean HP is topped off more often, along with the +HP on the weapon itself, and in some situations the Subtle Blow.

Hey everyone, has anyone considered updating the current guide or creating a new one? I just noticed the current one still has the old Group 2 merits listed and things like Maxentius missing from the clubs section. I would be down to write one up despite not having done anything with bbcode in a very long time. Any thoughts?

Please do! As a fresh new Redmage that guide confused me at first. Would be nice for the community to have a fresh new guide.

Rdm has changed a fair amount over the past year (maybe not everyone agrees) and tons of new gear has come out (malignance comes to mind). Might not be the worst idea. Can be hard to stay up to date on the best sets when odyssey updates come out and such.

Does someone by chance have the original post that included the information that came to the conclusion that Thibron off-hand was the best off-hand in the context of Savage Blade even when Thibron was hitting floored accuracy levels? Or was this something that RDMs imported from the BLU forum?

I'm looking at the math on R15 Ternion compared to Thibron in the case that Thibron is on the floor for accuracy, but I'd like to see what the original results were.

Thanks for any help.

It was for sure imported from BLU forum and also it was only said for Tizona main hand, because of AM3 generating more hits on main hand than Thibron. That being said Im almost 100% sure it has been just thrown by someone without any proofs and few people believed and distributed that further. It might (or might not) be close fight between floored Thibron and Zantetsuken, but I dont think I will ever try to calculate it. Going by feel I would rather go with Zantetsuken. For RDM it should be much easier, because split on both hands is more even and R15Ternion having even more advantage over Thibrion for Savage, than Zantetsuken over Thibron for Expiaction. Lastly you would probably use Aeonic in main hand with Ternion offhand, so you will be on avg effective 2000tp, and Thibrion gains are smaller above 2000TP. All that will for sure put floored Thibron behind.

The question was about floored accuracy Thibron situation tho. Also about R15 Ternion offhand, not Zantetsuken.


Its known for a long time Thibron is better if accuracy isnt a problem.

With Ternion offhand your TP generation is like 70-80% (or even more) higher, than with 20% accuracy Thibron. With Thibron you will also have floored accuracy on Savage Blade sub hand hit and all TA/DA proc from that hand. I dont think I will try to calculate this, but Im almost sure Thibron will lose. Also if you want to compare Naegling/Thibron vs Naegling/Ternion, you should realistically look at 2500TP vs 1500TP, because RDM will almost never get exactly 1000TP, when you have Temper II and few other MA pieces and all the store TP from Malignance/gear/samuraiRoll. You will on avg probably tp overflow to at least 1250TP, then you need to add 250TP from Moonshade earring.

EDIT: This post was in response to post that was deleted. Leaving it here, since it has some additional info :P

Yeah, if accuracy isn't a problem /Thibron will win by a huge margin.

I'm mathing out R15Ternion beating Thibron by a fairly narrow margin if Thibron is on the floor. I was just curious to see previous info on the matter. I have only looked at it in the context of WS spam so far, but I'm going to be looking at it in the context of holding TP for one extra attack round or so, too.

/Thibron doesn't gain much at all for going one attack round beyond what was needed to WS and I'm showing something in the ball park of 78% more TP generation with R15Ternion when Thibron is on the floor.

Edit: I should clarify this as in context of Naegling Main Hand. I didn't look at Sequence.

Its a really cool feeling when you guess right XD

So looking back on this, knowing that Frazzle/Distract are complicated I was wondering where does "Enfeebling Magic Effectiveness" come into play here. Assuming if you get 625 enfeebling magic is this with or without the effectiveness? Would 575 enfeebling magic + 40 effectiveness reach the same numbers since there is a "cap" of -130 EVA/MEVA.

With this set I get 576 Enfeebling Magic, +322 MND, and +40 Enf. Magic Effect:

ItemSet 374994

575 enfeebling and +40 enfeebling magic effect would result in evasion -168 with capped dMND, way more than what 610 enfeebling skill gives without enfeebling magic effect.

You can bring it even higher by using Empy body +1.

Then if you get 610 enfeebling and +40 effectiveness, I would assume that would be better? It looks like Enf Magic Effect goes past the cap

Edit: Here's a set that gives you 611 Enfeebling Magic without sacrifcing too much Mag Acc, but you do loose 20% Enf Magic Duration (from Kishar ring + Snotra Earring)

ItemSet 374995

Actually hitting the enfeebling skill cap is pretty unimportant, and is in fact, to my knowledge, actually impossible without giving up Enfeebling magic effect (though you can at least get close for Distract III), which will give you far greater results.

This set gets you to 609 Enfeebling Skill and +54 enfeebling effect with a capped skill Grioavolr, but it is quite lacking in MACC, Enfeebling Duration, and MND compared to other options:

ItemSet 374996

Changing enfeebling skill for MACC and MND (such as Casso Sash to Acuity Belt +1, Enfeebling Earring to Malignance Earring, Psycloth Lappas to Chironic Hose, or Grioavolr/Mephitas to Daybreak/Ammurapi) is generally worth it on things that don't have trivial magic evasion or MND.

You can hit the skill cap if you swap that Casso Sash for Rumination.

This set gives me 611 (1 over capped) with max potency gear.

ItemSet 371662

Oh oops, thought Rumination was 3 skill 7 macc, not the other way around.

This is the set I use,
ItemSet 374558

Augments:
Grioavolr 20 MND / 15 Skill
Chironic Hose 14 MND / 38 Macc
Sucellos's Cape 20 MND / 30 Macc
and it hits Skill 600 / MND +308 For (-195 evasion)

The change to get the 10 extra skill cost a ton of Macc, for around three or four more evasion in my opinion.

Even swapping out Staff and Strap for Murgleis and Ammurapi Sheild lands you at Skill 580 / MND +282 For (-186 evasion) to give you an idea of the change.

I’d be willing to posit that bis distract potency set isn’t failing to land because you’re low on macc. It’s because the mob has a resist trait and distract can’t immunobreak

Distract can't immunobreak specifically because a Distract status resist doesn't exist. Also, resist traits are separate mechanics from mob status resists, and unrelated to immunobreaks (though Distract doesn't have a associated resist trait, either).

If Distract doesn't land, it's always because of insufficient MACC (or a mob-specific full magic immunity, like Ahrimans' Magic Barrier).