Jack Of All Trades: A Guide To Red Mage

Guess Maxentius could beat my Grio then, that's interesting >:D

Yours is slightly above average, so while it has lower MAB, MACC and MDMG than Maxentius/Ammurapi, your Grio/Enki would have a lot more INT.

It's a close call--probably worth testing on Reisenjima mobs or something stronger. But it also highly depends on the rest of your MAB gear as Maxentius will be weaker the less MAB you have in total.

So I retested the setups on mobs that actually matter to get a conclusive result. Couldn't test Grio as I no longer have one augmented for nuking.

All on lvl 128 Apex Crabs. Blizzard is pretty much the same ranking except using Ngqoqwanb instead of Marin Staff +1.

Maxentius/Kaja Rod:


Maxentius/Malevolence:


Marin Staff+1/Enki:


Raetic Staff +1/Enki:


Maxentius/Ammurapi:


As you can see, Maxentius/Ammurapi is pretty close to Raetic Staff +1 with much better MACC and without the increased MP costs. So it should be quite competitive with a well-augmented Grioavolr, as well.

Malevolence + the Omen Shield is what your gonna want to use on high tier nukes. The Quest Club might be better for low tier nukes though cause MDMG means more there.

Nope, perfect Malevolence/Ammurapi shield loses unequivocally and significantly against Maxentius/Ammurapi even for high tier nukes. As I explained previously, the better the rest of your MAB gear, the better Maxentius becomes vs. MAB weapons.

It might be different if RDM had access to tier 6 spells, but we unfortunately don't.

Maxentius/Ammurapi:


Malevolence/Ammurapi:


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Maxentius/Ammurapi:


Malevolence/Ammurapi:


(Sorry about the weird sizes, I had some issues with my PC taking screenshots earlier.)

Hi. I'm a relatively new player(started just over a month ago) and I've always loved RDM in Final Fantasies. I started gearing up SMN because a friend of mine wanted to play RDM, but has as of recently decided not to play it, so I get to jump back on it.

The problem lies in that, despite SMN being my best geared job, I still can't really do anything in Escha or Reisenjima without being dead weight. Is there any gearsets I can seek out solo besides the upgraded AF/Relic/Empy gear to make transition into RDM any easier? All I really have for RDM right now is basic ambuscade gear. Or would my best course of action be what I've seen some people say, and level up GEO and use that to gear up RDM?

If your active character is on Asura I could help you get a few things, provided I'm not screwing around in skyblock.

Yeah. I'm on Asura. Character name is Oerbon. If you could help that'd be fantastic, because I still have no idea what to do or how to "gauge" if I'm good enough for stuff in Escha/Reisen. It's all incredibly overwhelming.

Rdm has a pretty high bar of entry but well worth it to peruse. Being able to flip roles on the fly is my favorite part of the job and worth all the time and effort that goes into gear. Byrne is a good dude from what I’ve seen and I’m sure he will help out well. Welcome to Bestmage Land!

Edit:

I might as well put my 2 cents In here.

Starting out, imho the sets that will get you the most mileage would be an enhancing duration, enhancing skill and healing set. Being able to keep haste and refresh on party and back up heal is where I got started and it worked well.

After that and during I suppose, would be enfeebles sets, Macc and Enfeebles skill sets are both important and Should be next in line. After that you are free to tinker to your hearts content. As long as you can keep buffs up and enfeebles flowin you can fill in the gaps of time with ever the alliance needs!

So are Naegling and Ammurrapi Better then Grio now for Enfeebles you lose and little MND and 15 Skill but Gain 22 Magic Acc Skill and 25ish Macc?

According to the formula on BGwiki, +15-16 Enfeebling Skill from a perfect Grioavolr amounts to a whopping ~5 extra Evasion/Magic Evasion down. Woo.

Honestly, the potential MND+49 from Grio/Enki (vs. +28 from Maxentius/Ammurapi) is probably a better selling point than that if you want to aim for a "perfect" Grio. Distract/Frazzle scale with MND (to an extent) and skill and the MND would also be useful for Paralyze/Slow/Addle.

On high end content it's usually more efficient to land Distract III/Frazzle III on your first casts with Saboteur and potency gear instead of wasting time recasting them multiple times. So the higher MACC on Maxentius/Ammurapi compared to Grio has distinct benefits and it doesn't compromise as much on MND unlike Murgleis or Crocea. That said, if you can get a "perfect" Grioavolr, then absolutely use it.

Also, for what it's worth, the values for Magic Accuracy skill on the weapons doesn't make for as huge a difference as one might think. 1 Skill is only 0.5 Magic Accuracy as confirmed by the devs a few years ago. But even if that wasn't the case, Maxentius/Tauret/Naegling have more MACC than a R0 Murgleis.

For Distract / Frazzle III you want Grio with +Enfeeble skill and Mephitis grip, doesn't need to be perfect but it's infinitely better then Sword + Shield. There are no "tiers" to those spells that you magically break into and instead they have linear growth at about 1 base potency for very ~4 skill. This potency before things like +Enf Potency and Saboteur are taken into account. Don't be lazy and gimp yourself. The difference in Magic Acc is about ~50.


For Frazzle II you would go with (Sword/Dagger/Club) + Shield. After that it depends on the spell but (Sword/Dagger/Club) + Shield is a really solid combo for both stat and non-stat spells.

Yep, the exception being that if you are doing Crocea DD you probably won't want to have your weapon swapping even for distract and frazzle. I know people hate to hear "it's situational" but that's pretty much RDM in a nutshell.

Quick rdm Grio question on the scale of 0 to un-obtainium where does a macc+25 enfeb skill+15 aug lay? I'm helping a friend maximise there rdm for wave 3 dyna.

I have an INT+13? Macc+26, Enf+16 Grio and it took me less than 500 stones, I stopped there.
I considered it to be WOOOOW, but then again it seems it's only slightly above the "average" threshold.

While on one hand such a Grio is quite cool, paired with Mephitis Grip, for stuff like Distract/Frazzle, I'm not sure I'd suggest every RDM to bother with it from now onwards given the other options the game gives us.

If you're a somewhat dedicated RDM absolutely, but for everyone else, meh.
Just my opinion of course, I'm pretty confident the majority of people in this thread will disagree with me, and this is exactely why I posted, to give you a different opinion.

ok thank you for quick reply sechs.

So I'm struggling trying to settle on a set for Sanguine Blade, Red Lotus Blade, and Seraph Blade. I know obviously Sanguine is Pixie Hairpin and Archon Ring, but beyond that I get stuck on what I should use. There seems to be so many things that effect the damage on it, I'm not sure what to focus on more.

Is there a best in slot set for those that has been tested and people have came to a consensus on? I'm not sure if I should focus more on magic attack bonus, magic accuracy, and intelligence (stuff like Amalric) or something that is a mix (Jhakri +2) because strength and mind mods, etc.

It seems like points of intelligence outweigh strength and mind mods from what I've read. But what about intelligence vs. magic attack bonus, etc?

I'm just trying to figure out which set will get the absolute most damage potential out of the magic weapon skills and haven't found really any examples to follow out there.

Any suggestions?

Pixie+1 archon obi with weather otherwise Orpheus if not then eachan stone is fine. Mab is gonna win most of the time with any weapon that’s not Crocea then INT wins as a mod with Crocea capped off then MND wins out in my experiences.

I personally use Jhakri hands+2 Amalric +1 body and legs. Would also be using the feet but I got a DM augment on Chironic feet that just barely beat them dmg wise.

ItemSet 361341

Baetyl pendant or neck from quetz that I forget the name of works.
Relic feet also a valid option


With the above I usually get around 29-30k then of course things get interesting with geo and cor buffs. Have seen as high as 80k on a few things.

I'm fairly certain that it was tested a few pages back that Baetyl beats out Duelist's Torque +2 for Sanguine with BiS.

It may very well be. It’s a matter of inventory space for me as RDM currently eats nearly 3 of my wardrobes by itself ☹️

I've just started seriously gearing my RDM. Is it really reasonable to end up with 3 full wardrobes of gear for this job?

In truly unique gear? Nah. In gear used? Possibly. But that's counting cross job gear like carmine+1, merlinic, chironic, ayanmo. If RDM happens to be your only job that uses those things, then yeah, you're going to have issues. But you won't end up with 3 wardrobes worth of jse gear.

yes

I'd expect to see a list of 240 (3 x 80) unique pieces of gear that RDM uses that other jobs don't.

Damn I haven't played since like 2011, after Vagary came out. How are people doing 20-30k damage on Sanguine Blade and stuff? Back then you could get maybe 3-4k at best. 30-40k sounds like abyssea numbers. How did damage inflate that much when ilvl gear is still 119. Like are stats on augment thats much crazier than delve/alluvion skirmish gear/119 Relic/AF/Empyrean

119 ins't the actual number; SE just won't show us the real iLv.
We've been slow vertical progression ever since abyssea was released.
We're probably up to 130~135 now.

basically above.

They just stopped bothering to change the actual ilvl number.