~Redmage Rights~

[Sir Laggy McLagg]

[Not]

Nicely done

Rand and his little hat

[Rand]

It marks me the leader. Besides, i had a coupon for it when I bought it at Kohl's.

[Kyou]

Lireans don't have redmages, I would know , Thats a bluemage siding with the redmages!!

[Sir Laggy McLagg]

kyou said:

Lireans don't have redmages, I would know , Thats a bluemage siding with the redmages!!

Grrrrrr.... Uhhhh....
He is a Sword for Hire

[Soren]

LOL.
Yeah, he soo bought the hat at Kohls. X:

So, what are they fighting for exactly?

[Hiroshima]

because they want to be known as, you now, 'normal' LOL it's just so....funny they're so cute with their wanting rights and such hahaha, i jest i jest! =]

[Sir Laggy McLagg]

I belive that they are fighting for equality with other classes...

[Not]

Notice how blackbelts aren't in this war

[Jumin]

or thieves..

[Kain]

It's too bad the other classes are using Call of the Grizzly, Barrier 3, Nuke, White, and Divide while RMs are using Tier 3 magic.

rms looz

[Rand]

Too bad the RDM's will get off their magic before the blackmages or whitemages trying to use offensive spells, and that the other mages will die by the strength-build Redmages before they can get off Barriers. Paper-armoured mages looz.

[Hiroshima]

too bad the other side'll still win =] Knight, Ranger, Fighter? or 2 or 3. and if they BLOCK the mages, your strength RMs won't do much, except maybe get owned by Rampage =D

RMs looz

[Taterz]

[Kain]

rand said:

Too bad the RDM's will get off their magic before the blackmages or whitemages trying to use offensive spells, and that the other mages will die by the strength-build Redmages before they can get off Barriers. Paper-armoured mages looz.

The only thing the RMs would have on their side is numbers. As far as pure ability, the other side has it. An RM's defense isn't even that great--they're still getting the same Vit growth as other mages, and their heavier armor isn't going to make that big a difference (for reference, my Goon only has 17 more points of Defense than my WM, and that's with the best equipment), and they'll still fall to magic just the same. Even if you somehow managed to kill all the mages before they could blast you into oblivion or put up defensive buffs (doubtful, in my opinion), you'd still have to deal with the huge HP totals of the Grizzly and the Fighter, not to mention a Knight's superior defense (and the most accurate insta-kill technique). If a Fighter got off a Block on the WM and had Barrier 3 cast upon him, you'd never get past him. If there was a Dragoon in there, you'd be screwed for sure.

[Rand]

Nope. All you'd have to do is utilize an array of area spells, and the Dragoon would be all alone. And Redmages are better defenders than you'd think. It's not our vit growth that makes it great. And, you can have a ton of HP and be an awesome ranger or fighter or knight. IT still won't matter if you get electrocuted to death.

[Takahashi]

I realize (hope) that most of us are goofing around with these comparisons. Anyhow, to throw my 'serious' observation on a class that has an edge on RMs into the thread (assuming that the classes compared have learned every skill/spell/hit they'll get and are Enlightened): Blue Mage vs Red Mage favors the Blue Mage, slightly.

[FenrirXIII]

You're all failing to remember there is a BluM trying to be a redmage. He's got B3 and poison. Plus, fighter HP build blocking a WHM or not, demix2 + tier3 element spell should take care of any nasty ol' fighters.

With a team of RDM's there is no head or main backbone of the group. Take out the whitemage and the bluemage healing the party however, and it would be a long fight to the finish with RDM's winning. =P Even if If the knight uses divide, the thief bloody murder, and/or rub, everyone can life. Unless you could systematically lower everyone's health then wipe them out with AoE spells, or whatever.

Unless every party member on the right can use an instant kill move its highly unlikely they could win.

[Takahashi]

fenrirxiii said:

You're all failing to remember there is a BluM trying to be a redmage. He's got B3 and poison. Plus, fighter HP build blocking a WHM or not, demix2 + tier3 element spell should take care of any nasty ol' fighters.

That's all well and good before Enlightenment, but afterwards the success rate of Demi goes from 90% to 45% (as well as reducing the effect to 75% HP instead of 50%, if memory serves). At that point it's no longer a simple 'do it twice and the Fighter is at 25% HP for sure'. The damage on the Tier 3 spell is also cut in half, so for a White Mage it might be as easy as 'Oh, did you guys do that to my meat shield? *Cure 3* Thbbbbbbt.'

With a team of RDM's there is no head or main backbone of the group. Take out the whitemage and the bluemage healing the party however, and it would be a long fight to the finish with RDM's winning. =P Even if If the knight uses divide, the thief bloody murder, and/or rub, everyone can life. Unless you could systematically lower everyone's health then wipe them out with AoE spells, or whatever.

Optimally, if the Knight uses Frenzy, the Thief Bloody Murder, the Blue Mage Confuse or Mute and the Black Mage Rub, you're looking at three dead RMs and one 'useless' RM. If next round the remaining four revive the three who died and Restore the confused/muted one, they're open to getting Divided, Murdered, Confused, Muted and Rubbed as well. At that point, what do the RMs do; what is the way to go in a situation where the odds may well be nine on four, with three of the four being near death?

Unless every party member on the right can use an instant kill move its highly unlikely they could win.

Unless we're talking pre-Enlightenment, RMs don't have any options that give them a serious damage option. Enlightenment halves magic damage of all kinds (Fire, Lit, Ice, Lightstorm, Demi, Drain). It also halves the success rate of status ailments (Slow, Lock, Demi). All that leaves is melee damage, and RMs aren't very good at that unless they're raw str and use a round to cast Boost 1 beforehand.

In other words, RMs aren't able to overwhelm you with sheer damage output. They don't have a spell along the lines of Nuke (or even White), their best AoE damage amounts to (at best) 75% of their willpower (i.e., one HS3 equals two or three Tier 3 spells depending on how much the WM boosts their will), and a single well-timed Cure 3 from a White Mage ruins or hinders any attempts to dogpile on a character with melee or single-target magic.

[Rand]

Which is why you'd kill the Whitemage first. Magic resistance or not, if you get pelted by pissed-off redmages who like Lightning that mage is going down, and thus your main healer AND resurrector is dead. All that leaves is the sad little bluemage. (Unless the Ranger stayed in normal form, quite unlikely.) And let's not forget, every redmage would ahve Healstorm. A compliment of spammed Healstorms until the melee'ers ran out of MP, and wah-lah. They have to either attack normally or defend while we still have some MP left to dish out, or return strikes of our own. It'd still be bloody, though.

[Not]

I'd confuse Rand and let him kill off all his fellow Redmages.

[Kain]

rand said:

Nope. All you'd have to do is utilize an array of area spells, and the Dragoon would be all alone. And Redmages are better defenders than you'd think. It's not our vit growth that makes it great. And, you can have a ton of HP and be an awesome ranger or fighter or knight. IT still won't matter if you get electrocuted to death.

My level 53 Str/WP RM can do 591-615 damage with a single target Lit 3. With Enlightenment factored in, that damage is reduced to 295-304, and the damage is cut in half in an area, which comes out to 147-152. You'd have to have everyone use Lit 3 in the first round for that to be effective at all, and as far as the WM and BM, factoring in Master Resist Elements, that Lit 3 damage would be reduced even further to 73-76--using my level 56 WM as an example, you wouldn't be able to take him down at 720 HP (no points put in HP at all) in one round even if you got the maximum amount of damage every time (my calculations may not be exactly right, but I think my point stands). It could be different if you had a bunch of pure WP RMs, but even then, all it'd take is a well-placed HS3 to negate any Lit 3 damage you did. A BM could even Drain 2 one of the RMs and steal most of their HP (if not all of it). Knights, Rangers, and Fighters might not have any magic defense, but they have enough HP to survive against an RM's magic spells, especially if the strength of said spells is being spread over an area. Hell, even if you focused all of your attacks (physical or magical), a Fighter could Block the WM to protect from physical attacks while a BM uses Barrier 3 to protect the WM from magic.

As far as defending against a Goon attack, well, if you're all using Lit 3 in the first round, you won't be able to bolster your defenses with Barrier, Shield, etc., so one Dragoon could pick one of you off in that first round with a Crush or a Jump + Dragoon Fury.

So basically, even with all those RMs, you can't cover all of your bases before getting killed. If you focus completely on offense, your damage will most likely be negated and you'll be killed; if you focus completely on defense, you'll leave the enemy party free to buff themselves and even attack you; and if you mix both, you might last longer, but you'd still die in the end.

[Rowan]

fenrirxiii said:

You're all failing to remember there is a BluM trying to be a redmage. He's got B3 and poison. Plus, fighter HP build blocking a WHM or not, demix2 + tier3 element spell should take care of any nasty ol' fighters.

So we need 3 different spells just to kill a single one of the opponents, hmmm.

Unless every party member on the right can use an instant kill move its highly unlikely they could win.

I agree with the first part, other than divide, instant kills aren't exactly consistent, so there is a margin of luck. However, the odds are in favor of the classes that actually get advanced skills.

[Rand]

Kain, if I wanted to kill off the Whitemage first, why in hell would I go for area attacks? o_0 Everyone else can wait in due time if the healer and resurrector is dead. By then the only other threat for a continued party is the Ranger, and chances are he'd have morphed. And when he UNMORPHS to use Life, he gets his turn of pain. End of discussion on that factor.

[FenrirXIII]

This is turning into quite the RDM debate. XD I had a really long post setup, with shiney quotes and all. but the intarwebz ate it.

I hereby formally protest that a PVP event be held once per year for such arguments as this.

10 rdms 1 blumage vs. a balanced party of 8. one match post, and pre-enlightenment status. Level 50, or 55 cap.

In short, if the redmages can survive the melee MP onslaught, 10 HS spamming for 70-100 HP a piece will indeed help to outlast the other party, slowly. Eventually they'll have enough buffs to focus on striking down some of the enemies one at a time. Rotating meditations and HS spams. In the end, it'd be the fact that the RDM team has more numbers that would win the fight.
(going off the basis of said photo in the OP.)

[Kain]

rand said:

Kain, if I wanted to kill off the Whitemage first, why in hell would I go for area attacks? o_0 Everyone else can wait in due time if the healer and resurrector is dead. By then the only other threat for a continued party is the Ranger, and chances are he'd have morphed. And when he UNMORPHS to use Life, he gets his turn of pain. End of discussion on that factor.

I suppose I should have said something about this in my original post, but if you all individually cast Lit 3 on the WM, you still wouldn't be able to kill it. Barrier 3 and a well-placed Cure 3 or HS3 are all that's needed to stop that. A few RMs (at least) would likely die in the first round, so you wouldn't be able to hit the WM with full force anyways.

[Takahashi]

rand said:

Which is why you'd kill the Whitemage first. Magic resistance or not, if you get pelted by pissed-off redmages who like Lightning that mage is going down, and thus your main healer AND resurrector is dead. All that leaves is the sad little bluemage. (Unless the Ranger stayed in normal form, quite unlikely.) And let's not forget, every redmage would ahve Healstorm. A compliment of spammed Healstorms until the melee'ers ran out of MP, and wah-lah. They have to either attack normally or defend while we still have some MP left to dish out, or return strikes of our own. It'd still be bloody, though.

A RM's versatility is also the primary drawback to an all RM approach though; it only takes a few of a certain class to match/counter the efforts of all eight RMs. Two WMs could easily erase eight RM AoE spells with two HS3 spells, or partially/mostly counter an eight single target spree with two Cure 3 spells. One BlM/BM can hinder a RM offensive with Barrier 2; losing close to 60% damage no matter which non-White/Black Mage target a RM points their magic at is no fun, and the 15% reduction to any melee they might throw out won't help either. Once the other team moves on to giving Barrier 3 to whoever needs it, the RM's magic damage plummets and they might as well be swinging sticks if they go with melee.

Basically, the RM's survival hinges on getting through the other team (or at least killing the Rangers and WMs) before said team starts the 'Barrier 3 For All' phase. The difficulty of the RM's feat is not as low as the difficulty of the other team's feat, so it could easily be an uphill battle unless everything goes perfectly for the RMs (i.e., anticipation of what the other team plans to do and using the best course of action against said plan, round after round).

[Hiroshima]

i'm curious if anyone has taken this into consideration? ANY class, ofg which there are 9 against 8 (that BLM doesn't count and hsould not be there) would have a rough time against a well-balanced party of 8 people all of whom are different class, it's because you have more skill at certain things in more areas where the redmage only specializes to point because, well, they are redmages, redmages would probably lose 9v8other classes just like Knights9v8 others would lose as well as any mage and even goons, you get healers and just wait for the goons to run out of MP, either way whatever class (it's not just RDMs) the battle is stacked towards the party of multiple classes =/

[Takahashi]

Well ultimately it's rare to have a 9v8 (or 8v8) fight where one side has a 100% chance of victory if they don't throw the match. A diversity of classes tends to have more favorable results too; eight Dragoons is one of the few 'single class' approaches that can handle most any situation with reasonable chances of success, if not the only approach that can do as much. A mix of White/Black/Blue Mages thrown in with a few melee characters can do well against any approach, and no matchups immediately spring to mind where such an approach would have a notable overall disadvantage.

[Sir Laggy McLagg]

Heh.... I sarted a war....