I need some Red Mage tips

[Formous]

So title. I play Rdm on my account which goes through the main launcher for the game, hence lack of ownership on steam.

Anyway, I need some advice about playing Red mage. Red Mage has always lagged behind my other casters, but this expansion, I figured Id really push the class up, max it out finally. So I got to work unlocking Boza front. As I entered the Lighthouse raid, i thought Id take my red mage this time. Had a snazzy new glamour and whatnot, and the mood struck to relearn.

I got a healer's worst nightmare that run. Full teams being obliterated, dozens wiping. Had I not experience thanks to endwalker and some quick wit, I would have gone down myself in some cases. I decided when all this began to go down, Id abandon DPS and do some emergency reviving, as is the wont of summoners as well, my favorite class. I rarely have to revive on Summoner, but I do lend a hand so healers dont get taxed much. But by god, this raid went south in a hand-basket so fast, i thought I was Alice on my way to wonderland.

I was aware of dual cast, and immediately started rezzing every healer, summoner, and the other red mage present in this raid, total of about 4 others. First boss, we lost 3 healers, the red mage, and a summoner. I get to casting jolt, then a verraise, and doing this in rapid cycle, burning lucid for mana, and then moving on the variety of other murdered players, including a tank. The healers in my party are in full panic, keeping three teams alive by the grace of God somehow (including me), and I have a mana bar that is basically zilch. I burned lucid soon as I could and often as I could, and kept raising, but I was by this point fully and completely out of the DPS race, save for where my non-magic costing ranged abilities came into play. Needless to say I couldn't raise my gauge much.

This run continued much like this, with me reviving people across all 3 8 man teams, often their healers and tanks too, and whatever useful dps I could grab that could help me raise potentially. We had I think 1 DC of a ninja, and 1 rage quit along the way from the dps side of things.


Now, it was cool playing Red Angel to the team, but I had intensive issues with mana consumption, and often had to spend my own mana to heal me as I was basically zipping away from my own healers to resurrect someone else's healers. We legit lost all 8 people of one group, to which was a sweaty moment since I had no mana either.

I need advice for rebuilding mana. Other classes that can give it, tips to regen it faster, ways to fight and minimize expenditure (like using jolt). With my luck, Ill be playing Red Angel again before long since I gotta do the next Ivalice raid tomorrow. Tonight was a night to be a Hero, but it was a rather uncomfortably close experience at times. I even would slow cast Verraise multiple times just to buy time to cast it on the next person immediately after.

[A1ch3mi57]

The short answer to your question is that as a RDM in a typical situation (not self healing or rezzing) then lucid dreaming is more than enough. IT's actually difficult to near impossible for you to run out of mp if you keep using lucid on cooldown.

Only way RDM struggles with MP is in the types of situations you described enough, where your job as a DPS turns into an emergency life saver. Self heal costs over double your regular casts while a rez is 2,400

[Izeyash]

Try not to worry too much about that awful run you had. You basically tried to carry the team and used up resources for that. Not saying you shouldn't have, but nothing you described is out of the ordinary.

No casters should struggle with MP in ideal situations. Ideal situations being not having to rezz 25 million times in a fight.

When it comes to your rotation you never want to use less optimal dps spells just to save on mana, you need to be greedy to be useful in this case. Only situation where you would want to cast those is when the fight is about to end and you only have mana for this, seeing as you would lose a cast waiting for mana to come back up to cast a stronger spell.

If you need general help with your rotation I can only recommend the balance discord. Sometimes people there are really stuck up in regards to rotations or strats that do not come from there, but I stop by every now and then to just get the basics and learn from there. More often than not that is enough, at least for me. Might be worth checking out.

[Blu]

100% what the others have said. Redmage's normal rotation will have you fluctuate on MP within the top 25% of your bar, but nothing less typically (and that's really only with faster GCD I find). Situations like what you described are common in regular content such as raids, especially the newer ones or ones that have posed trouble for a while. But for normal dungeons, or older content, it's not much of a problem. If you really want to be prepared, I'd say keep a stack of ether potions on you - they can give you one last rez if you really find yourself in a pinch, or give you a little extra once you've rezzed people to jump right back into your rotation.

You did the right thing on grabbing your healers, and then secondary rezzers, up first as well as the tank. But ultimately, don't stress! If you've gone into back to back rez mode, your rotation isn't going to be a thing regardless. Make sure you handle your mechanics first, stay alive, and lucid will come back up to give you a bit of a push (along with auto mp regen). I'd say don't bother with a hardcast rez. The 6 seconds that takes is as long as you'd need to wait to get MP back to cast another rez, and swiftcast has a fairly quick cooldown time too now to help you out. The time spent standing there and risking standing in a mechanic isn't typically worth the hard cast.

Rotation wise - absolutely the balance. Key things to remember are to keep your black and white mana balanced (and within 30 points of each other), 50 points of both are needed for your melee combo, and engagement is now more practical and useful than displacement - displacement is another 'oh no' button to get yourself out of something, but be careful you don't toss yourself into something worse. Otherwise, have fun!