Don't make these Beginner Mistakes with Red Mage in FFXIV

UPDATE: I made a video correcting some errors I made in this video, watch it here: • Corrections and Commen...
I hope this video helps you in your Red Mage journey. These are some beginner mistakes I hope you to help you avoid! If you have any questions be sure to leave a comment below. Thank you for watching.
Chapters:
0:00 Intro
0:32 Don't use Jolt
2:34 Red Mage Opener
3:28 Don't use Jolt cont.
7:33 Don't use Displacement
10:55 Where to find more info
12:14 Tidbit about Reprise
14:12 Where to find more info cont. / Outro
#ff14 #redmage #tips #guide #ffxiv

[@LinksterGames]

IMPORTANT UPDATE: I made a video going over some mistakes I made in this video and correcting them, which is all thanks to you kind commenters! :D Watch it here: kzbin.info/www/bejne/noGyiaVqm912hKc Thank you for watching, if you have any questions about my tips feel free to leave a comment below and I'll do my best to answer them! (Also about food for RDM, high quality Carrot Pudding is now the best over Pumpkin Potage)

[@mrlion8834]

I did not realize I was being so inefficient using Jolt as much as I was. This was very helpful. Subscribed!

[@godofm3tal1]

My guy. I watched this video half way in before hearing that your advice is coming from the perspective of a person who "doesn't do hard content" and also perceives "extremes" as being "hard content". What is this guide supposed to help people achieve? Duty roulette sastasha runs? If you're not doing high tier content why are you even worried about FF logs parse data? Legit I have to unlearn everything I've seen here. Just being real my guy, you should probably open with that information.

[@kaiumiko9461]

As a more experienced savage raider, 1. Definitely use addle, but not on tank busters. Use them on raidwides. 2. Always keep your flèche and contre sixte on cooldown. Occasionally using swift or accel in order to not allow these to drift. 3. In Savage content, it’s not always best to burn through all your swiftcasts/accels just to keep your procs up. This also goes along with enchanted reprise. If you know that in a short time you will have to be moving, you would: - 1. Save at least 1 accel - 2. Store white and black mana to have at least one melee combo ready - 3. Use your melee combo for longer movement periods and swift/accel for short movements. Or both melee and swift/accel if needed. In p7s, during purgation, it’s usually best to have a high amount of mana stored up. Ideally enough to get off at least a triple combo with your embolden and manification. Since this will give you about 38 seconds of free movement with swiftcast or accel for any areas where the melee combos run out. Each fight has their own movement windows and learning where to use melee combos to make these easier will significantly improve damage numbers. Even in casual content. Also, carrot pudding is the best food for 6.2

[@LinksterGames]

Good points! Thanks for the comment :D I didn't know that addle was better used on raidwides, I'll have to remember that one, thank you :)

[@kaiumiko9461]

@@LinksterGames most raidwides are magic damage(addle=10% magic/5%phys). Tanks have their own mitigations while feint(5%magic/10%phys) and addle are generallyi better used for raidwides. Tanks also usually have 1 tank to reprise (10% all damage mit) raidwides and the other to reprise TBs. reprise+tank self mitigations and some single target mits from the healers are more than enough for tanks most times. With two melees, it is okay to also use feint on Tank busters, but generally in most cases, they are better used on raidwides. The current savage tier is a great example of why feint and addle are better for raidwides. Raidwides this tier in savage hit especially hard. Some will even wipe the party without mit, especially in P8S part 2. As a healer main, I promise you, we greatly appreciate when DPS help with mitigating raidwides.

[@DomDomPop]

I will never play optimal RDM due to OCD. I can’t stand having my white and black mana be more than a few points away from each other. I don’t care if I have to use Jolt-> Verthunder/Veraero to rebalance a couple points; what good is damage if my numbers are different! I can barely deal with them being odd numbers half the time. Drives me nuts!

[@Akihito_Kanbara]

You can just bounce between black/white. You don't have to go black>black or white>white.

[@KanoKuroki]

That was helpful, thank you!

[@Neener_XIV]

I recently started RDM a few days ago, am currently 56, found that I could just Dualcast off the procs and use Jolt only when needed. Of course, at this level my options are limited, but this vid was still useful in preparing me for later levels. Many thanks!

[@Falvern57]

While this is good advice in general, I would argue that it's somewhat fight dependant. In fights that require you to move alot like Storm's Crown or P6, you're actually better off in the long run holding your accelerations and swift casts for those heavy movements and using jolt until those mechanics come out.

[@LinksterGames]

You're right, I didn't even think about that o_o

[@GaleGrim]

I think the only time you should REALLY be useing displacement, is when you have an AoE marker, jump out, when it gose way, jump back in. that way melee doesn't have to lose uptime to get away form you.

[@LinksterGames]

Yeah, that's a pretty good use for it!

[@aklokoth]

After the acceleration change in Endwalkers, i feel like the "never use jolt" really clicked with me. good video.

[@SubduedRadical]

Jolt has some uses, but you can mitigate it a lot between Acceleration, making sure to use the opposite (Holy/Flare) of what your higher mana is, even Swiftcast (Thunder/Aero and hope for a proc), and luck. I think it might better be stated "Use Acceleration more" than "Don't use Jolt". :) Wesk Alber's guides are amazing, I second that. Displacement can be useful, there are times to use it. But it doesn't need to be used as much as people use it.

[@HayTatsuko]

Displacement is of the devil and has _long_ been banished, displaced to the far reaches of my hotbars. As a RDM main, I will have to try this low-Jolt diet sometime. I already sub in Verfire/Verstone when they proc, but I don't try to trigger the procs manually...mainly because I'm often too busy trying to dodge mechanics, LOL.

[@aklokoth]

5:10 correction in this case you still wouldn't use jolt, you would use embolden & manafication to use your melee combo while the cooldowns finish on acceleration or swiftcast

[@LinksterGames]

You're right, good point :D

[@direpup8066]

Honestly with this though if you're doing things properly you will use embolden & manafication on cooldown if you're playing optimal. Not holding onto them for when you run out of acceleration and swiftcast

[@aklokoth]

@@direpup8066 this comment was specifically in regards to his current cooldowns, not any given situation you find yourself without a proc up. if you have Manafication ready to go and are sitting under 50 in either pools (like he did at my time stamp) you would go ahead and pop it during gcd and then go straight into your combo. interesting to find myself in a follow up youtube video.

[@tsbulmer]

These can be helpful for someone learning the basics of the job, but if someone wants to really excel at Red Mage, they'll want to rethink several of these tips. "You never, ever, have to use Jolt." Sure, you explained that sometimes you do have to use it, but continually stating it in such a definite, black-and-white way sets up an unrealistic expectation of how to play. Consider something like "you very rarely have to use Jolt," or "try to minimize using Jolt". Some content creators don't trust new players to handle a little bit of nuance, but I suspect most players are adults, not children, and can handle it. :P Also, Jolt is useful when fighting two targets. "Sleep - literally useless." Nope. It's rarely useful, but it's really strong when it is useful, which is during dungeon wipes. I feel like I have a better than 50% success rate with saving wipes. Sure, my first Sleep might not last, but my second very often does, and even if I cast it three times and it's broken immediately each time, that's enough time for the situation to stabilize. Usually, by then the melee DPS has panicked and run off with an add or two nipping at their heals, but the main group stays put and lets the healer (or me) Raise the tank in peace. Of course, some players would rather wipe and use that as an excuse to be a bully than actually use their non-DPS tools, but I gotta keep hope alive :P About Reprise and Acceleration - something that new players could stand to hear lots of is to always be casting, and these abilities are key to doing that. Sure, Acceleration lets you use Jolt less, but an even stronger use of it is to maintain casting uptime while moving. Similarly, if you're moving and don't have anything else you can do while moving, use Reprise. ABC.

[@LinksterGames]

You make some good points! Thanks for the comment :D

[@Akihito_Kanbara]

Sleep IS useless because no one knows it exists, even if you tell them repeatedly, and they will continue to attack the mobs. Also, you just shouldn't be wiping in dungeons. Yeah, sometimes you get stuck with a group of lost RPers and everything goes terribly, but that just circles back to the first point.

[@Zaulr9797]

If Enchanted Reprise gets a trait to add a Dual-Cast proc it would be so much better

[@yuhboik.g.8118]

Wouldn't there be concern over Fleche/Contre Sixte drift after the melee combos if you end up spending both accelerations and swiftcast? Edit: Drifting Manafication and Embolden would be concern too

[@LinksterGames]

Sorry, I am stupid, could you explain T_T

[@yuhboik.g.8118]

@@LinksterGames Red Mage effectively operates on a 5 sec GCD due to how dualcast works. Now with a cooldown of 25s and 35s respectively for Fleche and Contre Sixte for each, this is fine. The problem is that the melee combo plus finishers are about 12.5s long in total (12.7 to be exact without any SpSp). This means that you're going to drift either your GCD if you want to use those OGCDs on cooldown, or you're going to have to drift the cooldowns of the OGCDs. So the Balance says to use either swift or acceleration after every melee combo to prevent OGCD misalignment. Constantly spending acceleration and swift will make misalignment more likely

[@TenchiSawada]

If you use accel and swift to realign you will almost always have those gcd rolling. There are specific points in savage and ultimate where you want to build up melee combo for heavier movement. Therefore you could save accel and swift for those. A missing gcd is more potency loss than a jolt. And a ogcd drift is hurtful in longer fights

[@LinksterGames]

@@yuhboik.g.8118 I didn't know this, very interesting! I might have to make a follow up video to talk about this, and some other things kind commenters have let me know. Thanks for the info :D

[@aiellamori]

​​@@yuhboik.g.8118ik it's been over a year, but surprisingly I can't find ANY info on this, so I'm going to ask here. Why is manification 110 seconds and not 120? The fact it is makes me want to use it on cooldown, but that adds 10 extra seconds every 2 minutes to the drifting of embolden if you want to use both together, which makes me think it's wrong to use manification on cooldown. What is that 10 seconds for? Should I just not use it until embolden is up as well?

[@coreywong6229]

Muscle memory will be my downfall as using jolt kinda was ingrained when rdm was introduced as well to shorten times for the ver aero or ver thunder. Thats gonna be hard to break as I do enjoy this class.

[@kaiumiko9461]

Training dummy’s are your friend :). Go to the stone sky sea area and practice on the savage dummies!

[@Cerviel]

This gets really nuanced very quickly. Even in the video, we see the dependence on RNG. A standard lv 90 DPS opener and rotation is already a bit of work to memorize for a “beginner”. Add fight mechanics on top of that interrupting said rotation, and it becomes a mental load that’s even more work to handle. Now take into accound that RDM already deals with RNG even when using Jolt. And THEN you want to add in even more RNG/ situationals? For a “beginner?” Best to give people a 90% solution that they can fall back on when mechanic hell is dropping on the field. Even if its a little less damage, its smooth and consistent. And most importantly, its done mostly the same way in the same order every time. That’s important. This is an optimization tip if you ask me, not a beginner guide. A beginner guide should set people on a path to dealing consistent damage, while letting them know what the buttons do so that they can play around with it a little bit when their mental bandwidth allows.

[@zydeox1221]

Always start your cast at when the 6 second goes away which means you're synchronizing your 5s cast when 5second starts counting down.

[@mizzdojaplayz]

I use jolt for faster casting when I’m using single target magic spells. But for aoes magic spells, I don’t use jolt. I use the the other two aoes since they both have the same amount of casting time as jolt. The single target aoes take longer which is why I use to jolt. I use acceleration as well but I just started so I’m not sure what it does specifically? Does it boost dmg?

[@tacotuesdays3336]

Small change to this is don’t start your 5 second cast as the 5 goes away because this is automatically making you a full second behind from the beginning

[@joaoteixeira8349]

Yep, you want to start casting as soon as you see the 5 appear

[@LinksterGames]

Yeah, you're right 🥲

[@TheFlamespriest]

As a RDM main I feel like you're oversimplifying the jolt thing. I'd argue not to be afraid to use Jolt you will have to at least a few times durring a fight, and acceleration and swiftcast are important for movement in a few savage and ultimate mechanics, just don't leave acceleration at 2 stacks or swift cast up too long as you are losing damage. You lose a lot less damage doing a jolt and saving a stack of acceleration or letting swift cast stay off CD for 10 secs then having to lose 5/5 mana on a reprise. Also you don't necessarily want to melee combo every time you have enough mana. When going into every 2 minute window you need to have between 42/32 and 92/82 mana, and you time your melee combos to make sure that happens. If you have more than 92 on your higher mana, or 82 on your lower one, you will over cap when you manification(If you mess this up it's generally still worth hitting and wasting some mana o overcap opposed letting manification desync from embolden and the other 2 min raid buffs).

[@gorgothegreat2117]

All of this except don’t hold manification for burst use it on cool down. That was hard for me to learn but when I watched RDM POVs to improve most of the really good ones used it right off cool down (accept in P4S pt 1 because that fight is so short) actually ended up with better movement

[@TheFlamespriest]

@@gorgothegreat2117 yeah it so far has only mattered in p4s and TEA for me. Haven't done DSR yet but I would imagine it will have some persicely timed movement as well. I'm certainly not perfect with the usages. I'm not sure when to use acceleration/swift for the extra potency when they come off CD and I already have verfire and verstone procs. I just assume if it's off CD for 20 secs or so I waited to long and messed it up. Don't know the math on it.

[@ThatgirlGone]

I don't know why you push that narrative to not use jolt because rngesus says well I'm not going to give everyone optimal procs. so some unlucky bastards have to use jolt

[@vgaymer]

it's probably old habbits re: displacement; it used to be higher potency than engagement.

[@kaiumiko9461]

Just take displacement off your hotbar and replace it with engagement 🙂

[@AndroidA258]

i used displacement on p3s for that last nanosecont dodge

[@fairlyenjoyable]

Interesting! I'll have to try this out when I get on later. I know for a fact I used Jolt a lot, so this will be a welcome change-up.

[@shd_samurai9676]

It's important to mention that you should continue to use Jolt, unless you're trying to optimize the fun out of your game for Ultimate / Savage.

[@LinksterGames]

I don't think minimizing Jolt usage is optimizing the fun out of the game, if anything it makes the game more fun for me. Verfire and Verstone are much more fun to use than Jolt

[@itsyaboiherman]

I use jolt bc I don't feel like standing in one place for 10 seconds lol

[@LinksterGames]

Well what I really meant was to replace Jolt with your Verfire and Verstone procs as much as possible, and try to get those procs as much as possible, not to never use Jolt. Sorry, my phrasing in the video was probably bad :(

[@itsyaboiherman]

@@LinksterGames haha naw you good homie🤙you explained it well

[@MaNameizJeff]

ehh.. dont use jolt.. unless your below level 90.. in which cause you live the life of no proc and jolt is a main spell. ;p

[@the.duck.is.ronin.]

I think non-enchanted Reprise might just be the worst move pf any job in the game.

[@samz.3597]

I had a feeling I was doing something wrong! I was playing paladin

[@jack19995]

thought verthunder and veraero had 2 versions so you dont need jolt anymore

[@Rejykted]

Displacement is great for avoiding mechanics in P7N and P7S since the bosses hit box is so huge you can use both charges and practically cover the entire arena in one double weave

[@mr.mystere4999]

I have quit using Displacement altogether. I have managed to yeet myself off of every single platform in the entire game since I started in April 2019. Shadowbringers kept making all the platforms too damn small. But once I stopped using it, I stopped dying so much and became a better rezzer.

[@MrS4ndm4n]

mind=blown

[@salmanhannan9052]

Really you should only be using Accel once every melee combo unless you want your ogcds to drift tho

[@MorgueDweller666]

I'm gonna keep using jolt :)

[@altaiir541]

Dont get rid of displacement guys, incorporate it into the rotation, not only is it a good save from mechanics, but it's also free damage and in 90 since you will be doing your burst which is all instant and let's you move then it's no problem to return the moment you use displacement.

[@HiryuNikai]

All I took from this video, is that the potency difference between jolt and verthings is not that big xD

[@x3AnimeFanXD]

I'm still in stormblood and below lvl 80 soI guess I'm still using Jolt until I can not use it-

[@Baalthulhu]

A "beginners" guide that assumes your lvl 90. Thanks!.

[@stars-and-clouds]

Yeah ikr, this doesn't work if you're not 90 xD

[@lethaltoconcrete2194]

I mean, you blast through the levels so quickly that it would make little sense to make a guide on any other level of red mage. Besides, all of the currently relevant duties that require players to execute their rotations at anything approaching a high level are going to be endgame fights. It'd be strange if this guide didn't focus on level 90.

[@Quantum_Bluntz]

I feel this a lot as a new player. Like, I hit 50 and beat ARR and finally unlock Red Mage but the guides out there are 40 levels up. I know lvl 90 has crucial abilities for the rotation but imo they should show lvl 50 then 80 then 90 probably. Idk lol I’m new 🫠

[@M4rk-_-]

Please Extract Materia.

[@LinksterGames]

Ahh, you caught me 😅 yeah i need to get better at remembering that T_T

[@LockCard]

no one casually uses count down timers, tanks are going to go in when everyone says they are ready. this is closer to end game tips, to refine a play style with people you normally play with or extremes.

[@jonathanberry8656]

I made so many mistakes that my magic turned permanently black… If you know what I mean xD Jokes aside I’m black mage main. I like the whole my numbers are bigger than yours thing xD

[@LinksterGames]

T_T don't remind me

[@zombiegodsire]

You absolutely will have to use jolt. You won't always get procs and that has nothing to do with skill

[@keonrichards1083]

Nope that totally defeats the purpose instant casting no sir

[@tylerstewart3181]

Late to this party, but I had no idea that I sucked this badly at Red Mage. Thank you.

[@SiaCh_]

i thought this was common knowledge... just read the tool tips and u can figure this out pretty quick---

[@Akihito_Kanbara]

Honestly, the best information in this entire video is the bit about staying near the boss. It drives me absolutely insane to see some black mage 100 miles away (spamming Fire 1) or, gods forbid, a Machinist who is just running around the arena in circles. Just stay still until you have a REASON to move. Just stay near your group. If you DON'T do these two things, you are a bad player.

[@juliner4036]

Oh... oops.

[@IssicheaV]

Well not really, it depend on the fight ,nothing wrong with running around if there no raidwide aoe/2 min buff etc.

[@Akihito_Kanbara]

@@IssicheaV spoken like a truly bad player

[@IssicheaV]

@@Akihito_Kanbara cleared 2 ulti and P1-8s is still a bad player I guess 🤷‍♂️. Just saying that if there are no mech to do, running around have Zero consequences.

[@Akihito_Kanbara]

@@IssicheaV why are you getting so defensive about trolling comments from a random nobody on the internet? You okay, buddy?

[@rafagd]

"Don't use displacement" might as well play BLM

[@LinksterGames]

Why's that? I don't think RDM and BLM are all that alike at all, they play super differently, displacement isn't the only thing keeping RDM distinct from BLM

[@hunterontherun807]

I don't play red mage at all.

[@Akihito_Kanbara]

It's fine to be wrong. Someone has to be.

[@RB-cs5dw]

No m8, I just don't play rdm