Red Mage
Feast PvP Guide
Written by Brian Ricardo
Skills, Abilities, and Your Gauge ➤
Your Role in Feast
As a range DPS your goal is to sync damage with your melee DPS to secure kills. As a Red Mage your job is to do that for your team while also providing support through healing and CC.
+ Strength – High mobility and positional CC with gap closer and backstep
+ Strength – Vercure can provide support in emergency and to help against enemy burst
+ Strength – High damage pressure
– Weakness – You must go into melee range as a range DPS. This can be punished
– Weakness – No stun or silence. You are reliant on tank to play there CC correctly
– Weakness – Slow build up at the start or after a death
The Red Mage Kit
The gameplay style of RDM is to build gauge, use melee combination to do high damage and then use Verholy/Verflare to do High Burst Damage. You can begin melee combo at 75/75 White and Black Gauge. After the 3 hits of the melee combo are completed, Verholy and Flare will become available to use which is your strongest abilities. RDM has many tools, such as a backstep, bind, heavy, gap closer, and a cure to supplement your offense and defense for your team.
Verstone and Verfire
These two spells are used to build gauge. They do not cost any MP and should be used to balanced your White and Black Manage gauges as you want to keep them at the same level at all the time.
Veraero and Verthunder
These are available as soon as you use Verstone and Verfire. They are free cast and instacast thanks to dualcast. What you want to cast is based on your gauge needs. If you need White go with Verstone -> Veraero. If you need Black go Verfire -> Verthunder. You can also mix it up if needed, if you need both equally you can do Verstone -> Verthunder for example.
Jolt II
This is another gauge building spell. You gain 10 White and Black Gauge for this. Making it giving more gauge over Verstone/Verfire. It also does more damage then the formentoned. In exchange it costs MP! It is a great spell to use to apply a little more pressure or to get both of your gauge to 75/75 as fast as possible. Make sure not to spam it too much as you do not want to be below 5k MP so you can cast other spells.
Impact
This is the last gauge building spell. It also costs MP as well. You can use Jolt -> Impact for fast gauge building and pressure. In solo Q there are times where you may need to commit to a countdown but don’t have gauge for a melee combo or Verholy/Flare. This can be your fall back damage as it’s 3,250 raw damage. Adding debuffs and Gap Closers you can go up to 5k damage making it a weak burst but not entirely useless.
Enchanted Riposte, Enchanted Zwerchhau, Enchanted Redoublement
This is the melee combo! You are able to use this at 75/75 Gauge. Never be overflow gauge, if you at 100/100 you need to do the melee combo. Only the first hit takes gauge. Very important – You can continue to build gauge during the melee combination! You have 10 seconds between each melee hit to continue to the next hit. This is a strong thing to do when you need to use gauge but your team is not ready for burst! It makes your burst less obvious. If you go from Melee -> Melee -> Melee -> Verholy/flare the enemy team knows what is coming! If you weave in spells in the middle, it’s less obvious and you start your next burst phase quicker due to not having to start fresh at 0/0.
Verholy and Verflare
These are the highest damage abilities RDM has. They are unlocked to use once after the melee combo. You have the choice of either. Verholy gives MP and has a longer animation. Verflare gives TP and has a quick animation. What you want to use is situational, based on needs and how quick you need to burst. Generally Verholy is used more because having more MP is powerful for Vercure and more gauge building.
Vercure
One of biggest RDM utility! You should always keep try enough MP to have this in clutch moments. So never be below 5k MP unless you have to be. When you are experienced with feast, Vercure is a powerful tool to help mitigate enemy team burst. For example, if you see the enemy MCH is using Wildfire on the burst target. Assuming your team is not bursting at the same time, you can use Vercure to help stop that burst damage. If you see your enemy healer is asleep or stunned during a burst, you can try and vercure so make up for there delay. At the end of a match if you are winning, this tool can secure wins by making sure you have enough MP and start spamming it on everyone who needs extra heals. Try to end a match with 0 MP.
Monomachy
This ability is the core to the RDM ability kit. Monomachy has a lot of utility. The most important thing to know is this ability can and should be on 1 person at all times. The ability lasts forever until you or the target dies with it so make sure to keep it on. The person you have it on, takes 10% more damage so it a good idea to have it on a person you are building gauge on for additional pressure. If you are about to be attack/burst you should make sure to have it on the enemy range or melee to reduce the damage you are taking by 10% as well. For first situations you have two options. If you use the ability before a burst, it may alert and telegraph who you are doing on. This is actually a good thing, you can use it to bait people to use a defensive cooldown or if all defenses are used you can use it without worry!
Corps-a-Corps
This is your gap closer. This ability had a lot of utility. After you have 75/75 gauge, this is a good tool to quickly go in and start your melee combo. It can be used as peel. For example, if the enemy team is starting to focus your healer, you can use corps to apply heavy debuff on the enemy melee or tank. This can be used for kiting. If you are the burst target, you may use Corps to move away from the melee or tank that’s on you by targeting enemy healer or range. Mix this in with displacement to be extra slippery. Last but not least, Corps-a-Corps is an off global cooldown ability. You can use it to add extra damage to your burst! 750 in conjunction with other abilities does add up.
Displacement
This is your backstep. This tool as just as powerful as your gap closer. Similar utility. You can use it to escape and move away after a melee combo. You can use it to bind peel the melee or tank that are heading to burst you or your party. Generally if you are in melee range you can use this to end your burst. Binding your burst target is powerful not only for you, but for your melee and tank.
Manafication
This ability is to build gauge faster. It vital you use it almost every time you are at like 50/50 gauge to keep your pressure and burst consistent. One other tool is it resets Corps and displacement. In an emergency situation you can use displacement to get away, and then use
Manafication and another displacement again.
Additional PvP Actions
Safeguard
Recast: 60s
Reduces damage taken by 25%.
Safeguard is an absolute must for range DPS. It is it even more important for RDM due to the gameplay style of going into melee range. You have to know when to use it defensively and offensively based on what the enemy team is doing.
Recuperate
Recast: 45s
Restores 25% of maximum HP.
Recuperate is a strong tool for RDM. Again, due to the nature of RDM having to go in and out for burst this can be a backup tool for when safeguard is not ready. When you are nearing the end of a match and you are in vercure mode to secure a win. Having recuperate for yourself and vercure for other party members can make life easy for your team.
Muse
Recast: 60s
Restores 25% of maximum MP.
In low elo matches this ability can be helpful to add extra damage and extra heals to your comp. At high lvl it’s not really recommended because having recuperate and being difficult to kill is more reliable and powerful.
Enliven
Recast: 60s
Restores 50% of maximum TP.
This ability can have some utility. But, it’s really hard to run out of TP if you use Corps and Displacement wisely. On top of that TP trait would be more impactful than enliven.
Bolt
Recast: 30s
Movement speed is increased.
As tempting as this is to take for kiting or going in purposes it is not wise to take at all. You gap closer should be enough to go in. As for kiting, with current feast meta almost all times when you are a target you will be heavy, bound or stunned. Making Bolt useless for kiting.
PvP Traits
Increased MP Regeneration
Increases MP regeneration rate by 25%.
Vital tool, allows you to have more pressure, burst and heals in a match.
Increased Damage Dealt
Increased Damage Dealt by 3%
Pretty much all DPS jobs take this trait. As your main purpose is to get kills its important. 3% and modifiers start to add up when you include debuffs and buffs that exist in feast!
Increased HP
Increased maximum HP by 500.
This is another option for a 3rd trait. HP trait has multiple purposes as it buffs abilities that other classes may use to you. For example, Divine benison from WHM does stronger shield based on HP, Trill of war from warrior and even yourself recuperate are lightly buffed if you also have HP trait. With current meta revolving both WAR and WHM this is stronger then Damage Taken
Decreased damage taken
Decreased damage taken by 3%
This is another option. Most people prefer HP currently, but this is an option instead of taking Trait.
Increased Resistance Duration
Increased duration of resistances by 50%
This can be a good trait to take against certain comps. Primarily against comps that have a lot of stun and silence tools. Primarity DRK, PLD, NIN, BRD, MCH. RDM damage can be hindered by Stun, Silence and Bind so having your resistance duration window increased from 15 secs from 10 secs can be impactful.
Increased Action Speed
Decreased weapon skill and spell cast and recast times by 3%
While this is very very tempting to take, it does not out weight the skills mentioned above mathematically. Even TP trait would increase your overall damage over this trait in a 6 min match.
“Rotation”
Your general goal is to build gauge until you are 50/50 with White and Black Mana. As soon as you have 50/50 IF you have Manafication ready you should use it to instantly go to 100/100. Do not use manafication at under 40/40 or above 65/65 as it defeats the use. In solo Q, you should start preparing to ping “Hello” meaning your burst is ready when you are above 75/75. Start your melee combo, if there is no countdown during the melee combo weave in more spells to continue your gauge building. As soon as the countdown starts, you can either use the melee combo to complete the burst or you go for a full burst. In PVP especially as RDM, ideal situations does not happen all the time.
Best Burst: Jolt II-> Verholy/Flare -> Corps -> Impact II -> Displacement.
Using a melee combo as your burst is acceptable but it not as high damage or fast as the combo mentioned before.
Good Burst: Corps -> Melee x3 -> Displacement.
If you don’t have gauge or Verholy/Flare build up. You can do
Emergency Burst: Jolt II -> Corps -> Impact -> Displacement
As a reminder you can use monomachy before the burst rotations mentioned but beware it may make the burst obvious, so you have to be mindful of how you are using it.
Helpful Tips and Macros
Caster Limit Break and Vercure are the best ways to carry on Red Mage. Red Mage can use Monomachy -> Displacement -> Caster Limit break to confirm hitting it on one person. If you use it on a person who does not have safeguard ready it can confirm a kill as 25% damage more taken on the target is DEADLY. I recommend having a <t> macro for Caster Limit Break so you do not have to aim it.
/pvpaction “Cometeor” <t>
You can use the standard LB action for situations where you want to zone the enemy into not running to a certain location.
You can Vercure at waiting area at 0:01 seconds during the prepare phase of a match. That way you can have an immediate Dual Cast at the first engagement.
I recommend Vercure macros for every party member. That way you don’t have to switch targets to heal. If you have default party lists orders.
/pvpaction “Vercure” <1> will heal yourself
/pvpaction “Vercure” <2> will heal your tank.
/pvpaction “Vercure” <3> will heal your melee
/pvpaction “Vercure” <4> will heal your range.
