Wanted to try mage dps class

A lot of people don't know what they're talking about when it comes to engagement, displacement, and corps-a-corps and either tie those cds to their melee combo or use them exclusively for movement, or double weave with displacement, etc. It's a very popular job so there is a lot of misinformation out there from folks that don't care as much for optimization.

Yes, use them on cooldown. They do not line up with your gauge filling because despite Acceleration existing RDM is still inherently just a little bit random as far as mana generation goes. Additionally, it's wrong to enter melee phase if you will waste a proc in the process since verflare/verholy give you one guaranteed. I won't go into the specific numbers of it but you will sometimes delay your melee phase by 2 gcds to fix your mana/procs and when it becomes available in the first place is a bit random past your opener. However, if you aren't using swiftcast and you have a proper sps tier your offglobals should fall into your dualcast windows consistently so you can just throw them in as they come up. Also your melee combo has spots to single-weave ogcds, which is shown in the most common RDM opener. Since Manafication resets all of your movement skills at the same time it's important to use engagement off the back of the first part of your melee combo instead of using corps-a-corps. You could displacment at the end of the melee combo instead but since you are delaying it a bit you will lose potency doing this unless you use displacement twice more during this manification cycle and if you can not because of movement restrictions or not having a window to weave it all by itself you will lose damage. Engagement is safer for the first use of this shared CD, but you can replace future casts with displacement where it's applicable and you will gain damage. Reason for that is you can first 4 engagements per manification cd (150x4=600) or 3 displacements (200x3=600) but if you engagement first and use it on cd thereafter but replace one cast with displacement because a window was open for it (150x3+200=650) you can squeeze more potency out of this shared cd.

As a final note you "could" get 4 displacements off per manification since it has the exact same cooldown, right? The only problem is the first one still has to be right after manification at the start of your melee combo, so you would flip out and have to walk back in, or corps-a-corps back in. Either way, you clip your GCD doing this and that will more than likely amount to you messing up your off global weave windows, drifting those cds, possibly dropping a cast of each throughout the fight (840 potency) and losing a regular cast. At best this is a jolt (290 potency+6 mana) but it's probably your dualcast that gets dropped. It's just not worth it at all, clipping for 50 potency is bound to bite you for more than that.

/r/ffxiv Thread Parent