Red Mage DPS Rotation, Openers, and Abilities — Endwalker 6.4
On this page, you will learn how to optimise your opener and rotation in both single-target and multi-target situations. We also cover the use of your cooldowns, to ensure you can achieve the best use of them every time as a Red Mage DPS in Final Fantasy XIV: Endwalker (Patch 6.4).
Red Mage Rotation Guide
This page covers the endgame rotation for Red Mage. The base rotation for Red Mage is fairly straightforward, but it also has a lot of flexibility. As a resource-based job, your goal on Red Mage is to spend resources to put as much damage into buff windows as possible.
A video of a basic Red Mage rotation being done can be found below:
Casting Phase
The casting phase will revolve around casting short spells to proc Dualcast
and then instantly casting long spells.
Verthunder III and
Veraero III are your single-target long cast spells and should never be
hardcasted outside of the opener.
Jolt II,
Verfire,
and
Verstone are your short cast spells you will be hardcasting throughout
a fight.
Jolt II is always available, while
Verfire and
Verstone have a 50% chance to become available after using
Verthunder III and
Veraero III, respectively.
A dualcast pair should look like this:
Verfire or
Verstone. If neither are available, use
Jolt II
Verthunder III or
Veraero III
You should alternate spell casts to build both Black Mana and White Mana while keeping the difference
lower than 30. Prioritize picking your long cast spell based on what proc you do not have available
to minimize the amount of times you must cast Jolt II throughout a fight.
If there is downtime during a fight, Vercure can be used to proc
Dualcast
and begin the next phase with an instant long cast spell.
Melee Combo
Your melee combo costs 50 Black Mana and 50 White Mana. Once you have enough to execute a combo, your rotation will look like this:
Enchanted Riposte
Enchanted Zwerchhau
Enchanted Redoublement
Verholy or
Verflare
Scorch
Resolution
Because a melee combo costs 50 Black and White Mana, and you can store up to 100 Black and White Mana, your melee combo is flexible and does not have to be used immediately. This allows you to take advantage of your melee combo to use it for mobility or to put more damage into buffs, which will be explained further below.
Damage Off-Global Cooldowns
One of the strongest parts of Red Mage's damage is its off-global cooldowns. Fleche,
Contre Sixte,
Corps-a-corps,
Engagement, and
Displacement are all oGCDs that should be used as much as possible to maximize damage throughout a fight.
Fleche and
Contre Sixte should both be used on cooldown after the opener to keep
their cooldown timer rolling. Because the cooldown on both of these is relatively short, it is easy to lose a
usage of each through a fight or phase, hindering your overall damage.
Corps-a-corps,
Engagement, and
Displacement should also be used
as much as possible to keep their cooldown timer rolling, but these abilities are more flexible due to having two charges.
Corps-a-corps will cause you to jump to the boss, which can be taken advantage of when needed
in addition to the damage it does.
Engagement and
Displacement both have equal
potency and share a cooldown timer, so you will primarily be using
Engagement.
The order in which damaging oGCDs should be prioritized is as follows:
Fleche
Contre Sixte
Engagement or
Displacement
Corps-a-corps
Other Off-Global Cooldowns
Other off-global cooldowns Red Mage has as a part of its DPS rotation are Embolden,
Manafication,
Acceleration, and
Swiftcast.
Embolden is a raidwide 5% party buff that lasts for 20 seconds. It should be used on cooldown to
align with other party buffs unless the full group is holding buffs for a specific purpose.
Manafication gives you enough mana to execute a full melee combo and a 5% damage buff
on your next six GCDs used. This means that we should always use
Manafication either before
or during a melee combo to align our finishers and the 5% damage boost. While using
Manafication
will break any existing combos, the game considers the melee part of our combo and our finishers to be two
separate combos, meaning we can use
Manafication in between
Enchanted Redoublement and
Verholy or
Verflare.
If being used in between these GCDs, the three buffed GCDs following your finishers can be used
on either the start of a second combo or on three normal spell GCDs.
Because Manafication has a cooldown of 110 seconds, this means using it on cooldown will drift
it out of raid buffs. What is optimal will be fight dependent and killtime dependent. In fights where
rushing
Manafication will allow you to gain an extra usage, this will be optimal. However,
in fights where your killtime will not gain you an extra usage,
Manafication can be held for
ten seconds every buff window to align with
Embolden and other party buffs.
Swiftcast is a role action that causes your next GCD to be cast instantly.
Acceleration is a Red Mage-specific ability that is functionally similar to
Swiftcast, but it has two charges and also guarantees a proc.
Acceleration
can only be used on
Verthunder III,
Veraero III, and
Impact,
but these abilities should only ever be used on these spells for damage purposes anyway.
These abilities have two primary functions:
- Keeping uptime when you are moving and cannot stop for a cast
- Keeping your other oGCDs aligned
The most important way to use these abilities is to use them when you need to in order to keep uptime during movement-heavy mechanics. Keeping your GCD rolling is the most important basic of playing Red Mage, and these abilities enable you to do so even when executing tough mechanics.
The second way to use these abilities is to keep your other oGCDs aligned, primarily
Fleche,
Contre Sixte,
Embolden,
and
Manafication. A short explanation of this is that each of these ability
cooldowns is a multiple of five seconds, and each of our dualcast pairs takes five seconds, meaning our
oGCDs will become available to use again during an instant cast GCD each time. Our melee combo, however,
takes around 12.7 seconds to execute, meaning our dualcast windows become swapped with each use. This will
cause our oGCDs to come off cooldown during a hardcast and drift, which will add up over time and cause lost usages.
Because
Swiftcast and
Acceleration occupy a single 2.5 second GCD window, they achieve
the same result of swapping our dualcast windows. This means we can use them to our advantage by using one before or after
a melee combo to keep our dualcast windows aligned with our oGCD cooldowns.
A short video demonstration of this concept with timestamps can be found here:
Opener
This is a general purpose opener that can be used for the majority of encounters. In specific fights where phasing requires you to use any oGCDs earlier to gain a use, this opener can be altered slightly to fit your needs.
- Precast
Verthunder III at five seconds
Veraero III →
Swiftcast +
Acceleration
-
Verthunder III → Potion
-
Verthunder III →
Embolden +
Manafication
-
Enchanted Riposte →
Fleche
Enchanted Zwerchhau →
Contre Sixte
Enchanted Redoublement →
Corps-a-corps +
Engagement
Verholy →
Corps-a-corps +
Engagement
Scorch
Resolution
-
Verfire
-
Verthunder III
-
Verstone
Veraero III
Jolt II
Verthunder III →
Fleche
Playing into Buffs and Potion
The flexibility of Red Mage's melee combo allows you to play into buffs efficiently. Keeping
Embolden aligned with other party buffs will allow you to maximize your damage during buff windows.
Your basic goal is to fit one melee combo into every buff window. If you do not need an extra melee combo elsewhere for
mobility, it is also possible to fit an extra three finishers into 20-second buffs, including your own
Embolden
every buff window. To accomplish this, you must have a minimum mana count of 92|81, or have enough for a full melee combo and
Manafication if you are not using it on cooldown. Begin your first melee combo five seconds before
Embolden comes off cooldown, and weave
Embolden after
Enchanted Redoublement.
By doing this, you will be able to fit the following into buffs:
Verholy or
Verflare
Scorch
Resolution
Enchanted Riposte
Enchanted Zwerchhau
Enchanted Redoublement
Verholy or
Verflare
Scorch
Resolution
Keep in mind that while Embolden only affects our personal magical damage and
therefore does not affect our oGCDs, our oGCDs are still buffed by other party buffs. Therefore, it is
ideal to fit two charges of
Corps-a-corps and
Engagement into buff
windows when possible.
For our potion window, our priority is to fit two full melee combos under a potion. If holding
Manafication for each buff window, it is possible to fit three uses of
Scorch and
Resolution into a potion for a small potency
gain. To do this, you must have 73|73 mana and
Manafication available for use.
Start your first melee combo when there is around 17 seconds left on the cooldown for
Embolden, and use a potion after your first
Verholy or
Verflare. An ideal potion using this method would look like this:
Scorch
Resolution
Enchanted Riposte
Enchanted Zwerchhau
Enchanted Redoublement →
Embolden +
Manafication
Verholy or
Verflare
Scorch
Resolution
Enchanted Riposte
Enchanted Zwerchhau
Enchanted Redoublement
Verholy or
Verflare
Scorch
Resolution
Multi-Target Rotation
The multi-target rotation is very similar to the single target rotation, with some changes to the abilities used.
Two Targets
-
Hardcast
Verfire,
Verstone, or
Jolt II
-
Dualcast
Impact
- Use single target melee combo
Three or More Targets
-
Hardcast
Verthunder II or
Veraero II
-
Use
Impact
- Use
Enchanted Moulinet x3 for melee combo
Changelog
- 28 May 2023: Updated for Patch 6.4
- 14 Jan. 2023: Updated for Patch 6.3
- 20 Apr. 2022: Updated for Patch 6.1
- 14 Feb. 2022: Guide added.
Guides from Other Classes
This guide has been cowritten by Lana White and Argen Yin.
Lana is a Red Mage theorycrafter and began playing in early Stormblood. He has played Red Mage since hitting level 50 and unlocking the job and began raiding during Eden’s Gate in Shadowbringers. He became a mentor and guide writer for the Balance during Eden’s Verse, where he can be found hanging out and answering questions in the Red Mage channels. Lana occasionally streams raid on his Twitch account, and often posts fight videos and other helpful content on his Youtube channel.
Argen has been playing since Alphascape, but got involved in higher-end raiding during Eden’s Verse, where he helped the community learn about Red Mage’s often overlooked optimization potential. He has been blessed by enough RNG to achieve top 10 rankings in multiple raids, become a Red Mage mentor at the Balance discord, and not get forced to play another job in any of his statics. Argen can also be found in Elemental DC party finder or on his Youtube channel.
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