Red Mage DPS Rotation, Openers, and Abilities — Endwalker 6.4

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:

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:

1. Verfire or Verstone. If neither are available, use Jolt II
2. 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.

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:

1. Enchanted Riposte
2. Enchanted Zwerchhau
3. Enchanted Redoublement
4. Verholy or Verflare
5. Scorch
6. 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.

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:

1. Fleche
2. Contre Sixte
3. Engagement or Displacement
4. Corps-a-corps

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:

1. Keeping uptime when you are moving and cannot stop for a cast
2. 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:

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.

1. Precast Verthunder III at five seconds
2. Veraero III → Swiftcast + Acceleration
3. Verthunder III → Potion
4. Verthunder III → Embolden + Manafication
5. Enchanted Riposte → Fleche
6. Enchanted Zwerchhau → Contre Sixte
7. Enchanted Redoublement → Corps-a-corps + Engagement
8. Verholy → Corps-a-corps + Engagement
9. Scorch
10. Resolution
11. Verfire
12. Verthunder III
13. Verstone
14. Veraero III
15. Jolt II
16. Verthunder III → Fleche

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:

1. Verholy or Verflare
2. Scorch
3. Resolution
4. Enchanted Riposte
5. Enchanted Zwerchhau
6. Enchanted Redoublement
7. Verholy or Verflare
8. Scorch
9. 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:

1. Scorch
2. Resolution
3. Enchanted Riposte
4. Enchanted Zwerchhau
5. Enchanted Redoublement → Embolden + Manafication
6. Verholy or Verflare
7. Scorch
8. Resolution
9. Enchanted Riposte
10. Enchanted Zwerchhau
11. Enchanted Redoublement
12. Verholy or Verflare
13. Scorch
14. Resolution

The multi-target rotation is very similar to the single target rotation, with some changes to the abilities used.

• Hardcast Verfire, Verstone, or Jolt II
• Dualcast Impact
• Use single target melee combo

• Hardcast Verthunder II or Veraero II
• Use Impact
• Use Enchanted Moulinet x3 for melee combo