What have become of the RDMs.

[Cylock]

After happily leveling RDM and spending years main healing in endgame and merit parties on Col. i feel I am at a loss now with the release of Abyssea. Red Mages used to have the edge over all other healers due to our ability to never run out of MP. Not to mention our native enhancing and unrivaled enfeebling skills. Now that players have HP out the ass and SE didnt see fit to give us higher tiers of curative spells and all of our great unique spells being whored out to SJs what is to become of the RDM if not to main heal? Well the first thing that comes to mind is OMG OMG OMG you mean i can finally realize my dream of being a melee mage? You mean all those parties of putting up with players expecting the world from you were all for not? Ok mabye im being a little dramatic but still i put up with a lot of douche bags in my day, but what are RDMs to do now? So far I've made use of my awesome enfeebling skills in silence pulling parties and that has worked great so far. Other then that i feel useless except for buffing. I am now thinking of level my WHM past a SJ to feed into my need to heal parties and be the object of every party's desire(totally not in a gay way XD.)

What do you guys think, maybe give us some new and interesting spells to give RDM that great uniqueness it once had. I'd like to hear some feedback from the RDM community.

[Nepharite]

Build an Almace for Chant du Cygne and become that melee rdm you've always wanted to be!
It'll mop the floor with your average DD in a pick up pt.

[Neisan_Quetz]

Evis with blau mops the floor with the average DD in a PUG but I digress...
As it stands aside from certain situations lowmanning Rdm isn't really useful for much unless you feel like dusting it off to finish skilling up or something, that's just how it is in Abyssea since we have few Yellow/Hardly any Blue/Red procs, although aisde from not being useful I'm glad I don't have to main heal as much anymore and can go back to nuking/meleeing for the heck of it. It all depends on what happens in the future, if people are going to stay in abyssea Rdm will need at the minimum more curing ability to be seen as viable, if the game steers away from 3k+ HP straight tanking with no shadows/needing to exploit weaknesses on mobs I don't think it will be necessary.

[Protey]

that's just how it is in Abyssea since we have few Yellow/Hardly any Blue/Red procs,

this is not true, rdm can sub war and do 8 of the 13 red procs (though you'd need 3 staff merits + gear atm to do sunburst).
As /war we can also do 8 blue procs.

[Neisan_Quetz]

Natively, we have few red/blue/yellow procs. Most people aren't going to /war as if you wanted to garauntee red you wouldn't bring Rdm in the first place. Paladin would be more useful in that regard and they're already not wanted (Although for other reasons).

[Protey]

by that token, every job other than blm and blu has few yellow; every job other than war and mnk have few blue; every job other than war has few red. So why complain.

[Nepharite]

Natively, we have few red/blue/yellow procs. Most people aren't going to /war as if you wanted to garauntee red you wouldn't bring Rdm in the first place. Paladin would be more useful in that regard and they're already not wanted (Although for other reasons).

Its for the situations where you only have 2 people or are solo. Then again, most rdms won't have the polearm skill, let alone the pitchfork event item.

[Protey]

Also, to seem viable in abyssea? you do know you can self FC (aeolian edge anyway). You can easily get 50% pdt, you have phalanx, stoneskin, ice spikes, and aquaveil. You have native traits/stats and a huge selection of gear to boost your damage. You can get all lights. All this is native to rdm. If you're /nin you can hold or kill pretty much anything in abyssea. Viable? yea you're viable, you can farm lights/TEs/gold chests/whatever while the rest of your LS goes on their merry way. You pretty much don't need them, but you sure can help them out.

[Neisan_Quetz]

So basically you're advocating Rdm for the position of solo Blu/Blm (who are already desired), only slower.

[Protey]

blu/blm wouldn't survive over a dozen mobs hitting it at once (though this does of course depend on mob, easily done with mandies in tahrongi, not so easy with mobs that hit like a truck). and your rdm must be pretty gimp if it's slower than a blu/blm (either that or you never did aeolian edge spam/have no melee capability)