Red is obsolete.

[idx1]

I've played as Red since the start of '07, what attracted me was Fast Cast, the 'unique' ability to refresh yourself or the party, 'unique' spells such as Enspells, and also being the best enfeebler.

All is lost. So I quit. One note is that I do not have Abby.

Fast cast? No, for one a Blue can cast 100-500% faster than a Red.
Dancers can recast Utsusemi: Ni faster than Red - with Abby haste items, literally everybody has Fast Cast in the form of Haste.

Composure was great, until you cast something like Utsu: Ni - goodbye Fast Cast.
Full-time one of your best MP-saving Job Abilities and you can shove that Fast Cast.

Enspells.
PLD and DRK Enspell ONE is better than all of Reds Enspell I + II.

Refresh.
Everybody has Refresh. You go /SCH and it's already better than Refresh II.
Blue can Refresh-ga.

Enfeebling.
With maximum merits, a Red has access to more potent forms of basic enfeebles such as Paralyze, Blind, and Slow. Though it's just unfortunate that these enfeebles are heavily defensive, and only assist with keeping the Red alive in solo situations.
Though they may help keep a party 'alive', a stronger cure from a White or Scholar inevitably outweighs all forms of defense a Red can offer in terms of "defensive magic".

Sure, a Red can sleep mobs.
Well, a SCH or BLM has natural Sleep-ga capabilities, making them inevitably better in that department.


Nuking and enhancing aren't even worth talking about.
Red is the weakest nuking class (unless they 2-Hour).
A Red has no -ga type enhancements.

Melee.
You go anything that is not /NIN and your melee is beyond useless.

tldr; Haste II? Enspell III? Stoneskin II? Reraise? Cure V? Regen III? Tier 5 Nuke?
From 90-99 these won't exist.

A Red is nice - but only when you don't have a Blue, Black, White, or any other mage around.

/quit

One last thing; can we get some long term (at least 3year plus) RDM players into the discussion instead of these Blue or SCH main-ers?

[Raxiaz]

Haste is not Fast Cast. It affects recast timers but it does not affect casting speed.

RDMs excel at hindering their foes. They do very well in this field, and without a RDM a mob can be a pain. To my knowledge, NOTHING beats Refresh II. /SCH Sublimation is only 2MP a tic.

[Removed by Moderator according to the FINAL FANTASY XI FORUM Guidelines.]

[idx1]

Fast Cast on Sleep - with a natural cast time of 2.5 seconds.
A red casts it about a second faster.
Big whoop.

Refresh II - nothing gives more MP a tick, but do you see any Blue or SCH needing Refresh II?
Only Mage/NIN type characters need it.

And way to choose less than 10% to discuss against before trolling.
Mad respect.

[Neisan_Quetz]

Blu using Diffusion... ahahahahaha, nice jokes. and waste of merits. Blu also can't set all their spells at once. Blu doesn't have Fast Cast better than Rdm, in fact recent information now points to that Blu's fast cast is inferior (that or SE changed how it works with the Fast Cast update, so it's either intentional or a bug). A second faster is faster regardless of how minimal you think it is, and for FFXI shaving even a second off casting time can make a difference, especially in a pinch. Enlight and Endark degrade over time and with composure Rdm's lasts much longer, try again (their real benefit is the additional stat ups, enspell 2s are just fail anyway).

The weakest nuking class is Drk (Techincally Whm too) btw, even with higher skill they have no MAB. Sch has higher spells but no native MAB, locking them in /rdm or /blm if they're serious about nuking.

Lots of mayad that a generalist class can't match up to a specialist... Rdm was never better than a specialist class in any field, ever. The only class you can have any gripe over is Blu and that's only that they're better at melee/healing if they focus on it. Any healer not whm sucks in Abyssea as it is anyway, Rdm isn't alone in that.

[Raksha]

Sch has higher spells and no native MAB, locking them in /rdm if they're serious about nuking.

Fixed that for you.

[Neisan_Quetz]

Forgot about FC :/

[idx1]

Blu doesn't have Fast Cast better than Rdm, in fact recent information now points to that Blu's fast cast is inferior (that or SE changed how it works with the Fast Cast update, so it's either intentional or a bug)

Info was taken from FFXIclopedia.

Quadratic Continuum
Cast time: 1 second. With Fast Cast 1 = Less than a second.
Recast: 24 seconds. With Fast Cast 1 = 22 - 23 seconds.

vs.

Blizzard IV
Cast time: 8.25 seconds. With Fast Cast V = 5.775 seconds.
Recast: 36 seconds. With Fast Cast V = 30.6 seconds.

Enlight and Endark degrade over time and with composure Rdm's lasts much longer, try again (their real benefit is the additional stat ups, enspell 2s are just fail anyway).

Typically, Red's enspell 1 does about 22-26 damage per hit.
Enlight or Endark is about 50 per hit, with degrade.
You're telling me double damage that can be 'refreshed' every 30 seconds, is inferior to 'a longer lasting enspell'?
You might be right if both spells were only casted, once.

The weakest nuking class is Drk (Techincally Whm too) btw, even with higher skill they have no MAB

Last time I played FFXI - DRK didn't nuke. They didn't pull out their Jupiter's staff and Thunder III'd. From what I remembered, they did Nether Voids, Dark Seals, and Drain and Drain II. And from what I remember, DRK was a TP job, not a nuke-type. Amongst the .Nuker. type jobs, Red is the lowest.

Blizzard IV base value for magic attack is 506. With Magic Attack Bonus III it's roughly 647.
Aero V base value for magic attack is 738. Any additional Magic Attack Bonus easily beats out a RDM.

[Neisan_Quetz]

Individual spell casting time =! Fast cast. Once again, Blue mage is a better hybrid job when it comes to melee, except their physical spell damage drops drastically on anything that isn't a trash mob, and their magical nukes suffer from short range and long recasts, in addition to the fact they cannot access all of their spells at one time. The more often you have to cast spells, the more it detracts from dealing damage from through melee/WS, to the point without honourbound Enlight is actually a detriment to keep up for Pld, especially at higher levels of haste/delay reduction. Just because they do not use their elemental spells, does not the change the fact Whm and Drk are the weakest nuking jobs. In fact, it's precisely for that reason they do not use them, and in Drk's case, in addition to the above.

You would have a case for Sch, when they have haste and MAB, until then, they can't do everything. If it mattered, they also have the worst melee ability in the game, even Blm is better at meleeing than Sch is. Rdm is a generalist job specializing in enfeebling magic, why are you expecting it to perform better at nuking than Blm/Sch in the first place?

Before getting a higher tier of magical nukes Sch was considered pretty useless as a main job.

[idx1]

SCH/WHM = Haste. Slap on a Staff you get the MAB on tier V spells that WILL outdo Red nukes.

And since you're so insistent about WHM and DRK being nukers, lets go with it.
RDM is better at nuking at classes that simply, don't nuke. Woahepic.

I'm not expecting it to be better.
No class should nuke better than a BLM/xxx

You say best enfeebler but what enfeebles are useful outside of Sleep/Gravity.
Do you really need Para2 to kill a mob, any mob?
Do you really need Slow2 for the same?
No, you don't.

Dancer's have Gravity, it requires no cast time.
They can insta heal - IMO better a DNC than a RDM for those jobs.

[Neisan_Quetz]

There's 7 jobs with the potential to nuke (5 dismissing Drk and Pld and not counting pet jobs), Rdm is 3rd, this is a problem how?

All I see is mayad Rdm is less useful if you have specialist jobs already, but that's the case with any generalist job in any MMO.

That's more of an issue of where you are using said enfeebles/mob immunity really. The more people you bring to a fight with specialized roles, the less attractive Rdm becomes, and I don't see that as being a problem at all.

The fuck @ comparing Dnc Healing to Rdm, one of these jobs isn't stuck on a universal timer to either cure or remove status effects. Hint: it's not the mage one.