What is RDM all about?

If I could convence you of playing any job it would be Puppetmaster. I have played all 20 jobs and I must say it has the most "depth" of all the jobs in my opinion. That being said it is NOT an easy job to play and requires you to know the mechanics of Overload/Burden/Automaton A.I. (how your Automaton thinks so to speak)/as well as the strengths and weakness of each pet and the master himself to perform optimally, but after the new PUPdate it will be relatively "easier" and more enjoyable to play than ever. It is a very cool job that draws its strength through versatility and in my opinion is as strong as the Master is creative! I don't know how much you know about the Puppetmaster, but most people think it is weak because they failed at it themselves, but I promise, once you do learn it, you can solo Monsters that alliances fall before! Too bad your not on Fenrir :/, but if you ever do come, you've got a friend!

~Nezha (PUP from day one till the end of FFXI)

Rdm is a great job adept at enfeebling monsters. Paralyze II/Slow II/blind II on a monster inhibits it to a fair degree.

However, high end NMs are completely immune to usually 1-3 of these important enfeebles, and extremely resistant to the rest to the degree that red mage's niche is not used. This is why rdm sucks, because SE made them useless on most monsters.

I would say your best bet is to try them all, at least to 50. You can solo all jobs now (yes some are easier than others) if you need to.

Playing all jobs not only gives you all available sub jobs but it also teaches you about the other jobs so when you party with them you will know what they can and cant do. A good example of this is THF. Anyone who plays thf knows how frustrating it can be to try to get off a sneak attack without the person moving and ruining it. Someone who has played THF knows whats going on and can help the THF in your party get his sneak attack off without moving out the way at the last second.

And by the time you hit 50 you have seen a lot of the world, gained a great deal of experience playing the game and know if the job is right for you.

I personally started off playing whm, then moved to smn, and found my favorite job in dnc. Still I have leveled each job and found things i like/dislike. If you want to find the job that's good for you just start with a job, play it and if you like it great, if not pick something else until you do. Don't be afraid to level something you would like to do based off other peoples opinions. It might also be a good idea to check out the job list here http://ffxi.gamerescape.com/wiki/Category:Jobs read what the jobs do, look at their spells/abilities and see if anything interests you.

I agree with Autobot. In todays world of FFXI doing and trying all jobs to 50 is not a bad idea, plus you will have alot of available subs...lol.

I started 4.5 years ago as a RDM, it was my main job, but I used a sword/dagger and by lvl 30 started Nin and had 2 swords/daggers. It was a time when RDM's were cure haste refresh whores, so I kept my dd side in Campaign starting at 60. But I was due for a big wake up call at my lvl break....Had to fight Maat and didn't know how to do it magically, had a lot to learn fast and of course RDM is the hardest of the Maat fights.

I have since opened all jobs, some great, some good, some ok, a couple are still lvl 5. Rdm is still the love of my life, but it remains in the MH with full Af3, some +2 stuff. Whm and Blm both now 95 people love them, Nin and Thf I live on them when not in party. Blu is a great job also, magical and dd all in one, getting the spells was fun, also something to do back when no one wanted us. Now we can proc and we can get into parties in abyssea. I have 91 Rdm (last of the list to lvl up), 95 Blm, Whm, Blu, Thf, Nin, Sam, working on Mnk, Bst, War.

Just remember, combat and magic must be capped, you can lvl faster now but learn the job, learn to use your abilities and stay as capped as you can....one day my Parry will be capped (I keep telling myself it will happen).


p.s. don't judge a job by its lower levels, I swore I would never take nin past 37...omg I love it now. In fact I said not past 37 about a lot of my lvl 95 jobs. By 50, you will have gotten a taste of that which is yet to come.

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Originally Posted by Solonuke

When it comes to meleeing during endgame, I think the biggest problem is not that your damage isn't worth it but the fact that 90% of the monsters in this game screams "don't tp this!". After meleeing quite a few Isgebinds with my LS I thought meleeing didn't seem bad. You won't be taking much damage from AoEs as RDMs gets access to stoneskin, shell and magic defense bonus traits. When it comes to resisting enfeebles, it helps out capping the magic skill while using enspells that reduces the monster's resistance to a specific element and use death blossom for reduced magic evasion. Capping enhancing now helps out on temper and gain-spells which helps out while meleeing.

RDM melee is probably the most discussed thing about this game and the discussion has been going on ever since the game was released. 9 years of whether or not a RDM should use its sword or not somehow sounds really funny to me.

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Not arguing but we've already found out that the "TP Feed" argument is no longer valid on big NM class monsters. Turns out that after seeing a bunch of DNC and MNK's running around soloing things SE just said "screw it" and gave all the new NM's the ability to do a special move without TP. That or they have 40+ TP/tick regain. There was a time when we kited Kaggan around for a few min and with nobody hitting him and no damage being done he was spamming TP moves (jumping mostly as I never stayed in range, but occasionally the aoe mucus move). SE really has thrown out all semblance of balance on NMs and just plain cheats now.

Honestly, OP, I think trying all jobs to level 50 is a TERRIBLE idea. I'll explain why without taking up an entire page and making you read through a bunch of crap.

Simply: Jobs do NOT play anywhere remotely similar to the same way at level 50 as they do at level 95 and in Endgame. Period. Gaining experience in EXP amounts to knowing how to EXP really well. It doesn't amount to being able to perform the functions that jobs perform in Endgame well, because Endgame and EXP are not even remotely similar.

The best advice I can give you is to tell us what sort of job you want to play in Endgame, and then we can give you a better idea of what job you may want to try out. "EVERYONE IS GOOD AT EVERYTHING AND EVERYTHING IS GOOD AND YOU CAN'T TELL ME HOW TO PLAY" is just outdated tripe that doesn't actually do you any good. If you want to play a certain way and be effective at doing something in actual Endgame content, I can give you a decent recommendation of what job may be the best way of accomplishing that. Regardless, it's probably not Red Mage either way.

The best part of it all, really, is even if you pick a job and end up not liking it, leveling a second job becomes extraordinarily easy.

Red Mage was terribad in FF1. My Monk and Warrior do like 3x more damage than it and my RDM has Masamune. My RDM hits for like 300-500 and my WAR and MNK hit for like 1700. In FF3 RDM is crap too, its stat gain sucks and it only learns like up to level 4 magic. Any melee outdamages it because their weapon selection sucks badly(in the original, I know nothing of how they rebalanced it in the DS version. In FF5 RDM was actually awesome until the middle of the game when Blue Mage, Geomancer and Summoner rock it death. RDM's only good feature is Double Cast which is a half decent sub ability(but Blue Magic is far superior because White Wind> Cure IIx2)

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Originally Posted by Ophannus

Red Mage was terribad in FF1. My Monk and Warrior do like 3x more damage than it and my RDM has Masamune. My RDM hits for like 300-500 and my WAR and MNK hit for like 1700. In FF3 RDM is crap too, its stat gain sucks and it only learns like up to level 4 magic. Any melee outdamages it because their weapon selection sucks badly(in the original, I know nothing of how they rebalanced it in the DS version. In FF5 RDM was actually awesome until the middle of the game when Blue Mage, Geomancer and Summoner rock it death. RDM's only good feature is Double Cast which is a half decent sub ability(but Blue Magic is far superior because White Wind> Cure IIx2)

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Umm which versions of FF are you talking about, because that is NOT what I've experienced the past few months (I'm replaying the older ones right now). FF1 on PSX / GBA got a HUGE re-balance, their on all the good gear now. RDM gets Defender / Sun Sword and it's own special Deathbringer sword. With Masamune he'll do more then the Excal fighter. What your talking about, that 300~500 vs 1700 is an unbuffed RDM vs a Temper Hasted Monk. In the NES version the damage calculations favored MNK heavily, they basically got 2x the hits of everyone else and 4x once hasted. In the GBA remake they severely nerfed MNK and made magic resistance a much bigger part of the game (it's a hidden stat). MNK is still good but it's no where near as godly as it was before. They also buffed THF/NIN big time, it's basically as strong as a Fighter but with less defense but faster agility and more evasion. They redid the magic system to a MP based system instead of magic level points, thus RDM can easily nuke or heal along with meleeing although it's lack of aoe cures makes it a really bad idea to main heal on late game boss fights. Basically your going to have RDM or BLM in the third party slot, BLM having bigger nukes but RDM being able to melee and cure along with nuking and haste / temper casting (absolute MUST for late game boss fights).


FF3 again is different from NES vs DS. In NES each job upgraded to another job with ALL melee jobs "upgrading" to Ninja at the very end, all mage jobs upgraded with RDM's being to the "Sage" (able to cast all magic but limited points). RDM was a good melee in the beginning but later you swapped it out for a dedicated caster or melee. Infact the jobs you used changed as the game went on because it forced to do this you via gear acquisition. In the DS remake they threw all that out the window, Ninja was nerfed gearly, it's basically just an upgrade to Thief. RDM got buffed like crazy and put on most of the late game gear, including Excal and other super swords. RDM's stat gain was buffed and no longer resembles the Black Mage. Red Mage's "special" card item is the Crimson Vest which gives +10 to all stats, combined with the Excal and Ultima Blade the Red Mage can get +30 to all it's stats. They also redid the job level system, JL isn't only used for determining the number of fights your "weakened" its used to calculate your damage, accuracy, evasion and critical hit rate.

FF5 (what I'm playing now) is pretty much the same story, SE redid the game and buffed the previously neglected jobs like RDM / Bard / Dancer / Geomancer and such. RDM's stats resemble a Black / White Mage unless your equip a melee orientated alternate option like DW / 2H / Focus / ect. The system is now that your main job will gain the status bonus associated with that sub ability provided its not bigger then the main jobs current stat bonus. RDM being -STR and +INT means that it naturaly starts with lower STR and greater INT then that character would have, but if the melee secondary has +STR then it ignores the -STR on RDM and replaces it with the subs bonus. So if I put DW or 2H and use Enhancers (best sword until you go into the post-game areas) then the Red Mage gets really good melee options. Although the lack of L4/L5 magic means it's casting becomes severely limited late game. And honestly, late game FFV is about boosting Freelancer and Mine out the wazo. No job compares to what those two jobs become. BLU's white wind requires the BLU be at high hitpoints, otherwise it's just an expensive cura. Later on the boss's will hit you with MT damage attacks for 1~2K and put everyone into low HP. Curaga becomes vastly more effective for healing everyone. Because of this RDM really just becomes another WHM / BLM later on, it can equip both the sage staff (+50% holy damage) and Magus rod (+50% fire/ice/lightening/wind/poison damage) but not the rune bell (+50% to all except water).

Overall in every FF game Red Mage becomes a strong starting / mid game character but weaker in late game but then super again (except FFV) in post-game events. It's primary strength being that it's flexible and able to melee dungeon monsters and heal / support during mega boss fights.

And here we demonstrate yet another one of Red Mage's biggest forum weaknesses. People like to relate FFXI online mechanics to Old FF single player mechanics and get huffy when the jobs don't play the same way.

If I hear "But Red Mage could do XXX in FF# so it should do it here" one more time, I'm going to slap a ho.