[Job Adjustmentｓ Manifesto] RDM

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This sums up a lot of my thoughts about the way Scholar works or should work. Wasn't a Scholar a supportive mage in the lore? It makes things favorable to the party, then proceeds to add extra magical damage or healing as the situation needs it.

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Traditionally, there...is no real definitive image of what Scholar is. As it is, it's a very uncommon available class in Final Fantasy.

Just browsing a Final Fantasy wikia for a bit, it looks like the III DS version is as close to the XI version as any, with the ability to cast a variety of both white and black magic. It looks like all they did was determine enemy weaknesses in the original III. A running theme of the job though is it determines enemy weaknesses and scans enemies.

In IV: The After Years, they knew Gil Toss.

The Scholar that I'm most familiar with, aside from the XI one, is the one from Tactics A2, which actually specialized in dealing attacks that potentially dealt damage to all units in the field, including your own, and one you had to actually build teams and gear sets around to capitalize on. They also had the ability to scan enemies and tell you what kind of items can be stolen from a given enemy.

My impression of the XI Scholar is that it's a combination job of previous ones like Geomancer and Oracle/Sage/Lunarian/Seer or whatever else the extreme magic specialist of the game happens to be called this time.

By lore I meant FFXI store line stuff. I may be mistaken.

I should probably be more clear by what I mean by supportive, what I meant was Scholar does stuff like Geomancer type buffs, and more importantly, is able to switch between damage and healing to assist in these functions, ideally in a group that has both of these roles mostly covered already.

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Originally Posted by Economizer

For the time being, Haste is a major part of what Red Mage is, although not a unique one, but Red Mage is the best at Hasting the most people currently. While I'm not sure that giving Accession Haste to Scholar would stop them from trying to get Cure V, I do know it would have a major impact on the game. Thank goodness that SE isn't ever going to do this. Also, if your a Scholar that thinks this is a good idea in our current game environment, for the love of all things remotely sane, never produce any game.

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Would you feel the same way if haste was party only, and composure increased the duration on everyone?

I levelled RDM to 75 and I hate haste cycles as much as the next guy, but once /RDM gives haste I'm afraid I'll be stuck hasting all the time again.

The answer IMO is to make an AoE'able haste that is less insane. One person being able to Haste an entire alliance is pretty crazy.

I would scream if Haste was made party-only at this stage of the game. No, thank you.

Composure does increase buff duration on everyone when you cast in AF3+2 set, though.

Edit: That's part of what floors me about buffing complaints, really. 5/5 AF3+2 plus AF3 cape is basically double duration on all buffs cast on others with Composure active =/

On everyone's haste suggestions ever:

The best solution would be a way to punch people through the Internet that ask for Haste and aren't the tank, but I'm trying to think of a realistic answer.

I remember leveling with random people in Abyssea when leveling Summoner and having them ask for Haste. No thank you, I'm not going to work harder then everyone in the party to swap avatars constantly, and I'm not going to main Garuda, because I want to use a different summon so I can get skillups faster. Sometimes I wish there was a way to make people forget you have Haste with casual content because they all think they are entitled to lazily auto-attack and WS mobs while mage jobs work their ass off to make them slightly more efficient on a mob that you don't really need to be super efficient on. Yes, there is content where everyone should ideally be Hasted, but sheesh.

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Originally Posted by Raksha

Would you feel the same way if haste was party only, and somehow composure increased the duration on everyone?

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Composure does increase duration if you have AF3+2 and the cape on, to about 1.65 of duration. This is not close enough to Scholar's double duration stratagem if Scholar could Accession it (since they can't, it costs an arm and a leg in strats to do it otherwise).

Making Haste party only to convenience SCH and /SCH doesn't sound like a good solution. It breaks current setups where people Haste cross party. Party target Hastaga would be a better solution, but Red Mage has a distinct lack of aga spells. Even doing something the devs would probably never do, like programming Haste to only target party if you use Ascension would still considerably favor Scholars. Two strats so you don't have to cast Haste for six minutes? You still have 5.5 strats to work with. There aren't a lot of solutions that are better then the status quo, sadly. Balance is hard.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the Enhancing magic duration effects on AF3+2 feet, AF3 cape, and Af3 set are multiplicative, which makes it 1.5 x 1.2 x 1.1 = 1.98, not 1.65?

Honestly, Haste is so far and away from a big deal to me that I'd be wondering why the melees don't have it in the first place that they'd need to whine for it. It's second nature at this point that everyone can and should be hasted at all times =/

Unless most posted information on the effects of the Estoqueur stuff is wrong, yeah, it's multiplicative. So...

Scholar can double the duration of buffs using a stratagem.

Red Mage can very nearly double the duration of buffs by being properly dressed for the occasion.

So, if somebody at SE fell into a pile of heroin and stumbled out feeling joyful enough to allow Haste to work with Ascension, it would be a pretty even break. This line of discussion seems kind of pointless, though, given that most people don't leave their piles of heroin laying around to be tripped over.

As for spell division, I've come to assume Scholar will get the weirder, more situational stuff while Red Mage will get bread and butter spells.

I forgot about the bonus on the boots, which is why I had the odd number of 1.65. Thanks for the correction.

While this certainly changes much of what I said (it only gives SCH a slight edge in this case), I still doubt SE will allow Haste to Ascension. Or if they do, it will be the second before they announce Haste II.

What I meant was what if compsure alone increased buff duration on others, with gear just enhancing that further.

That would put a composured Haste far above a perpetuanced one, and means RDM could just use one strat to make it AoE, but SCH would still need two (accession + perpetuance).

What are the other suggestions for getting rid of haste cycles? Hastega? (For RDM only? What about SCH/RDM? Are we doomed to Haste Cycles now? WHM/SCH too?)

The ideal solution really is to AoE, but I can somewhat understand if the Dev team wants a challenge to find another way without breaking thematic lore.

From there they can either continue to increase the duration and decrease the casting time like what WoW did with Plds where their 5 min buffs that they were expected to keep on 40 people eventually became 15 min buffs that buffed 40 people in a matter of like 6 clicks.

Other then that if they pulled it off right they could also pretty much give out haste to jobs like they did sneak and invisible. I mean if every DD had haste that they could cast on themselves it wouldn't be as necessary to dedicate hastes to just one job. I mean this is an extreme example but if content encouraged lots of players and each alliance had plenty of hastes then it wouldn't be as burdensome.

They would have to implement this properly though as even with haste being more common there are still more incentives for certain jobs to cast haste over other people for efficiencies sake. They would need to make incentives for people to spread out the hastes instead of bunching them on as few people as possible.

Just want to point out that your avg. good sch is going to have their af3 hands so the buff duration increase is 2.5x not just 2.0x for sch.

I'm really so lost in this conversation.

1) How did Scholar become relevant to Red Mage in the first place? We've been going back and forth on it for a few pages, but pretty much the only thing the jobs have in common at all is access to both black and white magic.

2) Since when are Haste cycles a big deal / bad? 9 minute duration Haste on self and 6 minute duration Haste on others is nothing to scoff at, and is a reprieve specific to Red Mage (unless a Sch is burning all their strats on Hastes).

Weren't we talking about job adjustments that are actually relevant to Red Mage?

Well discussion is hard since we don't exactly know where content is headed.

If we continue on with events where you are trying to bring as few people as possible/designed only for a few people. Then it's not a problem

If content is headed for events where you are encouraged to bring tons of people and the events aren't too specific on what jobs to bring and attempt to encourage diversity it isn't s problem either.

But if content devolves back into the 18 man zerg fights we had at 75 then it's a BIG problem.

I admit that it would be better if they just designed content that was better, but we don't know the future.

If content devolves back into 18 man zerg fights haste cycles are and issue and saying that Scholar and Red Mage play completely different isn't that accurate (if they even get invited at all).

Wait, what? How in the world are Haste Cycles actually an issue? And are you insinuating that Red Mages don't get invited (or don't get invited for zerg fights)?

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Originally Posted by Supersun

From there they can either continue to increase the duration and decrease the casting time like what WoW did with Plds where their 5 min buffs that they were expected to keep on 40 people eventually became 15 min buffs that buffed 40 people in a matter of like 6 clicks.

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The balancing factor there is the need for reagents to use the "greater" versions of the buffs (though yeah, if refresh and haste cycles don't bore you to tears, try buffing a 40-man raid in vanilla every 5 minutes with single target buffs...).

Not to mention the buffs were designed in a way that raids were encouraged to bring more than one pally (WotLK had a standard 25-man raid bring at least two, three if you didn't have a druid for Mark of the Wild, and four if you had a Pally tank due to Blessing of Sanctuary being unique to them). Admittedly, it'd be a nice mechanic, but I don't think FFXI supports class stacking in large group situations. At least, not the type that would allow the mechanic to work without making things "too easy" (this is me trying to think like the developers). If you buffed a Warrior with Greater Blessing of Might, every warrior in that raid would also receive the buff, and it was instant cast. In contrast, here we have a bunch of BLMs that would benefit from only Refresh II, which has a cast time, and if we're in a BLM party, we don't have much else to do aside from toss cures. Not to mention you need just one RDM for that, who can also haste whatever melee are present. There's not much encouragement to have more than one in an alliance.

Granted, this is the kind of thing I'd like to see done with RDM buffs. Make them trivial to cast and maintain so that the player can focus on more important things in battle (like dealing damage or healing). I just don't think the game would support them as such (at least for the class as a whole).

Problem with "haste cycles" and "refresh cycles" is that the spells casting animation is to damn long and the recasts are punishingly long. It simply takes up too much time to cycles those spells on a bunch of people, further complicating the process is that it required you to do them over and over and over and over again until your head explodes or you get so burnt out that you refuse to play the job. SE took a big step by releasing a bunch of +duration gear, but it's only scratching the surface of the problem and requires too much gear for your average player. ~ALL~ buffs should be multi-targetable (AOE) no questions asked, period end of story, no arguments accepted. Any other system and you turned the RDM into a buff-bot which is something every serious (didn't level it to get into a HNM shell) RDM hates.

In fact you can pretty much divide the serious RDM's from the non-serious ones by the tone of their arguments. The serious ones want changes made to get RDM away from the haste / refresh / cure robot job it's become, they want more enfeebles more enhancements and more melee capability, yes all three. The ones just using it to get gear want as little changed as possible other then to add Cure V, they use the job exclusively to get gear for their other jobs, the jobs they like, and any positive changes to RDM could possible jeopardize their positions. I view them no better as those naked BRD's whoring merits.

Anyhow, since I got my stage II Almace I've found that I tend to go RDM/DRK to most non-abyssea events (I'm BLU inside abyssea) because we need someone to stun dangerous stuff. My typical routine is Dia III -> Slow II then engage and beat the sh!t out of the mob while spot curing and keeping Refresh II on the WHM (and Slow II / Dia III / Paralyze on the NM). Recent changes to DRK have made this a nice setup, LR is 3min now and SE is only 8% HP per swing for 5% damage, I've been loving me some LRSE CDC's. Enspell II's are pretty decent when single wielding, and I need to do more testing, I think SE might of ninjad the mag.acc calcs on them without telling anyone. Potency cap is still on hit though.

If SE ever bumps Rdm's Dark skill up from whatever abyss it currently is to something respectable that can actually make the rest of the spells gained from /drk beside stun land able I would be going Rdm/Drk a LOT more.

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Originally Posted by saevel

Problem with "haste cycles" and "refresh cycles" is that the spells casting animation is to damn long and the recasts are punishingly long. It simply takes up too much time to cycles those spells on a bunch of people, further complicating the process is that it required you to do them over and over and over and over again until your head explodes or you get so burnt out that you refuse to play the job. SE took a big step by releasing a bunch of +duration gear, but it's only scratching the surface of the problem and requires too much gear for your average player. ~ALL~ buffs should be multi-targetable (AOE) no questions asked, period end of story, no arguments accepted. Any other system and you turned the RDM into a buff-bot which is something every serious (didn't level it to get into a HNM shell) RDM hates.

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The problem is that SE's design for RDM has been trailing along that line of buffbot since the days of TAU. The fact the melee camp and the haters of the cycles were stifled by an overly zealous bunch of people who saw RDM as easy street leveling and merits did nothing to help our cause. I even remember during an interview or QA around the time TAU was announced, I think it was Matsui who said "RDM would still have plenty of casting to do". I knew it translated to keeping the cycles intact to create busy work for us, and could do little to stop it since at the time SE's developers did not have much of a communication venue with the players.

On a concept level, buffing should have nothing to do with RDM, firstly because the job inherently has access to "weaker" magic than WHM and BLM due to being versatile in magic and the ways of the sword. Secondly, weaker magic means the aspects of the job need to combine in some way to make up for what the job lacks compared to everyone else.

Granted, buffing is odd in this game seeing that it is limited to only a few classes. THAT in itself is the source of a slew of problems for not only our class, but having an effect on party dynamics. The enfeebling niche also opened another can of worms, which like a lot of other things did nothing to help our cause.

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Originally Posted by saevel

Problem with "haste cycles" and "refresh cycles" is that the spells casting animation is to damn long and the recasts are punishingly long.

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If the recast of Haste was really short, I don't think anyone capable of casting the spell would be talking about this. You have to wear a lot of Haste or Fast Cast gear to make Haste cycling remotely bearable.

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Originally Posted by saevel

In fact you can pretty much divide the serious RDM's from the non-serious ones

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I think that judging people based on how serious you think they are is a bad model for how to play the game or talk to people about the game. I have enough issues with people on the forums who think stupid stuff like "their job should have all the procs without having to sacrifice their favorite subjob" or "their job should have no down sides, but other jobs should keep theirs" or "lol, balance is for other classes" without having to deal with things like "who is a good player" or "who is actually serious about job x".

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Originally Posted by saevel

In fact you can pretty much divide the serious RDM's from the non-serious ones by the tone of their arguments. The serious ones want changes made to get RDM away from the haste / refresh / cure robot job it's become, they want more enfeebles more enhancements and more melee capability, yes all three. The ones just using it to get gear want as little changed as possible other then to add Cure V, they use the job exclusively to get gear for their other jobs, the jobs they like, and any positive changes to RDM could possible jeopardize their positions. I view them no better as those naked BRD's whoring merits.

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Sweeping generalizations are bad bro. You don't have to be a melee enthusiast to be serious about the job.

There's actually a grain of discussion in all the chaff about job concepts and people being "serious" this time. Huzzah for improvement!

How would you guys who vehemently hate casting Haste feel about the spell if it had the same casting time as Cure III and a ten second base recast?

Well assuming it did have Cure 3's casting time it'd only lop off .5 seconds base casting time from Haste's, which is impossible for Rdm anyway. I really don't see how you're taking a long time to cast Haste... cutting the recast done would be nice, yes, but I'm expecting either cast or recast will be cut with the new JA we should be getting. Probably not worth using on haste depending on recast on the JA but whatevs.

All I saw when I read 'serious Rdms want all buffs' is everything I've read anywhere else saying 'I want my job to be good in nearly every situation'. Suck it up it ain't happening.

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Originally Posted by cidbahamut

Sweeping generalizations are bad bro. You don't have to be a melee enthusiast to be serious about the job.

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^.

I could care less about Haste Cycles because, frankly, they don't bother me or inhibit my other spellcasting in the slightest. This is especially true with the 2x duration the AF3 set offers. People burn out on jobs because they get bored. There is nothing boring about Red Mage if you're serious and/or half decent about/at it.

This entire line of discussion is boring because it panders to the lowest common denominator. Good Red Mages don't need to be "forced" or "obligated" to Haste/Refresh everyone, nor does it inhibit them in the slightest. You can cast other spells in between Hastes while the recast is down, you know.

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Originally Posted by Greatguardian

This entire line of discussion is boring because it panders to the lowest common denominator. Good Red Mages don't need to be "forced" or "obligated" to Haste/Refresh everyone, nor does it inhibit them in the slightest. You can cast other spells in between Hastes while the recast is down, you know.

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Dude, this is a job adjustment thread. Whatever expectations you have will never be met.

I'm just glad people have stopped running around naked, bodies painted with whatever they could find in the pantry, screaming "We're magic swordsmen!" over and over.

Now, folks are dressed up for a discussion over a meal...and...rubbing the pot roast on their cummerbunds and screaming "We're magic swordsmen!" every ten minutes or so.

I've lowered my standards to the point that anything other than "I want to do something this job doesn't do and never will." or "I want to do this job naked. Totally naked. Forever." is a valid point of discussion.

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Originally Posted by SpankWustler

I've lowered my standards to the point that anything other than "I want to do something this job doesn't do and never will." or "I want to do this job naked. Totally naked. Forever." is a valid point of discussion.

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I don't mind points of discussion revolving around those that are less-than-awesomely geared, or experienced. I don't mind the assumption that not all Red Mages are willing to obtain full AF3+2 and other gear in a timely fashion. But holy crap, griping about Haste cycles reeks of nothing but lazy, with or without the awesome AF3+2 set bonus that makes it even easier.

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Originally Posted by Greatguardian

Holy crap, griping about Haste cycles reeks of nothing but lazy, with or without the awesome AF3+2 set bonus that makes it even easier.

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I agree 100%. I'm just glad an enhancing spell cast on other characters is being talked about at all, I guess?

I've never had any issues with Haste cycles on White Mage, and it's even easier and more thoughtless on Red Mage. It confuses me to the point of curiosity when people complain about it.

There's a shock. Meme and Meme Generator being all buddy buddy.

Prior to Composure, you could've been in a situation where you'd need to haste your whole party. 6 people, 3 minutes per, 20 times an hour for 120 casts with variable amounts of Refresh wiggled in between. Figure each cast sucks up 4-5 seconds in actual casting and global cooldown with the spell itself hovering between 13-15s recast depending on gear. My usual routine was Haste, two spells, Haste again, two spells, repeat. If you're expected to be your group's primary healer, and this happens, Abyssea or not, cycle times become a risk for the party as HP levels can drop dangerously low while you're mid-cast. It's not uncommon for cycles to get delayed or people forgotten about when you're presented with a sudden gear shift that leaves you dumping 2-3 Cure IVs on a person and possible status cures on top, or someone dies because you literally can't react. Sure, you're keeping nice and busy, maybe even reveling in the challenge, but if you've never been in a situation where someone doesn't get pissy when their buffs are down for more than 5s or grumble about how they could do a better job, you need to leave the mog house more.

This gets even more fun when you start fighting mobs with dispels, TP moves, or auras that overwrite buffs. It's SE's way of saying, "You thought you were done cycling? Think again! Muwahaha!" Can't forget those that love to run or get knocked out of your casting range, too. And simply because of gear potential, RDM will remain the preferred haste bitch over WHM since it leaves the WHM with more MP and time to focus on other things. Just because you might have no problem with that doesn't mean it isn't a problem, nor does it mean those who do have a problem with it are looking at it like another major tsunami just hit Japan. Cycles just aren't fun, and last I checked, this is a game and not an assembly line.

If you're insinuating that I'm using a sock account, I take that sort of thing very seriously and am not amused in the slightest.

Each account I own is on Cerberus server with me, and this is the only one I use to post with on the Official Forums. I don't even know anyone from Phoenix. I'd imagine someone just liked the name or thought it was funny.

Not sock, but the core purpose behind the name and your antagonistic intention behind it and a number of threads being tagged with it since. It'd be like me jumping onto a Christian forum with the handle AntiChrist666 to babble about how there's only one way to be a good Christian.

Besides, it's not like there isn't this other forum you frequent where your post was highlighted with the applause of "omg bestest post evar!" and the like, further building on the reply I made to you earlier this morning on how "we" aren't going to sit back and take the inane, gross stereotyping despite how "cool" it might be to ruffle the feathers of the pro-melee crowd.

I made one post with a very specific purpose. Separating the archetype in other media from the character class in this game. If other people like the name, like the message, or just plain like me, that's cool with me. I'm glad people like the ways in which I express ideas.

The SpankWustler analogy has nothing to do with "ruffling feathers" or antagonism. It has to do with pointing out a very real fallacy in the way people perceive the Red Mage job. If the job was named something completely different, but had the exact same traits, gear, and spells, a good chunk of this argument would no longer exist.

What in the fuck does conversation about a job on a MMO have to do with religion, seriously. insert srsbusyness quote of your choice here.

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Originally Posted by Neisan_Quetz

What in the fuck does conversation about a job on a MMO have to do with religion, seriously. insert srsbusyness quote of your choice here.

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Not sure if serious. Are you talking about antagonism? As in antagonizing? Being antagonistic? Silly.

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Originally Posted by Seriha

It'd be like me jumping onto a Christian forum with the handle AntiChrist666 to babble about how there's only one way to be a good Christian.

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Is what I'm referring to.

You seriously can't not be realizing it's antagonistic. The whole crux of your SporkWasher "argument" relies on creating a situation that doesn't exist just so you can try to justify your view on RDM. If you want to take a crap all over the Final Fantasy franchise and the things about it that draw people, we can't really stop you. Just don't be surprised if people don't agree and call you out on your verbal diarrhea. I get the vibe Saev's grab at pointing out "serious" RDMs hinges more on maintaining that faith while at the same time striving to make a versatile job enjoyable for anyone no matter how they opt to play it at any given day, especially with others. Not the whole "Good RDMs do this!" and "Bad RDMs do that!" back and forth your ilk instigates.

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Is what I'm referring to.

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Not so much about Christians or MMOs as it is deliberately making yourself an eyesore just to get a rise out of people.

No, I'm sorry, it isn't close to the same thing, you are not that special, nor is your viewpoint.

And your melee still doesn't matter on stronger NMs.

I'm sorry that I enjoy Final Fantasy XI and Red Mage for what they are and not what their names represent?

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Originally Posted by Seriha

There's a shock. Meme and Meme Generator being all buddy buddy.

Prior to Composure, you could've been in a situation where you'd need to haste your whole party. 6 people, 3 minutes per, 20 times an hour for 120 casts with variable amounts of Refresh wiggled in between. Figure each cast sucks up 4-5 seconds in actual casting and global cooldown with the spell itself hovering between 13-15s recast depending on gear. My usual routine was Haste, two spells, Haste again, two spells, repeat. If you're expected to be your group's primary healer, and this happens, Abyssea or not, cycle times become a risk for the party as HP levels can drop dangerously low while you're mid-cast. It's not uncommon for cycles to get delayed or people forgotten about when you're presented with a sudden gear shift that leaves you dumping 2-3 Cure IVs on a person and possible status cures on top, or someone dies because you literally can't react. Sure, you're keeping nice and busy, maybe even reveling in the challenge, but if you've never been in a situation where someone doesn't get pissy when their buffs are down for more than 5s or grumble about how they could do a better job, you need to leave the mog house more.

This gets even more fun when you start fighting mobs with dispels, TP moves, or auras that overwrite buffs. It's SE's way of saying, "You thought you were done cycling? Think again! Muwahaha!" Can't forget those that love to run or get knocked out of your casting range, too. And simply because of gear potential, RDM will remain the preferred haste bitch over WHM since it leaves the WHM with more MP and time to focus on other things. Just because you might have no problem with that doesn't mean it isn't a problem, nor does it mean those who do have a problem with it are looking at it like another major tsunami just hit Japan. Cycles just aren't fun, and last I checked, this is a game and not an assembly line.

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I can has chees...er...I'm actually totally fine with what you just said. If all complaints about buff cycles were phrased like this rather than wrapped in a bunch of stuff about job lore, I think people would be more sympathetic. I won't argue what's fun and un-fun for another person and I hope it's not so un-fun for you now that it's possible to make the buffs last much longer.

Also, I just thought the name was funny. My first idea for an Official Forums screen-name was "The Meat Toilet", so in retrospect, I think I made the right call. Sorry if it hurt your feelers.

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.I'm actually totally fine with what you just said. If all complaints about buff cycles were phrased like this rather than wrapped in a bunch of stuff about job lore, I think people would be more sympathetic.

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It's not a new argument by an means, though. I know I've been personally clamoring for the alleviation of cycles for a good number of years prior to these boards' inception, and while we've received it to some degree, I'll just say I'm not happy it's largely reliant on gear that not every RDM will have or could enjoy during the leveling process to set the foundation for eventual endgame play.

The lore aspect might be more of a convenience gimmick, but it's not as if there haven't been people pointing out the statistical shortcomings, either for or against. I don't believe "magic swordsman" and "demi-god buffer" are mutually exclusive entities and feel they both could work if only SE would try. Even as a pure caster, though, SE hasn't been trying too hard with RDM in creating a unique entity. Whether or not we actually achieve that come 99 remains to be seen, but the immediate known future of a few Gain spells and Thunder IV does not paint a pretty picture. And if their pending merit adjustments somehow makes all spells/JAs scroll or level learned, things would turn a bit for the better. I'll believe it when it happens, though, if it ever does.

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Originally Posted by Seriha

You seriously can't not be realizing it's antagonistic. The whole crux of your SporkWasher "argument" relies on creating a situation that doesn't exist just so you can try to justify your view on RDM. If you want to take a crap all over the Final Fantasy franchise and the things about it that draw people, we can't really stop you. Just don't be surprised if people don't agree and call you out on your verbal diarrhea.

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I just don't get the emotional attachment to a certain job doing a certain thing. Especially when it's never been, throughout the whole life of FFXI, very good at that thing. Five games preceding XI didn't even have playable Red Mages in them, even the ones that more or less had jobs, and neither did Tactics. Final Fantasy XI was their first move back to the job system in a while, so is it really that shocking that some jobs changed?

FFXI itself has existed for a long time, and seen many changes of the staff working on it, so the vision for the job even within this game has probably changed a few times. The current vision seems more concrete than previous ones, as well as being something that will work well in the context of FFXI, so I'm cool with it.

I'm trying hard not to make a snide comment because you seem earnestly worked up, so I'll just say, I truly do not understand the source of your discontent.

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Even as a pure caster, though, SE hasn't been trying too hard with RDM in creating a unique entity. Whether or not we actually achieve that come 99 remains to be seen, but the immediate known future of a few Gain spells and Thunder IV does not paint a pretty picture. And if their pending merit adjustments somehow makes all spells/JAs scroll or level learned, things would turn a bit for the better. I'll believe it when it happens, though, if it ever does.

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Given some of the recent announcements, I choose to be optimistic. Red Mage stands to remain functional in a way some jobs may not, but still, I can definitely sympathize with people who want something new to do. White Mage has evolved a great deal over the course of FFXI, and that's definitely kept the job much more fun for me over the years.

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I'm trying hard not to make a snide comment because you seem earnestly worked up, so I'll just say, I truly do not understand the source of your discontent.

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Many years of ego clashing. I might not resort to the Tybud level of profanity requiring deliberate moderation intervention, but if people on one side can get pissed, just don't be surprised if some on the other have. I'd like to think I'm open to good arguments of opposition, but when the best that's produced is the RDM becoming a risk/liability when we're simultaneously trying to propose ideas to counter those points, it gets tiresome. It all boils down to numbers, and were the situation reversed with RDM's melee being awesome and their magic being utterly craptastic, I doubt my thoughts on theme sanity would waver very much without knowing more specifics on the situation. Hell, that situation pretty much exists with DRK, and I am for SE giving their magic side attention to help steer them from being the WAR with Stun others seem to be content with. Whether or not they'll do a good job on that, though, I dunno. I've kept my head out of there because one "war front" is enough.