On Red Mage melee...

[Rayik]

This part is strange to me as well. It's as if SE's message is "We want to give Red Mage tools to melee. But...not to melee well. Tools to melee rather poorly, actually. Oh, and no new and useful enfeebling or enhancing magic. Never that."

You'd think they would either make the melee additions worthwhile or just focus on Red Mage as a casting/back-line presence. My God, what if someone at SE likes reading threads like this one?!

I really get the feeling like they are scared of what potential would be unleashed by RDM if they got really creative with it. It feels like they're handling RDM with hazmat suits, while they just toss whatever overpowered trick and ability at other jobs without a care. It just feels like every little thing we get is like a sample-sized bite, while other jobs get entire 3 course meals.

[saevel]

I really get the feeling like they are scared of what potential would be unleashed by RDM if they got really creative with it. It feels like they're handling RDM with hazmat suits, while they just toss whatever overpowered trick and ability at other jobs without a care. It just feels like every little thing we get is like a sample-sized bite, while other jobs get entire 3 course meals.

Certain RDM's running around soloing HNM's had alot to do with this. From a developers perspective seeing someone do that, in a way that was never designed for and potentially breaking the game, will wreck havoc on any game balance if your not careful. Thus SE has been over protective of it's game balance, to the point of nearly destroying RDM.

[Bubeeky]

Certain RDM's running around soloing HNM's had alot to do with this. From a developers perspective seeing someone do that, in a way that was never designed for and potentially breaking the game, will wreck havoc on any game balance if your not careful. Thus SE has been over protective of it's game balance, to the point of nearly destroying RDM.

Back at 75, I remember it was common knowledge that rdm could solo like 99.9% of game content....I think you are right that they are trying to avoid that kind of situation again.

[Duelle]

I really get the feeling like they are scared of what potential would be unleashed by RDM if they got really creative with it. It feels like they're handling RDM with hazmat suits, while they just toss whatever overpowered trick and ability at other jobs without a care. It just feels like every little thing we get is like a sample-sized bite, while other jobs get entire 3 course meals.

This is one of those issues that I believe stems from the fact the job has access to everything out of the box. This by itself is not much of a problem provided proper balancing mechanics are in place, but is made much worse by the fact that you can *improve* potency of whatever you do because you can swap gear mid-combat. Being in melee gear hitting things, tossing out a Cure with baseline potency and tossing out nukes at baseline potency is very different from being in melee gear, switching to a cure potency set whenever you cast cure, switch to an ele staff and MAB gear if you cast a nuke, change to FC set to get your buffs off, switching to your stoneskin set for max stoneskin potency, etc.