What have become of the RDMs.

[Dale]

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.

This post strikes me as odd. If you wanted to be a primary healer why not play a white mage? lol

Buffing and enfeebling is what Red Mages do best, so I should think you be happy now that you can focus on your strengths.

[Trangnai]

When you have weaker cures than a BLU (not counting cure potency gear) then something is wrong. Rdm can at least outcure their version of cure 4 but Plenilune Embrace does fairly well even without cure potency gear so yea... Blu is currently a better healer than rdm.

blu is only a better healer then rdm when you gear entirely for it, it always has been, and the lack of Alliance cures kinda makes up for it. Most people never recognized blus potential has a healer role. And honestly they still don't. Considering blu is a hybrid job like rdm, I don't see your point at all, a well geared rdm couldn't out heal a blu (per cure) before the only thing making rdm stand out was its was its MP regenerations with refresh and convert. which in situations where a whm wasent needed was all that made it stand out.

its not the job thats broke, its Abyssea. With jobs being able to solo/Duo almost anything and whms getting 20mp/tick without a rdm to assist them. Jobs like rdm, which are used for Utility perposes are simply replaced by Atmas. Or only used in the very few instances when something can't be easily low maned.

[lorzy]

blu is only a better healer then rdm when you gear entirely for it, it always has been, and the lack of Alliance cures kinda makes up for it. Most people never recognized blus potential has a healer role. And honestly they still don't. Considering blu is a hybrid job like rdm, I don't see your point at all, a well geared rdm couldn't out heal a blu (per cure) before the only thing making rdm stand out was its was its MP regenerations with refresh and convert. which in situations where a whm wasent needed was all that made it stand out.

its not the job thats broke, its Abyssea. With jobs being able to solo/Duo almost anything and whms getting 20mp/tick without a rdm to assist them. Jobs like rdm, which are used for Utility perposes are simply replaced by Atmas. Or only used in the very few instances when something can't be easily low maned.

a rdm spamming cure 3 and 4 is not going to cure for as much as a blu using pleniune and c4/magic fruit. when mobs can deal 2000 damage, and players have enough hp to not be one-shotted by it, cures 3 and 4 don't really cut it. and i assume they meant that with all the cure potency rdm has access to, c4 can outdo magic fruit (i don't know if this is true). when you're speaking specifically about a job's healing capability, i don't see how the fact that they're both hybrid jobs is relevant at all.

saying that "it's not the job thats broke, it's Abyssea" means nothing. it's already painfully obvious why rdm isn't useful in abyssea. however, pointing out rdm's shortcomings in an area where refresh is not important does not make the job any more useful. if the content that everyone wants to do is in abyssea, and rdm is useless in abyssea, then rdm is useless for the vast majority of what people want to do.

i still have my rdm always geared, but it's mostly because i prefer to play rdm in dynamis, where cure 4 is still sufficient to main heal, and i can nuke too. as far as cures, go, i think having a full blown cure V would make whm a lot less useful outside of abyssea, but it's also ridiculous that the highest cure tier rdm gets is the same as any job that subs whm.

[Doombringer]

eh.. at least the pressures off?

but in all seriousness, i'm sorta hoping this resurgence in whm popularity finally leads to rdm becoming that hybrid fighter mage we were all sold on 7 years ago.

keep cure5, give me an A sword skill and access to the same sword ws's as blu. make enspell2 effect all hits instead of just initial hits, and make it's dmg take enhancing skill into account at the time of casting, not the time of the swing. (why reward someone for meleeing in enhancing gear?) raise the cap on stoneskin and give the final form of rdm emp armor some haste and acc, oh... and make it look like crimson scale mail.. cuz nothing LOOKS more classic rdm than crimson scale mail and a warlocks chapeau. then put "RDM" onto some existing gear (why can't my rdm wear my warriors agasaya's collar?) maybe toss in a little "fencer" trait, then as a final beautiful cherry on top, give us a job trait that extends our enspell to nearby party members, like an aura effect. they'll BEG us to melee.

(please don't flame these suggestions as Up/Op, i just dreamt them up on the spot, you get what i'm going for though.

[Xikeroth]

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.

We shouldn't need to sub warrior to do any procs

[Xikeroth]

If you're complaining about not main healing on RDM, I right away stop paying attention to you. I have WHM leveled to 90 and I'll heal on that any day of the week, But I leveled RDM to nuke, enfeeb buff and even melee before I have it leveled to main heal. I have quit event linkshells because they wanted me to act as a glorified pink mage without any problem.

But I will agree RDM has lost much of its thunder, there is NOTHING rdm can do that no one else can do. Any mage job can enfeeb and buff. We really only have a smaller benifit from tier 2 enfeebs, other jobs far surpass ours in most cases.

But don't be too afraid bards are in the same boat but at least they have exclusive staggers.

Don't worry too much though abyssea is coming to an end as voidwatch designed for 18 players is non-abyssea so everyone will be crying wanting our refresh II, and debuffs since they wont be brokenly overpowered as they are in abyssea.

[Rayik]

Just give RDM Vorpal Blade. Done. Next?

[Fiarlia]

But don't be too afraid bards are in the same boat but at least they have exclusive staggers.

BLM/BRD gets all the Threnodies, and has Elemental Seal to land them.

[Alukat]

eh.. at least the pressures off?

but in all seriousness, i'm sorta hoping this resurgence in whm popularity finally leads to rdm becoming that hybrid fighter mage we were all sold on 7 years ago.

keep cure5, give me an A sword skill and access to the same sword ws's as blu. make enspell2 effect all hits instead of just initial hits, and make it's dmg take enhancing skill into account at the time of casting, not the time of the swing. (why reward someone for meleeing in enhancing gear?) raise the cap on stoneskin and give the final form of rdm emp armor some haste and acc, oh... and make it look like crimson scale mail.. cuz nothing LOOKS more classic rdm than crimson scale mail and a warlocks chapeau. then put "RDM" onto some existing gear (why can't my rdm wear my warriors agasaya's collar?) maybe toss in a little "fencer" trait, then as a final beautiful cherry on top, give us a job trait that extends our enspell to nearby party members, like an aura effect. they'll BEG us to melee.

(please don't flame these suggestions as Up/Op, i just dreamt them up on the spot, you get what i'm going for though.

or at least if SE plans group 3 merits, a JA that enhances en-spell (as example+5 dmg cap, enspell duration +10 seconds for each merit) and make it possible to extend it on pt members.
and i agree that it should proc on every hit and not only at the initial one.

Edit: EN-def down with 50% proc
EN-eva-down with 50%
EN-acc-down with 50%
EN-att-down with 50% might be nice too ^^

Edit2: i know rdm has gravity for eva,blind for acc,dia III for def and Bio II for att down, but an additional one is just *.*

[Kuvo]

I don't know about anyone else but as a RDM in abyssea i have found that it has helped jobs do what their jobs were meant for. For the most part. I never have any issues getting into any type of aby party either NM seal runs, clears, exp and so on. I just found that I actually get to do the job i was supposed to during the NM seal farming and clears more so then exp. During the exp parties I seem to be a healer and nuker which isn't different since the game came out. The better side to this is that our nukes are more respectable now with the new gear and the right atmas. On the NMs and clears I found that my enfeebles have become so strong with atmas and gear that I have seen them save the party from wipeing, and could be the difference in getting the clear or not.

For example i was in a party fighting durinn (4ppl pty) and close to the end of the fight our main tank went down. I already had it paralize on it which was proc pretty nicely, i casted gravity which stuck for the rest of the fight i was able to kite it while our whm got the tank back up for us to kill and get the atma.

Anyway, in my opinion abyssea made the experience i have had much more enjoyable for my RDM job. I won't even get into how much fun i've been having with my BLM job but overall my time in aby as rdm is better.