How i would change RDM if i could.

[Zekander]

I also enjoy filling many different roles on RDM, but your perspective seems a little out of date.

Frist off, it's pretty clear that SE does not want RDM anywhere near a tanking role ever again. They specifically made RUN for the purpose after all, and i'm fairly okay with that, RDM never really had great tanking tools to begin with, it was just it's durability against magic that got exploited, and i'm happy to utilize that durability for other roles. Being one of the few people still standing after a Ninja explodes in Dynamis is a great benefit for a support role.

Also, while I fully agree that RDM needs help in the attack area with regards to melee, the changes to composure along with the addition of the weapon Crocea Mors, turns RDM pretty effectively into a kind of magic monk, with auto attack damage in excess of 1k per swing on main hand when enspell damage is added. Admittedly this has some drawbacks on boss monsters that significantly reduce magic damage. So something to help with enspell damage on bosses would be very helpful, it could be something as simple as more gear combining both physical and magical accuracy, which seems to be the way they are going already. That being said, I would still like to see RDM get some kind of physical attack bonus to help with WS damage. 16k Sanguine blade is great but once again it falls off sharply on bosses and even then 16k is nothing compared to properly buffed physical WS. Saber spell please.

As far as nuking goes, RDM already has access to almost the best nuking gear you can get, the job simply lacks enough traits and abilities to back it up. Not really sure how to fix that as nuking in general has pretty much fallen out of favor, so it's really a problem for all nuking jobs at this point.

Healing... I don't think anything can really make RDM a healer again at this point. Even SCH can't really keep up. Pretty much WHM only again and even then a lot of content pushes most WHMs to their limit, to the point where most people simply prefer bots to any human player...

Debuffing I think is better then what a lot of people give it credit for. At this point Distract is just as good if not better then the accuracy buffs that other jobs can give, the only problem is the time it takes to stick it on everything. A simple fix here would be to just make it aoe, Distractga III, done. Dia almost works for attack, but the problem is that Dia III is not appreciably better then Dia II which all jobs can get through a subjob. Other debuffs are situational at best but still can be used to some advantage.

One thing you didn't address is a buffing role, which I think is probably RDMs biggest hurdle for access to content. A lot of things RDM could potentially do are simply filled by other jobs that are buffers rather then debuffers. RDM is great for crowd control, even though we only get sleepga I from BLM sub, our enfeebling duration augments mean it lasts even longer then sleepga II, not to mention our magic accuracy guarantees it hardly ever fails. There are tons of uses for crowd control across a variety of events. The problem is that the slot universally goes to BRD because they can sleepga plus give out insane buffs. If RDM could get a few more buffs to stay competitive that would make them much more desirable for other support roles as well. Some suggestions for this would be things like simply allowing Haste II alone to hit the magic haste cap, since BRD can already do this with just 2 of their 4-5 songs. Removing the limitations on Inundation would be a significant damage buff as well even though that's still a debuff. I'm hesitant to give away too many of our self buffs, like Temper, as that would marginalize our own melee capability, but RDM does need a few more buffing options simply due to the mechanical limitations of debuffs in general.

[Delgear]

No i play rdm in all endgame content currently my outlook isn't old at all.
in any serious group in Dynamis D, Omen, or even Vagary RDM is more or less relegated to a debuff bot and dispel bot ... only a few buffs are useful as most others are overwritten by "real casters" like scholar or whm ....

The 100% biggest problem on RDM is action economy, you have to perform so many actions all the time you cant really do anything else ... debuffs even with the best gear last barely long enough for you to get through a rotation, buffs even with extended duration on party members just still dont last long enough.

I think every class should be stretched to function in every role it makes sense for them to be stretched into .... Every server .... every day is a giant jumble of people sitting around until a paladin/RUN and whm arrive ... then content can actually be cleared and done.

Its rediculious .... we need more healthy healers and tanks for the health of the game .... if way more jobs could conceivably and healthily tank, content could be approached on many more job combinations .... we would have more players too as less players would encounter the "99 Stigma" of sorry man your job is useless because it isn't paladin run or whm.

Its foolish to not want rdm to be able to main heal .... just because they can doesnt mean you have to ... thats the point of having diversity of choice. you are basically saying because you would prefer to not heal on rdm everyone should not be allowed to heal on rdm. I dont want to heal on rdm, i would love to melee and have it feel powerful and impactful ... definitely not top dd levels ... cause you got buffs and debuffs .... but im also aware enough to know that lots of people like the job for other reasons and want to use it that way ... so why not try to accommodate as many players as possible.

I'm trying my best to come at it from a "Whats best for the game" angle .... and new fresh and interesting ways to play jobs and opening up the utility of each individual job so people have a much easier time just "enjoying content" on whatever job they enjoy is a much healthier way to go.

[Duelle]

Its ridiculous. we need more healthy healers and tanks for the health of the game. if way more jobs could conceivably and healthily tank, content could be approached on many more job combinations. we would have more players too as less players would encounter the "99 Stigma" of sorry man your job is useless because it isn't paladin run or whm.

Its foolish to not want rdm to be able to main heal. just because they can doesnt mean you have to. thats the point of having diversity of choice.

Except it's not a real choice. Red Mage is currently a go to healer because a) the only real healer job in this game is WHM, and b) not everyone plays WHM. The culture of "if you have cures, you're healing" mentality has not really died in this game.

I agree that the game needs more options for tanking and healing, but jobs are not boiled down into strict roles here because of how stuff is designed (on both a job and content level). With the skeleton crew currently running FFXI, we're long past the point where major changes in job and content design are feasible to make that happen.