Why are we advertized as fighter-mages when White Mages can out-do us?

[Neisan_Quetz]

Our melee options were even worse than nuking ones aside from piercing weak targets at the time.

What lack of MP regeneration? Rdm has never lacked that... it just got better with levels.

[Greatguardian]

Are we talking about the same situation any more?

I'm talking about solo'ing. You seem to be talking about group play where the MP could be spent on other things?

As far as Melee's effectiveness compared to nuking, that's going to depend on the target. The weaker the target is, the more relative effectiveness melee is going to have. The stronger the target, the less relative effectiveness melee will have. Nuking will have roughly the same amount of effectiveness either way, assuming the Rdm switches between potency and accuracy sets as necessary. I wouldn't bother nuking an EP or TW, that's just a waste of time and MP.

I'll just take this apart point by point.

1) Nuking was more of a joke than Melee'ing before Abyssea. False.

2) Nuking was ineffective in solos. False. It is, and always has been, significantly more effective than DoTs. DoTs are an addendum to Nuking, not a replacement, and relying on them will make everything take much longer.

3) Nuking was ineffective before /SCH was released. False. How many half-difficult Solos were RDMs subbing SCH for? For everything else, NIN sub was most definitely not getting Dark Arts so the release of WotG made absolutely no difference.

4) Nuking as part of group play was a waste of MP per damage dealt. Agreed. I'm not sure why this was brought up at all, but I never implied that casting Nukes was an awesome use of MP when you had DDs there with you to deal damage and you had to concern yourself with Hasting/Curing/Buffing them.

Was nuking always the best thing to do? Definitely not. Was it somehow super weak because of Rdm's low skill? No way. Was it anywhere near the kind of joke Melee was? Absolutely not. Nuking was something you did on targets that were strong. Melee'ing is something you got away with when targets were weak.

[Supersun]

1) I said nuking was more of a solo toy then melee was

2) DoTs aren't an addendum to nuking. If anything it's vise versa. Sure those solos take a lot longer without nuking, but they aren't even possible without the DoTs. The monster would likely turn white and regen HP if those DoTs weren't on

3) Yeah, you're right on that one. Too used to abyssea candy where I can get away with /sch for plenty of things as the arts reduces the solo time by quite a but.

I still think you are underrating Rdm melee back then a bit more then you should. It wasn't like leagues worse then any other 1h weapon user post 2h update. Hell, pre 2h update it was probably better then Drk (on birds) lol.

[Neisan_Quetz]

Worse than (at best equal to) a Thf not using SA/TA is leagues worse than other 1h users. Cept maybe... pre update Dnc not using Saber Dance I guess (assuming both using haste samba, still putting money on Dnc)? I suppose you could compare to 75 Blu since they had it pretty bad back then, and they still had Vorpal/CA going for them.

EDIT: not gonna lie though, pre 2h buff 2h melee was pretty awful, but Drk could just /nin and spampage so still not seeing how you're beating that.

[Greatguardian]

DoTs neither keep claim nor prevent regen. I'm not sure why that myth is still being perpetuated.

[Supersun]

DoTs neither keep claim nor prevent regen. I'm not sure why that myth is still being perpetuated.

my mistake then.

(Also I'm pretty sure Rdm could have beaten a thf if they didn't use using SA/TA. You really have to give more credit to the brokeness that the joyeuse was)

[Neisan_Quetz]

Hard to when they had X's if using Evis and DE crapped all over Evis if they didn't.

[Supersun]

Hard to when they had X's if using Evis and DE crapped all over Evis if they didn't.

There's more to DDing on Exp mobs then just the WS. We trounced them pretty damn hard in the DoT department.

[Neisan_Quetz]

You're still assuming they never used SA/TA, which is hard to believe unless they were awful/geared badly/didn't have SA/TA sets.

Oh, and perma TA +10%. And Asscharge.

EDIT: wow, maybe thief after all, still cutting it close assuming they're not even using JA...

[Supersun]

TA + Charge isn't going to even get close to a job that can equip a 13.5 DPS weapon that increased your WS frequency by 45% and a spell that more or less had the same effect as adding 50-100 Str during the TP phase.