Red is obsolete.

[idx1]

I've played as Red since the start of '07, what attracted me was Fast Cast, the 'unique' ability to refresh yourself or the party, 'unique' spells such as Enspells, and also being the best enfeebler.

All is lost. So I quit. One note is that I do not have Abby.

Fast cast? No, for one a Blue can cast 100-500% faster than a Red.
Dancers can recast Utsusemi: Ni faster than Red - with Abby haste items, literally everybody has Fast Cast in the form of Haste.

Composure was great, until you cast something like Utsu: Ni - goodbye Fast Cast.
Full-time one of your best MP-saving Job Abilities and you can shove that Fast Cast.

Enspells.
PLD and DRK Enspell ONE is better than all of Reds Enspell I + II.

Refresh.
Everybody has Refresh. You go /SCH and it's already better than Refresh II.
Blue can Refresh-ga.

Enfeebling.
With maximum merits, a Red has access to more potent forms of basic enfeebles such as Paralyze, Blind, and Slow. Though it's just unfortunate that these enfeebles are heavily defensive, and only assist with keeping the Red alive in solo situations.
Though they may help keep a party 'alive', a stronger cure from a White or Scholar inevitably outweighs all forms of defense a Red can offer in terms of "defensive magic".

Sure, a Red can sleep mobs.
Well, a SCH or BLM has natural Sleep-ga capabilities, making them inevitably better in that department.


Nuking and enhancing aren't even worth talking about.
Red is the weakest nuking class (unless they 2-Hour).
A Red has no -ga type enhancements.

Melee.
You go anything that is not /NIN and your melee is beyond useless.

tldr; Haste II? Enspell III? Stoneskin II? Reraise? Cure V? Regen III? Tier 5 Nuke?
From 90-99 these won't exist.

A Red is nice - but only when you don't have a Blue, Black, White, or any other mage around.

/quit

One last thing; can we get some long term (at least 3year plus) RDM players into the discussion instead of these Blue or SCH main-ers?

[Raxiaz]

Haste is not Fast Cast. It affects recast timers but it does not affect casting speed.

RDMs excel at hindering their foes. They do very well in this field, and without a RDM a mob can be a pain. To my knowledge, NOTHING beats Refresh II. /SCH Sublimation is only 2MP a tic.

[Removed by Moderator according to the FINAL FANTASY XI FORUM Guidelines.]

[idx1]

Fast Cast on Sleep - with a natural cast time of 2.5 seconds.
A red casts it about a second faster.
Big whoop.

Refresh II - nothing gives more MP a tick, but do you see any Blue or SCH needing Refresh II?
Only Mage/NIN type characters need it.

And way to choose less than 10% to discuss against before trolling.
Mad respect.

[idx1]

RDMs excel at hindering their foes. They do very well in this field, and without a RDM a mob can be a pain. To my knowledge, NOTHING beats Refresh II. /SCH Sublimation is only 2MP a tic.

SCH at 90 is 7MP a tick Sublimination - Refresh II is six.
/SCH at 45 is 3/mp a tick - without even the need to use any mp to cast Refresh but receiving the refresh effect.

Refresh II < SCH and /SCH.

Other jobs need a Red more so he needs himself.

And no, I can get Abby whenever I want. But what does a Red get from Abby - Empyrean that will actually allow a Red to have a stronger Refresh effect that a SCH that gets it naturally?
OK.
I'll pay for that.

And no I wasn't sitting in Aht Urghan - there have been an influx of new characters that Abby burned and had Limit Break problems because nobody gave a rat's ass about them vs. Abby burning.

Last days before I quit was helping them get their genkais done.

Whether somebody has Abby or not does not entail one being better than the other.
ohwaitschisomg.

You guys can nitpick at my posts and attempt to trump one minute side of a discussion - but please don't forget the BOLD text posted in the first post.


A Red is nice - but only when you don't have a Blue, Black, White, or any other mage around.

[Daniel_Hatcher]

SCH at 90 is 7MP a tick Sublimination - Refresh II is six.
/SCH at 45 is 3/mp a tick - without even the need to use any mp to cast Refresh but receiving the refresh effect.

Refresh II < SCH and /SCH.

Other jobs need a Red more so he needs himself.

And no, I can get Abby whenever I want. But what does a Red get from Abby - Empyrean that will actually allow a Red to have a stronger Refresh effect that a SCH that gets it naturally?
OK.
I'll pay for that.

And no I wasn't sitting in Aht Urghan - there have been an influx of new characters that Abby burned and had Limit Break problems because nobody gave a rat's ass about them vs. Abby burning.

Last days before I quit was helping them get their genkais done.

Whether somebody has Abby or not does not entail one being better than the other.
ohwaitschisomg.

You guys can nitpick at my posts and attempt to trump one minute side of a discussion - but please don't forget the BOLD text posted in the first post.


A Red is nice - but only when you don't have a Blue, Black, White, or any other mage around.

Oh, dear! You really have no clue.

As both a RDM (90) and SCH (90)

Refresh II is superior to SCH for 3 simple reasons.

1. Instant, don't need to wait for it to charge up to gai the MP back, making sure your HP is fine, or getting annoyed as a SCH if you take the hate and drop below 50% health.
2. Main RDM get's more gear for better Refresh than SCH gets for quick charge Sublimation.
3. Composure which even for others now can be augmented with af3 to last almost double the duration

Yes, Refresh I is kind of rubbish for /rdm but no one subs RDM for Refresh they do so for the benefits including Convert, MDB, MAB, Fast Cast III, Phalanx, Stoneskin and so on for jobs that don't get 'em but get use such as BLM or even BLU.

On top of that outside unlimited abyssea most people would have a main RDM to give the jobs that need it Refresh II which with AF3 pants = 7mp/tic so massively superior to the limited Sublimation

As opposed to Sublimation (to block sleep), some stratagems and Conserve MP

As for your last part:

A Red is nice - but only when you don't have a Blue, Black, White, or any other mage around.

BLU - Great job no doubt about it but you forget a few things like alliance targeting, limited buffs to use on others and so on.
BLM - A BLM will want either a BRD or RDM simple enough the spells are still expensive MP wise even with loads of MP Cost
WHM - Outside abyssea (which your doing) Cure VI is rarely needed same with Cure V (mostly used for -enmity) and again they want a BRD or RDM.

Admittedly a BLM or WHM will always be picked over a RDM, but guess what their is limited times you're restricted to only 3-6 people so in an ideal world most people would take a BRD or RDM so hardly useless.

I'm actually surprised someone who doesn't have Abyssea can't understand that.

In Abyssea where MP is nearly infinite, anyone can solo, and the buffs are crazily over powered I could understand your reasoning of thought.

But outside I have no clue where you've come up with these, even using the point BLU's spells are fast casting to trump the trait... Weird!

[Neisan_Quetz]

Blu using Diffusion... ahahahahaha, nice jokes. and waste of merits. Blu also can't set all their spells at once. Blu doesn't have Fast Cast better than Rdm, in fact recent information now points to that Blu's fast cast is inferior (that or SE changed how it works with the Fast Cast update, so it's either intentional or a bug). A second faster is faster regardless of how minimal you think it is, and for FFXI shaving even a second off casting time can make a difference, especially in a pinch. Enlight and Endark degrade over time and with composure Rdm's lasts much longer, try again (their real benefit is the additional stat ups, enspell 2s are just fail anyway).

The weakest nuking class is Drk (Techincally Whm too) btw, even with higher skill they have no MAB. Sch has higher spells but no native MAB, locking them in /rdm or /blm if they're serious about nuking.

Lots of mayad that a generalist class can't match up to a specialist... Rdm was never better than a specialist class in any field, ever. The only class you can have any gripe over is Blu and that's only that they're better at melee/healing if they focus on it. Any healer not whm sucks in Abyssea as it is anyway, Rdm isn't alone in that.

[Raksha]

Sch has higher spells and no native MAB, locking them in /rdm if they're serious about nuking.

Fixed that for you.

[idx1]

Blu doesn't have Fast Cast better than Rdm, in fact recent information now points to that Blu's fast cast is inferior (that or SE changed how it works with the Fast Cast update, so it's either intentional or a bug)

Info was taken from FFXIclopedia.

Quadratic Continuum
Cast time: 1 second. With Fast Cast 1 = Less than a second.
Recast: 24 seconds. With Fast Cast 1 = 22 - 23 seconds.

vs.

Blizzard IV
Cast time: 8.25 seconds. With Fast Cast V = 5.775 seconds.
Recast: 36 seconds. With Fast Cast V = 30.6 seconds.

Enlight and Endark degrade over time and with composure Rdm's lasts much longer, try again (their real benefit is the additional stat ups, enspell 2s are just fail anyway).

Typically, Red's enspell 1 does about 22-26 damage per hit.
Enlight or Endark is about 50 per hit, with degrade.
You're telling me double damage that can be 'refreshed' every 30 seconds, is inferior to 'a longer lasting enspell'?
You might be right if both spells were only casted, once.

The weakest nuking class is Drk (Techincally Whm too) btw, even with higher skill they have no MAB

Last time I played FFXI - DRK didn't nuke. They didn't pull out their Jupiter's staff and Thunder III'd. From what I remembered, they did Nether Voids, Dark Seals, and Drain and Drain II. And from what I remember, DRK was a TP job, not a nuke-type. Amongst the .Nuker. type jobs, Red is the lowest.

Blizzard IV base value for magic attack is 506. With Magic Attack Bonus III it's roughly 647.
Aero V base value for magic attack is 738. Any additional Magic Attack Bonus easily beats out a RDM.

[ManaKing]

Lots of mayad that a generalist class can't match up to a specialist... Rdm was never better than a specialist class in any field, ever. The only class you can have any gripe over is Blu and that's only that they're better at melee/healing if they focus on it. Any healer not whm sucks in Abyssea as it is anyway, Rdm isn't alone in that.

DNC is better than both of them, but they are the same in that you can't be a main heal in a serious party.



I'm still enjoying playing my RDM and that is all that matters. I do play DNC because it tanks a lot better in Aby and in Lowman situations. That doesnt mean I don't still love my RDM. It's still my main. Just because other classes are blatantly ahead of us doesnt mean we can't still have fun.

Obsolete is just a horrible word to describe RDM. We have proficiency in a lot of different things at the same time. We don't have the ability to do them all at the same time, which is our biggest problem. Historically, we could solo better than almost anyone in the game because of our diversity. That is no longer a unique characteristic of RDM.

The other problem seems to be the Dev teams lack of interest in our current lack of personal power and desirability to a team. Now that we aren't the only class that can low man difficult content, we don't have any real niche besides Phallanx 2 5/5. Our value to a party that isn't a FC isn't significant. But to us, RDMs value is very significant, because it is what we love playing.


To the OP, If you don't want to play RDM because it's not the hot job right now, then you've identified yourself. I can't say that RDMs are reasonable people, but real RDM are diehard about their job. No one that frequents these forums has any intention of giving up RDM, ever. It doesn't mean we agree on what RDM should be, and in fact we fight like animals with each other, but no one wants to play any other job.

I've been playing RDM since NA release. Everytime I come back to this game, I make one. It's my favorite job and regardless of what direction the game takes, I would rather play it than not. It is my favorite job, it always will be.

[Neisan_Quetz]

Forgot about FC :/