Potential homogenization between SCH and RDM is very real come 99 without SE throwing in some major monkey wrenches. That's a problem, and one Ketaru tried to skirt around mentioning the sword thing as a diversifier like it shouldn't matter. What gets me is how some are talking about how either job is constantly hopping back and forth between roles when ideally one should be solidified before you even leave the mog house. Sure, accidents can happen where suddenly if I was originally at a fight on SCH to play pseudo-BLM I need to hop into Add: White to cover for a weakened WHM, but that's not really a scenario you should be hoping for and using it as "But...!" to determine who's better at any given moment. As is, both RDM and SCH suffer from being the "not WHM" of the healing jobs, and while some want to stomp up and down over how both need Cure V, I really hope that's a route SE doesn't take, and not just because I'm averse to Pink Magery. Rather, it strikes me more as a lack of creativity and coming up with alternative methods to either cure people or mitigate damage.

As for RDM's "black magic" side, if someone said we wouldn't have gotten T4s with the cap increases, I wouldn't have grumbled. With that, SCH could've stayed T4 with Helix IIs popping up. That hasn't matched the reality of things, but I'm otherwise okay with leaving our nukes as is once we get Thunder IV. If SE wants to throw out some nuke/enfeeble hybrids like Impact (just much more MP economical x.x), they're free to. I'd still like to see SCH get better Helix spells and perhaps T2 Storms for double weather. From the RDM perspective, I'm jealous of SCH's duration doubling strat. If Haste can ever be AoE'd, for the small cost of 96s of strats, a SCH would be able to Haste 6 people for 6 minutes (something where, individually, we need a bunch of equipment to approach). Hell, they'd be able to do it cross-party once Haste goes off recast, too. And for all we know, the new "merits" could let them bolster that effect even further.

Either way, while Arts/Strat limitations can be a factor, I still stand behind the fact your role should be better pegged before heading out. In the off chance you might want to be a nuking SCH, though status cures will help, giving up some FC/MATK from /RDM to go /WHM might be in order. That way you can stay in Add: Black, only having to deal with slightly higher MP costs and (re)cast times for those things. Asking a SCH or RDM to deliberately spread themselves thin is just asking for disaster, especially if dealing with PUGs. Both deserve more to shake them from being a WHM or BLM -1, though.