Thanks for Temper SE

[Greatguardian]

Calling Red Mage a sub-optimal mage that brings nothing to groups only shows that you (plural) don't know a damn thing about the job and the potential it has in the right hands.

Red Mage is the single best support-class mage in the game, and does the job so damn well that it practically hogs the entire category to itself. Is it the best healer? No. Is it the best nuker? Well, not any more. Can it do a million things at once that bring a massive amount to the group without ever owning a sword? Damn straight. Ignoring its full utility just because your average full teal and/or joyeuse swinging retard wouldn't even be able to fathom its potential is fallacious at best and ignorant at worst.

[Rayik]

Calling Red Mage a sub-optimal mage that brings nothing to groups only shows that you (plural) don't know a damn thing about the job and the potential it has in the right hands.

Red Mage is the single best support-class mage in the game, and does the job so damn well that it practically hogs the entire category to itself. Is it the best healer? No. Is it the best nuker? Well, not any more. Can it do a million things at once that bring a massive amount to the group without ever owning a sword? Damn straight. Ignoring its full utility just because your average full teal and/or joyeuse swinging retard wouldn't even be able to fathom its potential is fallacious at best and ignorant at worst.

Whoa, whoa, simmer down now. So buffing is it then? That's what makes a RDM "optimal"? I don't have COR or BRD leveled, but I hear a lot of strong feedback that they are pretty serious buffers, not to mention what WHM can do, AoE wise. Refresh II is nice, but not necessary. Haste can be done by other jobs, even with just WHM as a subjob. I didn't say RDM brings nothing, I'm asking about what makes RDM so good that a specialist can't do it better?

Again, I'm not saying "RDM sucks", I'm just saying that we can't really argue how sub-optimal one facet of the job is, when the entire job itself is "sub-optimal." I'm not arguing that melee is as good as magic, because it's not. If it were, we wouldn't have 5 threads arguing the same things over and over.

IN my experience, "optimal" play does not want one job that can do multiple things well, it wants specialists that do it the best. That why you don't see a lot of DRK's get called on for red procs, even though they have a LOT of them, just a few less than WAR. Calling one side of the job sub-optimal is ignoring the other's shortcomings.