SE, Temper Activation Rate

[Crimson_Slasher]

While that may be true at times, more often than not it comes down to lack of discouraging the bluemage from doing those exact things. Additionally many rdms (myself included) seem to view the game as being a web of tree-chart categories. This is partly having to do with armor sets and the like being lumped to certain jobs, in example, the mage classes (See teal set) the support damage classes (See aurore set) and the armor classes (see perle). But the waters begin to get muddy with crossovers, Blu for example is blessed with access to teal, and aurore, as is brd, bst gets aurore and perle, which can cause some confusion. This is partly where things get even muddier is rdms see themselves as cousins to blu, as war and drk do, being similar in function, and for a VERY long time, sharing equipment in many slots, but then we watch as blu is granted the same buffs as us and more, superior selection of traits (and stat mods from their spells) and lastly a wider gear selection. Its simple to say rdm shouldnt melee because we arent on a lot of melee gear, but people also say brd shouldnt melee, and theyre on hecatomb, osode, and various other sets.

So we as rdm look at the good melee gear we DO get (like aethling, warwolf, etc) and the swords we keep being given and we see some fun options, but in practice, we are met with resistance, and in asking for enhancements to step out of the obscurity, we are further met with resistance and are shunned by our peers. I personally love my melee rdm build, but the i can look at so many other classes and just feel inadequate, is it rdm itself? Not hardly, is it skill? Nope, especially with composure, accuracy is less an issue, and my buffs, while timeconsuming to cast, are an aspect i LOVE about meleeing on rdm. However to bring back the point most people have to say, it comes to gear and ws access more than anything, we have great weapons, and ws can be bypassed by those with almace or mock empy sword, but our gear pales in comparison to...bard... among many other classes, now if rdm had access to aurore...not a lot would change, but youd see less teal/af melee rdms, if they changed their mind and added us to the hauberk sets, then you might mistake a rdm for a pld here or there even, but sadly neither of these is the case at this time. And the problem is only made worse when you start looking at rdm's subjob selection. A step in the right direction if you ask me is more melee oriented gear (shields included, i personally dependant on function use my genbu (19hp 4% cure pot.) or my sentinel shield (3 str and 1% haste) as shields of choice when meleeing, but then i frown, because our shield skill was quite some time ago, and to this day, remains gimped.

But i stand on the statment that its not the job itself that pales when it comes to melee performance, but the options given to us. On a somewhat related note, id like to see rdm get back their C- (or possibly B-, B, or B+?) shield skill, since they do still seem to want us to use shields, i mean, if we are gonna use em, why cant we use em better?

Edit:
Also that last line of your post made no sense scuro. We are losing on all fronts arguably, cor and brd can buff and debuff better in many situations as they can when it comes to croud control. Whm, and sometimes sch, blu, and dnc can heal as well or superior. Blm, sch, and at times pup can nuke superiorly, as can smn. Lastly a good chunk of the jobs can out melee us. We may be MENT to win buffing and debuffing, but as it stands we are still losing there, and no matter what single target or accession buffs they add, it wont add up when other jobs can keep them up easier and more consistantly for less effort. And lastly we are atleast on the same page with healing, buffing, debuffing, nuking, even croud control, but we arent even on the map when it comes to physical damage, and as our archery is lackluster, and we have 0 physical damage spells, we arent left with many options now are we?