Ok if you guys haven't figured it out yet most of the people your responding to are just trying to troll you. Add them to your ignore list and go about your business. They'll go away once they realize there's no one listening to them and nothing they can hotlink to on BG.

For RDM melee gear, that is one of my beefs. We get no "uber gear" and everything we do get is moderately easy to obtain. I'm up soon to get my Tiara and after that my "upgrade" options become rather limited. There literally isn't much left other then a Maats cap (CDC WS piece).

We got Awesome weapon's, mediocre WS choices until CDC (Evis is pretty bad a$$). Of course CDC pretty much destroys anything else we have. My highest so far is 5.6K with averages of 3K ~4K on normal mobs and 2.4~3K on NM's, really depends if TA procs or not. Outside Abyssea it really depends what I'm fighting, 2~3K on things like Fafy / Nidhog / Jormy and T4 ZNM's is common. Did the same on that T4 VNM (the Dark Dragon of death). Haven't had a chance to test it on PW, I was purely a support mage during that fight.

VWNM's would depend on which one, I've seen UF's hit for 400 before and Fudo's hit for 100. VWNM's have crazy weird damage resistances / modifiers. Sometimes you hit them really hard, sometimes they laugh in your face.

Getting spike damage out of RDM isn't hard, especially if your there for stun. Most fights these days seem to be endurance contests that focus on quickly dealing spike damage then getting away before the NM kills the DDs.

But honestly, why are people trying to predict new "content" from SE? We don't know what their going to create next, nor do we know what direction their taking things in.

As far as the idiots claiming "Abyssea is Over", well just ignore them. The best gear currently comes from Abyssea, including the best weapon and weapon skill for each job. Abyssea also produces the best XP and easier way to cap merits, should they introduce another type at 99. The only way for Abyssea to "be dead / over" is for SE to create another system that gives better gear for similar effort and more XP then Abyssea. And seeing what the drop rate on VWNM's has been like, somehow I doubt they'll be doing that anytime soon. It's possible that they could release a new expansion for PC/360/PS3 (assuming new client) only and have it contain a different continent with a completely new rewards system. But that's far in the future and none of it is pertinent to the right now. So for the time being, Abyssea is still "End Game", as much as the elitists want to hate it since it means everyone can have the shiny gear not just them.