at this point, controversy.. it is about controversy......

the perception of rdm has changed dramatically for.. as long as i've been playing anyway. at first it was very general. the problem there being that in a min/max mentality, a generalist is "useless" and pretty much out of favor.

so it got tweaked. and for a while, it was a more support oriented generalist. refresh alone made the job incredibly useful for quite a while, you keep the pt going, and piss on any fires that arose. plus back then the fights lasted long enough that enfeebling every mob was actually both practical and helpful. so you'd maintain a refresh cycle, usually share a haste cycle with the whm, enfeeble, and maybe sleep links/extra pulls or add some light dmg.

then the game around rdm changed, as opposed to rdm changing. xp mobs got weaker, kills got faster, everybody and there brother started subbing nin, and rdm pretty much replaced whm for a while. (since you didn't need a whole whm, you may as well take JUST the rdm and bring an extra DD) i honestly found it quite boring, but rdm was the only job in the game with access to cure4, haste, and refresh at the same time, so it worked.

but then when the lvl cap changed the atmosphere changed with it. anybody can /rdm for refresh and convert. there's very little reason to bring an rdm for refresh haste and cure, when a whm/rdm can bring his own refresh haste and better cure.

now you'd think rdm could fall back on one of it's older pillars, enfeebling, crowd control, or melee. but those sort of fell apart while we weren't looking.

rdm isn't as good at crowd control relatively speaking, when you consider whm has sleep, and blm is very popular nowadays as a proc job. basically if you NEED a whm, and you REALLY WANT a blm.. (both for other reasons) you have enough sleep/bind/break to keep the horde at bay. you just don't need to add an rdm.

enfeebling took a serious hit in that many abyssea nms have straight immunities to the spells we have, not to mention that trends have shifted slightly. tanks just seem better able to handle a mobs tp phase dmg, meanwhile nm's have gotten stronger and stronger tp moves. so the relative threat has shifted away from the tp phase, which spells like slow, paralyze, and to a lesser extent blind could significantly mitigate... and towards the actual ws's, wich rdm can't do jack all about. not to mention that, again.. with the proliferation of whm and blm nowadays.. most of the enfeebles are covered. and since they've ALREADY lost a lot of there luster, you're not gonna bring an entire extra job for the difference between slow and slow2.

as for melee.. i don't even wanna get into it.. it's not really a valid endgame tactic. rdm was never a GOOD melee. i'm considered a hardcore melee rdm myself and that was never WHAT i did.. it was just sort of something i did IN ADDITION. and it's been on a steady downhill slide from "sidebar" to "thing that gets you laughed off the internet"


oh, and i wasn't joking about controversy:

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/threads/15642-Cure-V

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/th...90-Temper-info

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/th...Red-Mage-melee

edit: ew.. that turned into a wall of text.. sorry everybody..