Quote Originally Posted by Convictions View Post
Hi, I'm pretty new to FFXI, decided to give it a shot after trying Final Fantasy 14 (boy oh boy).
Anyways, I love the game, but the biggest issue I am having is attempting to pick a Job I'd like to stick with. I've asked people in-game and they all just say "Level them all", though I'd really like to just stick with one and one only.
I like the look of Red Mages so far, I am enjoying it (with my limited amount of spells, I must admit) and the fact they seem to be Swordspells in my eyes; but what are they really all about? What am I to expect come end game? Will I get to swing my sword at stuff while supporting party members with heals and buffs, and also Enfeebling the enemy till it's useless, or something else less.. imaginative?

Thank you all in advanced.
Well despite some of the good and also rather horrible advice i imagine is in this thread, there seem to be one question you have failed to answer or mention: "What is your play style?" You can really give accurate advice on what job to pick if you dont have and tell us what is play style.

Some questions to answer are:
1. Do you prefer to be active or passive in the party (attacker or suppport basically)
2. How comfortable are you with taking damage? Love taking the punishment or try to avoid it any cost or dont mind the damage to a certain point?
3. (Attacker) How do you like attack fast or slow? (faster weapons like swords, daggers, axes and clubs usually deal less damage but have more opportunites at hitting the mob because of its speed while slower weapons like great swords/katanas/axes, staves, and hand 2 hand requires 2 hands to swing and thus take longer but usually deal more damage than the faster weapons on a swing by swing basis.
4. How do you like to attack (magically or phsyically or both)
5.(Support) How do you like to support healing, enhancing(making party stronger), enfeebling(crippling mobs)?
6. What is more important to you speed or sense of accomplishment or both? (partying or soloing or both)

All of these questions would be a good starting point to figure out exactly which jobs you would actually want to play consistently. The advice of playing all jobs to 50 is a good one despite the fact that you only intend to use maybe one or two and there is a good reason. With the way the game adds the abilitly to use other jobs you have leveled abilities, traits, and spells to aid you in your adventures. By trying out multipe jobs you get to see what traits, abilities, and spells they have at thier disposal and learn how they can aid your primary jobs to accomplish tasks you may have some difficulty with but dont feel you need a party to complete. In other words those other jobs you level can helps sure up what you feel are the weaknesses of your favorite jobs.

Unfortunately this will only help you as far as soloing because endgame is far less flexible in what they will allow and are capable or willing to manage otherwise. Ultimately in my opinion RDM is about leveraging your skills to get stuff done as opposed to being a one trick pony specialist that complete owns a particular style or skill but is lacking in other areas. Some people will disagree with this but please feel free to use your own mind and formulate your own opinion. Since RDM isnt the best at anything as far as i'm concern they certaintly not the worse at anything either but that depends on your own tolerance level and patience more than anything. RDM from what i've seen doesnt get to utilize all of it skill set in end game because of particular standards and cookie cutter playerbase dynamics so if you want to fully utilize all your skills you may want to level an ADDITIONAL JOB just for that else you will be frustrated as RDM. Aside from playerbase viewpoints and issues there has been sort of a water down effect of RDM because of chants and moans of RDM being too powerful some time ago and as a result alot of the things that made unique and good and a favorite in endgame is now kind of rendering them almost extinct now beyond healing.

Overall RDM is great job if you like being self sufficient and not heavily reliant on ther people for getting stuff done like myself but if your end goal is to be heavily active in end game type content you may be better served by leveling up other jobs these days. As far as spells go getting those arent that big of an issue if you know what mobs to kill for them, where they are, and are patient as most can be gotten as drops from regular monsters and some can even be bought from NPC if you not as patient. As a last result you can also buy them off the Auction house but many are severely overpriced after a certain job level. Hell some of those same spells are bought from a NPC then sold on the AH for 2 and 3x the price from the NPC so please shop around before buying and save yourself some gil.