Quote Originally Posted by Duelle View Post
There's still the issue of function, which I frankly don't know how to fix outside of what some may consider arbitrary adjustments for the sake of being different.
Unfortunately as long as FFXI retains its current magic system, then this won't really ever change. RDM was never invited for debuffs, even when they made a difference (XP vs IT). Plainly speaking, this game has too many jobs and not enough variety to make them all distinct. MMO's tend to be balanced around three types of class's / jobs, the defensive hate holding type (Tank), the offensive kill it now but with paper-thin army type (DD) and the keep us alive / make us stronger type (Support). The dev's short sightedness and refusal to admit when their wrong as lead to the complete destruction of the first type (Tank). Rampant AOE's make "tanking" worthless, what use is it holding the monsters hate on one person when everyone else within 15 feet will die anyway. The coupe de grace was the enmity system vastly favoring damage over anything else, so even the monster doesn't immediately kill everyone around the tank, the tank won't be holding hate and thus not tanking. So now we're down to 20 jobs fighting over two types of slots, (DD) and (Support) and since a hybrid like RDM isn't the best DD we're then shuffled into the support role. We're not very good at support, but support doesn't need to be very good to be useful. This is why there are those who want to see the return of "pink mage", a RDM who can support, even if at an inferior level, can still be made into something useful in super elite content.

SE needs to radically redo game mechanics to fix the class diversity issue. A short term fix for only RDM would be to make a set of powerful enfeebles, then we would actually have a specialty / function. It may not be the absolute most desired, but it would be something unique and helpful.