The Problem with Red Mage . . .

[Demon6324236]

Be it enfeebling specialist or not, its still a hybrid job and always has been. Thats like saying BLU learns spells from mobs, its a mimic specialist, well yes, it has that kind of ability that is specializes in, however its still a hybrid. As I said before the problem is that we have been mage heavy through it all. In our entire spell list there are only 4 melee or front line spells before lv85. En-spell line(counting as 1 as it can only have 1 up at a time), Spikes(same as en-spells), Phalanx, and Haste. Up to that point we also have 0 melee traits or abilities. After 85, we have Shield Mastery, Gain-STR, Gain-DEX, and Temper. In total we have 8 things for melee at lv99 while magic abilities soar far above those. This is the main reason why RDM has any problems meleeing on the same level as a light DD, such as THF, or NIN, where as BLU is on that level or past them even when counting their Self Skillchain power.

Melee gear not helping magical side and magical gear not helping melee out isn't a problem, gear swap.

All RDMs should gear swap anyways, as being a jack-of-all-trades it has way to many things to be doing with only 1 set of gear involved.

.Rdm can hit 50% cure potency yet whm has access to cure 6, we won't even get 5 to make us viable healers again, hell even sch out heals us.

When you think of it, it makes some sense. WHM, Cure 5&6 along with 1 ability to double potency. SCH, Cure 4 only, however it gets an ability it can nearly spam that adds 50~60% cure on top of everything else, which adds upto a Cure 6 in power. RDM is more spread than SCH, so it gets the short end of the stick in return for its other abilities, and gets only Cure 4, however it has the fastest casting in the group so it has at least some advantage, not to mention extra MP durability in places it matters.

Rdm can get 25% haste from gear iirc, yet rdm is weak melee wise and has no traits to back up using swords or daggers as a viable means to dd on the job.

Its because we have no melee or traits, we are stuck subbing 1 of 2 certain jobs to DD neither of which give us particularly great DD traits outside of Dual Wield.

Rdm also has good access to mab gear and such but we can be amazingly outdamaged magic wise by sch which is suppose to be along the same lines as us in the whole jack of trades job styles.

Not so much. think of WAR WHM & BLM as primary jobs. WAR+BLM=DRK WAR+WHM=PLD WHM+BLM=SCH & WAR+BLM+WHM=RDM. They are spread between the 2 magic groups, however lack the melee power. This melee power RDM has is why it loses some of its spells. RDM could easily out nuke a stupid SCH given T5 spells. However SCH even out nukes BLM if they know how to play & gear the job, because you can abuse weather & day bonus easily and that adds on multipliers that you can abuse on any element, any zone, any day. So to say we lose on that makes perfect sense, RDM nuking has always sucked, and since we wont be getting T5s any time soon, I assume its not going to change much.

Rdm needs a unique upgrade to make it useable again.

I think SE wants RDM to have next to no unique parts at all actually. I mean look at what they have done. Everything RDM has, another job has. Phalanx & Gravity are the exceptions to this, but everything else, something has in some way.

weak melee...hm..

with almace and nin duo you can do easy ws +2-4k dark sc, i dont think that is weak


both from my side, fencer is nice and help dmg when i go solo rdm/drk
Rdm/drk for solo abyss keyitem farm

RDM can put out nice numbers, but your numbers sound like Abyssea, where you must remember that all jobs are over powered. However I agree it is a good DD given the right gear & skill, but you have to basically be one of the best possibly melee RDMs there are to match up to a somewhat average NIN or THF. Which makes it a little sad, as for Fencer, it would help but its situational use is why I think people say they don't care about it. Which is understandable, not alot of times would you be trying to DD and not /DNC or NIN but still, I would like it myself.

You can do better with Requiescat and an Excalibur. Our Melee REQUIRES a prestige weapon to be viable unlike every other job in the game. It's a catch 22.

Almace can be fairly effective as well, however I have no Excalibur just yet, still 10 Silvers away, so I can not speak as if its better or the same. As RDM we cant really be lazy with weapons, its either Relic/Mythic/Emp or we are too weak to be worthwhile.