On Red Mage melee...

[Rayik]

For those of you complaining about lack of weaponskills, primarily Vorpal Blade due to the crit modifier, you should really thing about subbing Warrior. You get a nice Str boost as well as Berserk, Warcry, Aggressor and Vorpal Blade. I've done that before, even tanked as Rdm/War in level 60's colibri parties and it worked rather well. Just my 2 cents on the issue though. ^.~

I know RDM can get all the missing WS by changing sub, but by subbing something that grants EX WS's, we lose dual-wield, and thus a huge amount of our melee damage. Right now, we have to choose between dual-wielding as /nin or /dnc, giving more melee damage over time but weak WS's, or single-wielding with /war, /drk, etc granting stronger WS's, but losing half our melee damage(and WS'ing half as often).

[SpankWustler]

The addition of more native weapon skills would also make it relatively more productive for a Red Mage to melee weaker monsters then switch to a casting role for harder stuff, and fighting a bunch of weaker monsters followed by a boss or two is common in many of FFXI's situations. I couldn't really complain about the negligible efficiency lost from some dude in red pants hitting a thing with a thing if he could slip into a normal mage role when needed without the assistance of his moogle.

Although, this is already the case for a fellow with an Almace so it's not like it would change anything on the high end.

[Rayik]

The addition of more native weapon skills would also make it relatively more productive for a Red Mage to melee weaker monsters then switch to a casting role for harder stuff, and fighting a bunch of weaker monsters followed by a boss or two is common in many of FFXI's situations. I couldn't really complain about the negligible efficiency lost from some dude in red pants hitting a thing with a thing if he could slip into a normal mage role when needed without the assistance of his moogle.

Although, this is already the case for a fellow with an Almace so it's not like it would change anything on the high end.

I'm fine with that. I'd ideally like to be able to shift from helping melee to a supportive magic role, all in the same fight(without running back to home point to switch subs). It's already possible, just not easy. Native WS would allow us to keep a mage sub and still dish out some supplemental damage.

[Greatguardian]

RDM can't solo some of the DNC / NIN solo's or even MNK due to evasion being too low. Most of those guys solo is just stacking massive evasion / counter and letting the NM whiff at you all day long.

Uh, I'm not entirely sure where you're trying to come from with this but it's not like Red Mage is sitting around letting things attempt to hit it during solos anyways. There is no need for an evasion check when the monster is unable to swing.

Red Mage can and has solo'd quite damn near everything in Scars+Visions, and I'm sure it can solo damn near everything in Heroes aside from Ule Ironclad, Rani, and a few other NMs that don't take well to being alive for longer periods of time. Pinning has been recognized by the Development and GM staff as a legitimate tactical maneuver, and, anyone who actually understand what it is and how it works knows this, can require serious player attention and skill to pull off properly over long fights.

Red Mage can solo damn near everything in the game because it's so damn hard to kill. Not only do they have movement speed, Fast Cast Utsusemi, and full access to awesome PDT/MDT armor, but they can also damage monsters from a distance without ever getting within striking range.

There were plenty of reports of Red Mage solos of high level NMs post-Abyssea Era on BG, and I have personally solo'd damn near everything in Visions+Scars myself on Red Mage. The only reason myself and, I'd imagine, others stopped doing this was that there was very little point in taking 20 minutes to solo something when you can just get a mule or a friend and proc/kill the monster in 2 minutes with 5x the drops.

[Mageoholic]

I don't understand how this thread is 134 pages long when every piece of RDM's AF3 has caster stats on them and not a single piece has any melee oriented stat at all. Take a hint?

LOL and my AF weapon is a sword not a staff what the hell is your point.

On the topic of our AF3+2 set, it gives a direct boost to our melee by reducing casting loads. This combined with the increased Fast Cast rate gives you about a 5% damage increase. Not bad for gear you use to macro on a cast.

[Shiyo]

LOL and my AF weapon is a sword not a staff what the hell is your point.

On the topic of our AF3+2 set, it gives a direct boost to our melee by reducing casting loads. This combined with the increased Fast Cast rate gives you about a 5% damage increase. Not bad for gear you use to macro on a cast.

WHM AF1 weapon is a mace, guess WHM is melee DD too. WAR's is a 1h axe, guess war is supposed to dw axes or axe/shield.

cool logic

[Mageoholic]

WHM AF1 weapon is a mace, guess WHM is melee DD too. WAR's is a 1h axe, guess war is supposed to dw axes or axe/shield.

cool logic

At the time of AF being implemnted DW axes, or axe/ridill was the way to go. It wasn't until mid 2006 where 2H weapons took off as the main stay and Great Axe along with it.

(course you prolly an Xbox nub who doesn't know that the game existed prior to ToAU)

As for WHM they have always had a pretty solid melee side, their ability to actually make use of a KC off hand in a hexa spam build is pretty badass, especially in today's capacity of multihit crits being king. Not to mention their wonderful Nyzul WS that pretty well ensures that they have infinite MP even outside of abyssea. Should they melee full time, nope, but they should consider keeping such options open in content where their other abilities are not seeing much action.

Kind of like a RDM who decides to melee, or a BLU who decides to heal, or a DNC who opts to support, or a PUP with WHM pet, or a DRG/mage. All jobs with viable second third fourth roles. Basing a jobs skill set on a set of gear is stupid, and apparantly you do not recognize a sarcastic snipe when it is laid on a big platter. Gear does not define the job, if that is the case then RDM is clearly a melee job as a good sizeable chunk of its gear is designed for melee.

Convert
Refresh
Haste
Dia III
Enspells
Enspell II
Composure
Fast Cast

Are all abilities/spells/traits that directly enhance our melee ability, and/or support us while meleeing. If you don't know how or why then you probably don't have an ounce of logic in your tiny brain. Keep fighting the good fight Abysgimp.

[Supersun]

WHM AF1 weapon is a mace, guess WHM is melee DD too. WAR's is a 1h axe, guess war is supposed to dw axes or axe/shield.

cool logic

Red Mage has more unique melee enhancing spells and JAs that other jobs don't have / can't get then anything else.

cool logic

[Mirage]

Nah, war is meant to single wield axe, no shield. I don't see an af shield anywhere, do you?!

[TybudX]

You know what's hilarious, is over at FFXIAH.com, there's one single RDM melee topic.

http://www.ffxiah.com/forum/topic/17622/melee-gear/

And in that thread, they only lol for a couple posts, and then it's on to gear and strats. That website has some famously bad trolls, but even they can have a civil conversation about melee RDM without the holier than though finger wagging this forum has. Even non-RDM's join in with ideas and input. Just throwin that out there.

You'll notice nobody on that forum made any preposterous claims about RDM melee's greatness. No ridiculous assumptions about what RDM is designed to do, not a single mention of lolFencer (it's just a name, folks), nothing. Just some random *** saying Haste isn't good for RDM DoT and somebody else complaining about Empyreans and relic hat being too hard. If you want to be taken seriously... yeah. Not pointing at you in particular, but anybody who has read this thread knows who the *** are.