On Red Mage melee...

[Economizer]

and before anybody jumps down my throat, i understand there is a HUGE difference between a solid career whm and a cure mule, i recently burned whm myself and just having it skilled up and being payed attention to was like night and day compared to my friends whm mules. so i cannot fathom how much better it would be were my whm geared properly or if i knew what i was doing. but that fact of the matter remains people USE whm mules so it's got a low bar for "acceptable"

Or when they invite people's gimpy WHM they bring instead of actually gearing a job, and often will fill WHM slots in a Voidwatch over career White Mages, but will only accept damage dealers with super weapons.

On Red Mage for Abyssea stuff, as long as you have some decent cure potency gear (Light Staff does not cut it, the magian trial staff isn't hard), and you sub Scholar to cover gimpy Healing Magic skill (or skill it up I suppose), you can actually do pretty good. I'd imagine it would be a pretty solid choice for duoing inside Abyssea as well if you're well geared.

Scholars just do it better though, which is one of the reasons Red Mages don't get into many events, since anything where you don't need a White Mage's curaga/shellra/barelementra spells (pretty much the only benefits now since good White Mages only rarely dip into Cure V, and Scholar can match this) is better served with a Scholar. Some creative players might come up with something, but based on current trends it would be reasonable not just to expect Red Mages to stay in the invite light category but to see White Mages start to veer towards the same category once the metagame starts getting unstuck unless something changes.

[scaevola]

On Red Mage for Abyssea stuff, as long as you have some decent cure potency gear (Light Staff does not cut it, the magian trial staff isn't hard), and you sub Scholar to cover gimpy Healing Magic skill (or skill it up I suppose), you can actually do pretty good. I'd imagine it would be a pretty solid choice for duoing inside Abyssea as well if you're well geared.

It's worth mentioning that if you're a RDM duoing in Abyssea and your potential target is so dangerous that even your tricked-out RDM is incapable of healing it, your melee partner is not without options to cover the slack, so it's probably reasonable to call him/her out for not setting something like Mounted Champion or Future Fabulous considering they knew they were playing with a RDM.

At this point, IMO the biggest thing overshadowing RDM duoing in Abyssea is not WHM, but rather SCH with Embrava and SSL chests.

[Economizer]

so it's probably reasonable to call him/her out for not setting something like Mounted Champion or Future Fabulous

I get Future Fabulous since it has Magic Defense Bonus, but I don't get Mounted Champion. How is 20HP/tic going to save someone when you're healing for well over 400 on Cure III and 800 on Cure IV? I know you lose a bit of a safety net going Red Mage but there are few things in Abyssea that will be so dangerous a well equipped Red Mage won't be able to handle it, assuming the duo partner isn't a mushpot for brains.

And I don't think it is just Abyssea where Scholars are overshadowing Red Mages and White Mages.

[scaevola]

I get Future Fabulous since it has Magic Defense Bonus, but I don't get Mounted Champion. How is 20HP/tic going to save someone when you're healing for well over 400 on Cure III and 800 on Cure IV? I know you lose a bit of a safety net going Red Mage but there are few things in Abyssea that will be so dangerous a well equipped Red Mage won't be able to handle it, assuming the duo partner isn't a mushpot for brains.

Personally, I don't think there are many situations in Abyssea a RDM couldn't duo-heal at 99 if any at all, but my point is that Abyssea in particular gives the DD/tank a lot of options to take pressure off her healer. Saying "RDM can't heal that!" unfairly gives the DD a pass from having to actually make the duo work.

My mind just went to MC because I happen to like it a lot; obviously FF/+HP/a particular elemental resist atma is going to be the more obvious and consistent choice.

And I don't think it is just Abyssea where Scholars are overshadowing Red Mages and White Mages.

I actually didn't read the end of your post before responding to it. Sorry.

Nope not even close. You'll always bring a WHM over both SCH and RDM for two reasons, first being yellow light procs (seal / +2 items), second being Hexa during Blunt for blue procs.

Yes, waiting all day for a specific time to pop trivial shit for which we could just solo another popset rather than just go right now with what we've got is definitely something people still do in Abyssea.

The only situation you'd bring a SCH over a WHM is if you already had the pops and only planned on doing two Apademaks / Azdaja, then and only then would Embrava actually mean anything. Otherwise your already overpowered for everything else.

It's about killing faster, not simply killing at all.

Embrava is perhaps even more meaningful for KI farming, as the pretty-substantial Regain shaves a TON of time off cycling through potential red procs and a 70ish/tic Regen leaves the SCH "healer" free to go off and find the next SSL chest.

The main reason people gravitated towards the "light/darkday for everything" paradigm was because they were leaning on WHMs to dualbox everything already and going with a different time meant bringing another body. That's no longer relevant now that other healing jobs can easily handle the burden; if you are that desperate for yellow procs out of your healer, you might as well have a BLM/SCH or something come heal. That Hexastrike rounds out the Blunt procs is fine and good but it is yet another fringe benefit to a job you were bringing for totally different reasons; only the greatest of doofuses would have ever refused to pop an NM on the basis of being "only" 14/15 on blue procs.

[Economizer]

I actually didn't read the end of your post before responding to it. Sorry.

I wouldn't worry about it too much, it was more of an afterthought that I almost didn't include because it falls into the more controversial category.

I probably didn't make myself too clear, because I was actually trying to refer to stuff outside Abyssea as the focus on that statement. Abyssea is pretty figured out and I don't really think out discussion is really going to be saying much except to newer players.

At 99 everything is powerful in Abyssea. Red Mage is powerful in the sense that just like Scholar you get to cure "good enough"™ to cover healing, with the added bonus that you can do other stuff (generally better) then a White Mage, such as Phalanx if you are doing an AoE farm (native MAB for Aeolian Edge doesn't hurt either if doing it more solo-y), or having better nukes. Of course you have procs and other stuff that might throw a wrench in your job selection, but really if it is a situation where you need 100% coverage on procs it is probably a situation where bringing a party rather then trying to super lowman it will get the job done way quicker, and the benefit of having a Red Mage is somewhat lessened.

I don't even know why in this aside which is clearly not aimed towards newer players why I have to explain anything about Abyssea, but I suppose I wasn't as clear as I could be that I was trying to focus away from Abyssea when making such a statement... but that doesn't even matter, because despite this not being the focus, it still generally holds true even inside, particularly for the lowmans that were being discussed before. In Abyssea, you lose what, one blue proc? Since the discussion was about duoing that brings us to yellow procs, which Scholar (and Red Mage) handles with more variety then White Mage does by far. Scholar just gets to come out ahead with common Embrava coverage, better healing, and better nuking. If having less then a handful of procs in certain rare cases is better then healing just as good, having more haste most of the time, and being able to contribute to damage, then maybe there would be merit to those claims. But there isn't, even though that's not the thought I was trying to convey.