Useless spells

[Selindrile]

Why is the statement that I think Red Mage is one of the best designed classes so hilarious?

Very few games have been able to pull off an effective support class role. This game's Red Mage is one of the very few that has succeeded at it.

Because they were designed with "meleeing, in a party atmosphere" in mind, which has never, ever been the norm, Rdm was pretty much ignored by the populace before Refresh was made, that one spell skyrocketed it into usefulness above all other jobs, debuffing was possible but never really all that reliable on ITs (except Bio/Dia) that were the bread and butter of oldschool XI, and yes they obsoleted Whm, but that wasn't out of better design overall, they were both pretty barebones before Whm got Afflatuses and Rdm got Composure.

The reason Rdm suceeded as a support mage had nothing to do with it's overall design, it was and is access to unique buffs and debuffs which are very useful, which ones are useful have changed over the years with the content.

From a design perspective Drg, Sch, Dnc, were much better thought out and crafted jobs, good concept design doesn't always translate to actual ingame utility if the numbers aren't balanced. (Though admittedly composure was a really cool and successful design choice, once they added that.)

As for other MMOs successful support classes: Enchanter and Bard from EQ? Shamans from WoW? Control Wizard from NWN? (I haven't played every MMO out there but those pop into my head right off as great examples of successful support classes from popular MMOs.)