Quote Originally Posted by Dale View Post
Phalanx 2 is not a pure upgrade of phalanx 1. It just isn't. Yes you can merit it to make the spell more effective. And it might scale better at lower enhancing skill. I wouldn't know because mine is capped and was over 300 before I even leveled this job. But none of that changes what I said. It is a second tier spell that offers another way to use the spell rather just being a straight up pure upgrade. It was just an example I was giving to show that the en-spells were not the only spells that behaved that way.
But it was a flawed example. As I stated, Phalanx II is the exact same at 5/5 as the original spell except for it's ability to be cast on other players. This is an upgrade for that reason, a pure one, as it has no drawbacks that are forced upon it in return for that benefit. If at 5/5 it only hit -30 while the original spell hit -35 then ok, point taken, it's not a pure upgrade, but this simply isn't the case.

And Red Mage should not be equal in melee to other front line melee jobs. That would be silly and unbalanced if they were. Some of the Red Mages on this forum are expecting too much, and being unreasonable in their requests. And complaining about our en spells 2 and Gain spells and saying as a result SE has somehow screwed this job seems like exaggerated nitpicking to me.
I believe you misunderstood my thoughts on our melee. I in no way shape or form expect nor want RDM's melee to be comparable to a MNK or SAM. I just want to be able to do enough damage so that in equal leveled gear I can perform at, say, 80% of their DMG output. The best possible geared RDM vs the best possible SAM shouldn't result in the RDM being behind by more than 20% in my opinion. What I was trying to point out is that our largest issue when it comes to melee is our gear, we're left out of most light DD gear. One way to supplement this issue would be to make our Enspell IIs more powerful. It would allow us to have a more solidified role on the front lines via our elemental damage per hit and thus make us a bit more unique than your normal DD. This is far from a super Enspell, I'm not talking about giving us Rainemard level Enspells here. I don't think capping at 60 damage a hit on each swing and lowering a mobs resistance without sacrifice is overpowered, how do you come to the conclusion it is?

So I think Raydeus is right about this. If this job does have any serious problems, the ones you and the OP are talking about aren't them. And I think you and the OP might want to think about rolling an actual front line melee character if that's the kind of job you want to be. Perhaps a Monk or a Samurai. Because rolling a support class and being discontent you can't do as much damage as a Damage Dealing class doesn't make any sense to me and this is likely not to change. Because SE is never going to give Red Mage some super En Spell that puts us on par with other jobs in terms of melee damage.
There are many issues. One should not simply ignore the smaller issues simply because they're smaller. In the end all issues need be presented, the larger ones are simply the ones you hit with the hammer repeatedly rather than once and leaving them to rest. Threads that bring up Enspells are far and few between, they only really involve RDM, and that's about the extent of it. Compare that to the number of threads that on a monthly basis are either created or posted in that mention merits. I agree, we have larger issues than this, but that fact alone doesn't mean we should ignore this in favor of those more important issues which are already being discussed.