Inquiry to the Devs

[Glamdring]

The problem with the "jack of all trades" term is that people forget the rest of it, "master of none". Now, that's not entirely true of red; you are the kings of enfeebling and although your enhancing is all single target your skill is the highest in it. Now, that single target should really see a visit from the devs, although it might be intentional to keep whm viable; if you had group buffs and all raise tiers about the only utility whm would have is light based single target sleeps and the highest Curaga, i.e, not much.

Granted, that was the rdm complaint before is you didn't want to just be healers, but you had already taken the job of healer from whm in end-game at 75 on merits and most everything else. Perhaps if all the rdm out there refused invites when expected to be the healer, but that didn't happen. Seems to me the devs have simply been following the direction that play-style had taken rdm in.

Now as to tanking, the other "jack" job is dancer. Even though both rdm and dnc are jack jobs, dnc is clearly designed to be more combat oriented; their "MP" is TP and short of a regain ability you only get that by whacking/getting whacked. They have developed into a good eva tank in Abyssea, although I can tell you from personal experience that eva tanking is not particularily viable outside Aby at 90, i.e. we can be the 2nd tank to allow the prime to get shadows up or a cure off, whichever, but full-time tanking we'll be needing a curebomb if we fight VT/IT stuff at XP party speeds. Rdm is less suited to the role of tank than dancer-you can fill in for short durations but don't expect to live long as primary tank. You do have hate tools, Addle|Fire 4 is going to piss something off, and if you spam it you should get hate in a hurry. I think you need rdm/nin to really manage it well, and I've seen it used effectively by several good rdm of my acquaintance.

The big problem is Atma. People keep saying "this job is broken" as if it were. It's not. Abyssea is one segment of the game, roughly 1/32 of the content. Your job still works just the same as it ever did in the other 31/32 of the game. The problem is getting players to leave Abyssea (easy mode) to do anything else (insert brain here). That's not to say that your job was always useful elsewhere; most players read working strats and follow the cookie-cutter approach, so any job not in that build is "useless". The real answer is that they simply haven't figured out (or posted) the working strat for X job on whatever.

Regardless, just wait for the new content to be released, your concerns may already be addressed, not by giving you new balance-destroying abilities but by content that utilizes your abilities to be beaten.

[Duelle]

Granted, that was the rdm complaint before is you didn't want to just be healers, but you had already taken the job of healer from whm in end-game at 75 on merits and most everything else. Perhaps if all the rdm out there refused invites when expected to be the healer, but that didn't happen. Seems to me the devs have simply been following the direction that play-style had taken rdm in.

The answer there has always been "buff WHM and make it the better healer, as it is supposed to be", not "leave things as they are". In our case, we want to see content as much as the next guy. We get dragged along as healers because no one will accept us as anything else. Simply saying no won't change anything because for every one of us that want to do something other than heal you have 10 bandwagon jumpers who love the fast invites.

[Tassidaru]

I feel i should clarify something. My post and, by extension, this thread, is not about asking SE to 'fix' this or 'buff' that. While there are some things I would love to see changed, I do not have a right to demand those changes, nor do I know what SE plans, and cannot say with 100% certainty that any changes i want will keep the current balance, assuming this is the balance SE wants. My post is only some things ive wondered that i cant come up with a good explanation about short of RDM becoming the new black sheep of the XI family, something like how Dragoon was when call wyvern was it's 2 hour. I mean i can make conjecture that SE plans to raise our shield skill back to a C (like it used to be, pre refresh) and maybe give us flash back, but thats just conjecture, on the other hand i could theorize that se simply troll faced us with the same overall accuracy. what i do know is that generally when a job gets nerfed se OPd the job, or made a trait or ability op, resulting in nerf hammer being swung at their head. RDM has either been caught in the nerf hammer or been caught in the backswing repeatedly, but i dont remember a recent time of OPness.

[Tamarsamar]

on the other hand i could theorize that se simply troll faced us with the same overall accuracy.

Making a Job Trait called "Fencer" and then giving it to Bards instead of Red Mages was troll-facing us.

The Black Magic Enfeeble nerf (and soon-to-be-implemented Curing nerf), utterly decimating our ability to generate hate even if our lives depended on it, was troll-facing us (or for that matter, anybody who wasn't a Paladin).

S-E, Y U NO STOP TROLLING RDMS?