FFXI Job Direction?? Dev Team, Please Respond.

[Seriha]

I'd chalk it up more to a shortage of healers and making a last resort more tolerable with it, but the overall lack of interest in people playing support roles isn't a unique thing to FFXI. It is, nonetheless, a route people can come to socially exploit if they find the right suckers, as RDMs didn't really endgame for RDM gear. There was far too little of that to be had from Kings, Sky, or Sea and the continued trend of slow or stagnant growth with the cap increases are a big part of our issue. Regardless, melee and support aren't mutually exclusive terms.

But as I said before on the RDM board, if you're more keen on mage updates, make a thread devoted to that instead of pissing in the cheerios of the melee camp and trying to banish us off into solo land or some niche scenario where you expect melee RDMs, that you frown upon, will magically have an Almace whose sole purpose is for stronger melee. Then again, they'd have be giving up MM/Beyond/Ultimate if you want them being anything of a decent nuker alongside the melee. Being super all at once, which seems to be this nagging fear people have, isn't possible with MP constraints. And if you weren't running out of MP curing and nuking often without MM on, I'll just say you weren't being aggressive enough. It's not hard to run out just spamming Blizzard III and IV when timers are up, as was what I pretty much did when working on my Ice staff in the various Abyssea zones with 16/tic over your 7. Sure, meds can prolong things a bit, but they're never a guarantee. And again, all of this goes out the window once we exit Abyssea.

[Greatguardian]

A WoE sword is arguably less work than a single TotM staff. There is absolutely no excuse not to have Chant du Cygne for anyone who is even half serious about wanting to pursue melee options on RDM. Period.

Thank you for reaffirming my point about mutually antagonistic and mutually appreciative roles, though. Healing/Buffing and DD'ing? Appreciative. Nuking and DD'ing? Antagonistic. A good RDM, whose primary party role is Healing, will likely do more damage by adding Melee/CdC than adding Nukes. Especially if there is a Bard or a Dancer in the party. Haste is a pretty cool guy and doesn't afraid of anything.

[Greatguardian]

Getting an Emp is tons easier than a WoE for someone with a mule, with a high level of game skill, or with friends who are solid at the game and can keep a schedule.

Getting a WoE is possible, over time, for anyone. That's why it is absolutely a reasonable requirement. If a RDM isn't using Chant du Cygne, what the hell are they melee'ing with anyways? Death Blossom (which can arguably take longer to get if you don't have Nyzul complete)? Fast Blade? They're definitely not getting Vorpal Blade with a mage or Nin sub, and Rdm/War is total crap.

Edit: Dare I even suggest Sanguine Blade? =/ I don't even want to think about that.

[Seriha]

Edit: Dare I even suggest Sanguine Blade? =/ I don't even want to think about that.

With a proper atma build, consistently breaking 2k on RDM isn't out of the question. Main issue is said build doesn't involve RR and, of course, giving up the DW and survivability perks of /NIN. But for fodder mobs, you wouldn't even need shadows since you can just SB the HP lost back, as I tend to do on BLU with an atma build not built for SB.