I'll bet an AH RDM can cure better than an AH PLD. Ugh. I'm so frustrated. PLD was billed as a Swordsman with Healing magic, but no one lets me main heal in parties. Why does everyone expect PLD to be on the front line? What's the point of even giving them access to Apollo's Staff if they're not going to Cure? It's downright insulting, SE!

Protip: Red Mage is easily one of the single most powerful stand-alone jobs in the entire game. Players who are good enough to play it effectively while melee'ing appropriately already do so and no one with a brain complains.

Here's the thing, though. Good RDMs also know when to chuck the sword and throw on the staff. There is no "Always Wearing A Sword" approach to a job like RDM that will ever be successful. Staves enhance spells. Swords enhance frontline damage. When your duties are limited to Restorative/Buff duties, you aren't losing much by equipping a sword (CdC will outweigh the benefit you get from Cure Potency+, and you're able to use RR/Apoc/MM without much of a loss). When your duties include Enfeebles on resistant NMs, any sort of Nukes, Movement/Kiting, or the versatility granted by being able to change your Main/Sub slots, you wear a bloody staff/wand/whatnot and use Mage atmas.

RDM is one of the most inventory and macro-heavy jobs in the game to do well. But I tell you what, the fact that not everyone with level 90, 10,000 gil and a pulse can a be sooper dooper awesome magic swordsman is not a problem with the Red Mage job. It is a problem with shitty players who only have level 90, 10,000 gil, and a pulse.

When an ideal RDM is able to function as billed, the job itself is perfectly fine. If you're not ideal? Work hard and become ideal.

Inb4 someone tells me you can't fit enough gear into 80 slots to play melee RDM effectively again, despite already having shown a hypothetical 72-77 slot Inventory that covers everything you'd need out at any given time in the RDM subforum.