Quote Originally Posted by Greatguardian View Post
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!
Bad argument to start. Nice try but PLD has been one of the few jobs that actually lives up to concept and how it was sold. The knight in shining armor that uses a sword and shield and protects his allies. Hell, even the weak white magic is up to par with what you expect out of a Final Fantasy paladin.
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.
Counterpoint: The job is currently not streamlined and suffers in actual party content because of it. Keep in mind that this game as a whole is built around partying, which already proves the job fails when its components are not all relevant in the very thing the game was designed around. It's sad that some people here cannot wrap their brains around the idea of a hybrid job being capable of choosing their role and being beneficial to their LS/groups instead of having to be pigeonholed into one role alone.
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.
I felt you were going to play this card, but fine. Gameplay currently favors the backline caster with buffs much more than any other aspect of the job itself. Nukes didn't even matter until Abyssea, Atma and all that gear that was covered in +MAB entered the picture. Furthermore, front lining does not and should not include buff duties, as you already lose valuable melee time with what we have to cast on ourselves. Occasional utility is fine because you can pitch in during emergencies (much like the class I mentioned in my last post can when front-lining), but that is not part of what you should be doing in the front lines.
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.
Right, the job is an exclusive club. Screw the people that liked the job from previous games, only the elite get to play Red Mage! /sarcasm

The job used to fill a niche as being able to cover heals in an age where White Mage was the only real healer and Summoner could pseudo cover until you got to mobs that actually hit hard. It was in high demand not because of versatility or anything else, but because it could cure, haste and refresh, which were the three things parties cared about during the leveling process alone. By the time you hit the level cap everyone else is conditioned to expect that from a RDM to let the "real" melee and "real" nukers do their thing. Even with all the whining about RDM not being enough of a healer, I still got dragged along to cover heals.

Sure, we have Avesta and the clowns that immitated him ruining things for the rest of us who don't give two damns about soloing HNMs and gods (and in my case wish it had been nerfed to hell for the sake of class balance), but what the melee camp wants is simply the option to open up. As mentioned before, that is currently not the case, and the developers have basically been choosing random things to give our class instead of saying "well, this is what we're gonna do with you guys". Hopefully the upcoming posts on class direction will shed some light and will put the questions and issues to rest. If the answers are as definite as I hope they are, then I'll be able to drop the matter and move on.