Originally Posted by
MikkoAkure
Red Mage isn’t switching between Astral and Umbral like Black Mage is though. It’s explicitly stated to be switching between White Magic and Black Magic and its gauges are named as White and Black Mana. Aero and Stone are even called “White Magic” here. RDM has a whole reason to use the same spells because the discipline was created from both Black Mages and White Mages together.
BLM is the only job that has Astral and Umbral phases and it switches between both, it’s not just one and that’s the main mechanic of its whole job. SMN, WHM, SCH, SGE, RDM, AST, and BLU if you actually want to include that one have nothing to do with polarities. Each element has 2 polarities and the lore book describes Astral Fire for example as exhibiting high volatility and Umbral Fire as dryness. That said, on the chart of elements and per 1.0 mechanics, we have Fire, Wind, and Lightning as skewing towards Astral while Water, Ice, and Stone skew towards Umbral. By that strict definition, RDM would have 3 of its 4 bread and butter spells as “Astral” and be unbalanced.
If by “Astral and Umbral” you’re trying to refer to magic using the 6 elements, then I sure hope we have a job that doesn’t necessarily sling fire spells and that it’s something more creative. We already have those.