Red Mage thread

[Cynfael]

The beauty of hybrids is that they have skills that are not used 100% of the time but are nice to have. PLD with Clemency comes to mind because Clemency was added under that same idea; the prohibitive MP cost plus the fact it's not easy to get it out while taking hits to the face make this quite evident. RDM could get a similar ability/spell that your normal gameplay discourages using but is there in case things go south. Of course, being able to cross-class Cure and have something that lets it scale with our stats to be stronger than a character with 0 MND while being well below WHM would be fine too.

What concerns me about that line of thinking is that there isn't much appeal to a Job whose claim to fame is having abilities that are either incredibly niche or useful only when things go south. A DPS with a healing spell is such a sadly redundant thing in 99.9% of scenarios that I wouldn't want to see RDM celebrated as a "hybrid" when that really means "half-assed."

To use SCH as an example of a hybrid Job (since it's probably the closest we have to one), it only works because dealing damage does not conflict with its primary function of healing. However, since only so much healing is required, healing actions most certainly conflict with the primary function of the DPS role. Assuming the actual healer isn't asleep at the wheel, there's no point at all to DPS using their GCDs to heal.

Anyway, I really doubt that the devs would do this; they seem to understand that a DPS has to be able to deal damage first-and-foremost, so they'll probably keep the bloat of quasi-useless flavor abilities down to a minimum.