Is there any reason to play BLM over RDM now days?

[Stormblessed9000]

If you're so desperate to be victimized by RDM....

While I'm mostly on your side of the argument, the sarcasm and hyperbole is unnecessary. Lets keep this respectful please.

Ultimately, in a game where healers are expected to have enough downtime to dps, and when you have two healers on a team, red mage healing is only relevant when things start to go REALLY bad and both healers are pushed beyond their ability to cope. Occasionally it may be able to save a wipe, but in general it's not strong enough to do much.

Veraise is the real contribution of RDM. While it suffers from similar issues to the healing in that it's only useful if very bad thing are happening and at that point the run may just wipe anyway, it is very useful in prolonging fights so people can get more exposure to mechanics and hence learn them faster.

The issue is that, once a group is at a point where they won't die more than twice, all of RDM's utility apart form embolden are useless. As such, they need to have competitive damage for people to even consider them later in the content cycle.

Let's add even more assumptions!

If you have six Red Mages, can they handle the healing requirements while still pumping out damage?

To be clear: Red mages cannot substitute full time for healers. Their healers are far too inefficient and expensive and they do zero DPS while they heal. They should also very rarely need to heal in a competent raid. Their support niche is chain revives.