Quote Originally Posted by RadicalPesto View Post
"Red Mage is a learning and progression job that's not meant to farm or clear raids" is a meme people came up with to justify the class being terribly weak and in fact, has no basis in the game's actual systems, Red Mage is classed as a regular magical ranged DPS, not a Limited Job, and "progression-only job" doesn't exist for any other role no matter how easy or difficult a class might be.

"RDM is a jack of all trades so it should do awful damage" is also a meme. RDM is a DPS. Its purpose is to do DPS. RDM can't remotely replace a healer, so it should be balanced as a DPS.
I’ve been saying I don’t know why people seem to think it’s ok for one role to have “progression jobs”. RDM was known for being the caster job you play to learn a fight, and then switch to SMN or BLM in SB. This has gotten exponentially worse in ShB. RDM and SMN have these heavy raise taxes.

No other role deals with this. The raise tax needs to be looked at. Give RDM more damage utility. Boost SMN potency. Give them the ranged treatment. BLM is pure DPS, SMN is damage with some utility, and then RDM is damage with high DPS utility.