So far, I am absolutely satisfied with Red Mage. After all those years since this profession exists, in XIV, it's finally fully fleshed out. After 31 years!


Unlike before, where it was just a lazy and half-baked hackjob ("let's recycle WHM and BLM into one single character") with permanent back-and-forths in design (In some part, they had Dualcast, in some not), in visuals (the typical red-clad person with the plumed tricorne or .. whatever XI's supposed to look like) and sometimes totally vanishing even (how many FF parts skipped RDM?).

 No, what I love about Red Mage in XIV in the current state: It's like a Rubic's Cube. No matter how I turn it, it all makes sense. There are weaknesses that have a proper compensation. Or strengths that have compensation weaknesses? See, it's perfect.

Which is weird, as these Jack of All Trade professions often tend to be very gimmicky where you are neither A nor B and the C part is just ridiculous so you rather play the "rea"l A or B profession. The whole mentoring by X'Rhun was fantastic and I love him as character. I am happy and glad Square Enix actually manages to keep the balance of the RDMs Pros and Cons. I could throw around numbers in DPS and Healing, about Rapier and Magic combat, about how it all makes sense. I could go on and on about this beatiful profession I ditched my GW2 characters over with no regret. But I did and will do in other threads.

Right now, I hope they do not touch RDM at all. No buffs, no removals, no nerfs.





I fell two times into an "identity crisis" as Scholar though. Right now, I still have an open thread in the healer section because I could not believe if it's me or the profession that suddenly changed. I got over that finally and enjoy to be your bespectacled Lalafell healer. However, the reason which led to my "Scholar midlife crisis" are there. I could fix the issues on my side, but still, Scholar is, unlike RDM, unfinished.

The stiff and unflexible Fairy bar is stupid and not worthy for such a huge company (and such a pricey game of this franchise). Square Enix does not even know what to do with it: Our Fairies are clunky, some skills imply connection/combos but are a dead-end and stuff like the Seraph sound nice but are so short and I don't know what's so special about it. Some skills outright feel me punished. For example, why would I want to send away my Fairy? It's not a "skill" which implies a "ace up our sleeves", but rather it's a trade. I trade in my fairy for aetherflow stacks. I know it's a bonus because of the added 20% potency, but still, if I lose my companion over that time, what is that?



You can see that cluelessness with the worst jobquest line ever. "Tomberry staring into a lake" for 15 quests straight. It's like a high school student wrote those as homework.

No need to talk about the DPS spells. "Art of War"? You mean the purple "Marylin Monroe Air Gust" (TM). A trashy DoT that lasts too short IMO - very annoying to babysit. Ugh.

In general though, I think Scholar is very cool. The whole idea of being a tactician and everything over the typical celestial shine White Magic is awesome. And some of the problems are a me-issue and my mediocre skill with this profession, but by just looking at the skills you can see that they are not interconnected well, which is a shame for a tactician.