5.3 COMPLETE patch notes

[Katie_Kitty]

Black Mage requires you know the entire fight to properly optimize your movement tools.

So literally just like every other job in the game. You're not optimizing anything until you know the fight front to back, that's what optimization means to begin with.

it is far and away harder to master than Red Mage, and is frankly useless in a prog setting since you aren't prioritizing damage.

Different, yes. Harder, no. They are completely different playstyles. RDM play in high end content revolves around making the best use of dualcast and movement every other GCD to handle mechanics while performing your rotation to the best of your ability. Black Mage gameplay on the other hand involves timing your movement around periods of completely stationary play. While RDM has more frequent movement, It is BLM who enjoys more burst movement and the ability to pick when and where to move without sacrificing any of their main DPS rotation. When RDM gains an ability that allows them to teleport straight to safety with no drawback (or when RDM can stack scorch casts and use them at any time they wish) then maybe you will have a point, but they don't - Their movement is done during dualcast and then they have to stop and cast again.

Many Black Mage mains will prog on Red Mage and strategize how the fight would go on Black Mage. It isn't a matter they can't prog on Black Mage, it's just harder. You can deny it all you fancy but Red Mage is considered the "easy" caster because, well, it is.

That's nice, but if you think learning a fight on RDM is going to help you much on BLM, then I don't know what to tell ya. More likely, those BLMs do it for the chain rez more than because they think playing the fight on RDM is going to help them on BLM.