Red Mage Abilities

[Wolfysbane]

So just curious here if the red mage is a combo of black and white magic does that mean the red mage will be able to heal granted I know that they red mage is a dps class but if he has white magic in him will he be able to heal? I'm not talking massively like with the white mages and bennediction and such just small little heals to help out as needed or something

[mosaicex]

Nobody knows yet.

[Wolfysbane]

Damn I was really hoping that we would know something by now haha mainly cause a friend of mine mains healers basically only reason he plays the game at all and when he saw that there were no new healers he was kinda pissed haha so I'm trying to get him on board lol

[Rongway]

We will have a better idea of what RDM (well, all the jobs) can do Monday morning.

[Wolfysbane]

whats happening monday lol sorry a bit out of the loop

[magnanimousCynic]

whats happening monday lol sorry a bit out of the loop

Try clicking on the link in Rongway's post. :P

[Mhaeric]

Going by the two videos we have of their gameplay so far, here's my take on what SE means when they say red magic is a white and black magic hybrid. I suspect it just means that instead of being limited to the division of elements used like White Mages (only earth, air, water) and Black Mages (only fire, ice, lightning) are, Red Mages will have access to all element types. There's a bit of speculation here, but we do have enough visual evidence to at least partially support this theory:

In the lead up to the melee attack in both trailers they appear to be using some basic elemental casts. In the red mage preview, it looks like a lightning and then either a water or ice spell. In the benchmark they use a lightning and an air spell. A case could also be made that the tether ability that pulls them to their target is an earth spell since it fits the look of what an earth spell might be, but that's less clear. Regardless of the tether and ice/water uncertainty, however, at the very least they're using both a lightning and an air spell, which are normally on opposite sides of the BLM/WHM spectrum.

Here's the videos for reference starting at the rdm combat sequences:
Red mage preview: https://youtu.be/SKuIOtF41dI?t=26s
Stormblood benchmark: https://youtu.be/3_JxY2pRHn4?t=1m54s

This says nothing about healing abilities of course, but I doubt they'll have any. At least not anything that's more powerful than a cross-role Cure already is. If RDM gets any native healing related abilities I suspect it would be along the lines of minor damage mitigation (e.g. a small party-wide phalanx effect on long cooldown), healing potency increase (e.g. a mantra-like effect), or minor resource management (e.g. something more like mp-goad rather than mage's ballad.) Unlike with the elemental speculation above, however, there's no evidence at all for any type of support ability so far, so support ability talk is much more speculative and may very well not even be related to the phrase 'hybrid'.

[Silverquick]

Going by the two videos we have of their gameplay so far, here's my take on what SE means when they say red magic is a white and black magic hybrid. I suspect it just means that instead of being limited to the division of elements used like White Mages (only earth, air, water) and Black Mages (only fire, ice, lightning) are, Red Mages will have access to all element types. There's a bit of speculation here, but we do have enough visual evidence to at least partially support this theory:

In the lead up to the melee attack in both trailers they appear to be using some basic elemental casts.

That is pretty much exactly what I see too...

I was watching what appeared to be dual casting Aeros, Bliz, Lightning, Fire, Stone, (one almost looked like Gravity) combos, then once the guage filled he lept in to do a large zoro style melee attack.

[ShaolinMike]

That is pretty much exactly what I see too...

I was watching what appeared to be dual casting Aeros, Bliz, Lightning, Fire, Stone, (one almost looked like Gravity) combos, then once the guage filled he lept in to do a large zoro style melee attack.

The "dual casting" you saw was RDM's chainspell trait. They explained in the letter that whenever RDM casts a spell that has a cast time, the next spell is automatically insta-cast.

[Silverquick]

The "dual casting" you saw was RDM's chainspell trait. They explained in the letter that whenever RDM casts a spell that has a cast time, the next spell is automatically insta-cast.

Yeah that's actually called Dual Cast in the classic sense of the Traditional Red Mage who had that trait in the previous Final Fantasy games. And its exactly how it worked.

Chainspell was a separate ability that allowed you to cast them in succession instantly.

Dual cast was casting 2 spells at once, and that's more what it looked like.