Props for RDM, Devs!

[Duelle]

I never played XI therefore I am not sure what it was supposed to be.

RDM in FFXI was built as a generalist class that could do a little bit of everything.

Post-NA launch, the job was given a focus on debuffing, spells that came standard for white/black magic (Protect, Cure, Raise, Stoneskin, elemental nukes) and was given a way to sort of combine melee with magic with Enspells (self-buffs that added elemental damage to your auto-attacks). It was also one of the only two jobs that could restore MP of other people in combat. The community decided to give the middle finger to everything but the ability to restore MP (via a spell called Refresh), and pigeonholed RDM to become what we old-timers call a refresh-bot. Enfeebles had wonky durations and required you to have gearsets with ridiculous stats to get around level correction, you weren't allowed to melee because you needed to both rest for MP so that you could cast Refresh (and Haste once that came into the picture) and level correction wrecked your melee damage (even with Enspells) to the point of uselessness. Two expansions later, RDM was used as a healer and Cure was added to the rotation of Cure/Refresh/Haste.

Yeah, the artifact gear looked great and we loved the hat, but RDM in FFXI was NOT a good or fun in group content if you went in to mix sword and spell. This was even more grating because our relic and empyrean sets pointed to swordsmanship but did nothing to support it (relic set was the Duelist's set, empyrean set was Estoqueur's set).