I don't get it. I really don't. YokeM, do people like yourself and Duelle give other classes this level of third degree treatment?

Auricelia and Hyrist are right. YOU linked the video that was originally shown at FanFest when RDM was first revealed. That video guts your whole premise, because it showed exactly what we now have - a class that chains several spells in a row, jumps in, does one melee combo, then jumps back out for a nuke.

That's one of the big things I don't get about all this RDM drama - there was no false advertising. It was billed as a Ranged Magic DPS with a melee component, which is what it is. "A hybrid ranged/melee style achieved via high-speed positioning" - that's still perfectly accurate. I don't know how you get "high emphasis on the melee" from that video - the melee part is VERY short, just as it is with the actual class now that it's playable.

We weren't misled. She plays exactly like they told us she would. So yeah.

The other thing that's fueling all the RDM drama, of course, is your own personal sense of what RDM "should be", based on this oft-stated, but always nebulous, concept that it needs to be "true" to the class' series roots. Nevermind that said concept cannot be compartmentalized with any one game - e.g. it's not "FF1's RDM", or "FFXI's RDM". Because it's different in every game, but now that it is, yet again, different than other incarnations in THIS game, suddenly that's inexcusable.

Over in the other thread, people have said much the same. It's tiresome. If you don't like the class, that's fine. You don't have to. But the degree to which some people are hammering it as being WRONG WRONG WRONG, as if the devs somehow objectively made a bad class, is way over the top. Your standards for what RDM should be are exactly that: your standards. They are ARBITRARY and based on your own opinions. Again, there's nothing inherently wrong with that! We all have opinions and we all like what we like - if the class doesn't meet your standards or you don't find it fun, don't play it.

Just please stop acting like it's your Hydalyn-given mission to convince US, the people who like the class, that we should stop having fun because it's not a true Scotsma- I mean, Red Mage.