Dear RedMages

[Rinuko]

Dear virgil204,

Whether you make valid points or not, I hope I never end up in a party with you. You come across like a control freak and a jerk.

Sincerely,
Baingoleth

Same. Unfortnatly im on his datacenter

[Nestama]

Nothing annoys me more than seeing a fellow RDM focus on their single target spells/melee rotation after the tank pulls an entire room. Do you not see me using Scatter and Enchanted Moulinet? Why aren't you being a team player?

[Savagelf]

dear forum users are we behavior in Jobism dismate again are fellow red mage.

all kidding i remember about scatters.

[Maero]

Enchanted Moulinet is more dps then scatter so you will not just want to spam scatter but also use veraero and verthunder between scatters to build up your bars faster
So if you are just using scatter i am sorry but you are not doing the most out of the jobs potential

[Mhaeric]

Enchanted Moulinet is more dps then scatter so you will not just want to spam scatter but also use veraero and verthunder between scatters to build up your bars faster
So if you are just using scatter i am sorry but you are not doing the most out of the jobs potential

Only if you are facing 3 targets exactly. If you're facing 4 or more then Scatter spam without single target weaving does more damage even though you don't get quite as much balance build up because the extra 100 potency per additional mob per scatter more than outweighs the extra moulinet you get.

And even on 3 targets, if all you do is Scatter spam without weaving single target spells it's not that huge a dps loss, since it only adds up to one or maybe two moulinet per encounter. I'm happy as long as I see a redmage scattering on 3+ mobs instead of only single targeting. I'm ecstatic if they do weave on 3 targets though.

[Pyroxene]

And here I thought I was being lazy spamming it /tearsofvindication

[Lufir]

Haha at least RDMs are trying to do their job? The most problems I have seen are people who play Bards. The trend I see is everything is saved for bosses and not trash pulls. Not using Mage's Ballad on big packs. No songs unless on boss, no foes unless on boss, no Refresh for healers who help dps or Tactician when appropriate.

[-BlueGreen-]

RDMs may be a bit lackluster in terms of raid DPS support and long-term sustained DPS (not that they're terrible), but when it comes to dungeons, you'd be hard-pressed to find a more capable DPS.

RDM have the amazing ability to very easily and freely switch between single target and AoE without losing a step and can convert their gauge into a strong single target or AoE burst. To top it off, their two main AoEs don't even suffer from a loss of damage per additional target and the one that does has a lengthy cooldown (but it's a free ability that can be used during a dual cast for bonus damage, so not complaining).

Want to see just how OP a RDM can be in a dungeon? Try going in Tank + RDM + 2 other DPS into expert. A good RDM can keep up the heals and burst damage at key times to the point where it doesn't even look like you're missing a healer and you have 3 DPS instead of just 2. Of course, this requires a darned good tank and smaller pulls, but bosses melt in the face of 3 DPSes. Overall, my experience with such runs have been that you get out in just about the same amount of time as an average run. You can do it faster with a traditional makeup, but that requires max pulls and everyone knowing what they're doing.

Now a bit more on-topic. In general I agree with the given strategies for 3 and 4+ groups; however, at 4 and 5 mobs, I'll sometimes still opt to weave Veraero and Verthunder during dual cast depending on the exact situation.

For example, say the target list looks like this:
Mob 1 - 10%
Mob 2 - 10%
Mob 3 - 40%
Mob 4 - 20%
Mob 5 - 15%

Now, one of those mobs clearly has much more HP than the others meaning that if we stick to pure AoEs, we'll probably end up with one mob at about 20% left and have to go to single target rotations to finish it off. Once in that situation, it's obvious that Jolt II > Scatter for a single target, but what if we could avoid Jolt II to begin with for this encounter? In seeing this situation and knowing that I'll have to use some single target skills at some point anyway, I'll weave Veraero/Verthunder (basically the 3-mob RDM rotation) on the one target with a large amount of HP left to get it down with the others so that hopefully the entire wave is finished off with AoEs instead of forcing myself and my partner into full-blown single target rotations on a weakened mob. In that moment it means I'm doing less than my potential maximum DPS, but over the course of the entire encounter, it means I've upgraded a few Jolt IIs into Veraero/Verthunder. Meanwhile, my partner can stick with their AoE rotation and hopefully not face the issues with switching to single target at the tail end of an encounter (which effectively means that I'm potentially upgrading what would be their single target attacks into 300 potency attacks as well).

Of course, if your partner happens to be one of those TP-bound classes that have trouble keeping up AoEs through an entire encounter, let it be their job to help you avoid having to cast Jolt II by targeting the high HP mobs when their TP runs low and evening things out. Even if they don't do that right, no worries, you're a RDM, just hit different buttons and you're suddenly doing single-target damage on that final mob or two as if you were doing that the whole time (no need to worry about getting certain buffs/debuffs up as you switch).

[Maero]

Well i would not use enchanted moulinet on anything less then 3, lol
3+ i will argue highly that EM is far better then just scatter spam. Someone had posted actual dps numbers with comparissons sometime ago.
Point of all of this is OP has no clue how to play Red Mage to it's full potential by the sounds of it

Haha at least RDMs are trying to do their job? The most problems I have seen are people who play Bards. The trend I see is everything is saved for bosses and not trash pulls. Not using Mage's Ballad on big packs. No songs unless on boss, no foes unless on boss, no Refresh for healers who help dps or Tactician when appropriate.

To be fair the Bard community has always been bad or lazy. It is refreshing to see some good ones though.
I used to main Bard at the start of 2.0 (well Bard and blm) and yeah people are just lazy i think