RDM and the Utility Tax

[Sequora]

If we look at utility, summoner and red mage are pretty evenly matched.

Battle raise? Check. Both can use it. Red mage can just use it more easily, since summoner tends to use swift cast in its rotation.

Damage buff? Check. Summoner, I think, has the slightly better skill here with devotion as it's a straight 5% damage buff for all damage types for 15 seconds. Devotion has fall off on its potency and only buffs physical. However devotion is a 180 second cooldown while embolden is 120 second, so it's close.

Healing? Check again. Everlasting flight is a 600 potency heal for the entire party that gets applied as part of the summoner rotation. Vercure is a 350 potency cure (700 potency if you also use your dualcast) on a single target, and interrupts your DPS rotation to use.

Summoner utility may be less readily used, but all three components are there the same as red mages, and so the two jobs should be doing approximately the same damage, but at the moment, they do not.

I wouldn't say that they're evenly matched. Everlasting flight, while the extra healing is nice, is not reliable in any way shape or form. Vercure can be used whenever and on whoever. It also allows RDM to not need swiftcast as much as SMN for raises. I understand that it costs a RDM a lot of DPS to raise even one person, but sometimes it can save a fight. As far as embolden vs devotion, I'm not sure which buff is stronger. RDM also just had the MP cost of its spells adjusted. Lucid dreaming should not be needed nearly as much just to keep them floating.

[wereotter]

I wouldn't say that they're evenly matched. Everlasting flight, while the extra healing is nice, is not reliable in any way shape or form. Vercure can be used whenever and on whoever. It also allows RDM to not need swiftcast as much as SMN for raises. I understand that it costs a RDM a lot of DPS to raise even one person, but sometimes it can save a fight. As far as embolden vs devotion, I'm not sure which buff is stronger. RDM also just had the MP cost of its spells adjusted. Lucid dreaming should not be needed nearly as much just to keep them floating.

See my earlier comment regarding Vercure. It should never be used in a raid apart from keeping you alive if you messed up, or triggering dualcast when you have no target to hit. So from my perspective, at least, it holds as much value as Everlasting Flight, if not less considering flight gives the regen to everyone passively as part of the summoner's DPS rotation, while vercure going out means not only are you not doing DPS, but someone messed up.

I did give the advantage to red mages for raises, but wanted to point out that both jobs have the ability to fill that need when it comes up.

The adjustment to red mages spell costs just brings them back in line with summoner who didn't have the same pinch on mana costs as red mages since many of their base spells were already cheaper to cast.

Summoner is a more complicated job to play, I'll grant you that, so maybe should have a higher ceiling when played well, but for your average player, the two jobs should be much closer in DPS output than they currently are. Or... if they do want to have more distinction on the DPS potential between the three casting jobs, red mages need to be the dancer/ninja of the casting role with a lot of raid utility that serves to increase damage so that there's still a purpose in bringing them to a team apart from "we need verraise for progression"