Quote Originally Posted by MrKusakabe View Post
To me, the damage difference is perfect and justified. Why? Red Mage is always supposed to be the "Jack of all trades, but the master of none". Since 1987, when it has been introduced in the first Final Fantasy.
That's fine and all, but why should our damage suffer for it?

In the context of XIV:
Red mages have white magic. They don't do it as well as a white mage. In fact, use only white magic and you'll do horrid dps.
Red mages have black magic. They don't do it as well as a black mage. In fact, use only black magic and you'll do horrid dps.
Red mages have weaponskills. They don't do it as well as a melee dps. In fact, use only weaponskills and you'll do horrid dps.

There's your "master of none". A red mage in the context of XIV is a master of none of those disciplines.

Why, then, would it also be necessary to suffer in damage when the RDM is using all of it? "Because RDM has always historically been weaker"? That doesn't fly in an MMO. I'm not saying RDM should deal more damage than BLM or MNK, just that the damage output should properly reflect the utility it brings. But right now, the utility is vercure, verraise, and embolden. The first is a direct loss to ever use, and is far less efficient than a healer using the same amount of time, and they shouldn't even have to use a gcd to heal with all their abilities. It's best used to proc dualcast during downtime, which makes it more of a dps button. The second becomes actual advantage once 3 deaths in a short period have occurred, which is either a situation where you're probably wiping due to a dps check, or the content is not where you should be determining class balance. The third, therefore, is our only tangible utility in high-end content, and as shown with links to logs, it does not bring us to where you'd expect.

Now, I do agree that I don't want them to delete vercure or verraise. I do love RDM and its flavor, and getting rid of its beneficial white magic just feels wrong. I would just prefer if it doesn't cost me my enjoyment of the game in the context of XIV as it is. I would want them to change it so that they don't need to use it as a reason to hold us back.