Red Mage: I am not a Back line class

[Draven]

Jack of all trades is the way to go for Red Mage.

They should be on the front line, slashing gracefully and comboing with a sweet looking sword.

TP for weapon skills and MP for buffing party members and enfeebling enemies. Buff spells should last as long as other buffs like Protect. Enfeebles on the other hand should last a shorter time and have lower cost.

They wear medium/light armor so what will keep them alive for close encounters will be powerful single target buffs that they can cast on themselves.

Red Mage should never be as powerful in casting cures or elemental spells so as not to compete with White Mages and Black Mages. They should be there to enhance the party members effectiveness, not replace members roles.

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[Duelle]

Red Mage should never be as powerful in casting cures or elemental spells so as not to compete with White Mages and Black Mages. They should be there to enhance the party members effectiveness, not replace members roles.

If you do that all you end up with is a watered down bard with mediocre heals and nukes. Elemental nukes would be better tied to melee somehow (spellblade, instant cast as part of a combo) instead of being stand-alone spells. Heals should be situational and on an as-needed basis, where hardcasting outside of procs would eat up more MP or something along those lines. Generalists do not work in MMOs, and we have to keep that in mind moving forward. Because of this, RDM is due for an adaptation rather than try to copy/paste what it was in prior FF's, including XI.

[Ramsey]

Someone mentioned Sage earlier and that got me thinking. First of all it is essentially the back line Red Mage, very much akin to Scholar as it appeared in FFXI. But scholar has never been particularly powerful before that incarnation.

It would be fun to see Scholar as a class with Sage as a job. With access to mid level black and white magic, and more importantly as Sage abilities... Meteor and Recall! Recall would be hilarious and fun, randomly cast a spell, occasionally resulting in a high level cast they don't have access to.

[JTSpender]

Cycle through melee, nuking/debuffing and healing/buffing stances, and the longer you stay in one stance, the less effective skills of that type become. Encouraging the player to plug the gaps in a group and then switch to the next task.

Except... this doesn't actually work in an MMO. Nobody is going to invite that to a party. You have to *actually* fill a role. Don't get me wrong, I totally understand the power of hybrid characters at being "the right thing at the right time" when everyone else is locked in their role... I play a lot of hybrid characters and I've seen this firsthand. But people still need/expect you to fill a primary role. Being forced out of a role because of diminishing returns is kind of bad and defeats the whole purpose.

[Ramsey]

Except... this doesn't actually work in an MMO. Nobody is going to invite that to a party. You have to *actually* fill a role. Don't get me wrong, I totally understand the power of hybrid characters at being "the right thing at the right time" when everyone else is locked in their role... I play a lot of hybrid characters and I've seen this firsthand. But people still need/expect you to fill a primary role. Being forced out of a role because of diminishing returns is kind of bad and defeats the whole purpose.

This is not unequivocally true, there are examples in MMOs where pure hybrid characters work. It's actually more of a player construct, a preconceived notion that's been perpetuated that they don't work. One of the reasons it's a commonly accepted idea, is that in practice a hybrid class is more difficult to play.

One of the major issues with hybrids playing "plug the hole" is that they can never actually plug the hole with any level of effectiveness, without being broken. If a hybrid can tank as well as a tank, heal as well as a healer, or nuke as well as a nuker, what's the point of any other class?

On the other hand, make them weaker at all of those things, and they can never perform the role well enough to make the difference.

A stance that allows them to temporarily excel at a task, and diminishes over time would solve that problem, though it would require some fine tuning.

Tank's dead? Take over until they're raised and rebuffed. Suddenly a lot of people are at low health? Help out with heals. Anything else? Cycle between magic and melee damage. The reality is it's all about tuning group content so that there's enough flexibility for that class to have a use.

Bringing a Red Mage along, if they had skills like this, would be giving your group flexibility and a safety net, and perhaps losing a fraction of efficiency in a situation where everything goes 100% as planned.

Certainly, this sort of rotating through roles would require a great deal of player skill, but the reality is all classes are not equal in terms of required skill. I don't mind playing a class where people have low expectations due to a general lack of skilled players, as long as I can excel at that class enough to surprise people. Not like there isn't a precedent for classes like this in FFXI.

TL;DR

If you've already decided that it doesn't work, you're not thinking hard enough. Perhaps my solution isn't the answer, but there is an answer.

[Peptaru]

And if you think that making it so they can do everyone else's job just as well by rotating a stance, perhaps you want OP rdm. lol

[Vackashken]

For me the easiest way to put it would be to make rdm like Aions Chanter class. That was a true combat mage.

[Babydoll]

For me the easiest way to put it would be to make rdm like Aions Chanter class. That was a true combat mage.

I forgot about Chanter...but yeah that true! They were always usually DDing the mob..could back up heal if the cleric (or whatever it was called, i cant remember lol) died or needed secondary healer. I remember them having some badass buffs too.

[Vackashken]

I forgot about Chanter...but yeah that true! They were always usually DDing the mob..could back up heal if the cleric (or whatever it was called, i cant remember lol) died or needed secondary healer. I remember them having some badass buffs too.

Exactly word for word correct.

[Jinko]

Except... this doesn't actually work in an MMO. Nobody is going to invite that to a party. You have to *actually* fill a role. Don't get me wrong, I totally understand the power of hybrid characters at being "the right thing at the right time" when everyone else is locked in their role... I play a lot of hybrid characters and I've seen this firsthand. But people still need/expect you to fill a primary role. Being forced out of a role because of diminishing returns is kind of bad and defeats the whole purpose.

This is especially true with a party size of 8, the bigger the party the more roles you can fill so the less need for a hybrid class.

To the person who suggest stances, I kind of like that idea but you shouldn't be able to change stance during combat this will solve some of the issue with players filling all rolls at a switch of a button.

I see no harm in a class that can play all roles, as long as you can't play all roles at once, this is also taking into account gear, materia and stat choices of course.