Red Mage: I am not a Back line class

[Jinko]

Right, because forcing an entire job to drag around 4 sets of unique gear sounds smart. Let's not even discuss itemization of RDM specific gear, or point allotment.

That's why you pick one play style and maximize it, If I play an elemental Shaman in WoW, I'm not expected to drag around gear suitable to melee or healing and nobody forces that on me either.

RDM would be more than pointless given this setup. What you're talking about isn't a true hybrid anymore, but a hybrid in the way that Blizzard likes to define the term. A class that can respec to any role.

And what is wrong with adding choice for different play styles ?

Unless RDM is better than one of those, in which case, why not just bring 8 RDM

For the same reason you don't take 4 Shamans into an instance or dungeon in WoW, you balance them to be comparable to other classes.

Of course SE can't even balance Paladin properly so I guess it's not a such a great idea after all.

It would never be able to outright replace the main tank, main healer, or primary DPS, but it would be able to replace an off tank or off healer in a group transitioning from clearing to farming, or replace a DPS in a group just learning an instance.

With the ability to switch classes at any time you can do this anyway.

Not that it would be entirely useless for other situations, it would just be outclassed by other jobs that can permanently inhabit a single role. But I'd be willing to pay that price for the versatility expected of RDM.

As I said with 8 people the need for a jack of all trades becomes less, and even less when you start talking about alliance content, there is no point taking a class that is average when you can take a class which has a specific role.

You want to melee as RDM but how are the devs supposed to balance this? If RDM wears cloth armor, they die in 2 hits,If RDM wears leather armor, they have no mage stats or are forced into JSE/AF only.

You are seriously overestimating the stat system in this game, some PGL gear for example is cloth.

They have mentioned adding class speicfic gear in the future, leather gear with mage stats could be one such example.

What kind of WS are they supposed to get? If their WS do more than PLD, then PLD will complain about how they have less hate management tools than RDM (getting out-cured and out WSed by a mage). At least then the forums will have something new to complain about I guess.

Why would they complain, the role of a Paladin is meant to be a tank not a damage dealer, I don't see them complaining that they can't compete with DRGs, MNKs and BLMs.

[Ramsey]

RDM = Support

Believe it or not the 11 after Final Fantasy in Final Fantasy 11, is used to indicate that it is the eleventh entry in a series. I.E. there were 10 games before it, and various offshoots, many of which featured Red Mage, and in none of which was Red Mage a support class.

It's a tired saying, but this is not FF11, nor should it be. I loved 11, but this is a different game.

That's why you pick one play style and maximize it.

....? This really doesn't deal with the problem at all. You're making one job that has 3-4 different play styles, which is unfortunately, inherently counter to the current job system.

Nor does this address the other issue, Red Mage would either be inherently weaker than any of those specialized classes at their role, or better, in which case those classes would be useless. In a perfect world, where they're evenly balanced, it's still just a really unappealing approach that runs counter to the design of the job system.

For the same reason you don't take 4 Shamans into an instance or dungeon in WoW, you balance them to be comparable to other classes.

This has more to do with class buffs and debuffs. So unless SE starts implementing that sort of system into the game to force players to take different jobs, this argument is irrelevant.

With the ability to switch classes at any time you can do this anyway.

We're having a reasonable discussion here, and I don't have any sort of idea in my head that my solution is the best one, but try to read it and understand it, because I think you're missing something.

You can't do what I'm describing with the current system. That's why I'm suggesting it, it would give Red Mage a unique role to play, which is the key to the job system.

How is having the ability to play every role unique? It's not, you can already change jobs in the field. (Though you did just suggest a system where Red Mage can swap between roles out of combat.)

The ability to play every role in the course of a single fight is unique.

Currently, you're correct, you could have someone run as a DPS, and swap to heals for boss fights or something. But what I'm describing is a RDM being able to swap roles at specific points within fights. Perhaps your group runs fine on one healer until the boss is at 25%, run with a RDM and let him DPS and switch to heals at the end to help you get through.

RDM's abilities could be built around swapping roles, encouraging them to plug leaks in the raid's efficiency, and never allowing them to take up a single role for long enough to replace that role for an entire fight. Thus requiring at least 1 main tank, 1 main healer, and 1 or more main DPS. (Though I suppose you could do some weird stuff with a few RDM swapping roles in reverse... but that kind of crap is what we live for, isn't it?)

You are seriously overestimating the stat system in this game, some PGL gear for example is cloth.

They have mentioned adding class speicfic gear in the future, leather gear with mage stats could be one such example.

This is true, but more importantly, the class could just have its abilities balanced around a certain set of stats. Unless stat/ability relationships are tied up in some seriously misguided and hardcoded systems, you could simply balance abilities, defensive, offensive, healing, what have you around a certain arrangement of stats.