How Many Would Have Rather Seen RDM than SMN

[Ingolf]

If a RDM is a jack of all trades, then it won't have a solid place in any group.

it NEEDS to excel in some area.

[Levian]

So then you have to have a rdm, or you're locked out of the content. Or on the other hand, you could have someone along with gear for 2 jobs, one dedicated healing and one for damage dealing and just have them switch out depending on the boss. And if you lower the MP pool to the point where it can't function adequately as either healer or caster then you've effectively turned it into a pure meelee DPS with mediocre sword skill.

You see where Red Mage is a pain in the ass to balance yet? The problem isn't even so much the jack of all trades part, it's the master of none part. In an MMO setting you need one of 3 things mastered, Healing, Tanking, or DD in some form. I suppose since this is FF we can add a 4th role, buffing. But at the same time we're not talking about something that should be competing with Bard. I would say debuffing, but anything important is likely to be immune to debuffs so there's that.

So if you don't accel at one of those 3 roles, you'll be sitting out. A lot. Unless you're doing sexual favors for your LS leader. Or your job is ok at healing, then you'l get an invite because healers are perpetually scarce. I mean seriously, how do you make something that's B grade meelee, nuking, and healing worth that party slot in an MMO without making it stupid over powered? It literally can't be done, at least not in the traditional RDM sense.

My thoughts are give it B grade healing spells, just enough to keep a party going reliably. Give them an A grade mastery of rapiers, but tune them to do fairly weak damage in and of themselves, and use black magic to supplement that. En-spells to add an elemental property to the sword and increase it's damage, some DOT/debuffs maybe, possibly even a short or instant cast but slightly weakened nuke here or there to pump up the dps a little. But I don't think this would be the thread to hash it out in.

[MaethusXion]

Enspells... so then Mystic Knight instead of RDM?

[Levian]

Something I pulled from RDM in FFXI actually. Wasn't aware it was used elsewhere in the series, though thinking back Steiner and Vivi had a combo attack that worked similar to an enspell.

[ShinigamiKayla]

enspells were enveloped much into Pugilist and Monk so far so it would be kind of hard to give redmage but they did say that Monk was going to go through some drastic changes in 2.0 didn't they... who knows~ as for RDM should stay class C in all areas and not have all these top tier spells but have some Top Tiers of their own yes okay ill revert to say from FFXI spells like Haste and such just something to make them viable and give them at least some melee dmg... I don't know I'm glad were getting Summoner -sticks tongue out-

[KoujiGeki]

Well to the people would say Rdm excels at nothing, they COULD take the 11 path again and make them the BEST enfeeblers. Enfeebles that will actually effect bosses. That would give them some use. And give them AoE EN spells so they fighting Mire the whole party can get enfire. That would make them very useful.

edit: the en spells wouldnt overwrite the monks fist ability it would overwrite the En spell. and shouldnt have the same effect. Like Enwind will not make weapons faster.

[Mijin]

I imagine they went off that player poll they had a while back and more people voted for smn. I can't remember if RDM was on there or not though.

[Niqote]

Actually I would prefer both because then all are happy .... but ....

[Artiss2k]

Well seeing as there are only 2 magic classes in the game i'd be all for an implementation of a couple of DoM classes in ARR launch or early updates rather. being as that yoshi says it's suppposed to be a fan service title i would say you have to implement RDM at some point, as they are staple to the series. I personally think it would be awesome to switch it up and have rdm's use guns this time and be based on the musketeer class!

Shooting magic enfeeble bullets ftw and have super potent enfeeble and en spells/bullets, fast cast, haste etc. of course you don't want to shoot a haste bullet in your allies face to give them a buff lol so that may have to be an actual spell.

[KoujiGeki]

red mage was on the player poll. Rdm got the second lowest vote after Dark Knight.