How Many Would Have Rather Seen RDM than SMN

[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.