Moon_fox wrote:
Its of little value and all but i feel i have to say this. as a player whom starded as a red mage it saddens me to a degree that my favorate job is considered as a "healer" role and not multi teired in any way. playing in partys with a few players, i've been tasked with simply healing only. now, i have no quilms with this but i do have to express that this job is best suited to buffs/debuffs and is best used as a sub to a white mage, not as a white mage replacement. an example would be as so, say theres a party of 6. lets say theres a warrior, a paladin, a black mage, 2 white mages and a red mage. lets say everyone's doing there job but the white mages runs out of mp. that would be the time to step up to heal party, other wise its better to do enfeebling and enhancing while whacking away with the tanks with the black mage nuking while the white mages recover to do they're job. my point here is to promote red mage as a "swiss army knife" as opposed to a single use tool. all i ask is that you consider your parties needs when you include a red mage and not simply rely on red mage for solely healing, because red mages healing is C+ at best. happy adventuring people of nas~
RDM offers a variety of uses in parties. It can tank, main heal (as you've seen), debuff, buff, kite, and serve as a minor DPS. It's role changes based off needs, similar to your "swiss army knife."
I would say unless there's a PL (a lot of XP parties come with PL's on Nas), you should get the mind set of main healing/backup healing when you get invites to XP parties. You say "RDM shouldn't serve as a WHM replacement", but it can fill the main heal roll quite well, especially 40+ once it gets access to convert and Refresh.
In most group oriented instances you won't and shouldn't be meleeing on RDM. How are you going to have mp to backup heal if you spent all your time "whacking away" at the enemy instead of resting? Pre-41 RDM's MP pool is NOT unlimited.
Also, RDM getting a C+ in healing doesn't really drag it down much as a main healer, if you're geared properly to do so.
And what Kubi said. That scenario you describe, if it's for XP purposes, wouldn't have enough damage to constitute you as a RDM just backup healing + meleeing/debuffing. You're role would most likely change to nuking in this instance, as two WHM's should have healing more than covered, especially with a PLD tank.