However, due to Red Mages overall arsenal, as aforementioned, it is never not optimal to include it in your party, or alliance, either as tank or support. This weakness can manifest itself quite apparently in large-scale events that demand much healing, and enable you, as well as encourage you, to take in numerous players which creates a good milieu for main job White Mage.

In addition, it doesn't have native access to status ailment removal spells, this essentially forces the Red Mage into taking 'White Mage' as their sub class for many situations, as the ability to remove these effects is invaluable-and under no circumstance of the 75-capped 'era', is Red Mage able to cast 'Stona', a spell that removes petrification from a player. Furthermore, the spell generates an exceptional amount of enemy 'enmity' ('threat'/'aggro'), and while this particular aspect of Cure IV can be spun in Red Mages favour, typically it probably isn't going to be. When you're involved in battles and events with significant area of effect damage and a high number of participants, it's not particularly efficient to heal with, both in MP cost, and opportunity cost. On the side of support-role healing, while Cure IV is a good recovery spell, it can however at times fall short, being limited to single-target. That being said, even with the few shortcomings Red Mage has, there is never a situation where having at least some around, isn't the optimal choice. Red Mage doesn't have many weaknesses, but as great as Red Mage is, it is not without weakness.

I like to think of Red Mage as almost two jobs in one, one side being your support healer, the other an exceptional tank, and it's quite able to do this on the fly, to accommodate many situations. It's pretty easy to see that Square Enix were folly in their design of Red Mage, granted a lot of this stems from a by product of the introduction of the Ninja class by way of Sub Job, that ultimately culminates Red Mage into what is probably the most powerful job in the game in terms of the scope of what it can do. In closing, situationally the games best 'tank' job, but otherwise an all around incredibly powerful tank in the right hands. Arguably, it could also be named the games best crowd-controller, up until the release of Scholar. From being the best support-healer choice in a low-man setting, due to it's array of top-class enfeebling magic, enhancing magic, and MP management that is second to none with serviceable healing potential to boot, to the hands down best 'solo' job, even putting jobs that were conceived on a design level for this purpose, such as Beastmaster, to utter shame (At Lv.75, anyway). However, I've never believed this to be true, when you explore all the (many) facets of Red Mage, you come to see that it does in fact, have mastery.

Over the many years of Final Fantasy XI, Red Mage was coined the moniker 'jack of all trades, master of none', this was particularly prominent in the 75-capped 'era', in addition to other such names that all come to surmise a similar meaning. 1.3 Job Abilities, Traits, and Spells of note.

Resist petrify divinity 2