Red Mage Guide by Feauce/Job Abilities

Job Abilities
Next, for our Job Abilities. Job Abilities are active abilities that you select and use, and have a recast timer before they can be used again. In fact, we only have two Job Abilities, but don't get too distraught. They are envied by almost every mage job in FFXI.

Chainspell

 * Our 2-hour special, and what a special it is. As you might guess, this is Hundred Fists for our spells.  This lasts for 30 seconds, and while it's active, our spells have a near-zero casting time and a zero recast.


 * Note: It is important to remember that spells cast before using Chainspell will not have their recast timers reset to zero.

Convert

 * Our only other Job Ability, and we get it fairly late at RDM40, but as they say, good things are worth waiting for. This definitely qualifies as a Good Thing&trade;.  Convert is instantaneous and has a 10 minute recast timer, which can be reduced with Merit Points.  Strictly speaking, Convert exchanges your current HP and current HP while keeping your maximum values the same.  In practical terms, when you are running low on MP, you use Convert, are left with very little HP, and drop a massive Cure (with Divine Seal if you have White Mage subjob) on yourself to bring your health back up, thus having nearly full HP and MP once more.  This is how we are able to maintain a constant spell supply without needing to rest... much.  I'll be going more in-depth on this ability later.

Support Job Abilities
Now lets get into some useful abilities that you'll see from your subjobs, and the levels you will get them as a Red Mage. As with Job Traits, I'm going to be covering mage-friendly abilities as well as some melee-friendly abilities. Again, levels listed will be for Red Mage main, and thus will be double the level at which the subjob(s) get access to these abilities.

Boost (Lv 10)

 * Yes, yes, this does use a Monk support job. You don't have to use Hand-to-Hand weapons to utilize this ability, nor a Monk support job in general.  In fact, all you lose from using your sword with a Monk support job is Martial Arts, which will leave you with a higher delay than your sword anyway.  Boost combined with a weapon skill is effective for melee damage, though it does generate some Enmity on its own, so be careful in XP parties.