One of the two basic mage jobs, and a solid and obvious choice for a healer-type Red Mage. Gains access to exclusive White Magic, including status cures, Erase, and Reraise, the Banish series to improve Divine Magic (for what it's worth) and the Job Ability Divine Seal, which conveniently has a 10 minute recast timer to match our native Convert. Also, this subjob will add a slight bonus to HP compared to RDM/BLM, and gains Auto Regen at 50+. Much later, at 72+, you gain access to the Teleport spells (Holla, Dem, and Mea). Lacking somewhat in offensive ability, as we are left with only our own Elemental and Enfeebling spells and the Banish line, which leaves much to be desired in personal experience. This is primarily a healer-support subjob, and won't typically leave much time for anything else in an XP party scenario.

The more hostile of the two basic mage jobs, and it shows. You gain the Elemental Debuffs (Burn, Frost, Choke, Rasp, Shock, and Drown), Drain, Aspir, Warp, Escape, and the Job Ability Elemental Seal, which can assist with making sure an emergency Sleep or Bind will stick, as well as being useful for making sure you get a good profit off of Aspir. Gains the trait Conserve MP at 40+, which I personally think is of dubious utility. Good when it goes off, but don't rely on it to save you much MP. Gives more MP and INT than a White Mage subjob. This is a good general purpose mage, solo, and offensive mage subjob. It will also fill a support/backup healing role rather well.

No need to go into details here, this subjob is all about the MP. Summoner gives the best MP in the game while giving roughly equal MND and INT bonuses, as well as offering Auto Refresh at 50+. You get access to all your Avatars, which also give access to their Blood Pacts according to your subjob's level. With half skill, the various Avatars' attacks will be less accurate and the buffs will have a shorter duration and/or lesser effect. If desperate, a RDM/SMN could possibly manage to Avatar-pull, but this would be unlikely.

This job offers to replace Black Mage as a general purpose and support subjob, offering not only Drain and Aspir, but also gives access to Regen II at 74+. Light Arts and Dark Arts will selectively improve the majority of our magic skills (all except our two highest, Enfeebling Magic and Enhancing Magic), and at the same time reducing the MP cost of our spells. Using the appropriate Arts grants a 10% reduction in MP cost (rounded down, so minimum 10 MP to gain a benefit), while at the same time giving a 20% increase in MP cost for the opposing type of magic.

There are three Stratagems that are able to be used with Scholar as a subjob. These are are Penury/Parsimony, granting a 50% reduction in MP cost (unmodified by Arts), Celerity/Alacrity, shortening casting time and recast time by 50%, and Addendum: White, giving access to the status cures we would otherwise get only from a White Mage subjob. Unlike Conserve MP, these abilities will lower the cost for your spells before they are cast, allowing you to cast them when you otherwise couldn't for lack of MP. Scholar also grants access to Conserve MP, so there is still the random chance for some extra savings there. And to date, the only spells offered from Addendum: Black are already on our spell list, so while we do have access to it, there is little benefit in using it.

Also through Scholar (at 70+) we get access to another Job Ability. Sublimation allows us to store HP into a kind of "battery", and when we use the ability a second time, we gain the HP spent as MP. Sort of like a pre-paid, weaker Convert, and similar to Souleater, this ability will eat off of Stoneskin before our own HP. Unfortunately, this ability is completely incompatible with our own Refresh, offers only 2/tick on its own, and the 30 second recast Sublimation has will not allow us to get a profit from our own Refresh even if we attempt use it to bridge the time gap between Sublimation charges.

This is a strictly physical offensive subjob, offering Attack Bonus, Last Resort, Souleater, some Absorb spells, including Drain and Aspir, which it shares with Black Mage and Scholar. Also gives access to the exclusive Sword weapon skills, along with Warrior, Paladin, and Blue Mage. This subjob has one unique aspect, however, which only shows itself at 74+, and that is access to Stun. Combined with Chainspell, this is used to great effect against certain Stun-resistant NMs (such as Dynamis Lord).

An alternative for a support-mage role, this offers a wide range of abilities, including an array of AOE buffs, and some offensive options, such as the Light-based Lullaby songs, Magic Finale, and (for what it's worth) Resist Silence and Scop's Operetta. Most significant is access to Mage's Ballad at 50+, giving an extra 1 MP/tick Refresh to ourselves and any party members within range. Similar to the Summoner subjob, with half skill, songs such as Magic Finale and Lullaby will be more likely to be resisted, as well as lacking an instrument leaves you restricted to only one enhancing song active at a time. The major benefit to these Songs, however, is that all they cost is the time spent casting them and their recast time, as they have no MP cost.

A primarily solo subjob, though widely considered to be one of the best. Primarily used for Dual Wield and Utsusemi, this offers a lot of survivability. Offers INT on a rough par with Summoner, though being a melee job, obviously offers no MP. Also grants access to Tonko: Ichi/Ni and Monomi: Ichi, giving us access to Invisible and Sneak at the cost of tools alone, and lasting a full 3 minutes (or 5 minutes, in the case of Ni-level spells).

This job adds some MP (less than RDM/WHM, about as much as if we could use RDM/RDM), as well as exclusive Sword weapon skills, and allows faster access to Auto Regen (BLU16 vs. WHM25), but honestly speaking aside from that I don't know much about how it pertains to Red Mage as a subjob. If someone has useful info to offer, please let me know.

Useful mainly for farming, via Gilfinder, Treasure Hunter, Steal, and Mug. As always, Flee has its uses for overland travel, and the job also offers boosts to DEX and AGI, as well as a couple hits of Evasion Bonus, for what it's worth.

Primarily used pre-30 to enhance our melee capabilities, this subjob offers increases to STR, VIT, and HP, as well as Boost at 10+ and Counter at 20+. For a solo subjob pre-30, you won't find much better than this, as Counter will save you a few hits and increase your damage at the same time.

About the same as a Monk subjob, with this one offering Provoke and Defense Bonus (also at 10+ and 20+, respectively) instead of the various other abilities Monk offers. Like a Monk subjob, this one is primarily useful pre-30, where a mage subjob of some sort would be of greater value. Up to 30, this could be useful for adding to our melee output, sub-tanking (especially as a SA/TA partner), and assisting with keeping aggro off of the weaker mages, such as the nukers and healers, as we have much better armor than they do.