RDM, later levels, Dagger or sword?

[Secrenja]

At level 33, with dispel and a newly aqquired Centurions sword(LVL 30), I started to party up in Crawlers nest. At this time, I noticed that my attacks suck, and was wondering if its just do to the high defence of crawlers and the beatles later in quicksands, or do RDMs just get gimped on attack power?
My reasoning is because then at that level would it be a good idea to switch to dagger? They seem to be more prone to give extra stats, and the Higher level weapon skills absorb MP, would they be helpful?

[Maxim]

The MP-stealing weapon skill for daggers doesn't become available until your Red Mage is level 50+. The other weapon skills that you get along the way aren't very strong or aren't useful unless combined with the Thief's Sneak/Trick Attack. Daggers are only good when fighting Elementals who have high physical defense but low magic defense. You can attack fast and do more damage when you combine daggers, Haste, and En-magic since most of your damage will be done through En-magic and not the damage dealt by the dagger.

The best weapon for RDMs to stick with is the one-handed sword if you want to do damage in ordinary situations, but keep in mind that Red Mages are mages, not fighters. They're weak, which is the reason why I stopped attacking with them at higher levels. Nowadays I only attack enough to cap my skill level, and once it's capped I stand in the back with the other mages.

So to answer your question, the reason why you don't do much damage is because Red Mages aren't damage dealers. It's not because you're using the wrong weapon.

[Zempten]

What exactly is the skill cap? Is ther a formulate to calculate this?

Thanks for your responses!

[Maxim]

Formulas can be found here: http://www.ausystem.org/~aushacho/gbox/ff/skill.html

Red Mage's dagger skill is ranked B. Energy Steal (MP-stealing dagger WS) comes when your dagger skill is 150. Therefore, you use the rank B equation to find out how long it will take before you get to skill level 150.

(Level - 50) x 4.9 + 147 = skill cap

Plug and chug:

(51 - 50) x 4.9 + 147 = 151 rounded down

This means that you get the Energy Steal WS at level 51 as a Red Mage (you don't really have to use the equation to figure this out, since you can just refer to the table on the bottom of the page for dagger weapon skills.)

[Jei]

sword always is the best choice. Just a little addition to what Maxim already said, after Lv55 RDM get meny meny wide variety of swords to choose. High damage slow delay, so so damage very fast swing, wind effects, drain effects, light dark, it's all there. In contrast to dagger, there's only 2 crappy daggers you can really use. Dark Bazelard, so so dagger for level 55 and a stun knife if i remember correctly which only has 1 more D than dark bazelard. it's no where compare to swords expecially at level 70.