Time Mages in FF?
 

My friend (not smart) pointed at a red mage(ff1 sprite) and said, "that's a time mage from final fantasy 7." I knew he was either trying to hook me with his portfolio of lies or he was just being ignorant, but as I thought of it, I began to realize, "A time mage?They've got every other kind of mage, why not?" So, are there any time mages in any FF games (including tactics) and if so, how would you rate their usefulness on a scale of Very Bad to Very Good?
there was something else I was going to ask, but I forgot..

Well what do you think a haste and Slow spell are?

Time mage was definatly a class in FF5. Not sure about any of the others, been a while since I last played. Anyway, they rocked. They could even reset the battle if it went horribly, horribly wrong. Man, the number of times I used that on X-death....

They had a time-magic specialist in FFTactics. Pretty indispensable, too.

Your friend's talking out of his ass as far as FF7. Any character could do any kind of magic in that game, as long as they had the right materia.

... unless he was talking about some kind of enemy sprite? Eh, I doubt it though.

There are no pure Time Mages, but I guess if you spent time leveling up and attaching certain spells like Haste and Slow to a character, you could probably make one.

Aside from what's already been mentioned, Tidus could also be considered a Time Mage. His only spells for a long time only involved speed.

Yes, I know anybody could use any spell in that game (except for Blue Magic and summoning)...but of that group, Tidus was definately the designated Time Mage, and he was definately useful.

Yeah, there's the FFT Time Mage. Definitely NOT indispensible, but a worthy option for a mage class. I've never had one as a primary, but I've had Time Magic on my secondary skill set with black mage or summoner on primary.

And yes, I would agree with Ecurt. Although the grid system kept things open for all assuming you were crazy enough to invest that much time into it, characters had their niches and Tidus was definitely the "time mage." I still remember having him with both his own and Auron's grids, haste, and spamming Quick Hit to attack like 6 times in a row before ANYBODY else could move, including fast bosses. Good stuff.

The problem with FFT Time Mages is that spells required High Faith to have a high accuracy. However, since you mostly want to use it on power house fighters, those fighters needed low faith to avoid taking too much damage from magic attacks.

However, I must say...speed is essential in battle. Having more always helps. FFT Time Magic is the only bad set of spells that were ruined by being terribly inconsistent.

There were also time mages in FFTA. They were not that useful, but then again, FF fans don't talk about that game that much...

As for FFT, you didn't use time mages and your actual character, but you used their spells. Then again, in that game you (if you were me) you really didn't use that many types of units, you just had a variety of secondary skills.

And a time mage in FF7? You're friend was seriously talking out of his ass. Never listen to anything he says about any RPG. Ever.

Just cause I want to talk... Time mages use what is known as "grey magic" (somewhere between white and black). Genereally their magic is based around slowing, speeding or stopping time. But Comet, X-Zone (or an equivalent) and Flare (I think) fall under the Grey category.

One last thing, I do beleive that the time mage is sometimes refered to as a Comsic Mage (although I do not remember in what....)