Scholar definitely wins in raw nuking power, which is fun on scholar ^^ But you burn MP so fast (poor black mage lol) sublimation isn't enough to keep up, and overwrites refresh ;; At my scholar's level so far, refresh 2 would be nicer than sublimation. Stratagems help of course, but spending them all on parsimony to conserve mp seems wasteful.
But red mage would be able to cast more frequently, possibility evening up the damage gap with endgame staves. My friend was telling me stone I can hit like a truck and almost reach stone III damage with the right gear and III can reach almost IV's damage. So I don't know if scholar having tier V access is great or not as he said it doesn't scale the same way as tier 1, 2 and 3 do with that gear, 4 and 5 seem to stagnate in scaling. But i can't compare yet sadly, only my automation has tier V access, and she's only averaging about 1k unresisted lol.