I really don't like the idea of stances myself. I feel the conflict with the nature of Red Mage. Gaining something at the loss of something else isn't what Red Mage has represented in the past. Not to mention that stances are hardly necessary at this point. I mean for your melee stance why not just give us those WS natively? That sure isn't going to break the job and that's already the majority of that stance besides the 4x buff thing (which between composure and EAF cape + feet doesn't really need to be increased that much more for just our self).

I think the real bread winner is going to be an idea that enhances both the back line and the front line in a simple yet effective way. I randomly came up with an idea yesterday from the synthesis of a pieces of other suggestions put together. Once again this tends to play with the idea of an elemental WS, but could be just as easily modified to work for a physical was well.

JA - Spirit Release - 0:15 cooldown
Releases energy stored from a portion of your MP spent.

The general idea is that there have always been complaints that time spent casting is not time spent meleeing. Ideas such as swinging while you are casting have been proposed, but I was thinking if there were any other ways to make up melee from your casting. Then I realized that Occult Acumen was somewhat of an attempt at this, but imo it's too restrictive working only for elemental and dark magic and having the MP spent converted to TP isn't necessarily the best use. SO I came up with this idea instead.

The MP you spend is added to an invisible "Sublimation like pool" and whenever you use the JA above it spends that pool to enhance your next WS, nuke, or cure. Not 1:1 obviously, but I was thinking that it enhances your WS/spell by +20% of the "MP pool spent." So for example if you spend 100 MP and you used the JA it would enhance your next WS, nuke, or cure by +5%. This would obviously need some sort of cap and I was thinking about 1000 MP in the pool or +50% WS/nuke/cure potential. Of course the numbers are arbitrary if used would likely be changed, but the concept is the important thing.

Obviously there are some issues with this and this change alone won't really do all that much unless accompanied by other things (such as non 75 melee gear), but this might be one way that the front line as well as the back line might receive an added boost.