Oh im a DRK too, and i love to /drk on rdm. However, again this is overall fixes to rdm, and well, melee is something rdm can do, it is part of rdm, even if deficient, as are other aspects of the job, personally, id like to enfeeble more mobs, but aside from one or two things, id like some more enhancing spells over some enfeebling. Now as to having to chose a subjob to melee, its a nice thought, but unlike say...dancer, or thief, which have standard jobs they sub which allow them to melee equally or better but dont hinder their ability to do anything else. As it stands, theres another approach that can be taken to offer rdm the ability to sub a melee subjob of their choice, status removal, and well, as nice as /dnc is, then it hinders out ability to melee with needing tp to remove statuses. And it harms our damage potential, this is in fact common knowledge.

Now if we were given some native way to remove statuses, or to cause them to wear faster (a sphere buff/effect? Job trait? a mass debuff purging JA?) this will remain the case. Even in exp, at party or abyssea levels, as it stands, if you sub say...war on dnc, nobody will bat an eye, but if you sub war on rdm, you will be met with disbelief and in some cases hostility.

Now onto the matter at hand, why do rdm feel entitled to be able to melee? Well its a number of reasons. Other ff games where redmages melee come to mind, the fact we start with a dagger as starting equipment is there. However partly too is like people said, we were told we got to be fighter-mages! Oh but things have changed since then? Maybe so, but as many state, theres a lot of compelling arguments against it. Magian swords are a strong reason, as well as our continued featured /rdm tag on new swords. However theres another argument a lot of you havent even mentioned (atleast as far as i can see) that square has made no effort to spell it out that we have been designed to stop meleeing.

Let us take a trip to...oh...say.... www.finalfantasyxi.com shall we? Okay now that we are here we can see they have been updating the content to include abyssea, even selling the abyssea collection through it. Good, now lets go to... "Your Characters" and then "Jobs" to see what they say... Hmm. Something is confusing me here... well it says... "Red Mage; These fighter-mages can utilize both black and white magic, as well as the arts of the sword." So i guess im reading this wrong? Likely its an oversight by square-enix, but its still QUITE possible they have decided to not change it, in a nutshell its what we do. My point is to those that have said time and time again that rdm isnt ment to melee and square didnt "sell" us on anything. Well you are WRONG! They by neglect or by choice are still selling the image of a fighter-mage to new players interested in rdm! So why cant we try to be what they want to be?

Now that ive had my moment. It still stands some simple fixes can solve rdm, or if we want some more inventive ones, we can be a bit silly over it.

Other ideas: Random Buffing!
-What this is? Well lets take a page from plenilune Embrace, where while curing it grants a buff to the target it is casted upon. Well why not add a JA or JT to do the same? Someone dieing? Throw a cure, and if its a JA (stance-ish where it remains active) or a trait, it tells you that it proc'ed and grants a random-esque buff to that party member. Possibly haste? Possibly Refresh? Regen? While not the most effective JT/JA, and i can see it being useless, it still could save mp, and grant a buff to party members and save time. Is it good? Not really. Could it be fun? sure. Or we could get our own creative AOE buff, similar to nameless song from FFT games, that when cast, aoes and grants random buff statuses to nearby party members. Will it save a party from death? unlikely, its a gamble, but pre-battle, it could offer some quick buffs to lighten casting load, or even offer buffs rdm may not natively get (such as reraise?). Anyway just my rambling, feel free to take your turn and share your opinions!

Hp in this topic/battle: 160HP (this will go down as my points are truely defeated if anyone cares to do so!)