This was mentioned in another thread (Paraphrasing some what)

Red Mage

A mage first and everything else second.

But what kind of mage? Both our healing and elemental skills are less than our skills in Melee combat, if skill set defines ones role how is it that we are a mage first when half our casting skills are weaker then our melee skills.

It is the truth we are a mage first. A support mage, the job is designed around getting buffs and enfeebles out and then providing additional group support through our variety of secondary skills (healing, nuking, melee). Some are quick to judge based on our inherent mage like abilities defining us as a mage only job.

This is half true. Consider the following.

Fast Cast.
Increases the speed at which we can distribute spells, opening time to use other abilities. Often this is seen as a way to increase time spent healing (the primary role a RDM used to perform). It also increases time spent nuking (a secondary role a RDM performs) it also increases time spent meleeing on a mob. In each instance getting our primary spells out faster increase our time performing our secondary roles.

Composure
Increased buff duration, ACC without a doubt the most obvious trait that supports our multiple roles.

Emp Armor
Increased buff duration, this allows us to extend composure effects to allies, which in turn reduces our time spent casting support spells and more time performing our situational secondary actions (healing/nuking/melee)

These things affect every aspect of our secondary skills greatly, by reducing our time spent performing our support mage duties it increases our time and effectiveness at doing other duties (healing/nuking/melee)

So yes it is true that we are a mage first, but we are a support mage first, we apply buffs and debuffs, then we perform a role that is situational, healing needs help then it heals, nukeing damage is low it nukes, melee needs more it melees. It doesn't need to be the best over even close to par with the jobs that perform these tasks, it only needs to be around 80% effective. The other 20% is made up threw our buffs increasing damage output, healing output, damage intake, and our enfeebles increasing damage output, and reducing damage coming in.

These are the staples of a RDM, these schools of magic allow us the ability to perform other duties. Being able to reduce incoming melee attacks by 1/3 means our Cure IV (if SE increases the cap on cure 4 to about the same as a cap of C5) would stand up in a lot of situations. Being able to negate attacks completely with paralyze saves us from having to burn a heal at all. Gravity on a mob allows most every DD to eat meat, a 10% Hit rate increase, that is a large boost to melee output. The fact that our enfeebles are essentially ineffective (due to various reasons is absurd).

In the enhancing vein we have Haste, Refresh II and that is really it unless you merit Phalanx II. The trouble here is that SE has limited RDM at that, we have a few very nice buffs that can not be cast on others. Temper for one, Gain Spells, Barspells. While at the same time giving several jobs the ability to provide haste/refresh and Cure IV at similar levels as RDM, and then their own unique abilities on top of that (BRD, SMN for example).

The above changes I listed to how skill effects the spells involved (potency increase) to diversify RDM from other jobs with similar spells (WHM, BLM, SCH). Allowing RDM to have higher overall buff scaling and debuff scaling through its native A+/B+ skills demonstrating the superior ability to provide magical support to its allies.

Everything from the job stems from the ability for a RDM to weaken a monster and strengthen teammates, and currently RDM is not accomplishing these task.

This is a serious situation that has been evolving over quite a period of time. In addition to the above changes to skill affecting the potency of spells:

Enfeebling:
Make these spells land, all of them if certain ones seem to strong adjust them.

Gravity is a huge buff 10% Hit rate is a large buff, yet it is restricted due to the movement speed effect. (Get rid of the movement speed effect).

Slow is ineffective due to the rate at which mobs gain TP, give us an enfeeble that restricts mobs TP gain so slow can be noticeable in effect, other jobs can do this.

Paralyze needs to work on TP moves, you have BLU a job with an incredible amount of stuns that can be spammed near indefinitely. Why can paralyze not stop a WS too?

Blind this spell is actually probably the only one that isn't entirely useless now, since it affects both melee and physical TP moves. It is the only tool a RDM has that is actually beneficial in combat. Too bad NIN has Kuryami (lvl 44) which is the same as our meritable Blind II spell (@5 merits). This needs to change, as a meritable spell this should be more powerful then one learned at lvl 44.

Enhancing:
Let us use all of our buffs.

Why are we limited to Haste/Refresh/RefreshII essentially our only native Enhancing buff left is Refresh II, everything else is available as JOB/RDM, We have Phalanx 2 I guess, but SCH can AOE Phalanx 1 for as much as Phalanx 2's potency.

Temper, allow us to cast this on others it is a great benefit to the people in our groups, you give COR has it, SMN has it, so it is not an issue of it being to strong, and considering the other unique buffs those two jobs have it benefits diversity by having a RDM cast double attack buffs, and have COR do TP roll, or SMN provide critical hit rate aura.

Haste, let this spell scale like BRD's let it rise based on Skill level from 15% to 20%, this is not game breaking, especially since you put 15% on a dagger so now any job on that particular item has a pocket haste (literally my DNC loves this btw). It separates RDM from the other buffers and /RDM or /WHM buffers as well.

Barspells ..... really. WHM can AoE these, why can't we single target them
Gain spells : See Bar spells.


These adjusments to our buffing debuffing side. The structure of the entire job depends on its ability to play situational tide turner, it is meant to weaken foes, and strengthen allies and fill in gaps in healing or in nuking or in melee, as needed.



On a curious note, are our buffs limited because you are running out of space to keep track of the buffs a player has?