I was never a fan of dissecting posts; however..

Front line non-tanks are all equally squishy at the baseline. I don't see how a front line Red Mage would be any different. Or are you implying that front liners in general are a liability?
The difference is not that some jobs are more/less squishy at the frontline. It's the loss of what RDM brings to the table (in it's current form) that causes it to be a more drastic loss than loosing, say, a dragoon.

If you your frontline dragoon bites the dust, you loose a chunk of DOT. The fight lasts a bit longer. Big woop.

If your frontline redmage bites the dust, you loose someone capable of:

Hasting all DD's
Throwing emergency potent cures
Removing ailments
Weakening the mobs accuracy/attack/attack speed
Additional re-application of buffs (for those spammy mobs)
A large amount of utility spells
Additional sleepga/stuns for crowd control and NM lockdown

Unless of course, you're not doing any of those things. In which case, why invite someone with below-par melee?


I've seen you reference "had I not seen it work before" twice now. Care to give an example, or two?

The playerbase has always been known for doing things in the most efficient way possible, it's the reason why some jobs are seen as unwanted, and why you see specific shouts for specified jobs. It has been like this for as long as the game has existed.

That's a losing proposition already seeing that you're expecting the RDM to heal, refresh and haste while in melee. That's not going to realistically happen unless you turn Refresh and Haste into 30-minute duration AoE spells. Off-heals and the occasional buff, sure. Cycles and all that comes with it, not a chance.
All in all, I would kick a whitemage out of the party if they refused to do their job. Same as I would kick a tank for not tanking. You have those spells for a reason, they make other jobs better; ignoring, or failing to cast them is NOT DOING YOUR JOB.

However you make a fair point with the casting burden redmage faces. It has a large amount of spells to cast often on multiple players. Typically, I'd expect NO LESS than 2 melee jobs hasted and anyone who uses MP to be refreshed; whilst still maintaining their enfeebling role (and I often struggle to find a RDM decent enough to do that, let alone anything else). SE did reduce your casting burden by introducing enhanced duration enhancements via your RDM AF3 set, although it's not enough to free up the kind of time you're expecting to have to wave your sword about.

I wouldn't expect RDM to get -ga versions of any of those spells as RDM seems to be the single target enhancer, whilst WHM (or alternatively accessionable, SCH) the AOE enhancer... whilst it might be... useful for RDM to get spells like that, it doesn't fit in with their current spell lineup in comparison to other mages.

Perhaps I'm alone in this, but the idea is more along the lines of "front line RDM does A, B and C" and "back line RDM does D, E and F".
The trouble lies in that ~12 other jobs currently do A, B and C in far greater capabilities than you'll ever be able to achieve. Buffing your A, B and C to compete against them will overpower your job as you'll still have D, E and F (which can easily be replaced by WHM + BRD).

If however, you feel that SE should take a give-and-take stand point via heavily buffing ABC and heavily weakening DEF, then why wouldn't anyone just get meleejob-ABC or actualmage-DEF?

If you are talking about efficiency you have to ultimately realize you are referring to some form of economics.
Actually, as MEng I refer to efficiency via its mechanical definition ("The ratio of useful work done to energy expended").

If you're to meleeing, you are actively contributing damage over time via sword attacks, enspell damage and the occasional WS.

In doing so, you've now placed yourself inside AOE range of the mob.

You'll now require to be healed (amount varies depending on NM) and you may be inflicted with a various assortment of ailments (of which can reduce your DOT to 0 temporarily). You'll also have to remember that since you are using your sword, you'll not be gaining the magical accuracy boosts to your debuffs or your cure potency... and you can't forget to haste yourself too~ (implication that you'll have to cast additional spells)

(note -- Presuming that you've somehow the inventory to carry all those assorted gearsets. SE has stated that there is only so many stats they can stick on a single piece of gear. If you're moving gear out to move TP/WS gear in, then you're loosing part of the benefits of backlining)

(Side paragraph -- Although, if you are /war or /nin you'll have no way to remove your ailments. If you are /dnc, you'll have to expend TP to remove them one at a time, TP presuming, on a 15 second recast timer, amnesia-not-prohibiting.)

So, for your RDM meleeing to be AS EFFICIENT as backlining then the potential difference damage gained will have to be EQUAL to the difference lost in MP expenditure/regain and potency of debuffs/cure.

(side note -- For the playerbase to suddenly stop and rethink your current 'position', it would have to be heavily in favour of melee damage gained.)

Of course, this is impractical and currently swings heavily in favour of backlining.... and it's because of a multitude of problems... which is kind of the point of this thread; to stop, and think out the reasons for and against of an idea, and also the possible outcomes of implimenting it.

I rather liked your idea to combat the difference in stave potency via:

Job Traits:
- Arcane Combat: Your magic accuracy is increased by your main-hand weapon accuracy while under the effects of composure.
However, given SE's way of doing things, you'd probably have to balance it out a little.

Job Traits:
- Arcane Combat: Your magic accuracy is increased by your weapon accuracy while under the effects of composure. Your magical attack is similarly reduced.
For debuffs, that shouldn't change anything. Now, that's 1 thing crossed off the list, care to try any of the other problems that you'll end up facing ?