As someone who leveled mage jobs prior to trusts (albeit only to 40, and after the mod that basically doubled xp from EM and lower) melee mage does work out well. Plowing through enemies with a staff or club provides a degree of longevity, and DC mobs won't hit hard enough to be a major issue. Heck, I had a total blast on SMN opening up SCs for my pets to close. Also, do remember that magical WS follow magic foemulas for damage: they use your int (or mnd for light element club/sword ws) as main stat and benefit from magic attack bonus. I fondly remember being in a qufim party on WHM, subbing /blm for MAB, and slamming mobs with seraph strike for some rather nice numbers.

So, yeah. The game was designed with the intent of mages meleeing. The playerbase just found it suboptimal for their leveling methods. With the changes to the lower end of xp and FoV/GoV encouraging attacking EP-DC mobs the method has changed. Embrace it.