Well, while this thread is here, I might as well post my thoughts on it . . .

First of all, the so-called "RDM tanking nerf" was nothing short of spiteful, plain and simple. Not only did it prohibit a Red Mage of any sort from tanking (not from an inability to take hits, but rather an inability to get the mob to look at us), but as a side-effect, it totally demolished the PLD/RDM (which also suffered from Paladin natively obtaining Phalanx), NIN/RDM, and NIN/DRK options as well, essentially leaving only PLD/WAR, PLD/NIN, and maybe PLD/DNC and NIN/WAR as the remaining tank options, total. One could argue that the enmity decrease could help protect genuinely dedicated mages from meeting a messy end, but if that was the purpose of that update, then why was the enmity from spells such as Sleepga untouched?

As far as my opinions on whether Red Mages should be able to tank or not, I see absolutely no reason why not; in fact, I daresay that being the versatile "jack of all trades," should lend itself well to tanking! Think about it this way: all party roles can be divided in to varying degrees of two elements: killing the mob, and keeping everybody else alive. What roles other than "tank" pull as heavily from both those elements? It follows that a good tank should be versatile.

Again, the only thing keeping Red Mages from being a good tank is that the devs refuse to allow us to be easily equipped for holding enmity, presumably because Paladin is their baby or something. I mean, not that we should tank nearly as well as a Paladin, but to all you Red Mages complaining about our now sub-par healing abilities: imagine what it would be like if we didn't have the spell Cure at all, and you'd roughly have the equivalent of our tanking ability right now. We can survive to Apocalypse Nigh, yes, but generating enmity at all? Good luck with that . . .