Someone else mentioned gear funneling as a reason.
E.g. when in a static it's better to put all your gear on your most cracked DPS and then have a dancer partner them, than it is for a bard to buff 8 semi- or un-geared people.
Perhaps. But MCH would serve this paradigm even less for the single reason that it's shit selfish damage (comparatively to any melee or the big boys), and it has no raid buffs at all. At least a BRD still buffs the actual melees benefiting from said funneling, even if less than a dedicated DNC.
Yet MCH has way higher pick rates. Perhaps the fact that it's mindless to optimize and will always guarantee a solid damage floor is enough of an explanation I guess..
Also forgot who said or which thread I read it in but I saw someone say E. Reprise was a fall back tool for movement for RDM. That was a funny joke, I'd rather sleep on gcds than slug an ability with less pps than cast/dualcast for the cost of 1/10 of a melee combo. It's not even worth using to prune mana like you used to be able to do, its beyond a dead button, its a button you push if your goal is to grief your party and your own damage.
Also regarding the "casting isn't that hard" debate, it depends on the context but in Endwalker it absolutely takes some time to become proficient in finding time to cast. Standout "you're going to learn to cast today" mechanics off the top of my head:
>the entirety of TOP p1
>fourfold flames (especially how pf does it can lead to even more unnecessary running for the caster)
>the marathon in p7s
>I wanna say p9s martialist is a good exercise in needing to see the future to maintain abc compared to fully mobile jobs
>pinax
>p4s p2's second act mechanic (the one where everyone kinda circles the arena...bad with names)
>for rdm specifically: getting melee uptime during the 2m burst of p12sp1 with partners/proteans going on
Is casting impossibly difficult? No. Like any other mechanic you'll eventually learn and get a feel for it. Should it be removed? God no, casting and all the metagame that comes with it and how movement itself becomes a resource is my favorite part of ffxiv. But it's not "nothing", it takes a lot of effort and planning to maintain abc on casters (including healers, excluding smn) because even the biggest movement tools some have are better tooled toward dps bursting anyway.
I'd like to be able to use Corps-a-corps (gap closer) and Displacement (gap opener) on party members, not just enemies. Black Mage has Aetherial Manipulation for this and Monk has Thunderclap charges that do the same. And there's no harm in using Corps-a-corps to shift to a party member, moving ahead of them with sprint then using Displacement to flick way ahead of them, as you can already pull this maneuver with enemies. I'm going to assume that the only reason you can't use these 2 skills on party members is because they forgot to add it/didn't think of it at the time- but it's only fair for Red Mage to get this as it just feels like this function is missing.
Honestly, the best personal mitigation idea they could give to red mage is to just remove manaward and radiant aegis from black mage and summoner and then add a new role action to the caster role which gives you a shield worth 20-30% of your max HP. I mean you can still call it manaward, give it two charges cuz I guarantee you it wont be the thing that pushes black mages over the edge and boom. Self mitigation problem solved.
Don't be silly!
We got a new great role action at the start of EW, haven't you used Sleep so much?
TBH I'd rather casters just have more HP at this point, there is no reason for the HP differences for the classes at this point, melee are hitting the boss from across the room, there are no mechanics that deal more damage to melee.
No reason casters should be dying to something completely out of their control with how static all the fights in the game are.
....omfg I forgot we only got sleep in EW, that makes me even more mad xD.
and yes I totally agree that the better solution would be to just give higher HP and/or defense values but realistically they are not going to do that. Though I wouldn't mind if they cared enough to do that.