So..Lets talk jobs?

[Duelle]

XI was gear and macro intensive, a thing people seem to want to get rid of. So yea, the question seems to be; How do we make a jack of all traits* with no gear swapping while balancing it to the other classes and jobs? (*Which is the current battle system if you think about it lol)

The short answer is you can't - it loses position to specialised roles.

Not necessarily. Gear was one of RDM's balancing factors in XI; as in, gear currently equipped. That balancing factor was negated due to allowing all that gear swapping.

Had they gone with Caird's idea of layering jobs on top of the classes rather than treating the jobs as specialization paths for each class, I'd say Scherwiz and I would both get what we want. I could set my class to FNC (once that's introduced) and my job to RDM and be a magic fencer. He'd get to set himself as CON or THM and play RDM as support.

Since that's not going to be the case, one of two things should happen. Either you allow RDM to become flexible based on abilities and traits set, with gear sealing the deal (as in, you equip melee traits, melee gear, and melee attacks and you get to stand in the front, equip healer/support traits and abilities and you stand in the back, and so on), or you focus more on the melee mage aspect of Red Mage right out of the box (the way it was done with BLU in FFXI) to keep the same mistake that happened in XI from repeating itself. All of this is provided the class combo that unlocks Red Mage is a mix of GLA/FNC and CON/THM. Personally, I'd be pleased if it was FNC and CON.