Quote Originally Posted by Duelle View Post
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.
Don't forget what RDM's signature skills are. The option to use not only white magic, but black magic too, and equip heavier armor with offensive weapons+ shields. Because of this, RDM doesn't master in any one specific skill, but instead has the viability of using all said skills.

Applying that to the FFXIV system, means we need to look at RDM differently than we do in FFXI. People need to pre-determine their role in a party, if they know they are going to be main healers, than set your actions to do so. Same goes if you end up nuking(magic DD). Or luckily for RDM they can even choose to be a front-line job, and utilize a bit of everything offensively, with a tid-bit of support options. Gear switching as the devs have already said, is something signature to FFXI, and is not something they want FFXIV to utilize. Look at RDM along the lines of "what role am i playing today, set my actions for that role, equip the gear for that role, and stick with it till my role has changed/ party ends".