Increasing the mele classes' damage output, especially during the party buffs, would probably be fair and make them a bit more appealing to have around... because right now the ranged classes (mages and archers) can do just about as much damage and from a safer distance. Flip side: lowering ranged classes' damage output would be wrong because we still need to be able to play solo.

The ironic thing is that in the other threads about mages being nerfed, it was most often the non-tank melee classes that were saying "the higher MP cost is good" and "mages, learn to play".

I think a lot of the mages were playing fine before. And we did learn to play again -- differently. For the survival of the party, we don't want to waste MP on healing and raising melee classes because the cost is just too high.

Changes are usually a double edged sword.
We (all of us) really need to be more careful about what we wish for with this game.