Why are summoners so neglected?

[Talraen]

Where did this "melee red mage" came from? In FFIII they sucked as melee and in FFV their only purpose in life was Dual Cast.

Red mages use swords. They were the second-best melee weapon class in FF1 until the job change, since they could use silver/mythril swords, and they are actually good tanks for the first few quests because they can use chain armor. In FF3, red mages basically exist to use the wightslayer early on, which is another sword. In FF5, Dual Cast was something you got as a reward for leveling an obsolete class. It basically existed because Red Mages, as was the case in FF1 and FF3, sucked after you progressed very far in the game. For the brief period they were good, they had decent weapons as well as decent spells.

So yeah, red mages were always melee hybrid casters. This is even true in FFXI: they got the original en-spells. The only reason they didn't melee in FFXI was because feeding TP to mobs outweighed their contribution. They were clearly designed to melee (their artifact weapon is a sword!), but then, ninjas were designed to DPS, too. The FFXI team didn't have a huge success rate at jobs being played as intended.