But it's a sword.

[Duelle]

The Summoner's Level 70 ability is literally called "Summon Bahamut" in which you call out a Bahamut pet.

A temporary pet, which as a class-encompassing system is not something I would be opposed to. Egis are not far from being dead weight from a mechanics perspective, and at this point I'd suggest dropping egi's and focusing on trances. Temp summons can be treated as bonuses for certain actions.

Mystic Knight also casts White Magic. And ranged options are in no way tied to being able to cast magic.

Magic in general often grants the benefit of attacking from range. And the white magic thing must have been a later addition, because back when that job was called Sorcerer it really was just Magic Sword => select spell => swing weapon with particle effect. Mind you that FFV is my point of reference there.

Red Mage is not a turret, neither was Bard, just because you're wrongly saying they are doesn't make reality agree with you.

I wasn't the only one who felt that way about BRD. Feedback did get the devs to give the job back its mobility, after all.

FFXI is the only Final Fantasy game to give Red Mage "En-spell." This is, again, the Job in one game getting the ability from a different job (Mystic Knight). It is not a core part of the Job's identity.

FFXI is also the first FF MMO. Which ties ties to my point of MMO combat (live combat, really) opening the door for things you couldn't do with the console FFs.

Final Fantasy XII is not turn based. It has Red Mage in it.

I started playing the original release, but never got past the first 2 hours because I found the english voice acting atrocious, so I don't know much about XII.

It's designs have nothing to do with design limitations because the fact that jobs like the Mystic Knight exist in turn based games mean that they do have methods of making Melee/Magic hybrids in turn based games.

I disagree. Hitting Attack does nothing for the next magic spell used in any of the turn-based RPGs I've played. Casting a spell has no effect on the Attack command. There's also the lack of support for the type of procs required (hitting Attack has an X% chance to do something to the next Black or White magic spell) nor stacking mechanics (Attack generates a stack that does something to your spells). No combo systems, either.

Except "How it was done in older FFs" absolutely DOES matter because Final Fantasy XIV is a Final Fantasy game.

It does matter, but is not the absolute boundary for what you can do with class design. There's elements and aesthetics that can carry over genres, but not everything will. And this is something I've been arguing since people started to complain that SMN had DoTs back when ARR launched.

And no, I haven't played any MMOs other than FFXIV, so I don't give a crap about them.

Then you're willingly limiting your critical spectrum (and explains why what I say is making no sense to you). Which not even the developers of this game are doing, as Yoshida himself has said they look at the competition for inspiration for systems and gameplay; hell, pre-SB PLD was basically a WoW prot warrior with some added knickknacks, Pre-HW BLM was for all intents a WoW fire mage with infinite MP, SMN was built on the foundation of WoW's warlocks, and so on. Even the recent stuff like the WHM Confession+Plenary Indulgence mechanic (an adaptation of the WoW Disc Priest's Atonement system) and the BRD song system (which has a decent chunk of the chant system from Pillars of Eternity; yes, I know that Pillars is a CRPG) fall into this.

They've drawn plenty of systems from the competition, believe it or not.