Red Mage "better"??

[Gruntler]

Corps and Displacement were designed to deal oGCD damage because that's how the devs saw players were using jobs (see MNKs with Shoulder Tackle, BRDs with Repelling Shot)

Your argument would hold more weight if you would remember that Stormblood, where Displacement was introduced, was also the patch where damage was removed from all other things like Repelling Shot.

SE saw disengagement tools, and removed damage from them so that they would only be used for their utility. The assumption then is that utility disengages would therefore have no damage and only utility.

RDM has damage on it, and later had damage increased on it, because it's meant to be damage that introduces a positional tension in the kit. You want to be close for, like, all the reasons, because that's how this game fn works, but one of our ogcds pushes us back. Then they introduced Engagement so that we'd have an option that alleviates some of that tension, at the cost of some small damage.

Trying to divine developer intent is surprisingly easy if you look at a broader picture. Having a disengage added with damage in the *same patch* that damage was taken off all other disengages, should tell you that the intent for Disengage is different than the others. The message should be loud and clear. People have asked for that Disengage to have the damage removed specific to make it that utility that you want, and SE's response was to up the damage and add a second damage tool to use when you can't use it.

You can pretend it's for zipping out of melee all you want, but SE's been sending messages for two years that it's not their intent.

* The sad thing is that FFXIV turned RDM into a turret, and people think that's what it's supposed to be. It's supposed to combine sword and magic into something more, not spend the bulk of gameplay spamming spells and jump into melee for only 3 GCDs before scurrying back to the back line like good little casters.

The funny thing is, if you actually played it optimally, it's not a turret, and the design lets you not play it this way. You've locked yourself into a mode of thinking that's caused you to simultaneously want to play the job in a way that mixes melee and magic (which you do do, in optimal play) and believe that the design is for the non-optimal play, where you're standing around like a turret.

It's hard to argue with someone on design intent when they're not playing the job the way it was designed.