Next new job better be heals

[Claire_Pendragon]

some combinations make more sense, such as casters (having actual casts) not having to restart their casts if their target moves out of melee range, or have more reason to function more differently as a role, i.e. differently enough to warrant the label.

Having a cast bar is not required for "Magical Ranged". Its a cliche we are used to, and dont question. (Mostly to do with "fairness" arguments, which dont apply to 14. look at physical ranged as an example why) Also, "Casting" as a mechanic, is the playstyle. But this also applies to jobs with short buff durations, that wear off when uptime cant be maintained. Look at RDM in comparison to just about any other DPS that needs a target to hit, in order to keep their buffs up. (RDMs bars dont deplete) No matter if you have cast bars, or not, your "role" is to DPS, while staying further away. (be it due to mechanics to make u get away from the boss, or forcing a melee to ruin uptime to do said "ranged" mechanic) This issue is a result from designing short duration buffs around the requirement to have a target. Not if someone is a caster, melee, or physical ranged.

Ranged and Melee are a sufficient distinction because of how raid mechanics interact.

While I agree, this is mostly true, due to what I just mentioned about how the jobs were designed to require a target for uptime. (You can make alternatives to keep uptime, and it doesnt require giving melee ranged attacks. Simplistic example, a buff they can use that gives a stacking buff, to increase the dmg of the next GCD (on the GCD) if the stack number is low enough, its a waste of a GCD, so its only DPS neutral when the amount of time spent away from the boss was required by the boss.) But Im fine with making savage content require melee or ranged mechanics, which is why my post broke melee and ranged into 2 sub categories.

imagine a Magical Melee. Given what is necessary to function as a Melee, how diverse can that Magical Melee be? How does it keep from just being a NIN (already arguably a hybrid in terms of damage types and casting), a SAM (already a hybrid in terms of casting), a Monk (already has nominally 'elemental' stances), or DRG (which had outright magic damage in HW Geirskogul and has it still in DFD), "but with more of its damage being magic"?

Your statement is correct, but I feel its trying to be misleading. (1) We have no melee who has "no positionals". (Which is a mechanic to prevent them from being too simplistic) (2) Cast bars were made for casters to also prevent them from being too easy.(and HW BRD+MCH for the same reason) To take a page from your book, give a magical melee cast bars for all, or 90%, of their attacks, and remove the positinals. (You can also make an inverted SAM, with a single positional, instead of a single cast bar, for one of these new magical melee jobs) HWs mistake was giving MCH and BRD such a long cast time. They should have had 0.5s cast bars. This was short enough to weave oGCDs easier, and allow them to be extremely mobile. (And like casters, given something equivalent to swift cast, but for maybe the next 2-3 GCDs instead) This of course means they need more multitasking, to make up for the easier to use cast bars. (Similar to how NIN had more multitasking to make up for its lesser amount of positionals at one time.)
Additionally you're saying the other melee jobs are casters due to their magical abilities, and we currently have 0 physical melee? Is RDM a melee for having a burst phase they use WSs in melee range for 3 seconds every once in awhile?Does this also mean that physical ranged are magical too, based on this logic? I know this isnt your point, but its an unnecessary additional bit, as it doesnt help your argument, nor counter mine.
Realistically they are grey zones, and the only way we can measure how to categorize them, is primarily based on "does the jobs mechanics require melee uptime?" followed by "does this raid require you to be in melee or ranged positions?" secondary. Which only has room for "Melee" or "Ranged". Physical or Magical cant be measured in a game that doesnt reward more or less dps based on damage type. They are functionally the same damage type.

Are mere aesthetics sufficient? And even if so, is it worth forcing all to be predominantly physical or magical? What happens to the jobs that step too much on the toes of "Magical Melee"? Do we remove TCJ from Ninja because it's too "caster-like"? Do we remove Iajutsu from SAM?

Aesthetics would be the last way to categorize them atm. But its still a strong and well desired category from players. This ends up being as important to players as glamours, and as important to combat as glamours. For the sake of identity, consideration should be given before giving magic or physical options to any job.
As for your question on NIN. Mudras are more of a mechanical gameplay idea, than a "Lets make a magic melee" idea. But it IS a great method to give "cast bars" to a melee (back when it was oGCD) but wasnt fully implemented in the best of ways, to fulfill this idea. Its current GCD version is as "caster like" as a MRD/WAR is. Comparing the Beast Gauge to MP, in how its used for spending points to cast spells like a WHM uses MP.
As for the spells magical animations being a grey area, those are mostly fine. (Yet again, I'd have to suggest the creators dont go overboard stepping on the toes of other possible classic FF jobs in aesthetics/feel) Unfortunately to answer this question in better detail, i'd have to give a much longer wall of text than I already am, about possible future jobs/roles, along with which features to give each job, to help give them unique identities. (even if that identity is being like another job, such as RDM being a little bit of a few jobs)

Let's consider the historical context as well:

• Lancer/Dragoon's unique armor class fit squarely between standard and tank-level passive mitigation, with none of this Tank Mastery nonsense to make it worth basically nothing. Heck, Lancer was originally Gridania's answer to needing a tank.
• The difference between Bard and BLM/SMN was arguably less about its mobility than the raid sustain it brought.
• Scouting differed from Striking in that, again, it brought unique utility -- recovery (single-target TP regeneration) and capitalization (Trick Attacks), and later enmity control (Shadewalker, Smokescreen).

Now, would the themes in each of those cases have been worth pursuing further?

• Can we even make use of a half-tank armor class, for instance? Raid design and enmity control thus far would indicate otherwise, but it's probably possible with less bloated tank passive mitigation and more defensive tools being allowed to DPS (in particular, Maiming users).
• Ranged's prior distinctions are completely gone, apart from "even more mobility (than is ever needed)".
• Scouting has lost all but one of its unique tools, which has itself been badly watered down.

(All this then leaves the question, if the distinct melee armor classes are vestigial, should we remedy the lack of identity across each armor class or just consolidate the armor classes...?)

Functionally, we have classes with varying degrees of functional reach and mobility, which ultimately amount to just one stat: uptime (including uptime provided for others through positional swaps you enable). (Nominal factors won't do here; one either has enough GCDs of Ranged spam on PLD to allow a melee to continue attacking while you sit where one would otherwise be out of range, or you have some percentage of that downtime filled, to proportionately lesser functional reach.)

Theres a lot said here that I dont feel is completely related to the subject matter, but to lightly address these different subjects, (1) we used to separate "selfish" and "Support" style DPS, Healers, and Tanks. Which I was mostly ok with, but felt some adjustments were needed (mostly in line with how DNC used a single target buff, so its easier to balance out the support difference) but this has nothing to do with "Should we add another physical ranged/magical caster" instead of a "Healer" or "Melee"? Its also not really related to how we separate physical and magical in a nonsensical way. The game currently doesnt recognize support vs selfish, despite the community does. (And i dont blame them, its normal)
(2) Scouting and Striking are gear types, not what each job offers. Those gear types dont effect one job over the other, in any real manor. They are just glamours. Im saying make NIN STR or make MNK DEX (I feel NIN to STR makes more sense based on current trends in the game, despite understanding why they picked DEX) But you also semi address this, so I'm confused as to why this is brought up.
(3) The DRG, Maiming gear, and "can we have a lesser geared tank?" bits are also weirdly placed in here. While unrelated, Ill address them mostly because Im obsessed with tanks, and possible ways to make tanks.
As it currently sits, SE has a VERY weird way of handling tanking and healing. Mostly due to constant bandaid patches to fix problems they didnt have foresight to prevent. Such as tank stance, rampart, sentinel, etc, all using -% dmg taken, rather than being based your own personal stats. Abilities like WARs "Foresight" which was +20% defense, were much more accurate to how mitigation should have been handled. Also, Thrill of Battle would have become broken too, if not addressed properly. This has also lead to SE wanting to allow healers to DPS more easily, but picking the most simplistic of routes to handle it.
So any arguments of tank balance that goes against the normal, is currently pointless. DRGs historically had platemail, and were essentially evasion(jump) tanks who didnt directly protect the group, other than be the last one standing, in which to revive the healers, and then keep the fight going. I also have no idea why they keep giving DRGs "lesser" armor, be it leather/chain, instead of platemail in the MMOs. The current version of 14 doesnt break DRG giving it platemail. (In 1.0 it barely helped me tank as LNC, since i practically died in a second of being hit by multiple mobs. The only reason I survived wasnt because of 2 healers spamming me, but because i was doing the entire groups worth of DPS multiplied by 6. Essentially I was taking out over 90% of the mobs HP in a single hit. The other DPS just had to land a single AoE, and the fight was over, and I was at single digit HP. Later when bosses were made, Id have to be overgeared to barely take the hits enough to be healed. Where as PLD and WAR didnt need anywhere near as much perfect gear.)

On a final side note, i agree that DNC should have been scouting, based on how things were at the time.