Red Mage: I am not a Back line class

[Klive]

Only FFXI has red mages as enfeebler. Last I heard, the arcanist was going to be our mage enfeelber. Anyways, Red Mages are known, in all except FFXI, as melee versatile casters that use weak black and white mage. They get abilities that give them quicker casting and double casting to compensate for their weaker spells.

I pulled this description from here http://finalfantasy.wikia.com/wiki/Red_Mage

Red Mages typically cast both Black and White Magic and can also wield swords and equip armor that normal Black and White Mages cannot. They are, in essence, among the more versatile characters of the series. However, their versatility comes at a high price: their stats are usually low, and they cannot cast higher level spells or use stronger equipment. They can learn many spells, but not the strongest, and equip some heavy armor, but not all of it. Thus, the Red Mage is a jack-of-all-trades, but a master of none. However, in certain games, Red Mages have a special ability such as Dualcast which boosts their spell casting efficiency.

I'm not saying the Red Mage shouldn't be an enfeebler mage/melee, I'm saying FF14 probably isn't going to copy FFXI.Our BLM and WHM copy more from FFIII than anything else; hence WHM having stone and wind magic. I would guess they are more likely to use that as a template over FFXI Red Mage.

EDIT:
FFXI is still going and people are still playing it. Probably wouldn't be in SE interests to copy an entire class/job from an MMO they still have going. Variety is probably a better direction between the two games.