I posted a detailed build in the previous thread (and I was also annoyed at how the topic somehow meandered off to discussing Summoner...) maybe I'll repost it here maybe not, but I will mention here some points that I feel would be important to any Red Mage build.

First, if Red Mage is going to be anything other then a liability in melee it needs a powerful survival ability (but not so powerful that it breaks the job for other purposes). Red Mage needs to do more then just barely survive devastating AOE attacks as that would just produce a extra drain on the healer, and since it is unlikely that RDM would be a powerful DD job it pretty much needs to be able to take care of itself in order to be accepted in the front lines.

Second, a specific job role. In order to keep Red Mage from being pigeonholed into a single monotonous task (Refresh wh***) it needs to be designed to fill a specific role in parties, and it needs to be able to accomplish that role under any conditions (keep in mind the crowd control adjustments cover all traditional debuff spells).

Third and most importantly, it should be fun to play. Don't go adding a bunch of abilities that make sense for the job but require you to bend over backward while playing it to get the job to function properly. The abilities should flow together to create an enjoyable combat routine (not that it should be monotonous either), not a random button mashing mixup. (think about how you would lay out the abilities on your action bar and what if any conditions are needed to activate them)