Red Mage

[Arkanethered]

The way I see Red Mage getting in is as a Battle Mage. AKA, a mage that focuses on being directly in your face rather then spell slinging from a distance. I even suggested to SE that the Red Mage spells be melee based, like conjuring up flaming pillars as an AoE blast surrounding the Red Mage, with no cast time.

"But but but! That would just make it another melee DPS!"

You pretty much just described ninja with a new paint job.

[TruebladeNuke]

You pretty much just described ninja with a new paint job.

I didn't respond to this earlier due to the thread going down through the pages anyway and because I didn't think of any good response at the time, but since this thread is now back up here...

If we're going to go by the paint job logic, you may as well extend that to all the melee DPS roles. By adding in all the details, you'll see each one is different:

DRG: Can give a debuff to the enemy and give extra piercing damage buff for both themselves and BRDs.
NIN: Can give a slashing damage buff to themselves, PLDs, and WARs.
MNK: Can decrease the enemy INT via Dragon Kick, and decreases the target's Blunt resistance. (Only works well for themselves right now as I'm aware)

And that wasn't even all the details. Now lets boil away all those little details and get to the point. What's the number one thing they all have in common with each other?

"ZERG RUSH THEIR FACEZ AND KILL THEM ALL! KEKEKEK!" (With proper DPS rotations preferably)

Seriously though, that's the one thing they all have in common with each other. They kill. Up close. Just like that. In this regard, each and every melee DPS role could be described as another melee DPS role with a different coat of paint. So I don't see how Red Mage should be deterred from getting in just because my earlier description example of how a Red Mage could work sounded similar to Ninjas.

Besides, Red Mage would probably bring a different utility debuff to put on the enemy that would make other DPS roles approve of the Red Mage putting up said debuff on the enemy... or even the Healers and Tanks for that matter.