Thought about RDM's utility

[Duelle]

Raise isn't a caster role skill.

Giving caster DPS the ability to battle rez in controlled amounts wouldn't be a bad thing. I'd personally go for introducing "DPS raise" as an ability on a 60s cooldown (subsequently remove Verraise and SMN's access to Resurrect).

When we got our third caster, it got a raise because it’s part of its job identity.

Raise may be a white magic spell, but it is not a defining aspect of RDM.

BLM does not need a raise, it wouldn’t work with its kit at all, Swiftcast is needed in its rotation and to help maintain AF/Enochian, and it has unlimited MP.

Making it a role ability on a 60s cooldown means MP is not a factor.

PS: Job homogenization is a non-threat, as BLM still has Enochian/Polyglot/Astral Fire/Umbral Ice, SMN would still have trances and aetheflow, and RDM would still have spell spam & the glowy toy sword.

[Seraphor]

Giving caster DPS the ability to battle rez in controlled amounts wouldn't be a bad thing. I'd personally go for introducing "DPS raise" as an ability on a 60s cooldown (subsequently remove Verraise and SMN's access to Resurrect).
Raise may be a white magic spell, but it is not a defining aspect of RDM.
Making it a role ability on a 60s cooldown means MP is not a factor.

PS: Job homogenization is a non-threat, as BLM still has Enochian/Polyglot/Astral Fire/Umbral Ice, SMN would still have trances and aetheflow, and RDM would still have spell spam & the glowy toy sword.

So what version should ALL casters get? Role skills at all are a bad idea.
Give Healers their own versions of Esuna back please.
Physical Ranged already have their own versions of a party defense buff, give every job its unique skills please.

Why not give SMN a 60s CD Resurrection, and give RDM a 60s CD Verraise with 2 charges.
Differentiate it a bit. BLM doesn't need one at all.

[Duelle]

So what version should ALL casters get?

Assuming you're talking about caster DPS, I'd suggest a simple word like Recovery or Arise.

Assuming you're talking about all casters as a whole, Raise becoming a role action for healers (spell on the GCD with an 8s cast time), and Resurrect becoming a role action for caster DPS (instant cast, 60s cooldown).

Why not give SMN a 60s CD Resurrection, and give RDM a 60s CD Verraise with 2 charges.

That sounds too arbitrary for my tastes.

[Seraphor]

Assuming you're talking about caster DPS, I'd suggest a simple word like Recovery or Arise.

Assuming you're talking about all casters as a whole, Raise becoming a role action for healers (spell on the GCD with an 8s cast time), and Resurrect becoming a role action for caster DPS (instant cast, 60s cooldown).
That sounds too arbitrary for my tastes.

Arbitrary? For Red Mage's identity as a support dps with white magic? For its reputation as a rez bot?
2 charges would allow it to be more effective at raising than Summoner, yet still put a limit on it.

Everyone gets Raise?
What about Ascend, Resurrection, Verraise?
No. More. Role. Skills.

[Duelle]

Arbitrary? For Red Mage's identity as a support dps with white magic? For its reputation as a rez bot?
2 charges would allow it to be more effective at raising than Summoner, yet still put a limit on it.

Giving RDM two rez charges is arbitrary, as there's little reason to do so aside from wanting to keep the rezbot meme alive.

Everyone gets Raise?

Might wanna reword that, as my first reaction was "WAR, DRK and DRG are getting Raise too?".

Sure, in terms of thematics it's nice to have multiple versions of the same spell. That said, little (if anything) would be lost in making the healer rez spell Raise and implementing it as a role action. Adloquium, Essential Dignity, Cure, Assize, Benediction, the lilies, and tarot cards still exist.

[Archwizard]

Giving RDM two rez charges is arbitrary, as there's little reason to do so aside from wanting to keep the rezbot meme alive.

I disagree.

The current "rezbot" mentality features an interesting intersection of two mindsets. One, which I assume falls closer to dev intent as seen with the SMN, is that giving a DPS role access to a rez tool is useful for if the healer(s) -- otherwise the only other access to a rez -- falls in battle. The other, from a higher-end player perspective, is that the RDM's comparable access to raising makes them first priority to perform raises on the party, since their MP is otherwise expendable compared to a healer's own and they waste fewer GCDs on each one.

Sure, the devs could just give insta-Verraise a 1 min CD and go home, safe in the knowledge that RDM is no longer Swiftraising more frequently than SMN or any healer has access to Swiftcast... except that A) it would be the only rez-accessing job restricted to a cooldown, and B) that's a drastic change to the RDM status quo.

Giving it two charges still keeps it restrictive (especially since spending both charges at once means you have to wait 2 minutes to get them both back), but the extra charge isn't just a gimmick or consolation. If the RDM is expected by their raid team to have expendable raises for DPS and by the devs to have emergency raises for priority targets, being able to keep an extra raise in their back pocket for a rainy day allows the caster to accomplish both goals, so long as they remain tactical in their deployment.

Unrelated note, I disagree highly with your signature. RDM has never been a melee-centric or melee-heavy job, and in fact usually spends more time casting in the entries for which it is available; the fact that it has better melee equipment or physical stats in older entries is, for the most part, consolation for limiting their access to stronger spells. The Red Mage has only ever been about combining White and Black magic into something more, with swordplay being largely vestigial; in fact the "iconic" use of a rapier is actually quite recent in series history, around FF11 I think. By comparison, it's been a "turret" as long as it has had Dualcast, introduced in FF5.
For a job focused on combining sword and sorcery, you may mean Rune Fencer, Spellblade or Mystic Knight. But first and foremost, the Red Mage has always been... a Mage.

[Duelle]

One, which I assume falls closer to dev intent as seen with the SMN, is that giving a DPS role access to a rez tool is useful for if the healer(s) fall in battle. The other, from a higher-end player perspective, is that the RDM's comparable access to raising makes them first priority to perform raises on the party, since their MP is otherwise expendable compared to a healer's own and they waste fewer GCDs on each one.

While you're not wrong in your assertions, you seem to be downplaying the effect battle rezzes have on the meta and how they affect perception of the jobs involved. The devs are treating battle rezzes in a way that seems to be detrimental to RDM's (and to a lesser extent, SMN) place in the meta, and this is exacerbated by the knowledge that RDM can bypass Verraise's long cast time because of how Dualcast was implemented.

Now combine this with the thread about RDM not being wanted in PF groups because of their lower DPS (which, again, is presumably thanks to Verraise), and you can probably see my reasoning. Killing the rezbot meme means that when RDMs ask for things (like higher DPS output so that they don't get excluded from PF groups), the naysayers have one less thing to bring up (they'd likely fall back to Vercure and the job's lack of "complex" mechanics, which are harder to quantify and thus easier to ignore). And to do so you need to fundamentally change how raises are handled by DPS classes.

A) it would be the only rez-accessing job restricted to a cooldown

As I'm very much in favor of changing stuff across the board, this part is a non-factor. In situations like this, you want the affected roster to all play by the same rules instead of making unnecessary exceptions.

B) that's a drastic change to the RDM status quo.

You say that like it's a bad thing.

If the RDM is expected by their raid team to have expendable raises for DPS and by the devs to have emergency raises for priority targets, being able to keep an extra raise in their back pocket for a rainy day allows the caster to accomplish both goals, so long as they remain tactical in their deployment.

Battle rezzes are generally meant to try to prevent a wipe by bringing back someone that is crucial to raid survival. It's supposed to be a second chance with a big "now don't screw up again" attached to it. Having "disposable raises" undermines that entirely.

Non-sequitur:

Unrelated note, I disagree highly with your signature. RDM has never been a melee-centric or melee-heavy job, and in fact usually spends more time casting in the entries for which it is available; the fact that it has better melee equipment or physical stats in older entries is, for the most part, consolation for limiting their access to stronger spells.

I never said RDM was melee-centric. What I did say is that RDM is a combination of sword and spell, and representing that combination is very important. The console FFs kept the three aspects of the job segregated from each other (largely because of turn-based combat), but a modern MMO doesn't have that limit. There's several mechanics that could be used to help represent that combination of trades that the were not possible in the turn-based games.

The Red Mage has only ever been about combining White and Black magic into something more, with swordplay being largely vestigial; in fact the "iconic" use of a rapier is actually quite recent in series history, around FF11 I think.

There was no combining of anything in the older games. RDM was used as a stand-in for whatever it was you were missing (hence why there are FF1 runs where RDM is the healer since the group has no white mage). As I said above, by design the three aspects of RDM (sword, white magic, black magic) had no interaction with each other, so it was a matter of weaker cures being better than having no cures at all.

Funnily enough, FFXI was the game that tried having RDM combine their trades with Enspells (which allowed auto-attacks to deal additional elemental damage) and Phalanx (which reduced damage taken and stacked with Protect). This was a step in the right direction towards (IMO) the natural evolution of a hybrid like RDM.

Despite the fact that RDM in FFXI was boned by several factors, that one step taken with Enspells and Phalanx is very significant and something that should be built upon.

By comparison, it's been a "turret" as long as it has had Dualcast, introduced in FF5.

Dualcast as a RDM job command was pretty much exclusive to FF5 before the offshoots, and the only reason that job command exists was because Sakaguchi & Co needed a gimmick to get players to level and master RDM (considering Dualcast + Black Magic or Summons was a popular setup, it was a strong gimmick but one that RDM benefited the least from).

For a job focused on combining sword and sorcery, you may mean Rune Fencer, Spellblade or Mystic Knight.

This isn't much of an argument, as the combination that I speak of is more than just enchanting your sword and whacking away (though it is a single step in the right direction). Beyond melee strikes with particle effects, your average hybrid also has mechanics that combine magic and melee: melee skills weakening the target to magic spells, magic spells weakening the enemy to melee skills, melee skills making a follow-up spell instant (bonus if the player has to decide to use that instant cast for a damaging spell or a healing spell), melee skills following a spell having a secondary effect. This all goes well beyond the scope of Mystic Knight/Rune Fencer's concept (though as FFXI has proven, the concept does have directions in which it can grow).

Compare the aforementioned gameplay and mechanics to one where RDM has to stand in one spot spamming magic for 18 GCDs (assuming no Verfire/Verstone procs) before wasting a gap closer to use 3 melee skills + an instant nuke before wasting a gap opener and going back to spamming spells. Where the melee combo feels tacked on and looks like it was almost grudgingly put in because the job would otherwise be as insulting as Revelation Online's Swordmage.

oversused "mage" argument

Was wondering where that would rear its ugly head.

[wereotter]

Unrelated note, I disagree highly with your signature. RDM has never been a melee-centric or melee-heavy job, and in fact usually spends more time casting in the entries for which it is available; the fact that it has better melee equipment or physical stats in older entries is, for the most part, consolation for limiting their access to stronger spells. The Red Mage has only ever been about combining White and Black magic into something more, with swordplay being largely vestigial; in fact the "iconic" use of a rapier is actually quite recent in series history, around FF11 I think. By comparison, it's been a "turret" as long as it has had Dualcast, introduced in FF5.
For a job focused on combining sword and sorcery, you may mean Rune Fencer, Spellblade or Mystic Knight. But first and foremost, the Red Mage has always been... a Mage.

Only a handful of games in the series even have red mages, so your assertion that red mage has never been a melee job (then proving that it has been a melee job) seems to only be thinking of one title as the end all and be all of the job.

Consider the full history of the job:
FF1: all-rounder job limited in access to higher level spells with fewer cast charges than its black and white mage counterparts. Had access to medium weight armor and swords.
FF2: non-existent
FF3: starter job that was outclassed by other jobs pretty quickly. Acted similarly to FF1 in that it had access to a few spells and more swords and armor.
FF4: non-existent
FF5: continued the trend of being able to use low-level magic alongside being a melee fighter. Unlocked the Dualcast ability that helped red mage keep up with magic damage of other casting jobs, and being even more powerful when used by other dedicated casters.
FF6: non-existent, though one could consider Celes a red mage archetype. She learns magic naturally, but most of her spells are weaker than Terra's in the long run, and is highly competent with a sword.
FF7: non-existent
FF8: non-existent
FF9: no playable red mages exist
FF10: non-existent
FF11: this is the title that you seem to be referencing, and I expect is where you are trying to distinguish red mages from the other jobs. I never played the title, but from what I understand while being the most recent implementation, it is also the outlier of what the job is.
FF12: non-existent in the original. The Zodiac Job release continues the trend of giving the character a wide variety of spells, along with some unique magic, and includes a mace and shield as weapons.
FF13: Lightning is very close to being a red mage, and her initial paradigms include offensive caster, healer, and melee fighter, all of which she is equally competent at.
FF14: this game
FF15: non-existent

So to that end, explicit red mages, and if we expand the definition to include Celes and Lightning, have always been competent fighters with a sword. Depending on your playstyle, it's also highly likely that a player would rely on sword attacks first and magic as a backup for enemies like flan that need magical damage or as a backup healer. Just as likely as someone who views them as a caster first and melee fighter once their mana runs out.