Thought about RDM's utility

[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.

[Archwizard]

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.

[and so on]

Sure. And the act of putting Verraise on a cooldown in itself addresses that, since the availability of an instant Verraise would be equal to Swiftcast-Raises for other casters.
At least in the vacuum where other casters don't pop other CDs to cast additional Raises quickly or for reduced cost.
It doesn't actually dismiss the possibility of giving it an additional charge, particularly when strictly limiting our Raise ability to a cooldown bears its own potential tuning knob (ie adjusting the cooldown to, say, 90-120 sec while still retaining 2 charges; still fairly reasonable without being crippling, and enough to call it an alternative to what SMN currently brings without being worthless).

Continued non-sequitur:

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.

And I challenge you to name one that could not fit just as well (if not better) in the hands of one of those melee-oriented Mage-Knight hybrid jobs I mentioned.
The combination of sword and magic is something that has potential, maybe, but either way it lacks the precedence that your signature implies with statements like "It's supposed to be this instead." Supposed to according to... your headcanon?
How is one player's headcanon any more valid than another player's, much less a dev's?

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.

And personally I'm not against RDM gaining similar skills here -- in fact I've suggested as much many times. However, to nebulously state that 11's ideas "should be built upon" without any mention of how to do so in a way that would have separated it from its contemporary Rune Fencer comes out as a lofty demand with no thought towards practical application. Hell, you've said nothing about why such expansion would be incompatible with the base we already have in 14!

I could just as much argue that such skills could easily be considered as the results of combining White and Black Magic! Black Magic has largely become more selfish and personal damage-oriented over the years (often to make way for Time or Green Magic as a group-buffing tree) while White Magic has always been largely a supportive role (here represented as almost entirely raw healing power with little other utility). Red Mages, being not limited to the damage-aversion of White Mages or utility-aversion of Black Mages, could easily combine the abilities of the two to create elemental damage buffs for the party, or barriers that instantly counterattack, or curses that heal attackers.
That, however, comes from under the purview of its role as a spellcaster.
(Besides, I'm fairly certain that Embolden was the devs' attempt to provide an En-spell in the absence of an elemental wheel, particularly when it was released in an era where all melee jobs provided vulnerability debuffs to physical damage types but only SMN had a magic damage buff.)

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).

Why should that matter? It's become enough of a staple for the job identity since that we use it here. Given the complete dearth of entries featuring the RDM between V and XI because of the inability to min-max exactly your hybrid fantasy, that's the most iconic ability to debut with the job. Without it, you would never have wanted a RDM versus a pure healer or pure damage-caster.

oversused "mage" argument

Was wondering where that would rear its ugly head.

Dismissively saying it's "oversused" [sic] doesn't actually invalidate the point being made. Or perhaps it never dawned that maybe the reason it's overused in your eyes is because this is the general consensus towards your argument, which you've otherwise made no effort to dismantle beyond thinly-veiled sass?

The point I was trying to make is that SE has provided several different job archetypes over the years, and while many of them have some degree of overlap or are straight-upgrades to one another, they've been surprisingly clear about the distinction between "Mage who uses both White and Black spells (but lower ranked, with other stats to compensate, including in melee areas)" versus "Knight who employs Combat Magic", particularly when the latter can just as well describe the NIN or SAM we have now.

[Duelle]

And the act of putting Verraise on a cooldown in itself addresses that, since the availability of an instant Verraise would be equal to Swiftcast-Raises for other casters. At least in the vacuum where other casters don't pop other CDs to cast additional Raises quickly or for reduced cost.

Outside that vacuum you run into the possibility of Swiftcast being on cooldown (from what I'm told, SMN uses Swiftcast as part of their rotation), making SMN's contribution effectively nil. In that scenario the advantage still goes to RDM.

It doesn't actually dismiss the possibility of giving it an additional charge, particularly when strictly limiting our Raise ability to a cooldown bears its own potential tuning knob (ie adjusting the cooldown to, say, 90-120 sec while still retaining 2 charges; still fairly reasonable without being crippling, and enough to call it an alternative to what SMN currently brings without being worthless).

I might be willing to go with a 120s cooldown on Verraise, though overall it still feels like an arbitrary exception.

I guess the best way to explain this is that changing battle rezzes for DPS across the board gives every raid the same emergency button (i.e "you get one chance to salvage your run and if you screw up a second time, you wipe"), whereas you want to give raids different emergency buttons. That's the part that makes little sense to me.

Since we're keeping this going:

The combination of sword and magic is something that has potential, maybe, but either way it lacks the precedence that your signature implies with statements like "It's supposed to be this instead." Supposed to according to... your headcanon?

Ignoring your appeal to authority (because the FFXIV devs are absolutely infallible), it boils down to looking at the elements that make up the job and what makes sense given that knowledge. If you tell me a class is built on a combination of sword and spells through concept and aesthetic (RDM), then I'm going to expect to see that well-represented in gameplay. I can understand if there's limits or things that can't be done in one specific medium/genre, but that can only be taken so far.

And you can't call it my headcanon when the idea sprouted from SE's own games. While FFXI helped the concept evolve, RDM was always the FF series' original hybrid. You can't even say this is something only I wanted, as there were also threads asking for a RDM with melee & spell mechanics (partly to avoid Refresh-botting, partly because the sword should not collect dust) going as far back as the beta to ARR.

And personally I'm not against RDM gaining similar skills here -- in fact I've suggested as much many times. However, to nebulously state that 11's ideas "should be built upon" without any mention of how to do so in a way that would have separated it from its contemporary Rune Fencer comes out as a lofty demand with no thought towards practical application.

Well, since you were nice enough to ask, assuming we want to go with sword enchanting as a mechanic for RDM, you can go the route of building a resource that can be spent piecemeal on sword enchants. An alternative would be combo bonuses where following a spell with a specific sword strike grants an enspell buff that lasts for something like 20-30s.

Assuming you want melee & magic mechanics, you can go the way of weaponskills granting RNG procs for instant spells, melee skills granting a stacking buff that reduces cast time of the next spell, or melee strikes building a resource that allows certain spells to be cast instantly. To ensure the rotation between sword and spells is followed, have melee strikes gain a secondary effect if used after a spell, or have spells apply a short debuff that increases damage taken from your melee skills.

Mind you that neither of the above are mutually exclusive, but given the FFXVI developers' understandable aversion to button bloat, there's that to keep in mind as well.

As for Rune Fencer, considering the concept of the job (cast Flare Sword => whack away at target), sky's the limit with what you can do with it. A long time ago I suggested having it brand enemies using sword skills and then doing something with said brands to deal damage. An alternative would be charging their blade with elemental runes and once the runes have grown strong enough (what I called "maturing") spend the runes on elemental sword skills. Yet another alternative would be making them a tank that uses elemental runes on themselves to generate aggro and deal damage, or elemental shields.

Hell, you've said nothing about why such expansion would be incompatible with the base we already have in 14!

In order for melee to have a bigger role in the current design, you'd need to:

- Adjust how mana is consumed (you can't automatically consume mana like the current design without adding a second melee combo)
- Adjust how mana is generated (either remove mana gains from everything but Verfire/Verstone/Verthunder/Veraero or make melee strikes generate mana)
- Change melee skill and spell potencies (buff melee skills, nerf spells)
- Create an incentive to use melee skills outside of 80/80 (or de-emphasize the use of Jolt so that it doesn't eclipse the melee skills)
- Throw in a mechanic that ties sword skills and spells (sword combo lets you cast a spell instantly)

All of this is very doable (in fact, most of these come from a thread I made shortly before Stormblood launched). It's also very unlikely because the devs said they wouldn't do an overhaul again after WAR during ARR.

Besides, I'm fairly certain that Embolden was the devs' attempt to provide an En-spell in the absence of an elemental wheel, particularly when it was released in an era where all melee jobs provided vulnerability debuffs to physical damage types but only SMN had a magic damage buff.

Embolden was more an excuse to say "hey look, you have party utility!" than anything else. Their attempt at enspells came via the enhanced melee combo. The live letter after the reveal had Yoshida say as much (since he referred to the combo as the 魔法剣 or "spellblade" combo).

Why should that matter?

Because without Dualcast RDM would not have been in FFV. It wasn't a natural element of the job, and instead something pulled out of the ether. If delay reduction between spells cast had been a thing for RDM since the first Final Fantasy game (like maybe spells cast by a RDM always go first in an attack turn), I could have been convinced that it's just natural progression for the job. That, however, was never the case.

Dismissively saying it's "oversused" [sic] doesn't actually invalidate the point being made.

If you want to discuss points connected to RDM's design and concepts, I'm all ears. Using the mage argument basically means you have no real points, as that argument is used in bad faith to try to kill the discussion.

"Mage who uses both White and Black spells (but lower ranked, with other stats to compensate, including in melee areas)" versus "Knight who employs Combat Magic"

What I'm arguing for doesn't move RDM into the latter. If anything, it's essentially the former but actually putting the entire concept to work. Bonus being that it'd be true to how the job is presented in-world for once. FFXI had RDM as more than just mere mages, making the player want to be like Rainemard (especially once you meet him during Wings of the Goddess) instead of the Refresh-bot that hangs in the back lines. Likewise, FFXIV has the whole crimson duelist thing but then gives us gameplay where the sword is an afterthought. I get that SE has a track record for pulling crap like this, but that stopped being funny at around the time of Vision of Abyssea.

[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.

[Archwizard]

Outside that vacuum you run into the possibility of Swiftcast being on cooldown (from what I'm told, SMN uses Swiftcast as part of their rotation), making SMN's contribution effectively nil. In that scenario the advantage still goes to RDM.

Once every several minutes on average, sure.
It largely depends on the needs of the raid and the rate of dying. If players are not dying, or are dying as quickly as/less often than Swiftcast/a charge of Verraise comes off cooldown, the difference in value is moot. If players are dying more often than Swiftcast/Verraise comes off cooldown, the RDM is only at an advantage in the sweet spot where only exactly one extra charge is needed, after which his contribution becomes not just effectively but literally nil.
Outside of Swiftcast, with one reserve charge it's a case where it's much more arguable whether RDM truly is at the maximum advantage (versus far and away being the best rezzer now), since once that extra charge is spent, you're out unlike a SMN or other healer who can still fullcast Raise at-will... and that's continuing to assume a 1 minute charge time to match Swiftcast.
And that SMN would even continue to have Raise, which is a separate argument entirely.

Ignoring your appeal to authority (because the FFXIV devs are absolutely infallible), it boils down to looking at the elements that make up the job and what makes sense given that knowledge. If you tell me a class is built on a combination of sword and spells through concept and aesthetic (RDM), then I'm going to expect to see that well-represented in gameplay. I can understand if there's limits or things that can't be done in one specific medium/genre, but that can only be taken so far.

And you can't call it my headcanon when the idea sprouted from SE's own games. While FFXI helped the concept evolve, RDM was always the FF series' original hybrid. You can't even say this is something only I wanted, as there were also threads asking for a RDM with melee & spell mechanics (partly to avoid Refresh-botting, partly because the sword should not collect dust) going as far back as the beta to ARR.

You're sliding away from the actual point though. My concern isn't the validity of such desires, but the assertion of the statement that the job is "supposed to" match them just because that thing's what players wanted it to be when we have no evidence it matches up with dev intent.
Your use of "supposed to" is a giveaway that you got your hopes up -- like a kid ripping open packages on Christmas morning only to be disappointed an expensive gift from Santa was "supposed to" be under the tree -- but its literal phrasing implies that the devs were ever bound to your design, which is patently untrue.

Sure, the devs are fallible, but you can't state they made a mistake as a matter of fact just because you're dissatisfied with what was delivered, particularly when many players are either satisfied with what was released or optimistic about the base design.

Well, since you were nice enough to ask, assuming we want to go with sword enchanting as a mechanic for RDM, you can go the route of building a resource that can be spent piecemeal on sword enchants. An alternative would be combo bonuses where following a spell with a specific sword strike grants an enspell buff that lasts for something like 20-30s.

Assuming you want melee & magic mechanics, you can go the way of weaponskills granting RNG procs for instant spells, melee skills granting a stacking buff that reduces cast time of the next spell, or melee strikes building a resource that allows certain spells to be cast instantly. To ensure the rotation between sword and spells is followed, have melee strikes gain a secondary effect if used after a spell, or have spells apply a short debuff that increases damage taken from your melee skills.

Mind you that neither of the above are mutually exclusive, but given the FFXVI developers' understandable aversion to button bloat, there's that to keep in mind as well.

[...] What I'm arguing for doesn't move RDM into ["Knight who employs Combat Magic"]. If anything, it's essentially ["Mage who uses both White and Black spells (but lower ranked, with other stats to compensate, including in melee areas)"] but actually putting the entire concept to work.

Here's the thing though: Mechanically, you've just designed a melee job. Not "a caster DPS who also uses melee in near-equal shares", literally a melee job that punctuates combos with spells.

Sure, maybe every other attack or so is arbitrarily designed to have a range, but the same could be said of NIN mudras, DRG dives or any tank's MP skills; nothing is actually compelling you to back up when a spell comes up in the rotation, and you would functionally never want to back off unless compelled by encounter mechanics, making the act of giving the spells a range niche at best and largely flavor at worst. Ultimately you're not only at the greatest advantage when dug into melee range, but literally unable to use most of your spells in the first place without being close enough to charge them with your melee.
It's a core melee job in Int gear (and even that would be a point of contention).

In other words, you've flipped the equation exactly on its head, not "balanced" it by any stretch.

Now, maybe that's your intent, but as I've previously explained, the devs have already made several melee jobs who alternate magic, and it's a separate archetype. If I wanted to play a melee with magic finishers, I would just play NIN, or hold out for RUN.

In order for melee to have a bigger role in the current design, you'd need to:

- Adjust how mana is consumed (you can't automatically consume mana like the current design without adding a second melee combo)
- Adjust how mana is generated (either remove mana gains from everything but Verfire/Verstone/Verthunder/Veraero or make melee strikes generate mana)
- Change melee skill and spell potencies (buff melee skills, nerf spells)
- Create an incentive to use melee skills outside of 80/80 (or de-emphasize the use of Jolt so that it doesn't eclipse the melee skills)
- Throw in a mechanic that ties sword skills and spells (sword combo lets you cast a spell instantly)

All of this is very doable (in fact, most of these come from a thread I made shortly before Stormblood launched). It's also very unlikely because the devs said they wouldn't do an overhaul again after WAR during ARR.

I wouldn't say it's unlikely at all, just unlikely to happen overnight exactly the way you dictated. I could see many of these being taken as directions for advancements of the job in future expansions, and in fact we've already seen a slow creep in that direction even with what little we gained in Shadowbringers. Mana generation rates and melee skill emphasis were increased with the introduction of Scorch, while Reprise and the buff to Manafication made us more liberal with Mana spending outside of the 80/80 combo.
Besides, ShB literally overhauled WHM, AST and BRD. Never say never, particularly with statements made a half decade ago.

If delay reduction between spells cast had been a thing for RDM since the first Final Fantasy game (like maybe spells cast by a RDM always go first in an attack turn), I could have been convinced that it's just natural progression for the job. That, however, was never the case.

And on the other hand, the "combination of sword and magic into something more" wasn't in the original Final Fantasy either -- at least not in a manner that set Red Mage's use of spell and blade apart from Knight and Ninja's access to magic. In fact, the concept of adding elemental enhancements to weapons through magic wasn't introduced until FF4 with Cid's Engineering, and wasn't attributed to a job until... ah.
FF5.
Just like Dualcast.

If you want to discuss points connected to RDM's design and concepts, I'm all ears. Using the mage argument basically means you have no real points, as that argument is used in bad faith to try to kill the discussion.

It's only made in "bad faith" if used in the same dishonest manner as a common troll. Given I'm still yammering on about it, I think I've demonstrated at this point that my backing of this point is as genuine as my belief that you've misconstrued the point of the job. T'is a hill I will die on.

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.

And on the other hand:
- Much like the devs in FF5 and FF11, I made a distinction multiple times (including in the section you quoted) between a Red Mage and a Spellblade-archetype, and Celes is literally called a Rune Knight with access to one healing spell. It's telling that you didn't point to an example like Terra, whose repertoire much better balances damage and healing like a classical Red Mage, and whose primary weapons are even small swords.
- Implying a Red Mage is a melee-centric job just because it can equip a mace is like implying a White Mage is melee-centric because it could wield hammers in FF1. But not to be accused of another "bad faith" argument, the Red Battlemage has by and large lower LP costs on spell upgrades than on weapon and armor upgrades.
- The Lightning example further reinforces my point. The most distinctive thing about her kit is that her faster attack animations and greater access to innate Haste skills gives her the functional equivalent of a Chainspell element (as close as you can get in a game where all spells are already instant), making her exactly the kind of turret we're discussing.