Issues enjoying RDM

[Nalien]

My big issue is that the devs still seem to think that Verraise is a great enough utility to justify lower DPS.

Give Raise to all the casters;

Red Mage gets Verraise and Dualcast, for rapid Raise.
Summoner gets Flames of Rebirth, which Raises the target and does moderate Fire AoE damage around them, for not entirely DPS loss Raise.
Black Mage gets Walking Dead, which Raises players with the Walking Dead status effect, and needs to be dispelled the same as on Dark Knight (Necromancer theme was the only way I can think of making Raise work on Black Mage).
Blue Mage gets Reraise from Lost City (Hard).

Done. Now Raise isn't special utility for Red Mage which holds the Job back in other aspects, it's effectively a Healer/Caster role skill. Except it isn't a lame role skill, it's something that provides some level of class identity, which this game is increasingly desperately lacking.

I'm not sure if I'm alone in this; it was honestly a little demoralizing to look at my upcoming skills from 70 onward and realize that I wouldn't really be playing the class any differently than I was in Stormblood until the very end, and that it'd only add an extra attack to the chain, at that. Anyone else feel the same way?

The moment Red Mages Shadowbringer kit was announced I was incredibly disappointed. It really is a lackluster kit... I really want two things form Red Mage going forward;

A bit of an emphasis on the sword side of things. Reprise and Engagement almost provided that, but Reprise and Engagement are also things you really don't want to use all that much... A rework for the crystal swords gimmick would be nice too, I actually think that could have a gauge element applied to it. It's a fairly cool concept that's just wasted on a oGCD IMO, I'd rather have it as something to manage, perhaps with a visual element to it given Red Mage is one of the only Jobs with no visual "stance". Certainly the only caster, Black Mage has Umbral/Astral, Summoner has its pets, even Blue Mage has Moon Flute... Dragoon has Blood of the Dragon, Monk Greased Lightning, Ninja gets a shadowclone, Dark Knight has Fray and Darkside... All great visual effects for part of their Jobs rotations, and Red Mage has nadda... Spin some crystal swords around me like this is FFXV, that visual was perhaps the only good thing about that game after all...

A different way to look at the existing gauge. Right now it's fairly boring... There is an aspect they could expand on though, and that's the unbalancing of the gauge. Right now that's solely a punishment mechanic, but I think it would be interesting if it was something you intend to do for part of the Jobs rotation. A DoT, for example. Something you don't spam but need to reapply all the same. Make it a sword skill like Reprise that uses up Mana gauge, if you have too much White Mana, it applies Verwater, if you have too much Black Mana, it applies Verblizzard, with it costing a specific Mana to rebalance you (so if you apply Verwater, it costs White Mana to bring that down to rebalance). Then we have the exact same gauge, but we're using it in a new way.

[Aeducan]

Give Raise to all the casters;

Black Mage gets Walking Dead, which Raises players with the Walking Dead status effect, and needs to be dispelled the same as on Dark Knight (Necromancer theme was the only way I can think of making Raise work on Black Mage).

This has been said multiple times in the past but... BLM does NOT need Raise ability. If anything, SMN should loses its raise so casters dmg can be balanced properly and solidify RDM as the only DPS who can raise. I'd reckon RDM dmg will plummet in comparison to the other 2, I honestly have no idea how to balance Vercure/Raise properly because these are useless spells in normal/optimal situations but extremely useful in others, potentially saving the run. No other DPS has the capability to salvage a run as good as RDM, but that requires said run to be bad to begin with, which we don't want.

My issue with RDM is how the job plays. Plays basically the same throughout the journey with frosting at lv 70(68) Verholy/flare and cherry on top at 80. Not to mention multiple duplicate spells that do the same thing except type of mana generation that (again) plays the same from 50-80. The job itself flows well enough I suppose, a lot better than Tornado Kick and SSS at least. Personally though, there are better DPS for me to play regardless of dmg.

[Bacent]

If anything, SMN should loses its raise so casters dmg can be balanced properly and solidify RDM as the only DPS who can raise.

As long as Scholar is stuck with Summoner, they're always going to have raise. They get the spell as an Arcanist. Scholar isn't actually a Scholar until level 30 with the job stone. Right now you'd have to make Scholar get raise at the latest out of all healers, which would just be going back many steps. Remember when Leeches was level 40 but the other healers could remove debuffs at a much lower level?

[Archwizard]

Give Raise to all the casters

Here's the thing: That solves nothing.

The problem isn't that RDM is the only caster with Raise -- hell, SMN actually has it too. The only one this comes out to a benefit to is BLM, who is already in a good spot, and you don't need to give it a Raise to justify buffing everyone else.
Nor is the problem even that there is a "Raise Tax"; we all know regardless of Raise that BLM will be balanced higher due to lack of other utility, and the fact that raids need someone to focus single-target buffs on for max rDPS (where BLM is the only viable non-melee in that regard).

The problem... is that Raise is nowhere near as high value as the devs seem to think it's worth.

So, the general assumption a lot of players run with is that as raid groups advance out of the progression stages, the value of Raise gets lower and lower because people die less and less. Raise doesn't have a static value, and balancing a job around that means its value shifts, which means the value of RDM's utility goes down in favor of a more damage-heavy job. This assumption is true, historically speaking.
As was put to me recently, however, that leaves out one vital thing, particularly in the current tier of Savage content: If ever you need to Raise, you probably need or are about to wipe anyway. Even having Raise be Swift- or Dualcast would not help, because either too many existing mechanics require every player already be alive to prevent a wipe in fights with next to no recovery time (like Pulse of the Land, Paradise Regained, Black Smokers, Tsunami, Stormy Horizon, etc), or feature DPS checks which Weakness would already prevent you from beating anyway.

So we come out to two possibilities here.
One, that Raise should be considered to have zero damage value and those with it be balanced accordingly. The immediate argument becomes that Raise should be a role action for casters (so that in lower-end content a RDM/SMN doesn't push a BLM out for lacking Raise), but I also find that to be an unsatisfying option since it runs under an assumption that is fundamentally false, only situationally true.
Two, that Raise instead only occur the grander part of its damage "tax" on the caster if and when it's actually used. While this doesn't immediately lead into BLM getting a Raise, it does provide more options for those that do -- particularly RDM whose gimmick seems to be nigh-infinite access to it -- while leaving the leeway to increase their base damage and that BLM, being a job without a Raise, retains a higher ceiling. This is something that may largely be easier to implement, as SMN already uses a similar principle, often using Swiftcast as part of its rotation.

For example in this case: Put Verraise on a charge-based system for RDM, but have it share its CD with a damage skill of some variety -- particularly one that would greatly increase DPS value during one of the aforementioned DPS checks. In Savage raid compositions RDM could remain competitive by spending all charges on the damage skill, but would incur a penalty on their utility as a result. Likewise, in any queued content, you could simply hold Verraise if you don't trust your group, while still having the charge timer to decide if you want to risk for reward instead.