I'd like more sword play from RDM in the future, melee and ranged

[Archwizard]

My concern with higher mana generation per spell is that it necessitates looking at the imbalance threshold between white and black mana. You can't increase mana generated without also removing or increasing the threshold, otherwise the job would go off-balance within the rotation instead of as a result of player carelessness. That, in turn, somewhat diminishes the whole point of maintaining balance.

Not necessarily - you'll note one of the suggestions I made was "multi-type Mana builders". Consider that aside from "Red Magic" focusing on spells that give a smaller amount of both types of Mana, we also have room for Ice and Water magic, two elements which are often thematically linked.

One suggestion I've made before (just as a spitball) was to make both spells share a proc, and have each spell generate a certain amount of their native Mana type and then buff the caster or debuff the target to give a bonus of that Mana when next casting the opposite spell, so that alternating between the two would cause each one to give an uneven amount of both types of Mana each cast, without thematically breaking either one or forcing them to be "Red Magic". No need to worry about exceeding the threshold amount if both ends rise.

If I'm reading this right, you're trying to tell me that weaponskills are not satisfying unless its glowy sword swings that are used once every 14-18 GCDs.

No, I'm saying weaponskills purely for the sake of having weaponskills would not be satisfying for a caster, period, and they need to go above and beyond to justify their place in the arsenal. The Balance Gauge addresses this by having them be powerful but infrequent attacks to build up to, rather than weak regular occurrences like you've been pressing for.

Freedom of mobility? People already stack behind bosses for most if not all content. The only place this might create a problem is in dungeons, and even there you're AoEing down everything and can plausibly stand in melee range.

Unless you're talking about bullet hell phases, adds, pads, safe zones, or any point where there's a player-targeted AoE marker to spread for. And that's just focusing on when the group is competent.

But sure, why even have ranged jobs or slidecasting, right? I mean you're already saying everyone should be in melee at nearly all times anyway.

Seriously, can I just address the hilarious ineptitude of the argument, that any time someone were to bring up having, say, Ley Lines as a group buff, the casters complain about people stacking too close to them, but bring that up for RDM being literally marked as a ranged job, "well everyone stacks anyway, casters better be auto-attacking between spells!" C'mon now. The only reason we're that close in the first place is for healing, and we have to make up for our cast times with the head start out of the group when the boss starts nuking.

Being able to offer some utility is nothing to scoff at. It doesn't factor much if things go perfectly, but the moments when it is useful are fairly satisfying.

"Some utility that's only useful for when things go horribly wrong" isn't really a strong selling point for a job.

That's kinda the whole point of people complaining about the Verraise tax a few months back.

Call it my being jaded by FFXI, but part of me expects a hypothetical Spellblade to end up being "the thing RDM should have been, minus the heals" instead of its own thing.

"The thing RDM should have been" in your opinion. You're the one who wants it as a lazy melee DPS first that follows up with point-blank instant spells, in what can only be described as a frankly amateurish design doc where your "choice" of three spells is completely arbitrary, and as Mirron has been pointing out, you didn't even try to balance White with Black magic.

You complain about melee just being tacked on, but you ultimately want magic to be in that position instead.

That's not a "hybrid." That's a melee job, that happens to have some ranged attacks tacked on at the end of its main rotation. Dragoon has 10 yard thrust CDs and Ninja has 25-yard Ninjutsu, so that's not even unique among melee. It's just slightly more frequent, with slightly worse actual ranged attacks for mobile phases or any time melee would want to have ranged attacks, due to the cast times.

You are literally just railing that they didn't match your design doc closely enough, when they had no reason to. If you want a melee job, go ask for a melee job for crying out loud.