For all the folks who are super-adamant about RDM being a melee/white/black hybrid because that is what it was in various other Final Fantasy games... it's also worth keeping in mind that in most cases Red Mage also ended up being terrible mid/late game in a bunch of those games. There was usually a more advanced class that totally dropped the melee and was white/black magic combo only that totally outclassed Red Mage. :P

For people who *want* a white/black, healing/damaging combo *mage*, there are a whole lot of other awesome Final Fantasy classes/flavors you can pull from. Sage is the obvious choice, but frankly I would <3 at the return of Scholar in some form, because it is *neat*. There's no need to try and force RDM in that role when there are other options for that role, and so many people who would love for RDM to be a real front-line magic fencer.

That said, it's worth keeping in mind that in a lot of the single player FF games (and I guess in FFXI for that matter) there was a big pool of black magic spells, and a big pool of white magic spells, and different classes were grated access to different amounts of spells from those pools. FFXIV is structured a lot differently, and so "here's yet another slightly different combination of those same skills" isn't going to work. Everything is going to need it's own unique, focused skillset. I think the discussion about "would you rather see RDM as a DD or debuffer" makes sense (although it may be too late for that; MNK is already kind of sneaking into the elementalist melee role). And maybe doing something vaguely DNC-ish so they can also off heal a bit would be ok. But trying to do some wonky hybrid thing so they can front line or back line and fill all roles or whatever seems a bit much.