Red Mage: I am not a Back line class

[Firon]

Wat? I thought RDM was just supposed to be a swordsman with debuffing spells only?

No that's what FF 11 thought rdm should be, rdm has never really been Debuffer it just had a little of everything. Some folks need to remember that FF 11 is not the whole FF Franchise.

[Arcell]

No that's what FF 11 thought rdm should be, rdm has never really been Debuffer it just had a little of everything. Some folks need to remember that FF 11 is not the whole FF Franchise.

^this. 1000x this.

So RDM being a jack of all trades, it would get some melee skills (likely with status effects) and a little of both support and offensive magic. Red Mages have traditionally used swords but Gladiator is already the 1-handed sword class. However Red Mages have also been known to use Rapiers so that would make Fencer the class (since class = weapon) which leads to Red Mage as the Job.

Now Rapiers are a little different from Gladiator swords, they would be used without a shield and thus would be able to parry. Parry should be a form of light damage mitigation for Red Mage so that it can stand on the front lines, in the same way evade helps Monks stay in the front lines longer. To balance it against WAR's parry ability, RDM would obviously have much less health so it would not be able to take Warrior's spot as a parry tank. Also they could link some conditional skills to parry.

Throw in CNJ/THM as their cross-class, give them Dualcast/Fast Cast as their 15 min and throw in some job exclusive en- spells.