How Would You Design Red Mage!?

[Jinko]

Red Mage needs to do more then just barely survive devastating AOE attacks as that would just produce a extra drain on the healer, and since it is unlikely that RDM would be a powerful DD job it pretty much needs to be able to take care of itself in order to be accepted in the front lines.

Hmm I have seen this kind of thinking a lot lately why is it considered healing melee as a waste of resources ?

Isn't the point of a healer to heal whoever needs healing, yet people in this game seem to think of healer = tank only, screw everyone else.

RDM doesn't need to be self sufficient any more than the next class, healers just need to learn to heal everyone.

(and I was also annoyed at how the topic somehow meandered off to discussing Summoner...)

There was a few comments about summoners but nothing much, I mentioned green mage quite a bit mainly because I think your build above would suit that better than a RDM. (minus the close combat skills)