Red Mage idea

[Duelle]

So how do you make a jack of all trades?

You don't. You can have versatility while not making the job a pure generalist. Being a generalist worked against RDM rather than for it in FFXI. And while all generalists are hybrids, not all hybrids are generalists; Red Mage therefore needs to lean towards hybrid than towards generalist. Note: it'd probably be a different story if jobs were standalone and we had talent tress instead. Then you can create a generalist RDM and have his talent trees decide where you want to go with the job. That ship has sailed, though.

Personally, melee and magic should mesh together. Enspells are a step in that direction (a black mage doesn't need to enchant his weapons because he's blowing crap up from range, but the Red Mage would most likely bend that rule to make up for what they lack in strength compared to a barbarian or warrior). Magic spells (offensive and defensive) as openers and closers in combos is another. Abilities that play off both would also follow that ideology. This turns RDM into a job with its own identity and take on combat as opposed to a hackjob put together using scraps from the other jobs. The latter worked in single player RPGs due to you being solely in control (so if you never used RDM or had them spam only cures nobody's feelings got hurt), but RDM would need adjustments to truly be MMO-worthy.

[AceofRains]

You don't. You can have versatility while not making the job a pure generalist. Being a generalist worked against RDM rather than for it in FFXI. And while all generalists are hybrids, not all hybrids are generalists; Red Mage therefore needs to lean towards hybrid than towards generalist. Note: it'd probably be a different story if jobs were standalone and we had talent tress instead. Then you can create a generalist RDM and have his talent trees decide where you want to go with the job. That ship has sailed, though.

Personally, melee and magic should mesh together. Enspells are a step in that direction (a black mage doesn't need to enchant his weapons because he's blowing crap up from range, but the Red Mage would most likely bend that rule to make up for what they lack in strength compared to a barbarian or warrior). Magic spells (offensive and defensive) as openers and closers in combos is another. Abilities that play off both would also follow that ideology. This turns RDM into a job with its own identity and take on combat as opposed to a hackjob put together using scraps from the other jobs. The latter worked in single player RPGs due to you being solely in control (so if you never used RDM or had them spam only cures nobody's feelings got hurt), but RDM would need adjustments to truly be MMO-worthy.

My apologies I forgot to include the actually job actions that pull this all together. You called one of them and that is En-spells. With the limit of only 5 new abilities per job you need to find a shortcut on en-spells. Here the abilties I made up that help to make a jack of all trades be a melee attacker as well as a caster.

Enchant - Use a crystal to enchant your weapon with it's elemental property. This is so you have a constant flow of additional magic damage on your melee attacks.
Translation - Convert all of your TP into MP. This is so that if you happen to run out of MP, the fact that your dealing melee damage will help to recover it so you can keep going.
Delta Strike - It's name is tenative because I believe this is a Magus sister attack but this basicly deals damage to HP, MP, and TP it would be the red mage's unique weaponskill.
Free Cast - Now this skill really brings it all together. It allows you to attack and move while caating at the cost of gradual TP consumption. This makes it so that you don't have to take the time out to interrupt your melee while trying to get a spell off.
Chainspell - This allows you to essentially spam your magic for a short period, good for a 15 minute ability I'd aay.

These combinations of abilties will help red mage to be a caster on the front lines while continuing a melee onslaught. This is what I mean by a jack of all trades. What it really equates to is just a damage dealer with a few spare tricks up his sleeve such as raise and cure from conjurer.

[TaalAzura]

My apologies I forgot to include the actually job actions that pull this all together. You called one of them and that is En-spells. With the limit of only 5 new abilities per job you need to find a shortcut on en-spells. Here the abilties I made up that help to make a jack of all trades be a melee attacker as well as a caster.

Enchant - Use a crystal to enchant your weapon with it's elemental property. This is so you have a constant flow of additional magic damage on your melee attacks.
Translation - Convert all of your TP into MP. This is so that if you happen to run out of MP, the fact that your dealing melee damage will help to recover it so you can keep going.
Delta Strike - It's name is tenative because I believe this is a Magus sister attack but this basicly deals damage to HP, MP, and TP it would be the red mage's unique weaponskill.
Free Cast - Now this skill really brings it all together. It allows you to attack and move while caating at the cost of gradual TP consumption. This makes it so that you don't have to take the time out to interrupt your melee while trying to get a spell off.
Chainspell - This allows you to essentially spam your magic for a short period, good for a 15 minute ability I'd aay.

These combinations of abilties will help red mage to be a caster on the front lines while continuing a melee onslaught. This is what I mean by a jack of all trades. What it really equates to is just a damage dealer with a few spare tricks up his sleeve such as raise and cure from conjurer.

I don't see why FNC couldn't get en-spells, considering it's a melee based spell, and give RDM's job abilities magic oriented spells such as haste and refresh.

[AceofRains]

I don't see why FNC couldn't get en-spells, considering it's a melee based spell, and give RDM's job abilities magic oriented spells such as haste and refresh.

Because it would make the class too similar to PUG with its fist stances, and it would eliminate room for variety in skills. That;s why I prefer the scout design over fencer. Scout allows for a few of the needed magics and evasive combat.

Plus do you really want to learn Enthuder, Enstone, Enfire, Enwater, Enaero, Enblizzard, and waste 6 skillslots on your job when you can just condense it into one action that is unique to redmage?

If you put en spells on fencer then ALL of the jobs that come with fencer-which I don't particularly see much more than red mage-will have have enspells, defeating the purpose of this unique job.

[Delila]

If RDM in XIV gets the spells haste and refresh I would never even start it. Being a Haste and Refresh monkey in XI WAS NOT FUN! Now if it was a sort of weapon affect like Haste Samba/Aspir Samba like DNC got that would be different.

[TaalAzura]

If RDM in XIV gets the spells haste and refresh I would never even start it. Being a Haste and Refresh monkey in XI WAS NOT FUN! Now if it was a sort of weapon affect like Haste Samba/Aspir Samba like DNC got that would be different.

Although it wouldn't be as much fun, make the CD for the spells pretty long so you can only keep it on one member at a time (Hello MNK becoming OP in pts)

[Yrusama]

GLA is basically the all-sword class. Adding Fencer would be pointless, although I'd love to see the animations they came up with in the dummied files. They could give GLA a RDM job division and let RDM use GLA/THM/CNJ abilities. Then it would fit the proper mold of using simple melee and white/black magic. In addition they could give it better buffs and extreme parrying.

In early FF RDM wasn't able to use ALL swords, but it wasn't limited to rapiers. It could use sabres, broadswords, etc. Just no "knight" swords.

[SwordCoheir]

GLA is basically the all-sword class. Adding Fencer would be pointless, although I'd love to see the animations they came up with in the dummied files. They could give GLA a RDM job division and let RDM use GLA/THM/CNJ abilities. Then it would fit the proper mold of using simple melee and white/black magic. In addition they could give it better buffs and extreme parrying.

In early FF RDM wasn't able to use ALL swords, but it wasn't limited to rapiers. It could use sabres, broadswords, etc. Just no "knight" swords.

This is true, however with the armoury system and current types of weapons currently available to GLA it does leave the Rapier, Sabre, Epee, Degen type weapons completely open for use. This is probably because Musketeer was initially being developed back in the Alpha and Beta stages of 1.0 and they had originally reserved those type of weapons specifically for the class. With that being said I have no doubt if they were going to release RDM it would more than likely be grown off of Musketeer though it may or may not be renamed Fencer for all extended purposes unless they intend on making Musketeer a ranged user fully reliant on Guns like Bows with Archer.

[Brakapart]

Let's just hope they don't mess up this job or do the classic MMO problem, having unbalanced classes. We shall see in 2.0!

[Virin]

You can fix the haste problem by doing either what the other poster said and have it reset cooldowns or if that is too OP decrease cooldown times by x% or to save the class from being a haste-bot make it a self-only buff. Make it cost 2000 or 3000 tp and incease weapon speed by x% on the rdm.

or don't give them haste. Let haste sit and wait for time mage where it belongs

only reason i suggested to make it sort of a evasion/debuff tank was if it came off gld
if it comes off a new fencer/scout then a dd/debuff would be cool. In parties you could bring thief (not in game yet but if it does end up in game) or rdm. they could be totally unique classes but still fall under a dd/debuff role in parties.

/edit
to expand on that a bit. rdm would be extra elemental damage with enspells and thief could be extra bleed damage.