Subtle Hints: Red Mage

[Gamemako]

Jobs are 5 skills, and you need a base class from them. There are only 4 classes at this time which could become a Red Mage at all due to the need for competent melee: PGL, LNC, MRD, GLA. Of them, only GLA has a traditional Red Mage weapon, and it's the tankiest of the tanks.

-PGL, extending into MNK, already has effective -en self-buffs, which kinda works if you include that one-off role from FF11.. This would be some kind of toe-stepping if you tried to extend that. Not to mention breaking Greased Lightning and ruining DPS.
-LNC... well, why bother? It's a no-downtime DPS. The need to maintain positional abilities for keeping DPS up would result in immense frustration, unlike BRD's any-place-any-time approach.
-MRD is amusingly the most feasible of Red Mages, simply because you can use the off-berserk time for spells. As Maim is not position-specific, you can afford to keep it up, unlike Heavy Thrust. The biggest obstacles here are the horrible lack of PIE and the lack of skill slots inherent in jobs.
-GLA, the consummate tank, has pretty much no synergy with a Red Mage skillset. It actively has 8 tank-specific skills: Rampart, Flash, Convalesce, Provoke, Shield Swipe, Awareness, Sentinel, and Bulwark. 8/17 skills are pretty much totally useless to a Red Mage, and many others are likely to be dubious as well (Shield Lob unless you offer no attack spells, Shield Bash, Tempered Will). You're left with just barebones utility: 4 direct attack skills, 1 AoE attack skill, one damage buff. Not a pretty picture.

Finally, you have 5 abilities. Choosing any of these will not avoid this problem. If you want a role as diverse as a Red Mage, you have to reflect that in 5 skills. Red Mage is a jack of all trades -- and fitting "all trades" in 5 skills isn't pretty. You have to completely club a Red Mage's skill set, making it little more than a Red Mage in name only.

What? More competition for debuff slot?!

Now let's be clear about debuffers. You have two options: class and job. There will be no debuffer class unless that class can offload its DPS onto a pet. This is because a debuffer class would be overpowered in a party or gimped solo, and that defeats the purpose of classes. Debuffing has to be a job, and for the reasons previously described, I find it intensely unlikely that a Red Mage will show up with current classes.

That said, you're missing the point: FF11 is the only title where Red Mage had that role. Once and only once. Jack-of-all-trades in 1, total crap in 3 but same role as 1, doublecast nuker in 5, greatsword-wielding bearer of the most powerful attack spell in 12i. Given that FF11's RDM was such an abortion to begin with, it's not worth bringing Red Mage to FF14 at all if you're going to turn it into that trash.

If it's going to have debuffs they should come from weaponskills similar to the Spellblade class in FFTA/2

That's a Mystic Knight archetype. They actually have a really cool traditional look as well, and certainly could make an excellent job for a dedicated class (e.g. Fencer -> Mystic Knight & Red Mage).

[MartaDemireux]

That's a Mystic Knight archetype. They actually have a really cool traditional look as well, and certainly could make an excellent job for a dedicated class (e.g. Fencer -> Mystic Knight & Red Mage).

I actually had a FNC > MST/RDM idea on my PC. Just posted it here: http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...27#post1316727 If you'd like to see it. Funny, great minds thnk alike?