I was a 75 RDM that healed merit parties, did Salvage, soloed ZNMs/sky/sea, etc. I'd argue that pink mage and boring things to death (soloing) are the only two substantial roles RDM ever filled. If you think that the difference between a RDM's Tier II enfeebles and a WHM's Slow in level 75 endgame really mattered, I think I may have some news for you. If you think that RDM's higher enfeebling skill really mattered, you needed better WHMs. The largest debuff difference was between Dia III and Dia II.
For a long time RDM excelled as pink mage because:
1) Refresh
2) Access to head refresh
3) MP consumption mattered
4) Dia III gave them an offensive bonus over their competitors
So people are all "boo hoo, if we get a useful buff we'll have to be pink mage again!" But that's the only real party role the job has ever had. Enfeebling was always a fringe benefit to bringing RDM along. I was probably one of the rare few that enjoyed pink maging in difficult situations (sometimes) because you had to match MP consumption against MP recovery perfectly or your were either under-utilizing the job/your gear or causing /healing breaks. That is simply not an issue anymore, because you almost can't spend your MP fast enough to beat out recovery.
For the job's future direction, I would hope to return to a genuinely useful pink mage role, but I'd also hope that they remove the tedium of haste/refresh orders. To that end:
1) Allow all enhancing magic (except Erase) to be Accessioned
2) Allow accessioned buffs to gain the full benefit of Composure for all the targets.
Now RDM would need to do ~4 JAs +spells every ~10 minutes (Enspell, Refresh, Haste, Temper). The rest of the time could be spent on the more interesting and interactive parts of the job, whatever they might be for the situation RDM finds itself in. I wouldn't complain if they also made all of RDM's spells single target instead of self-target, but I don't see it being as necessary as the above two changes. Those two changes would make RDM the best meleeburn and lowman healer for most things.