What is this "game balance" you speak of?

[saevel]

It's a fairly easy and obvious concept.

The easiest way to look at balance is: if job A gets this suggested ability, would it make job B obsolete?

If THF can DD along with the rest of them, why take any other DD?

If PLD with all it's abilities to mitigate damage, was suddenly able to deal as much damage as a Ukon WAR, then what's the point in warrior?

Likewise, if WAR gets better damage-mitigation abilities like many of them are asking for, then what's the point in NIN or PLD?

RDM can't have cure 5 or 6 because it gets much stonger enfeebles and higher skill for landing them. (I refuse to accept phalanx 2 as an agrument).

SMN, PUP and BST don't get the best of updates, but they have their niche in many situations, and using a selection of magian weapons can allow for some very powerful pets.

DRKs claim they have the bad end of the stick, but can be utilised in many different situations by simply swapping SJ.

The balance isn't brilliant, but there is certainly some there, and it makes sense, you choose to only see what you want to see. It's human nature.

The only things that have really put one job in front of another are procs, and abyssea allowing any DD to tank anything.

I typically don't have a problem with this idea, except SE is picking winners and losers with their gear and WS selections. If they would take a step back and stop trying to decide which job to favor then things would eventually balance themselves out. Take SAM and WAR for example, those are two of the most powerful jobs period, yet SE keeps piling more things onto them to make them more powerful. Take DRK, BST and many others, their less powerful with some being nearly useless (RDM), those jobs deserve significant attention and overhauling yet SE avoids them like the plague. DRK's because they used to SE KC zerg everything years ago and RDM because they used to spend hours soloing something that an alliance would kill in 15min. There are lots of things they could do to both of those jobs, amongst others, that wouldn't upset the DD hirechy and thus "balance" but would instead add versatility, depth and utility. In DRK's case make all their absorb spells have a 0.5s cast time like stun and have the duration of the +stat effect last 3 min. Instantly you've created a method by which DRK can buff it's own stats without upsetting the DD pecking order. Could also use some WS modification but I'll let the DRK's chime in on that one. SE just needs to get over hating RDM, we talk about "enfeebles" but their useless on anything made in the past few years. We talk about support but any other job /RDM or /WHM is better at support then RDM main. And lets not get into the melee debate where SE is constantly hamstringing that facet. Ultimately you get a job that takes a ridiculous amount of gear, effort and concentration to be somewhat equal to jobs that a half-brain dead monkey could do.

In short, if your going to gimp something, gimp it ONCE in ONE area, not multiple times across multiple areas. Nerf effects are multiplicative not additive.