Dale, when you have a DD who has hundreds of millions of gil in gear, and a COR buffing their ACC/ATT, they are gonna do a shit ton of damage.

I don't think it is unreasonable that a BST who has spent 100/+ million gil on multiple gear sets, receiving BST-specific buffs, should outdamage someone's fudo SAM that's in unaugmented skirmish armor with an unaugmented nene.

BST was not the issue here. BST was fine for years. BST did not change. The content changed, and then BST became a problem. Ergo, it is the content's fault, or, more directly, the community. There are things that work a lot better in a lot of situations than BST BST BST BST BST COR. However, BST BST BST BST BST COR requires virtually no coordination or teamwork compared to other things to make it work. I honestly think that's what made it so popular.

As to people doing BST because pets, with their high HP relative to players, can survive high damage AoE: Most DDs refuse to wear any -DT gear. When I go to things with PUGs I frequently see people who "outdamage" me do far, far, far less damage because the TP move that hit them for 1700 damage while they weren't topped off only did 850 to me. People who focus purely on theoretical damage output without any thought to survivability are a large part of the reason why BST was so heavily used as they were.