Job balancing?

[Dale]

A balanced party like PLD, WHM, GEO, SCH, SCH or BLM, BLM?

The pendulum has swung too far in the other direction. Two to three (edit: said one to two) melee, including the tank can SC faster than 2 SCH but the baggage melee bring far outweighs this benefit.

And some melee can solo SC pretty darn fast if they can wear offense-oriented gear and have proper support.

That's the other thing mages don't really need. They don't terribly need Geo-Haste.

I was mostly commenting on your point that all you need is enough melee (or DPS generally) to create skill chains. Adding any more than that can start to cause more problems than it alleviates.

That's probably true. But I believe that's as intended because it creates an inventive for support jobs. If all anyone has to do is load up on DPS jobs to kill quicker, then that is what they would likely do. I've seen that tragic scenario play out on multiple MMORPGs, where support jobs slowly go extinct in favor of DPS jobs. And I would hate to see that happen on this game. It's one of the few MMORPGs on the market today that still have a vibrant support role available for players.

As to your Mage > Melee argument, I am sure that is true in many cases. But so long as a melee can get the job done I don't really have a problem with it.

Survivability is definitely an issue. But it seems SE is finally starting to realize this with their recent ambuscade offerings. It only took them over a decade to start to address it.