Originally Posted by
Lastelli
This is the only thing that matters though. Except for some cases where a given job is frustrating to play, in which case we're not talking about balance but rather actual gameplay issues, discussing about job balance and relevance only makes sense with progression raiding and speekills in mind. And of course everyone here is talking about how SAM performs relative to other jobs. When we say that SAM should stay where it is now in terms of dps we mean to say that it should be ahead of any other job (with the possible exception of blm) be a high enough amount to justify its lack of synergy, whether or not other jobs are buffed. For instance, if mnk and nin are buffed, sam should be buffed as well, otherwise mnk/nin would be the preferred melee pair.
Casual players shouldn't even care about job balance unless one job is severly underpowered (like mch and brd were in 3.0) and/or not fun to play (I think this is what DRGs are complaining about right now) and/or has a stupid mechanic (again, barrel and minuet in 3.0 were basically a dps loss).