Quote Originally Posted by Seschat View Post
A solid support character should be a force multiplier for his party, not just offer a slight edge that could easily be ignored if you filled his spot with another Blackmage.
And this is exactly why pure support classes are so hard to balance. If their buffs and debuffs are too powerful, you all but force groups to always bring one along in order to be as strong and efficient as possible, at the expense of the players who don't have it or don't want to level it. BRDs in XI had this very problem and I don't recall it ever being solved by the time I left; the buffs and debuffs provided by BRDs were so powerful every group had to have one (getting a party as a BRD was about as easy as getting one as a tank).