Punished by the game for being a Dragoon. (Magic defense and 2.4)

[Ryel]

I wish it were that simple, but unfortunately a WHM's Protect is far better htan a SCH's due to the 20% Mag Def boost, which would have knocked down the damage the DRG took significantly. Add the stronger Stoneskin in, and unfortunately you need a WHM or that DRG will not be surviving Final Coil. Sadly as we've all learned, we need BOTH kinds of tank and healer classes in any raid party for the increased damage mitigation tools, and I don't think that will be changing in the near future.

That isn't an acceptable reason balance-wise, and it very much IS that simple.

You say that the game requires us to use BOTH healers and BOTH tanks, yet you forget that 3.0 is adding another healer and tank to the equation, the question then becomes:

What happens when there are 3 available healers?

If only 1 out of 3 Healers can provide a level of Magic Defense that enables Dragoon to survive in endgame content this becomes a problem if Dragoons are ONLY viable in parties with that specific healer. It would be much easier on the playerbase as a whole to simply not worry about it and pick one of the other DPS that are not only outperforming Dragoon damage wise but also offering superior raid utility, and now in addition superior survivability unless a specific composition is met.

A job has to be able to perform equally on it's own merits to be considered viable, having to cater your composition around the job for inferior results only ends up with players choosing something more flexible to run with.