Bard qq

[RiceisNice]

...

This is why you give classes differing utility outside of damage. Enough to discourage class stacking anyway. That's why you see DRGs with battle lianity, monks with mantra, so on.

Is this WoW example from a PvP perspective or PvE? If PvP, it's a whole another can of worms that's not related to the discussion at hand. If PvE, then read above what I said. A hunter wasn't going to provide utilities such as stats, spell power or versatility without taking a sub-optimal dps pet, which would not be a problem if you had a warrior, mage, paladin or druid for those instead.

And the thing is with FFXIV content, those downtimes are effectively minimized to negligible amounts by competent melee players who know the fights in and out. Bard stacking happened in 2.0 because they had (admittingly op) utility to themselves that set them aside from other classes, like a damage reduction debuff. Not to mention primal fights that made melee a liability (garuda's wicked wheel comes to mind). Though that's not the case in FCoB fights (which mostly favor melee anyway) and current Alexander fights.