I've permanently solved The Wanderer's Minuet problem...

[Vickii]

To be fair, that's pretty much what they're doing already. The jobs are slowly becoming more and more homogenized and losing their own identity in the process. When every job starts playing the same as every other job, there are things that need fixing. Just look at the healer changes during the 3.0 update if you want further evidence.

It's the way most MMO's go/went I'm afraid. Balancing so many jobs is an impossible task and the only ways to do it are a) make all jobs of a function the same or b) accept that there are ups and downs for each class and one patch may be good but another may be bad in comparison to others.

Sadly, the players don't accept that second point very well so devs tend to homogenize everything. Then the same player who complained that Bard had a bad patch, comes back to complain that bard feels exactly the same as Black Mage. It's a vicious cycle.

[Kazrah]

Sadly, the players don't accept that second point very well so devs tend to homogenize everything. Then the same player who complained that Bard had a bad patch, comes back to complain that bard feels exactly the same as Black Mage. It's a vicious cycle.

That's exactly why bard is in the state it's in: homogenization due to the "OMG MOAR DEEPS" mentality that players have gotten.

Also, instead of trying to cram more damage skills in, devs could instead have solved this with more support abilities and use the same line about support abilities to compensate for damage output that they used for why astrologian does less damage than the other two healing jobs.