If best way is the only...why do we see different setups ?

[Tilgung]

Everywhere in these parts, we see how <insert_job> is weak or how people always find and use only the best path...

If that is so, why do we see so much different setups in videos ?

At Savage release, everyone jumped the bandwagons "PLD sucks", "MCH is garbage", "AST is dumb", etc...
Yet, it's not uncommon to see clear videos with approximately any job as soon as early september, when A4S world first was only 23rd of August.

If that's the case, isn't it just saying that people are still basically playing what they want and not automatically reroll towards "What is best"?

Because even though some classes are objectively better than others, XIV is balanced well enough that all other jobs are only slightly less viable than optimum set-ups.

Balance being key, which is why some people (such as myself) are hesitant about skill trees and unique class specific materia. It's a balancing nightmare and I dont' want to see XI-2 where half the jobs in the game are considered unviable by the player base because they're ridiculously outclassed be easier to gear/play jobs.

Something like Jump Recast: -5 Seconds Materia is a ~90 DPS gain for Dragoons. Ninja has Juggulate on the same initial recast as Jump so you'd think -5 seconds would be cool. But because of the potency differences, it's closer to a ~35 DPS gain.

Dislcaimer: Values are a sloppy estimate based off the memory of some math I did a few months ago.