Will they ever stop with constant Vertical Progression?

[LineageRazor]

I think they've said already that they won't be doing this, because no matter what, there will always be a "best of" build that everyone will flock to, making all that development time pretty much wasted. I, too, wish they'd do *something* but I'm not sure what that something is.

The answer is situational traits. Stuff that's good in some fights, and worse in others. As an example, let's go back to the days of Turn 2 before enrage farming was an option and folks actually had to deal with Allagan Rot. Now, let's introduce a piece of armor with terrible stats, but reduces the recast for Blunt Arrow to two seconds. Suddenly, you have a BRD that can silence High Voltage every time - even if you kill the Quarantine Node to disable Allagan Rot, which makes the boss SO much easier. Now you have two pieces of desirable gear - the normal vertical progression gear for damage, and the Blunt Arrow gear for instances where things frequently need to be silenced.

Of course, this means that every BRD will be expected to obtain BOTH pieces of gear, but it does introduce gear variety - and it also introduces a piece of gear which remains useful for a long period of time, as that Blunt Arrow enhancement remains useful regardless of the other stats on the gear.

It bears mentioning, though, that this makes BRD pretty much indispensable for stuff where Silence is needed - and making one job indispensable is one thing SE is hoping to avoid. It's a tradeoff, and as someone who came from an MMO where jobs cycled through "flavors of the week" nigh constantly (some jobs must-have, others practically ignored, and which was which could change every patch) I know how bad this can be. It does make things more INTERESTING, though, and to me that's more important than ensuring that every job is included, always.