Job/Role daydreaming

[Reynhart]

If we're using SMN and SCH as a benchmark then you could consider any melee job with two 3-button combos to be a variation of Gladiator, as the similarities are about the same.

Technically, there's not that much difference between ROG and LNC. It doesn't prevent the game from creating two different jobs. If you take the Gladiator above, give it some debuffing spells, a "stance" that spends HP to buff each WS and a skill that deals more damage the less HP you have, you could come close to a real "Dark Knight" DPS that would feel very different from PLD.

Yoshida literally and openly said that they pursue simplification to make balancing future fights easier.

He also said thaty they wouldn't put unique builds for characters and unique effect on items because he thought people would be rejected if they didn't have the mandatory best setup...which is stupid, because ilvl is already a mathematically best setup and yet the world didn't burn when not everyone had a perfect Zeta.

That's why the stat distribution was removed, why elemental affinities were removed

Stat distribution was removed way after they decided that jobs would only use one stat for all. And elemental affinities were removed right from the start because they feared that some jobs might be pushed away...yet they have no issue having physical affinities that effectively pushed jobs away...

As for the role skills, I think you missed the point of role skills as stated by the developers. Their purpose was to make sure that every player had every necessary skill at their disposal without having to level other classes.

But, that's stupid. You want every healer to have Swiftcast ? Make switcast a native skill for all of them. You want every tank to have Provoke ? Make Provoke a native skill to all of them. Removing the actual cross-"role" skills (Like Internal Release for WAR or Stoneskin for PLD) make those actions just bland, and especially because there wasn't even a choice of what you should use.