Lack of End Game Content

[Hawklaser]

-Snip-

Horizontal progression works not because they were not balancing things, but because of a different balance perspective. In a horizontal system, a much bigger emphasis is placed on incomparables and a state of perfect imbalance. Perfect imbalance is understanding and designing around unique traits. Lets take the prior Drg/brd/mch piercing meta for example, it worked because people were taking advantage of the synergy between the classes. The response we got to that was one of lets make everything equal by removing the piercing dmg buff. The perfect imbalance response would be create other synergies(maybe give mnk a reliable source of magic dmg and a magic resist debuff for example) or introduce some more meaningful enemy resistances to break it up in addition to finding ways to improve the other synergies.

Incomparables would be things more like giving Drg a choice between +70 yalms on dragon sight so they can use it on the ranged dps that love being in the boonies and also not as likely to have it broke early due to an aoe placement, or giving their jumps a temporary immunity periord at the expense of the relocation effects which in a sense could allow for a skilled Drg to handle a sizeable number of Titania EX's lighting tether hits for example, much like how a skilled XI Drg could use Super Jump to avoid things like enemy Astral Flows. That is a choice that is not easily mathed out, and those are the bulk of the choices Horizontal systems thrived on.

If you really think about it, its the gutting of several of Sch's incomparables that got a number of them upset with the changes to the class. Much like if you took elusive jump and I can't recall if its spineshatter dive or dragonfire dive relocation effects away for no real reason, you would likely have a lot of ticked off Drgs. I'd touch on other classes as well but don't know their kits well enough to off handedly state theirs.

As long as you only think of damage as what a job brings for balance, you move more and more to everything being the same and even more at the mercy of the theory crafters number crunching.