Quote Originally Posted by Kabooa View Post
Gaps of 2-4% invalidate the jobs who aren't bringing the goodies.
On what basis? The most damage is the most damage. If BLM is meta, it can't possibly be invalidated. The only question is how close can a job get before a defensive skill changes the math - and raises, actually (which I assume are your "goodies" here) are worth absolutely nothing in this context. At least Minne tallies up 300 healer potency or so in a lot of fights.

So RDM and SMN only need to be just far enough behind that people don't just say "well why not bring the one that can raise?". That question should be easily answerable by "less damage", and it doesn't take much of a gap for that to be true.

We've seen jobs get dumpster fire stigmas over gaps as small as 1.5% in the past. People care about this stuff, more than they should, but the fact that they do is all that matters. 2-4% less damage is more than enough separation to drive player behavior. That has been very well proven out by history.