Red Mage is top tier - [job effectiveness = player skill]

[Neela]

can't understand the wuzz Nin, Brd & Drg - were always part of the meta... now a dbl cast comp is as powerful everybody scream unbalance... its just shifting for once, so what's the deal? : /

[Akiudo]

can't understand the wuzz Nin, Brd & Drg - were always part of the meta... now a dbl cast comp is as powerful everybody scream unbalance... its just shifting for once, so what's the deal? : /

1. people screamed about nin/brd/drg all the time, so nothings changed in that regard aside from the target

2. given the class distribution we had back during heavensward/stormblood it made perfect sense to take exactly 1 brd/mch, and mch simply wasn't fun during stormblood so really, bard was mostly meta by default instead of simply being way better than the competition (that being mch)

3. "at least" the reason for especially brd/dragoon being so strong was this insane synergy of crit, crit and more crit on top aswell as the piercing debuff, i'm not saying that was a good thing, it was a terrible thing, but at least one could say square went wrong while balancing classes in a group setting instead of simply in a vacuum, smn as is is insanely strong simply by existing AND making redmage all but obsolete if you got the choice for a smn.

4. complaining about other classes aside it is totally fair to argue "my class is too weak" that argument may or may not have merit, but in itself its a fair argument to make and in case of redmage i would agree, even if smn was slightly weaker redmage also should be somewhat stronger

[Shurrikhan]

can't understand the wuzz Nin, Brd & Drg - were always part of the meta... now a dbl cast comp is as powerful everybody scream unbalance... its just shifting for once, so what's the deal? : /

The only thing that left double-caster behind were raid-buffs. SMN and BLM together were S-tier at the end of expansion, and RDM right alongside them in a pure-physical comp.

The issue? NIN helped everyone. MCH helped everyone, especially another Ranged. Bard helped everyone, especially another Ranged. DRG helped everyone, especially MCH and Bard. SMN helped only RDM and BLM at any real significance. RDM still helps only physical classes.

So if you wanted a fully synergetic comp, there were only three options: MNK/DRG/BRD/MCH, NIN/DRG/BRD/MCH, or MNK/NIN/DRG/SAM.

At least back when Foe Requiem only increased Magic damage, one could have run 3 casters and a Bard, Bard/DRG/SMN/BLM, or more often DRG/BRD/MCH/SMN at roughly equal coverage/synergy in raid buffs to the meta comp.

SB simply created only three optimal compositions in terms of its raid buffs, such that anything else competing wholly with them would have to be a result of individual job imbalances. That's not a community preference to remove Casters. That's just a result of what we were given.