Quote Originally Posted by Seraphor View Post
Thing is, they have to change the jobs up with each expansion. Just as many would complain that they haven't added anything new to the jobs as those who complain that things were changed, you're essentially buying a new game, you want something new for your money. And they can't just add new abilities to the existing skill sets or we'd get an unmanageable number of skills to use. So some skills have to be cut to make way for new ones, which means reworking the job.
You can add to a job without completely destroying its identity. That’s the complaint a lot of ASTs have: the developers removed the time aspects of the job (which was part of its identity in this game since its introduction in 3.0), and they neutered the card system to the point where they had to invent an entire mechanic to keep the six cards aspect relevant (seals—without seals, you could have just kept 2 cards: one for ranged, and one for melee). As with BRD: the developers removed all of the support aspects from the job due to the misconception that there couldn’t be two pseudo-support jobs in one game. Even with the drastic overhaul from HW BRD to SB BRD, the job never lost its core identity of being the closest thing to a support DPS this game could have. Now it’s a Ranger more than anything else, despite the level 80 quest continuing to emphasize how much BRDs sing to support their fellow people (lol).

They could have worked with the original card system without altering it so drastically; they could have also left in the time aspects. And they could have done both without making the job feel stale. It was basically the same from HW going into SB with a few new healy things (Star) and card mechanics (Sleeve Draw), but you didn’t really hear about ASTs complaining about how it was “the same ol’, same ol’ boring AST that we’ve been playing for 2 years already”.