How would you feel if shields had no upfront healing?

[BungleBear]

The comparison is no fairer than the last, though. Nor did it suddenly grow a point. How does content making a larger difference than one's job in how much one is engaged make the mechanics of the job no longer, in effect, a factor? It can be less (and, depending on the job, I wouldn't necessarily even agree with that) without being insignificant.

Why is the comparison unfair? The point is that the contribution that a job's DPS rotation makes to a player's level of engagement is minor in comparison with that made by difficulty of content. I'm only speaking from personal experience here. Perhaps others have had different experiences. But if someone told me that they found playing DNC in a dungeon even remotely as engaging as playing WHM in an ultimate, I would be very surprised.

I just don't quite get what you're trying to defend here. Sure, go into more engaging content when one wants to be engaged, but... why should that preclude any desire for having more to do, insofar as I want to do, on a given job even in less demanding content?

Well, doesn't that sound a bit self-contradictory? "I want to have more to do, but I don't want to do the content that requires me to do more."