Quote Originally Posted by Payadopa View Post
I think SE just programmed themselves into a corner with the whole DPS/tank/healer segregation to make the DF work. Classes need to fit a certain role or it doesn't work (looking at you, BLU). Combine that with static boss encounters and of course everything will devolve to number crunching. I'm not disputing that fact. I'm just saying I could see the writing on the wall ever since the system was implemented and I was hoping it wouldn't come to this. ShB brought the worst job changes by far. No job is allowed to stand out and [press button to make damage go up/down] is just no fun to use.
Look, I don't know how else to put this. The game's--in fact the entire subgenre's this game inhabits--core mechanic in combat is to take a bunch of numbers, and add them together, until they exceed a total; and to do this either before a rival set of numbers sums up to exceed a different total, or before a timer expires.

Complaining that every job is based around some combination of adding the numbers that make you win, or subtracting/dividing/avoiding numbers so you don't lose, is like complaining that your first person shooter relies on aiming and pulling the trigger as a mechanic, and that the 'writing is on the wall' the moment they introduced aiming and pulling the trigger.

Things like silences, stuns, heavy, binds, got used this expansion. They don't get used every tier, but they do get used in some form. Utility like rezzes secured world firsts. But utility didn't do so 'despite' the dps meta, they did so because of it, and they work in that frame work, in the same way portable walls and forts, heals, and other forms of utility work in a first person shooter: By interacting with the genre's core mechanics (damage dealt, damage mitigated/undone/avoided, and time).