Quote Originally Posted by Archwizard View Post
I'm personally less worried about Ultimates than I am about level sync'd content or just leveling the dang job in the first place. A lot of jobs suffer from getting actions trimmed one expansion only to have a replacement added in the next near level cap, so it makes lower levels less fun and more difficult to play at.

DRK's already lost original Dark Arts, Dark Dance, Dark Passenger, Sole Survivor, Blood Price, spammable Abyssal Drain, and Shadowskin -- and those are just the actions that impacted its survival. In the process, its rotation has been reduced to knockoff WAR aside from a double-weave heavy burst at max level, and its "replacement" survival tools all come at level 70 or later.

So I'm not going to say it "hardly matters", especially when a majority of players go through duty roulettes every day on every job under the sun but only 1% actually go through Ultimates.
The difference between casual content and high-end raiding is that a -10% mitigation skill vs only magic damage not being available outside of high-end raids (Ultimates) is because numerically, your impact is so minimal there is no need for the average player to learn that action yet, whereas for the Ultimate raiders you'd push the job from "already damn good" into "you are stupid if you don't bring it" tier. What you want is more engagement at Lv70, which I think is good. I don't agree with the "streamlining" by pushing even more mitigation downwards and making Bahamut and Ultima even easier, especially in light of the recent Living Dead rework. (huge buff in my opinion)

How about fundamental offence gameplay changes, like those in Stormblood or Heavensward? You mentioned various skills of it after all.