Quote Originally Posted by Lyth View Post
Historically, the jobs which have done the most damage haven't done so because they were technically challenging by any stretch of the imagination.
Patently false. MCH in SB, SCH in 2.0-4.0, SMN in 2.0-4.0, BLM for much of the game's life span and SAM up until 6.1 all required a higher skill threshold to be maintained in order to obtain optimal performance. Or in other words, they were more technically challenging to play at their best, but successful play was rewarded with better damage than other jobs. SCH's dominance as a "green dps" is a huge part of why healer kits from 5.0 onward have the same bog-standard baseline approach of spammable nuke, spammable aoe, DoT and 1-2 unique damage options. BLM's technical difficulty has never been so much about it's rather simple rotation, but rather in maintaining said rotation when faced with fights that are constantly forcing movement for survival. SAM used to split the difference between the moment-to-moment gameplay that most melee dps had and the longer-term plan-based approach you tended to utilize with BLM and SMN. MCH in HW and SB had all kinds of plates to juggle, between Wildfire and ammo management. Top-end MCH's in SB could put out incredibly high damage but the rotation was so demanding that few people had the patience or motivation to master it, especially when you factored in how the MCH would often still be expected to deal with ranged dps mechanics in a fight.

So yes, this game absolutely has a history of technically demanding jobs being higher - and often highest, even if just within their relative role - damage. The common thread among all these jobs is that said high damage is an option, not a requirement. Each job is perfectly functional even when not played optimally, but each job also had great room for skill expression through a variety of methods.