Quote Originally Posted by Renathras View Post
That would mostly depend on how you define that. For example, unifying the buffs does not favor the lowest denominator, since it favors groups that coordinate their buffs since them being ABLE to be aligned means doing so generates a huge boost in performance over those who do not. That very much does not favor "the lowest denominator".
Previously, you'd hold CDs variably and coordinate compositions. Now, if you open even just not-too-stupidly, your CDs are synced to raid buffs automatically, because everything shares the same timers.

That's... objectively simplified.

The design intent there is to give advantage to the harder thing over the easier thing. That also is not favoring "the lowest denominator", as if the intent was to favor "the lowest denominator", it would be the Ranged allowed to do more damage.
Not at all. If people were enjoyed added difficulty, itself (at least as importantly, including whatever extra they may saddle their party with in their shortfalls while learning) there would be no need to incentivize the jobs that are harder to learn with greater on-paper damage so that they have parity for the average player while content is still relevant.

Rewarding what's harder allows you to have even significantly easier jobs --for better or worse-- without reducing the breadth of job choice available to even less-skilled players (who would otherwise feel pushed only towards whatever's easiest -- say, MCH/BRD/EW SMN).