Thank you to the moderators

[Ivtrix]

I think a good example is the recent Summoner discussions. (A topic near and dear to me as Summoner is presently my favorite job that I spend the most time on.)

A criticism of "Summoner has been overly simplified. It would be great if it had a tad more skill expression." would be received fine. In fact it has been with lots of support or at least respect for that position.

A criticism (and one recently removed by mods) like "People who like Summoner are braindead and bad! They can't handle other players being good! TRASH JOB!" will probably not be received as well.

The smn braindead comments are just low hanging fruit of people piling on the bandwagon, it will always happen and it it what it is.

Writing out and explaining why the job is fundamentally in a bad state only to be met with either a specific person who is consistently confidently incorrect on how the game works or the general response which I continually had to sort thought was Well I like SMN as it currently is, there isnt a problem! This is all elitist and not fair! Its fine to have an easy class that does a lot of damage! The problem must be RDM!! When the entire point of the discussion is more based on higher level play, you cant really take into account a casual players perspective anywhere close to 100% because they simply dont understand the expectations and standards of higher end content. Hearing the classic Well, the majority of the players are casual so it doesnt matter! When the developers are still clearly invested in making content for all ranges of play by the fact that 1) every other job has a significantly higher degree of skill expression and 2) the developers continuing to commit to creating savage and ultimate content. EDIT: side note, if people really cared about an easy class that did a lot of damage 1) SAM and MCH do far more dps and 2) why are you using a parser and care about damage in content with 0 enrage checks?

Its really easy to get jaded having to answer to 16 different people that the core mechanics of SMN are fine, its just missing the little extras and how specifically that is a problem in relation to the balance across both caster and dps jobs on a whole, that all jobs in this game are fun to play inoptimally and in casual content, and that balance significantly matters in specifically high end content which is literally tuned to players playing optimally, that its easy to become really snark in response.