Quote Originally Posted by Valence View Post
Sure, let's remove more constraints and flavor from every job and delete all thinking that goes behind mitigating which types of attacks.
You could only make that argument if that was the standard to which all jobs were held to. Shake it off and Divine Veil are both on the same recast but work on all types of damage and also provide a bonus heal effect. Passage of Arms works on all damage types as well.

If you want a Physical Ranged parallel, Tactician/Troubadour/Shield Samba are all interchangeable and work on all damage types. They also, amusingly, happen to have the same damage reduction, recast, and duration as Heart of Light and Dark Missionary (which are the magic damage only tank actions). Dismantle likewise works on all damage types without regard to aesthetic considerations.

I think good design should avoid homogeneity, but it's also important to be fair. If you have two actions that you can compare on a word for word basis and one is mathematically superior to the other, then you have a balance problem. Partial homogeneity is a greater flaw than complete homogeneity. In an ideal design, there should be enough differences and trade-offs that it's impossible to make a direct comparison where you can say that one is generally better than the other.