Combat system is beyond saving.

[Jeeqbit]

Cross world pf didn't exist at the time, smaller population and it was harder to get people in groups on PF for them to be so picky.

That's a good point as well. We did get cross-world PF at the tail-end of the expansion, but for even the initial 4 months of creator it was just your own world's PF.

You'd be more likely to run into more people that would block/kick the 'imposter' player for faking fight knowledge and constantly failing all of the mechanics

This is why the jobs are being made easier haha. We ran into SMN that didn't know their rotation in a way that meant they wouldn't be doing much damage. Healers that just couldn't heal raid-wides even in A11S.

Mechanically, I got beyond steamroller pretty quick in A10S and made post-steamroller parties... but nobody that joined was actually post-steamroller (the same issue you get today in savage basically).

The smaller population in PF meant that after the initial few weeks of savage release, you were effectively a static - a lot like people say ultimates are now. The amount of people became so thin that you were genuinely just progging with the same people in PF always, so cross-world PF was a welcome variety.

A11s was a giant wall by the end of the tier.

My experience is that it was a wall when progging (variously due to poor healing, not being able to do limit cut, OTs not being able to handle add, etc). But reclear parties were actually pretty smooth for me.

Anyway - OP is right, combat will not regain the things it has lost which makes everything very reliant on the success of encounters - if encounters end up being boring, well...

Agreed and I don't necessarily think everything should be how it was (obviously I gave the SMN and healer examples which were frustrating to deal with), but we really do need the basic trinity to function ie. warrior not just being able to heal without healers. I say that as a tank main! It's not easy as a tank main to say "take stuff away", but when you just literally don't even need the rest of your party in a dungeon it's ridiculous. Auto attacks used to be far more threatening on bosses without the constant boss casting and self heals as well.

whatever HW hatred some people have now wasn’t prominent enough at the time to justify sharing their own feedback about it back then.

Ok, so I agree the job balance thing wasn't an issue in PF, but people definitely shared their feedback at the time about numerous issues like Accuracy, RNG parry mitigation, cross-class actions needing to be role actions, useless actions, physical mit, which SE listened to completely since it all changed in SB.