Quote Originally Posted by Cilia View Post
... which is cool and all until those abilities get removed or changed to the point they no longer resemble their original incarnations (e.g. Dreadwyrm Trance, the focal point of the Heavensward SMN quest, which has been changed relatively frequently since its introduction and wasn't even in Shadowbringers until 5.1. You could still do the quests during this window!).
If you really want to keep on top of AST lore, you need to rerun that 30-50 storyline every expansion because of exactly this. Possibly several times because of mid-expansion revamps.

You're right that we're explicitly in the range where the WoL is making things up rather than learning from others (some jobs have been in that longer than others; I think DRG started improvising in the 50s), which does do a good job of explaining most of the weirder abilities. There's still a few weird ones--Solar Bahamut's probably the biggest--but just accepting that the WoL is good enough to start innovating new abilities themselves gets you plenty far.