Pictomancer should be the monk to black mage's samurai

[Sarantserel]

snip

Have you played Pictomancer in a savage or higher fight? Because saying Summoner is arguably harder to play is ridiculous.

Also, your numbers of instant casts are off for BLM. After the despair change, a BLM doing top damage has around 60% of its rotation made up of instant casts. Meanwhile, a PCT has around 35% of its rotation made up of instant cast.

Whilst PCT's rotation is free form rather than rigid, it still has some things that it has to do every minute. It's main movement tools in the hammer skills and comet are also needed for its burst, meaning you don't want to use those whenever you please if you're still trying to optimize your DPS output. And if you go into your 2min burst without having spent 12s casting 2 creature motifs, 1 hammer motif and 1 starry sky motif and 1 Comet, your burst is gonna be severely neutered. You bring up RDM being confined to only 1 combo for movement purposes, but it's the same thing with the hammer skills on PCT. Since it has a 1min CD and you need to use one in your burst, you usually only have 1 hammer you can use purely for movement. Also, the reason why PCT's Starry Sky is larger than Ley Lines is because 1) PCT doesn't have 3s CD "teleport me to Ley Lines button 2) cannot move their Starry Sky like BLM can and 3) Doesn't only get a SpSpd boost from its stationary buff, it needs to be inside those lines for its 5 palette GCD to avoid losing out on Rainbow Drip.
Also, while it has gotten more rigid, BLM is still pretty free flowing and the 7.1 changes even reintroduced non standard lines. And I'd argue that RDM also doesn't really have a fixed rotation. Outside of burst, you're just trying to build gauge, avoid drifting Fleche/Contre Sixte and use Acceleration to not lose a Grand Impact, which while it has some constraint, is not a rigid rotation like most melee have.

And outside of the Star Prism heal, which is extremely constrained in its timing and use, and the ability to spread its shield, which does nothing for its own survivability, PCT doesn't have more options than BLM. While PCT has Smudge, BLM can use Aetherial manip/between the lines, and Mana ward is a stronger shield than Tempera Coat.

So saying that PCT "overflows" with on-demand instant cast is laughable when it's genuinely the caster with the least amount of them, as well as pretending it's uniquely free and flexible.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to say PCT is the hardest job in the game, but acting like it's a free job that doesn't have to work for its damage output is an extreme exaggeration.

[Carighan]

Have you played Pictomancer in a savage or higher fight?

The savages, yeah. Not done any ultimate yet. EXes of course, too, but you sounded like you skipped those in the discussion, only post-EX counts?

But yeah, I did not mean it is easier than Summoner. I worded it the way I meant it: You can see why people might argue it is. It's very freeform and as a result relaxed to play. It's resistant to timing mistakes, it trivially re-aligns, it enjoys downtime. Sure it has more casts than most other casters right now (TY for the correction on Black Mage, sheeeeeeesh that's insane), but it's still not what I'd call a "full caster" comparing other MMORPGs I've played where 90%-100% is what makes a "proper" caster, and usually with no sliding/weaving time.

Mind you none of its utility is on the level of 4xRezz from RDM (although Smudge like En Avant often means 1 less rezz needed :P ), but eh... the job isn't wanting for options to work around fight mechanics and survive "oh shit!" moments where you catch on too late to something. One of the easier jobs to handle that with in fact, again due to how freeform it is.

Though now that I consider 60% instant casts on Black Mage, I honestly don't know where I'd want caster balance to be anymore. None of them sound like full casters at all, so naturally none of them ought to deal full caster damage.

[Sarantserel]

cut for lenght

I didn't mention EX since they're very similar to savage fights but usually more approachable. When I started doing savage, my friends would often try out jobs they were not as familiar with in EX fights for that reason. And usually, when people talk about balance, it's often centered around Savage and Ultimates since those are big raiding event for this game where we actually have world races and savage is the content people tend to point to for speed killing.

And I personally just disagree that Pictomancer is uniquely advantaged against timing mistakes. You forgot to paint your starry sky motif because you got overwhelmed by a mechanic or mistakes, your burst is now out of line by 4s for the rest of the fight. Yes, it doesn't have hard combos, meaning that going from a palette GCD to a hammer and back and to a comet doesn't break your combo, but again, considering the hammer and comets are the job's mobility tools, having them reset your paint would be really punishing compared to other casters.

Taking SMN, yes you are stuck to a rigid Demi Egi, 3 primal, Demi-Egi cycle, but considering most of the GCD in there don't have a cast, I don't see how SMN is punished harder for that beyond just not planning their Ifrit usage correctly, but then again, that's 2 GCD in a rotation otherwise completely free of movement constraint and even then, Ruby Rite has a faster cast speed than PCT's motif. Even for BLM, assuming you didn't blow through your triple cast and xenoglossy charges. You can just click triple cast and have 3 GCD of movement, then throw in Thunder and Fire 3 procs or Xenoglossy. Meanwhile PCT needs to have found the time to stand still for 3s to access their "triple cast" equivalent. RDM is probably the other caster that's more limited when it comes to continuous movement in that it needs to both have gauge saved and a moment to go in melee range for the first 3 hits. And even then, the addition of Grand Impact and Swiftcast's lowered CD help.

And regarding "proper" caster, a caster with 90% to 100% cast with no sliding and weaving would not be viable in the game with the current fight design. Fights require too much movement, at times even mid burst phase for a job with so little mobility to survive. The most egregious example of such a mechanic in the past few years probably being Inviolate Purgation in P7S, where BLM had to save all the triple cast, swift cast and xenoglossy it could to do that entire mechanic without dropping a cast or RDM had to use their combo, combined with acceleration, swiftcast and some very tight slidecasting to make that mechanic without dropping a cast. Meanwhile SMN, Phys ranged and melees had nothing as stressful to consider since the fight didn't even have positional being a wall boss with a gigantic hitbox.

And I dunno, for "oh shit moment, BLM has instant cast peppered through its core rotation on top of a floating triple cast charge that can be popped for emergencies. SMN literally only has 1 short moment in its rotation where it can actually get screwed by an unexpected event and RDM can use acceleration to quickly get access to two instant cast for repositioning. I will grant you that smudge is the most versatile gap closer among casters, although it has some pit falls compared to BLM's skating tools, as I can attest as someone that smudged to her death a few times.

Plus, as wayfinder mentioned, difficulty has a subjective aspect to it. I had a lot of trouble wrapping my head around SAM during ShB and saw it as way more difficult than DRG, my main at the time, but I also had SAM maining friends tell me they found DRG way harder to play than SAM.