Are Ultimates a major contributor to Job Design issues?

[Absurdity]

y, there are a few things that players need to agree to for any sort of change to happen. The first is the raid buffs either need to be removed or heavily nerfed. I will caveat that 100% uptime buffs are fine (Bard's songs/Dancer's Standard Step) as it provides an increase to everything equally. The second is, if you want jobs to have a different damage profile, you might need to accept the fact your job might be underpowered compared to another jobs, just because of fight design.

I'm not sure even that is really necessary.
Sustain jobs like Paladin were fine when raid buffs were still 60, 90, 120 and 180 seconds because the different timings of FoF and Req allowed Paladin to take advantage of the multiple different buff windows, it wasn't the 2nd highest dps tank in most of ShB for no reason.

It's really only the consolidation of all buffs into the same window that killed sustain dps jobs

Paladin in the middle of Endwalker got a full rework because it didn't fit into the current 2 minute rotation design. The 2 minute rotation is only really relevant in higher level raiding. Old paladin functioned completely fine outside of that content.

You could even see it in the fact that old Paladin was doing fine when it came to rDPS, problem is that it completely fell off a cliff when it came to aDPS and for tanks it is relevant how much damage you can put inside other people's buff windows.

[Mikey_R]

I'm not sure even that is really necessary.
Sustain jobs like Paladin were fine when raid buffs were still 60, 90, 120 and 180 seconds because the different timings of FoF and Req allowed Paladin to take advantage of the multiple different buff windows, it wasn't the 2nd highest dps tank in most of ShB for no reason.

It's really only the consolidation of all buffs into the same window that killed sustain dps jobs

Which is true, to a degree. Paladin was a weird job in that it was buffed for the vast majority of it's GCDs, so you could make the argument that it was no wonder it all lined up, because the chances of it not are slim. In a different mindset, this buffed damage was PLD's baseline, with a boost during Req and a slight dip when there is no FoF or Req.

However, temp raid buffs could potentially hinder job diversity. Imagine for a second 2 burst DPS, one where the buffed period is fixed, like Dragoon and another where it could be more flexible, as an example, take Monk, remove RoF and Brotherhood and make Perfect Balance and Masterful Blitz the burst window for Monk (with Perfect balance boosting damage). With perfect balance, you can be very very flexible with were you burst in a vacuum, you could delay it for an important ADD to take down as an example. Dragoon is as it is now (minus Battle Litany for this example).

If I now introduce a job that has a raid buff, the Monk is now going to want to put it's burst damage in that window, necessarily restricting where it can burst and losing that previous flexibility. Whilst Dragoon is hoping that the timing's on their burst window line up with the raid buff to make full use of it.

This is why I bought up Ninja in my post as it was the first job to have a universal raid (de)buff (Foe's Requiem was magic only) and that one debuff alone necessarily wanted people to make full use of it. We didn't have the insane potencies we have now, but it was still a factor. It causes jobs to funnel into that window, which is the same path that got us to where we are now.

As for ShB, being the last expansion before the 2 minute meta, most jobs were already 60/120 second jobs, with 90 second being uncommon and 180 being even rarer. But this is where the problem arises. Why should I bring the 90 second job when I can replace it with the 60 second job and get more damage out of it? That raid buff at 90 second is only really benefitting that one job and the odd action here and there. It is just in this weird, awkward spot. Maybe, shove it into the 120 second window? Just so it feels a but better to use. So again, we are shoving things into the raid window.

We could make some jobs 60/120, some 90 in about a roughly equal split, but could that then split the jobs down the middle, only wanting to party with jobs of their own buff timings? Would adjusting a job to fit both make it over/under powered in either one?

So it comes down to 2 main reasons why I do think they should go. The first being, we tried it, and throughout the expansions, it just kept getting shoved into the 2 minute meta it is now. It could end in a 3 minute meta if done differently, but it would still be the same complaints. The second, it necessarily reduces how you can build a jobs damage profile. By making these raid buffs, you are saying, dump all high potency attacks here, even if you job really doesn't want to. You kill the ability to provide flexibility in some jobs and diversify the way jobs do their damage.

Note, that this doesn't stop raid buffs going out, just ones that provide an increase in damage. Arcane Circle and Brotherhood are raid buffs that rely on the rest of the team to buff the job using them. There is also the case of keeping raid buffs up 100% of the time can be something that the job has to maintain by pressing more than just 1 button.

This all being said, there is no real right or wrong answer to this dilemma. Different people are going to have different opinions about what they think is the right direction, which does highlight the fact this is a more complex matter than it might initially seem.