Job Customization

[Steeled]

You mean "sub white mage because the game lacks dedicated healers so you can be shackled to healing and spamming buffs", "sub black mage and get laughed out of groups because your nukes are still subpar and are 'less useful' to the group because you're not focusing on healing", and "sub WAR/NIN/DNC and be kicked off the game from the sheer power of the alliance's collective laughter at the idea of you wanting to do something other than heal/buff"? RDM is not the best example for what you're trying to argue.

Prior to SCH, RDM was a great healer. SCH didn't change RDM, but it did kind of knock it down a peg. WHM could heal harder, but RDM had better throughput. The thing about RDM was the original job to straddle both lines. It could assist in damage until the group needed some healing and then could immediately provide that. Gearswap macros made it possible for you to nuke efficiently and heal efficiently.

RDM also tanked, as you know. It was the original soloer, claiming everything from Faust, to Charybdis, to Urteil (=P) most recently.

The game changed, negatively, after 75.

Anyway, no, I don't want just cosmetic toys. I want functional choices to make. I, for one, like the opportunity to do things wrong. I like the opportunity to do things differently and I feel like this game, more than any other, deprives us of that choice. I don't want to be a special snowflake, but I do want an actual choice to make and this game has managed to give us *none*. It's astounding.

It is not because I have any dreams of being a special snowflake, but because choice allows us to compensate. If I know I'm playing with a weak healer, I might want to gear/"spec" for that.

If you argue abilities, then you're conveniently forgetting that this is done for the sake of balance between jobs, in tandem with traits that enhance said abilities for their native classes.

Balance between jobs? Like how Warrior and Paladin are balanced? How Scholar and White Mage are balanced (edit: enmity)? How Dragoon and Monk are balanced? It wasn't done for the balance of anything, and if it was, it was done poorly. White mage is a fine healer, but I'd rather have a scholar. In high-healing situations, its nice when a healer can do its job without riding the tank's threat (Hi Titan). Monk is a fine DPS but Dragoons do it better, and though it lacks the desired limit break, bards do it best.

The abilities don't have to be "useful" 100% of the time, as the core of jour job is defined by native class abilities and the five job abilities you get. Cross-class abilities are for additional utility and flavor, but are not and should not be job-defining. From one paladin to another, my bars currently have Cure, Raise, Foresight, Mercy Stroke, Fracture; outside of Foresight, they all don't get used 100% of the time, but that is fine.

No, I'm talking about abilities that aren't useful. If you can't cast stoneskin, curing yourself has value, but minimal. The bosses usually hit a lot harder than a Paladin can cure for (and rightfully so), so the best you're going to do is delay death for a second. Stoneskin is more likely to save you, especially since when everyone is playing properly, a heal shouldn't be far away.

Tell me what a Paladin or gladiator is to do with Skull Sunder, please. That ability was thrown in there for the appearance of choice. Even if Heavy Swing was in there, it wouldn't belong because paladin has it's own counterpart abilities.

If you argue gearing, you're basing that entirely on wanting to be a unique snowflake with no practical gain to gameplay on a larger level. Keeping stat gains and job/class scaling on a tight leash is for the sake of balanced gameplay, and it'll be a cold day in hell before I support the alternative.

We don't work for the Adventurer's company, we shouldn't all be wearing the same uniform, but that is there is only one path presented to us. Everybody, do this the same way.