If i remember correctly, in several final fantasy u had a huge liberty of choosing you skill build or wich competence this or this character would use, be it with competence trees or with skill materias... you weren't forced to choose the ONLY path the game would offer you.
Diversity is good and healthy, look at how many ppl signed the vanity slot post because they are sick of looking like everyone else ingame. And we it comes to skills and specs for me it s the same. I don't see why i m litterally forced to have the same skills and the same stats as other ppl from my job.
Some ppl here said that jobs would be the equivalent of specs, i then hope to see in the future 6+ jobs per class wich would then have their own strength. But even if that would happen there could be even more diversity if they would give us more gear choice. Why not let us choose if we want to have more vit/more dext/str/int... or mind or piety and parry on the gear we want to equip?
For exemple a monk could choose to prioritze vit to be a tanky dps... a war could go full str to spec as a tank with high dps... a bard could go for parry/piety to go for a pure support dodge class... and so on.... those a just a few exemples right?
As the pve side of the game is right now.... wich is easy and straight forward, were jobs HAVE to play the roles they are designed to... and nothing else... the lack of diversity is still somehow "working"... even if it is less interesting that it could be. But when it comes to pvp! this isn't the same at all... you can't force your ennemy to only atack your tank while your DPS burst them down with their squishy build and tank being healed by healer jobs being even more squishy.
We do definitly need more specs, and no, Cookie Cutter spec in good games doesn't exist (as a lot of ppl were saying earlier), there s always strengths and weaknesses to any build you could make, and never 1 build that could win in any situations. I know we have a lot of math guys in FF14ARR who think they are super cool and almighty with their numbers. But in mmos... everything is situationnal, especially when it comes to pvp fights or hard pve environment (unless the AI is completly predictible)... having the highest DPS of all is not always the way to go you know. Theory usually only applies when you fight against a Dummy.