Simplicity over complexity, time to change.

[Felessan]

Issue is though, our debuffs are "after the fact" deuffs. The only direct debuffs we have are from Warlo...Summo....Arcanist, everything else is on weaponskill use or a "combo" - Someone who specializes in it would go a long way to adding depth to this game.

We have debuffs that increases all type of damage, we have a number of ability that reduces damage from mob, we have slow/gravity debuffs, bind, evasion down, buff for magic resistance, several shields etc.
Yes, some of them have additional damage or included in combos, but they are still the same debuffs/buffs as in every other mmo.
And the only reason to include buffer/debuffer class is for someone who likes to play to buff/debuff only, and it has nothing to do with "complexity" of the game.

It's not even 'complex', it just ...makes the game not feel so mundane battlewise. I mean Maplestory has more depth to its gameplay in comparison and anyone who's played it knows that's just a spam fest.

You know, FF14 combat in depth has nothing with spamfest. You can spam, but you result will be below average.

You do realize this exists in XIV right now, right? It's not a 'FFXI situation" because FFXI was not the first nor last MMO to exist.

Ok, you can say it's a situation for oldschool MMO that only hardcore crowd played, that have a very little playerbase where all that "insane grind", "lockouts" and all-content-wide elitism considered to be normal, so no casuals would dare to step into this territory. It was proven that it is bad for general population and for game to be "success in masses".
And not, FF14 does not have anything like this outside fashion items and super ultra hardcore part of 0.0001% population. You don't need crafting gear to pass through T9, nobody forces you to make Novus with best possible stat. Nobody really cares about how much money you got.
The maximum you might be asked for is a food, but it's cheap and spending like 20k a week is a joke as SE did bothered to provide constant stream of money for everyone, even though it's rather small, but it's still enough for basic activities like repairs, teleports and minimal food.