Not going to read through the 10 pages, so excuse any repeats...

1. Gameplay. A Dragoon does not go through their rotations the same manner as a monk. They have jumping skills that tie in with their surge cooldowns (which comes at a risk cause of mobility lock), a few positional attacks, and not as big reliance on maintenance (range). Monks have positional bonuses on nearly everything to maximize their damage, work with stances rather than combos and suffer greatly if they can't keep their momentum. Ninjas from what I see have a mix of dragoon's mobility lock on some of their skills and seizure inducing mudras.

In the ranged category, bards play nowhere near similar to either BLM or SMN with their freedom of mobility and well controlled burst damage through cooldowns. SMNs are DoT oriented from what I've seen with reliance on pet, while BLM is more of a traditional caster. Both have different means of maintaining their mana to sustain dps.


2. It's the way they tank and the moveset they have available. You way you label it "beyond their skill names...", you speak as if the skills function in the exact same manner. Overpower is not flash. Warrior has nowhere near the amount of defensive cooldowns Paladins have. Paladin does not have an Off-GCD stun. Aside from that, healing them is a bit different as well. Speaking with a lvl 34 WHM, warrior hp drops a lot faster than paladins, but the high hp does allow for much better value out of stinkskin.

3. They don't. I'm sure people have mentioned it before, WHM heal has more on hp restoration and a damage shield based on the target's max hp, greatly synergizing with warrior's high hp pool. SCH has more access to additional mitigation and barriers based on their magic attack, making it equally effective on the tank regardless of their max hp..

4. The process of getting to novus in the first place (materia, the initial relic quest). If you take crafting completely out of the equation, as in, no player in the entire game has crafting learned, then material would be incredibly slow to flow into the market, and specifically grades III and IV having little to no source at all (you can't buy lvl 45+ equipment from vendors).

5. Read above. Though crafters are acpable of crafting ilvl 90 equipment which is entry-level (myths), and are typically better stats if you use the materia slots. Otherwise, raiding (coils for example) will always be better for tackling what is supposed to be difficult content.