A Use for Classes.

[Bishop81]

why even bother with jobs?

Less prep work.

If you can dodge reliably, and like dodging, there is no reason to go through all the prep work required to gear up a Class.

hy go through an entire grind to accommodate latency-dependent encounters instead of tuning the encounters to accommodate for the average latency?

Define "avg latency"? Will tuning for avg latency make it too easy (hence boring) for people with low ping?

With Classes in my suggestion, the gameplay is shifted from "dodging in dungeons" to "figuring out the right skill set and gear to survive the attack".

f a class has more hp to be more reliable to survive unavoidable AoE, why would I want to bring a job that has a lower overall survivability ...

Who said anything about HP? Dodgeable AoE will be negate by Classes with skills and passive resist. More HP will just burden healers.

Survivability is depend on the player, not the Job/Class. If a player is good at dodge, his survivability will be fine regardless whether he plays a Job or Class. If a player can't dodge, then a Class is a good option - you pay for it with prep work required.

And I keep bringing WoW as an example because they have tried doing something like that in the past, and it just straight up didn't work out (element wheel),

WoW did it wrong, and as typical of Blizzard, they just cut it out instead of trying to fix it.

Would you then be able to play a class like a job and get the best of both worlds?.

The intent is to design it such that there is no point to doing so.

That if you start dodging as a Class, you gain no benefit - heck it could even lower your damage/healing. It would be like a tank (a real military tank) evading small arms fires ...