The Op is right Classes do not equal Jobs, they are the building block to make jobs. If you look at everything in the game almost all the abilities in FFXI are present just spread out among all the classes. Put all those abilities back together on 1 class and you have a very unique job.

The reason why everyone is complaining everything plays the same is because people are playing the classes and not jobs. If you truly make something out of the different classes then you make something unique.

Make a Pld out of your glad and at rank 50 you can actually negate almost all the dmg you take for like 40secs out of every min. You can cure yourself, and hold hate on 2-3 mobs at once. Your dmg will fail, but hey you are a tank.

With almost all my classes above 30 now I can say no 2 job really play the same when you build something with them.

Archer is a range dd with high spike dmg

Lnc gets Stamina crazy fast and builds tp like mad on top of that has strong debuff and buff attacks. A combination of dragoon/sam/dnc from 11 almost.

Pug is an Evasion Tank and decent dd. Cross between nin/mnk

Mar is a tank or a Warrior like class depending on how you build it.

Glad is well a tank, they suck at dd. BUt there is no class in this game able to negate as much dmg as this class. Basically the Pld of this game if you build it right.

Conj is the main healer (has all the status and cure spells) and the nuker (although it is weak at that atm...)

Thurm is a sorta rdm/drk hybrid. Has all the strong debuff spells and absorb spells (which combined with roaming soul and the transfer spell can give a dd or a tank 100secs of a buff)

The armory system is literally what you make out of it... if you do not make anything out of it you get 7 blank canvases which all look the same.