Quote Originally Posted by Lyrica_Ashtine View Post
Regardless of the amount of skills you have to choose from, players will always be funneled towards a certain direction by the community.
This is only true for games like FFXIV. Ragnarok had so many possibilities, it was not only about math, about how much DPS or Raw Damage you could do, there was a lot of nuances, LOTS of different -- effective -- builds, specially for organized WoEs. And I can assure you, the best builds were not on forum guides.

I'll give you just some examples:

pre-renewal:

High Wizards could be Damage Dealers or some kind of debuffers for WoE (Assaulter Build), with use of Lord of Vermilion to "lock" players in place and spam of Ganbaltein to pierce the enemy Land Protector/Magnetic Earth and eventual uses of Quagmire.

Scholars could be full support (the best build for WoE), or could lose support capabilities and focus on damage with Double Bolt build to have fun in PvP. Some FS Scholars like to put some points in STR to be able to carry more gems and pots, which is a very reasonable reason. Others prefer to put more points in VIT or even AGI (Attack Speed reduces animation lock).

Renewal:

Warlocks can use Tetra Vortex build for focused single target damage or instead use Comet/White Imprison build for high AoE damage and debuff capabilities.

and so on and so forth, could give more examples that there is lots of different builds in RO, and you can confirm that going in any RO forum and see that even today, 10+years after, people still discuss different builds and different card combinations.

But yeah, I can't see this happening in FFXIV, because most skills are just that: Damage or Heal, and then what matters in the end is just math unfortunately.