Quote Originally Posted by Lavani View Post
People don't seem to understand the fact that player skill is a variable that needs to be the controlled variable. Assuming player skill is the same regardless of the class being played, it's clear that one class will be better suited for a specific encounter. Using the Ifrit example, we assume that all 8 players have equal skill, their first attempt is done with only lancer for DPS, and things go well. Their second attempt is done with a medley of classes and things go well for the raid. When the two attempts are compared it's clear that using only one type of class facilitates the encounter. The fact that the lancer class is a stronger dps, allowing for a faster kill time and less stress on healers to worry about mana and does it from a safer distance, again less worry about player survive ability, makes the encounter favored to one specific class.

Like i said before, that bad game design breeds FOTM classes especially when people can change weapons and be a different class.
Yup. Considering if lag, skill, gear, and everything else being equal, classes are never going to be 100% balanced. But when you have class imbalance or a fight where a certain class can make up for lack of gear, skill, or lag because that class' skills don't require equal or near-equal player competency you have a problem.

This is what happened in FFXI with black mages for the longest time, because it was exceedingly easy and safe to play a BLM, and their gear requirements to do a satisfactory or good job were much lower than melees. When more gear became more accessible to melees in FFXI, black mages were shunned. That's a good example of what class imbalance is. It doesn't have anything to do with whether class X or class Y can't participate, but has to deal with whether all classes close enough to each other in performance when all other variables are equal.