besides RDM, which jobs actually need these fancy gauges to function?

[Zarabeth]

It seems pretty useless on SMN and WHM.

[Chukkaque]

In general the gauges are there to make keeping track of tasks easier on all jobs. in 3.xx the skill gap between hardcore and casual was rather extreme and it was mostly due to the "intense" nature that 3.xx added to rotations.
As such these gauges are there to assist in keeping track of various aspects of jobs easier.

[Coatl]

(cough) WHM is probably the most pointless, but at least it's pretty.

You play SCH or AST yet? It's purely an aesthetic change.

[Albinosmurfs]

That would make MCH the most boring class in the game by far. Currently they took away a lot of extra abilities and our dot which removed depth. If they took away the heat bar too we'd have basically nothing to pay attention to.

Just our buffs, procs, and cooldowns. We'd be fine. The dot didn't add depth it was literally hot shot into lead shot. That isn't depth; it's lazy design.

[Greedalox]

Just our buffs, procs, and cooldowns. We'd be fine. The dot didn't add depth it was literally hot shot into lead shot. That isn't depth; it's lazy design.

I agree with this. You weren't watching for Lead Shot to fall off, you were waiting for Hot Shot to. Lead shot was always after Hot Shot so it was effectively 2 GCD's for the monitoring of 1. Design wise, nothing was truly lost from the loss of Lead Shot.

[Katryn]

Whm's probably isn't the most needed, but as someone who does use direct heals as part of my toolkit, I'm glad to have a quick and easy way to ensure I use my lilies at the best time possible.

[Albinosmurfs]

I agree with this. You weren't watching for Lead Shot to fall off, you were waiting for Hot Shot to. Lead shot was always after Hot Shot so it was effectively 2 GCD's for the monitoring of 1. Design wise, nothing was truly lost from the loss of Lead Shot.

I really wish heat would have been made more punishing but give us ways to manage it. The heat gauge now is just boring since there really isn't a downside.

[Amelia_Pond_Behemoth]

I feel with DRK, the bar isn't necessary. I just need the numbers and I'm good.

[Tsukino]

It seems pretty useless on SMN and WHM.

It's pretty pointless on WHM, but on SMN it actually came with a set of nerfs/adjustments. Can't use Aetherflow or any abilities that require stacks while either waiting for or in Dreadwyrm Trance, if Aethertrail is taking up any spots that many Aetherflow stacks cannot be replenished, and failing to land an Aetherflow-based ability removes the ability to get to three Aethertrail without reusing the whole chain.

I know it's all part of rebalancing, but it certainly feels like we lost a lot of functionality and replaced it with a shiny gauge.

[SaitoHikari]

Bard MUST pay attention to their gauge, it's fairly clear the entire job was redesigned around their existence. A Bard that doesn't pay attention would essentially be missing the entire point of the job in the first place.

The split second decision making we have to make to maximize our damage output is pretty insane, and the gauges are also the reason why Bard DoTs got buffed to 30 seconds. It's a delicate balance between deciding whether or not you should throw DoTs on more enemies hoping for more procs, or go into blazing machine gun mode.

Honestly, I feel SB Bard is actually harder to optimize than HW Bard, but failure to optimize SB Bard doesn't result in your DPS dropping as much compared to HW Bard.