Quote Originally Posted by Nominous View Post
Well, it's an interesting discussion to be had, surely. Given my previous examples of the kinds of utility and party support/synergy options in the game, there's not much room for creativity in creating a job that has a place in a raid environment without them. The most 'creative', and that's hard to say with a straight face, utility they could have given to Samurai was a high amount of damage. It's difficult to balance, but that was their decision. I think the impetuous is on them to maintain the identity of a job, and what makes a job fun, or attractive to certain players. That is what I think they failed on, not the balance of Samurai.
Completely agreed. Pure damage was almost the only unique contribution method left, now that Monk has Brotherhood (though one could say this simply took the place of Dragon Kick). I think we'll still need to see each job played optimally in a larger variety of content before we can affirm its balance, but the damage itself certainly doesn't break that, so long as they are only trying to balance one party size and allotment—the 2/4/2 8-man.

I'd argue that, if fights were permitted greater complexity, there's actually a lot that DPS could do with a faintly off-tank-ish toolkit, which I actually think both Monk and Samurai would make good candidates for, just as there might be for further mob positioning control (looking at the currently useless Earth Tackle, Blank, FA), kiting, or buff stripping (previously of One-Ilm Punch).