SAM out classing all other DPS

[Galvuu]

snip

That isn't the whole story, and I'm not letting SE off the hook here.
When AST came out, people said it wasn't strong enough and needed a lot of work in some areas (same for MCH, and there was the BRD thing with WM not being worth jack at first, though I don't remember this so well, so grain of salt with this one).
Instead, they pulled out the old "y'all don't know what you're doing, we tried it here and it's just right".
So they leave and underpowered class to rot for a patch and a half while ignoring criticisms of it- thus letting the public perception of "AST is garbage" set almost permanently.
Then, months later, they tune it better and scramble to repair the damage that's been done- but it's already in the collective memory that "AST is worthless". So the only way to show it otherwise is to overbuff it.
Even then, did anyone really think AST was weak in 3.4/3.5? Pretty sure the general perception became that it was getting centralizing (especially when you account for Balance rng).

If the balance team acted faster, many of these situations could be averted. Which would be nice, since they tend to have a lasting impact.

[Nominous]

That isn't the whole story, and I'm not letting SE off the hook here.
When AST came out, people said it wasn't strong enough and needed a lot of work in some areas (same for MCH, and there was the BRD thing with WM not being worth jack at first, though I don't remember this so well, so grain of salt with this one).

They tend to wait to change things because it's the right approach, even if they're a bit bullish on their opinion of things (which isn't the right approach). They choose to balance things after the first raid tier for good reasons. They changed AST in 3.1, 3.2, and 3.3, AND 3.4 as well. They never let it sit.

They have been wrong about Job balance before, I think we all can agree. They only overbuff things, however, because people don't react to middling buffs as we saw with AST. And then you get the MCH/BRD counterbalance issue in situations where the buffs might suffice, but you have the DPS jealousy issue. Again, because the community refuses to chill when they think their Job is anything but meta. It won't stop happening, either, unfortunately.

[Galvuu]

They tend to wait to change things because it's the right approach, even if they're a bit bullish on their opinion of things (which isn't the right approach). They choose to balance things after the first raid tier for good reasons. They changed AST in 3.1, 3.2, and 3.3, AND 3.4 as well. They never let it sit.

They have been wrong about Job balance before, I think we all can agree. They only overbuff things, however, because people don't react to middling buffs. Again, because the community refuses to chill when they think their Job is anything but meta.

If the job launches on 3.0 and it's not in a good state and you wait until 3.1 to buff it... people who are learning the new jobs/playing story/progressing into the new raid tier are already invested into something else by the time the buffs start trickling in. You can gather data over a month or two, but you need to strike while the iron is hot. That said, the 3.2 buffs were fairly minimal. Ewer and Spire buffs did not change the fact that they were undesirable cards.

Plus, Gordias was quite unforgiving. I remember that at launch AST had lower potencies than the other two healers. I mean, whomever thought that one out clearly didn't think of AST in a serious raid scenario. Especially when it's "trump card" is so unreliable. They actually kept one of the healers legitimately unviable for a patch- the 3.1 buffs simply made AST usable to begin with. This should've been the starting point... I hope jobs like MCH aren't left in the dumpster for a whole patch :/

[Nominous]

They actually kept one of the healers legitimately unviable for a patch- the 3.1 buffs simply made AST usable to begin with. This should've been the starting point... I hope jobs like MCH aren't left in the dumpster for a whole patch :/

Again, they did the right thing by waiting to change things. Changing things mid-patch give certain teams, running certain comps, a better chance at world-first, while inadvertently making it potentially less approachable for those who don't. Not to mention, people who leveled and practiced a specific Job can't test the Job to it's true potential in content that is worth balancing around. Therefore, they'd have no data for the real performance of a Job to say what is capable of clearing all content in the game, or how easy or difficult they might have it.

"Striking while the iron is hot" in this context is no better than knee-jerk reaction 'balancing', and their patch schedule is to blame for any time wasted there, not balancing issues.