I'm quite convinced, based on Summoner and a variety of other Job balance issues, that the development team simply doesn't understand the nature of online play. It's like they're designing a single-player game sometimes. They seem to have concluded that it's alright to sacrifice balance in the name of Job flavour.

The thing is though, especially for FFXIV, that's not an acceptable approach. This game's mechanics only work if various Jobs are relatively balanced. If they aren't, it generates animosity and frustration. FFXIV's content, lest we forget, is designed to be spammed; small imbalances are magnified as a result. It's arguable even FFXI handled job imbalances better than FFXIV, and that's saying something, because FFXI had multiple severe, long-lasting imbalances - but at least end-game content typically allowed for a "death by large numbers" approach, and individual pieces of content weren't spammed a dozen times a week.

The development team, from Yoshi P on down, need to get their collective heads out of their arses. This type of approach isn't acceptable, and hiding behind flimsy excuses like job flavour is ridiculous.