Black Mage

[Galvuu]

snip

The only thing that could justify a bad litany like that is a random skip, and you can normally predict those accurately (Creator gave me a lot of training there, thanks A11).
When Sfia says "high level" he doesn't mean a god-tier player somehow playing with 7 idiots.
He means a party of skillful people playing together. Which is what you see in serious progression, high-end speed kills and more recently, Ultimate.
This "pug" example in the vacuum where everyone is bad except for the subject of the argument doesn't mean much. Of course if you're shoved into a terrible party things go South fast. That's why Hashmal is such a clown fiesta.

This kind of balancing is always meant for the top cut of the playerbase. This is simply because it's only at that level that the issues become apparent, when people are fully utilising the resources they have available (and optimally) that the discrepancies become visible.
It's these heavily invested, heavily devoted people that become disenchanted when the state of the game balance bodes ill.

Someone who's on the 50% of any job (and that's the majority of the playerbase) can get better just by reading basic guides about their job and try to have good uptime.
Someone on the 75% percentile can start to keep track of their buffs/dots and do the rotation as well as possible while keeping those up.
Someone on the 90% percentile can now optimise the rotation for each specific fight and alter it with regard to skips/timings and make sure the little things are all done perfectly on top (weaving ogcds and stuff like that).
All of these happen regardless of the state of game balance. You have so many avenues of drastic improvement before these imbalances become a critical issue that they honestly make no difference.

But if when you start nearing the 95%+ you still see a big gap between your job and the others, you realise that all your investment was a waste. It's here that balance becomes an issue- you're suddenly limited by the game itself moreso than your execution. This is actually the worst feeling ever.
Especially in a game like this, where we play a self-insert avatar. Oh look, my catgirl witch now has to be a bard in Ultimate. So much fun >.>