Give DRK a magic vulnerability debuff

[Shurrikhan]

Replacing all debuffs with a flat damage buff would just create a two tier system of jobs that have it and jobs that don't, and would make it just as redundant as protect.

How? They're not redundant; they stack. TA stacks with Hypercharge which stacks Battle Litany which stacks with Balance/Arrow/Spear which stacks with Fey Wind, and so forth. General raidwide buffs do not eclipse nor override each other. The only non-stacking debuffs are the typal ones, such as magic, physical, slashing, piercing, and blunt. All others can only be overriden by a duplicate class (an overlapping use of EB, TA, BH, BL, Balance, etc).

There's nothing wrong with damage types and job synergies. Those synergies just need to be more balanced. Someone needs a magic debuff, and that should be a lesser favored class.
It's that simple.

This would be true if not the for that fact that by playing primarily just to one side or another, a given party can squeeze out an additional form of damage-utility, or the direct personal damage than one would normally pay to have that kind of utility. By the time the choice is balanced in a split comp, it is naturally overpowered in a specialized composition, and the better of the two possible specialized parties would then simply overwhelm the other in meta.

The only way to avoid that would be to compress the scalability of the debuff, such that it can only, effectively speaking, influence a set number of party member's worth of damage anyways. Alas, XIV has no such mechanical features to allow that at this time.

At that point, yes, you can have actual balance as compositions are no longer favored by going purely in one direction or the other. But until then, they inherently imbalance themselves -- perhaps not by a huge margin, but a large enough one nonetheless to discourage use of the suggested DRK outside of caster-heavy parties, and of MNK and RDM outside of highly physical parties (unless Verraise is needed).

It wouldn't further schism party composition, because it's already skewed towards physical anyway.

Which is why I said we needed to delimit the two typals that remain (Brotherhood and Embolden). At which point there would be no such skew.

[Seraphor]

If all damage type debuffs were consolidated to a single damage resistance down debuff, there is no way they would let them stack.
Imagine getting a cumulative 30% or 40% damage resistance down on an enemy.

[Shurrikhan]

If all damage type debuffs were consolidated to a single damage resistance down debuff, there is no way they would let them stack.
Imagine getting a cumulative 30% or 40% damage resistance down on an enemy.

Trick Attack is a damage resistance down debuff.
Hypercharge is a damage resistance down debuff.
Foe Requiem is a damage resistance down debuff.
All three stack. You can therefore manage a 20% damage resistance down already. (Actually perhaps a 21.275% damage resistance down, as they may stack multiplicatively rather than additively.)

I've never said that Slashing, Piercing, and Blunt ought to be turned into a single debuff form. I've simply stated that

1. Typals (Magic, Physical, Slashing, Piercing, and Blunt) are the only type of non-stacking vulnerabilities debuffs.

and opined that

2. Magic and Physical typals restrict compositions and encourage schismatic composition choices.
3. What few (Brotherhood, Embolden, and Radiant Shield for physical, and Garuda's Contagion for magical) Magic/Physical typals remain should be not be typal.

Slashing, Piercing, and Blunt are inherently different from Physical/Magical, precisely because they do not self-stack, and those who affect more than just themselves (as per Blunt) generally have additional possible sources (Slashing) or have their effectiveness halved (Piercing).