It makes zero sense for the PLD class to have three different skills for AoE

[Izsha]

How far are you willing to go along this path? Let's strawman for a second here, just as an illustraton though. "It makes zero sense for there to be more than one healing spell" or "It makes zero sense for there to be more than one class, all jobs should be able to heal dps and tank with a single button that does everything!"

Yes, that's a completely ridiculous argument, but at what point between PLD having 3 aoe skills and there being one job with one button will you be satisfied? Flash and eclipse have nearly opposite applications in spite of them both being aoe. One builds threat, reduces damage taken, and does no damage. The other ONLY does damage.

Because opportunity cost. Every class has X button budget. Let's say 50 for math sake. If 5 of them are aoes, that's 10% of your actions that have little to no use for much of the game. One forenmity. One for defense. One for damage. Etc. Is that interesting gameplay? Is that fun? Would it be more fun to streamline it and just have an all in 1 like steel cyclone? It does damage. It doesn enmity. It does defense(healing). Then you take the other actions and make interesting and fun resource juggling, swapping, position changing, party assisting whatevers.

Aoes are a standard and boring part of most jobs like pld and war in particular. There is nothing engaging about flash to gather then spam a 2nd skill with the exact same CD, area of effect for damage. That's not engaging and splitting those into 2 skills doesnt ADD anything to the pld experience.

That's why your straw man falls apart. Plds 2 gcd aoes dont add anything except buttons. They arent fun. They arent interesting. So if you have 2 Boring buttons, you should makethem interesting or combine them and use the new button budget to make something interesting.

Your straw man misses the point that you get something new for every button you cull. So it isnt condensing aoes is the same as having 1 job with 1 button. Its replacing lane boring buttons with good interesting buttons. If 2 jobs were nearly identical the same argument would work. Remove the duplicate and change it into something unique and interesting.