I see what OP is saying here. This game is not quite as action-based as some other MMO's out there. For me, though, that's why I play it. A lot of the fights are more strategy based, and as most players come from FFXI where that's how you had to beat things. It's just taking the nuances between each class and ability and essentially abusing them to the point where you have a working strategy that gets the fight done as fast as possible as smoothly as possible. I don't like the fact that melees are underused right now, but honestly I do find it kind-of silly. Throw a mnk war and lnc on something and you can be sure to see a few stuns, blinds, and pacification going off. As long as your healing can deal with it it's just as valid, everyone just needs to know what they're doing.

People don't bother doing this, though. You can just throw a few ranged DD's at soemthing, and not have to worry about the quality of your support. Less people on the floor, and the fight just goes smoother. You could say the same for a lot of FFXI fights.

That being said, even action MMO's can have their abuses of game mechanics. In DCUO the best way of beating someone in PvP was often a combination of clipping ability animations and ending on an ability that gave you a 60% boost to normal attacks, and follow it up with a combo.

I'm fairly certain in both cases it's just a matter of dev intentions vs player utilization. People don't see a reason to try things any way other than the easiest. Personally, I think the additional effects on almost every combo should warrant having a range of DD's, but perhaps something else needs to be done. I just love doing a fight on MNK and being able to do almost any combo and see some effects getting thrown on what we're fighting. It could be that these effects aren't as potent as they should be, and should be increased so that putting them on mobs outweighs the extra healing needed by a melee job.