I DON'T like Stormblood RDM

[Wayfinder3]

My approach to balance is that it's actually easier to achieve, while maintaining fun, when you allow diversity. Trying to line up everyone's DPS is a game of whack-a-mole as jobs fall ahead and behind. As homogenization sets in, small differences make jobs completely superior, as there is no difference in niche to allow the lower DPS job a place. Making encounters that support different skill-sets and balancing the number of phases and/or encounters that favor given niches, on the other hand, ensures a place in the game for every job.

I know FF14 won't balance like that, and I mention in another post that different FF games need to adapt for genre, but 14 is going down a bad road by relying on compressing class design space down to role fundamentals. It hasn't hit the Cataclysm/Early EoC RS3 homogenization event horizon, yet, and I am trying to prevent that. StB BRD and NIN were a good example of adapting support skillsets into DPS jobs for a trinity game. If they could have given certain other jobs (RDM) something similar and then tuned the pure DD's (BLM/SAM) to a point of desirability, it would have been fine. Instead SE slashed support abilities from many jobs and roles, slashed diverse support from AST, slashed DPS from SCH, and slashed aggro management from every non-tank.

Gotta get all the pegs to fit precisely in their holes. But when most of the useful support abilities just increase rDPS, because the encounter design cares for little else, we shouldn't be surprised that pure DPS soar over or sink under "support" DPS based on whose rDPS is highest.

This wouldn't happen if a diverse array of support abilities occupied niches besides adding rDPS, and were actually supported by content (cleanable debuffs for BRD, the occasional thing that needs to be slept/bound/slowed, encounters that actually stress healers to the point that a) their full kits get used and b) defensive buffs/debuffs are more highly valued).

I envy people who can say a job "feels different to play" just based on rotation or aesthetic. That doesn't work for me, I need a difference in function. And I doubt I'm the only person who thinks that way.

Well, good. Because I never proposed further GCD support or healing skills for RDM. I also think that such additions need to be oGCD's. If there's a place to experiment with GCD support skills, it's on the healers as an alternative to nukespam during downtime.

EDIT NOTE: Accidentally deleted post during editing, and had to rewrite most of it! That's why things may have looked... strange.

1. Needing a difference in function would imply some jobs could only do some content, taboo number one.

2. I don't like that SE slashed Aggro management for dps and MP assistance from ranged physical. But whether casters have an AoE bind or a Sleep means nothing no one because if they were required, they'd all need to have it, and judging by your attempt to job balance. you'd be perfectly ok if RDM and SMN couldn't do a fight because BLM is the only caster that has sleep simply because it's "different"

3. Different isn't better, Full homogeneity isn't the answer. In this type of game, there is a balance that needs to be landed to ensure all jobs can clear content and no disparities exist based solely upon the pursuit of being different.