Balance, Homogenisation and Encounter Design: The Problem.

[ForteNightshade]

Hard Enrages are one of the main issues with this game when it comes to endgame to be honest. Why everyone only cares about DPS. Just pure stupid game design.

Should make them soft enrages. 10mins or whatever hits. Bosses get a stack of dmg taken -10% and damage dealt +10% then an additional stack for each 30secs - minute after that, to the point where it is impossible to kill.

Not the oh well you are at 5% guess what though... you had a Ast, nin, and rdm in your party so you timed out. Do not worry though you can wait 3 weeks longer then groups of equal skill to clear it or play the meta jobs.

While I do like soft enrages, they functionally serve the same purpose. In fact, they're more likely to encourage a DPS focused mentality. After all, if you lose the DPS checks or fail a mechanic, the boss just became even harder.

Regardless, seeing enrage has nothing whatsoever to do with the job selection you pick. Your odds may be better with jobs like Monk and Black Mage but none are so bad they literally cannot clear.

Pragmatism is why I said I don't blame people for being picky about jobs. But this is a video game, not a matter of life and death. Being pragmatic is still player preference. As you've said yourself, a group of friends could very well be cool with not having the best jobs. As long as people are skilled enough (to at least make some progress), they could still have a good time running any content.

The difference being you know those seven other people, and know they can compensate for your preferred job's shortcomings. A random pug does not, which is why you see certain jobs being locked out, albeit not nearly to the extent people like to insinuate. No matter how you slice it, the onus lies with the dev team to make each job competitive within its own category. Player preference does play a factor, but that preference comes from how each job performs.

Wow, so are we really down to cosmetics and pushing buttons in a slightly different order?

To be fair, certain aspects of a job need to be uniform. Otherwise, people prioritize the superior option above all else. I mean, why wouldn't they? Case in point, when Paladin was the physical tank and Dark Knight magical. You saw less and less Paladins because practically the entirety of Alexander was magic heavy.