Balance, Homogenisation and Encounter Design: The Problem.

[RyuDragnier]

Except there is no such need when jobs are actually balanced decently.

Nothing is ever balanced decently when it comes to raiding. There will always be one move, one skill, one setup, that will be greater than the others. Weaken it, and another will suddenly become better. It's a neverending cycle, you cannot stop the playerbase from creating its own meta, you'll only be playing Whack-A-Mole. Or you do what SE is doing, and homogenize them to begin with, and get things just balanced enough to where people don't care if you bring X or Y class (like how it is currently with tanks).

You're conflating homogeneity and balance. Again. You can have balance without homogenization. Is it as easy? No. But should we submit to having only 4 classes in the game -- 1 for each Role -- just because the devs want the easiest means of balancing? No.

They stand in tandem, quite a bit. Look at GW2 and ESO, classes are not homogenized, and you have the problem with the playerbase homogenizing the setups to do things. It's wildly unbalanced and will never be balanced. Look at the tanks right now in FF14. They're homogenized quite a bit, but they're balanced enough to where nobody is wanting one job more than the others.