Anyone else concerned by the extremely low skill ceiling?

[ForteNightshade]

I don't get why you only list things that they lost, when the fact is they actually also gained things. Take blm for example, yeah the Blizzard IV refreshed enochian back then, but as you said that wasn't hard to keep up, and your overall rotation was actually simpler back then, they gained polyglots to use and despair, both which actually make you press more buttons now on your rotation. The only thing I can say is that they raised the skill floor by making it so when you mess up you aren't punished as heavily as before, but that is raising the skill floor, playing the job as it's meant to be played involves more abilities now and the gameplay feels pretty much the same, thus the ceiling hasn't been lowered. Same with many other jobs, dragoon gained life of the dragon etc. I fail to see how losing something but getting something else in it's stead isn't retaining complexity for the most part, only thing they did was they brought the floor up so when you fail you aren't punished that much, but honestly that is irrelevant, you still have to play the job near it's potential to clear harder content, the ceiling of jobs is pretty much the same.

You actually don't, especially not on Black Mage. An average Black Mage will boast higher damage than any other job outside the melee. Regardless, simply gaining a new ability or gauge does not inherently make the job equally complex.

Since you mention Dragoon, I'll use it for such an example. In Heavensward, management of BotD was far tighter and more punishing. You needed to know when to maximize your gauge because Geirskogul drained BotD, thus you could unintentionally ruin your own buff through mismanagement. The Eye system is significantly more straight forward as you simply used your Jumps and activated it through Geirskogul, which no longer drained your gauge. This was simplified even further in Shadowbringers where now only Jump/Hi-Jump grant an Eye, Nastrond guarantees a full 30 second duration; increased from 20 previously. You also had maintenance management in Phleebotomize and Heavy Thrust—both of which were removed in the subsequent expansions they were introduced.

Put simply, the newer systems designed for Dragoon were easier than Heavensward. That isn't to say they were necessarily bad but the job has, indeed, been simplified, especially going from Stormblood to Shadowbringers.

Really? I couldn't get any clears on either of those two with less than half of those deaths, decent gear, and in normal mode. I don't do savage, but in both SB alliance raids and ex trials, if there were too many DPS players down during the timer, chat logs would get filled with one word: "Reset". I couldn't even imagine a savage clear ever happening under the same circumstances where bosses have enrages between phases. Is it fair to say you might be exaggerating, maybe just a little bit?

She is not. My static cleared Innocence EX with 11 deaths while in a hodgepodge of i430-i440 gear. Back in Deltascape, Alte Roite was cleared in a single pull by the WF team. I know several groups that had 10+ deaths and still beat his enrage. These fights are simply that undertuned. What you're experience is players with no concept of improvement or optimization attempting content that isn't entirely brain dead, and their inexperience/lack of skill being put on display. This isn't necessarily their fault either. The game gave them no intention whatsoever they would actually have to pay attention because everything prior barely tickles—which is part of the problem.