Quote Originally Posted by Velhart View Post
2. Other MMO's are more gear dependent. In these fights, a well geared player will survive and perform substantially more DPS than someone without as much gear. In FFXIV, besides BLM, stacking up stats are truly minimal at most and FFXIV overall is more ability/skill dependent.
From what I've seen, this is a two-fold problem. Firstly that gear still has small numbers in terms of stats unless you're double/triple melding materia. Secondly, stat scaling is not what it should be for melee and ranged to be on par with each other.
3. Requirements to win the fight add difficulty to ranged, mage, and melee. Other MMOs (If you can't tell by now, I am mainly referencing to WoW) make conditions that make it difficult for the whole party, not just people near the boss. Right now, FFXIV only punishes players who are too close to the boss. Chimera is an example. He is hard enough without the poison being applied and that one large thunder attack people had to find a small exploit to avoid.
Very much this. That's why I mentioned stuff like Shadow Crash that singles out ranged without affecting melee at all. You can have mechanics like this alongside with any risks for melee being tossed in. WoW bosses also have AoE that hit everyone, but by the same token healing a group in WoW is a lot easier than healing a group in FFXIV because of burst heals, HoTs and smart heals.
4. FFXIV simply makes other jobs more convenient than others. BLM and WAR have access to many AoE abilities while DRG and MNK only get one real AoE attack that is on a large timer. You either need to tone down AoE on those jobs by making the AoE powerful, but the damage number divides by how many enemies you hit, or you need to give DRG/MNK more AoE usability. The first option makes it so DPS is on par with the other jobs, but it is hitting all enemies at once. Like WAR takes everything down slowly with AoE, but DRG and MNK take one by one down faster, matching the speed it takes for a WAR to take all of them down.
This goes back to my comment about paradigms and how classes and jobs that are vying for the same role should be balanced around the same paradigm. WAR should not be this AoE beast of a job because it hurst the melee DPS as well as PLD since it has higher AoE capability. So you neither tone down WAR AoE damage so that it can be used frequently but for less damage per use, or up everyone else's AoE ability (or grant AoE ability in the case of PLD).
5. All classes bring something to the table. In WoW, all classes have some special buff or debuff that really benefits the party. Rather it be a Paladin's King buff, a Hunter's Mark of the Wild, a Death Knight's Horn of Winter, and so on. These buffs bring a lot to the party, and why most raids have people seeking at least one of every class in a group. Bard is FFXIV's answer to this, but other jobs should have passive traits that benefit the party in a way that doesn't affect the Bard.
If I were designing things, I'd make it so BRD has the short-duration but decently potent buffs, and give the other jobs something either passive (like giving PLDs an equivalent to Heroic Presence), or short-cast and long duration buffs that are less potent.

The problem is obviously very complex, but I agree that it can be solved.