Get ready for a wall of text.
So, I'm sure a topic like this one has been posted somewhere, sometime, but I wanted to suggest this anyway.
So, with the coming of class only gear, jobs are still preferred/better than their class counterpart. So, with that, to balance classes and jobs (and to give classes more flavor and competence at what they are "meant to do") why not give classes 5 abilities that help define that class from the job?
For example, for CNJ, the 5 abilities would be supportive abilities, but not focused on healing so much as damage prevention and mitigation...might as well toss in some elemental attacks in there as well to define the CNJ as an elemental user (which I think it should still be)
The abilities would looks something like this:
Ability 1 : A shield that blocks damage similar to Stoneskin, but a lesser amount and party wide, with short duration. (barrier from LL opening please?)
Ability 2 : Another shield spell, but instead of blocking damage, it would mitigate damage by X amount per hit. For example: Shield lessens damage by 50 per hit shield is active for 20 secs. (of course this is just an example, numbers are completely just thrown in)
Ability 3 : A water nuking spell, would slow attack speed of target, more powerful than stone/aero that CNJ already has
Ability 4 : A short self-buff. The next time you cast a Cure spell, you shield the target for 5% of the total cure (again, just example)-long cool down.
Ability 5 : A tri-elemental nuking spell using water, earth and wind, fairly powerful attack.
giving a class like CNJ abilities like these would help CNJ in it's role of being a healer without being a lesser version of WHM, and the nukes given would help it solo, as classes are supposed to be better at soling than jobs (right?)
So, with all this, what do you all think? What abilities would you give other classes?