What of simulators that are completely independent and allow you to practice mechanics without actually having to get to them in-game? Reducing the intended difficulty. And what about xivalexander is a balance harming (at least in it's default setting, I know it can be abused)? What's the actual advantage you get from it compared to other players that live, say in California? If anything, it restores balance.
To use your own phrasing: It's still surprising how people continue to classify game mods and addons in such black and white categories.
Everyone has their own sauce of what a "cheat" is. I find it outrageous that people can go to gamerescape and see where NPCs, gathering nodes, and drops are/comefrom without having to manually search in-game. That's totally using reverse-engineered data to gain an unfair advantage in-game and should be a bannable offense.
In fact, if you've melded crit>det on your character you should also get banned because there's no way you would know that's optimal without using software that interacts with the game to reverse-engineer the data. Totally against the ToS and clearly cheating.
And don't get me started with discord overlay. Getting to see who's talking when you aren't familiar with the people in chat is such a big advantage that I miss out on by being a ps4 player. In fact, I'm going to standup for players who might not have smartphones (or have old ones that have shit batteries). They shouldn't have to change their setup to gain access to this balance-breaking tool where people can do callouts for you. That should also be a bannable offense.
Or reshade that can be used "client side" but may allow you to make telegraphs easier to see. That's not fair.
Anyone who doesn't play the game vanilla and without external resources is a cheater who simply speaking just shouldn't be allowed to play the game. It ruins my fun just knowing that they're out there.
I shall now drink this poison called resentment and expect someone else to die.