Coming into FFXIV lost on what activity I wanted to delve into, I knew regardless of my choice want to main SAM. The first FC I joined I got told I sucked as DPS... not wanting to fall into a victim mentality I wanted to proof myself wrong.
I practiced hours and days at the striking dummy... to the point I don't even need to look at my Hotbars to help me focus purely on mechanics. The feeling of accomplishment I had to see my practice bearing fruit, finishing my first Savage Raid, E9S, at the time even with Echo at Lv80 was amazing.
I got parse shamed, but I didn't care, I had a lot of fun. I'll improve and I'll keep practicing. Thus it didn't stop there, I started helping random PF parties and players clear E9S E10S and E11S, the savage fights I was struggling with.
I joined a random E9S party one day to help out and I remembered it like yesterday... where we got questioned " why 2 Samurai's? " and sure that was not optimal, but this Samurai had the E12S chest piece I didn't have nor cleared... must be more experienced then me let me watch how this SAM does the fight.
And as soon was the boss wanted blast us with " Wide Angle ", the SAM moved in such manners that I didn't knew was safe. " Like we can do this? " making me learn the concept of " Melee Uptime ". We wiped but I was like " I should mimic this person "... and sure enough I started performing better and better, and then came " Anti-Air " and again the SAM revealed more ways of handling it then spamming Enpi. I even thanked the Sam for indirectly teaching me.
That was the moment for me where realized the complexity of performing my rotation, with the challenge of having as much up-time possible that made Samurai INFINITELY more enjoyable.
My parses aren't stellar, but I could care less... I proven I am worth raiding with, and the difficulty of Samurai as low as people meme it to be? helped push me to become a better player. Often times I don't get compliments in real life, but Samurai felt so satisfying to execute that it even helps my depression ever so slightly.
Removing and dumbing down the complexity I see does not help any of this, it just does the opposite, and I feel like it just devalues every experience I went through both the good and the bad. That's what hit me so much reading your post... From my 6 months to your 8 years...I can only imagine what I missed out on, but more so what more will be missed on if things change for the worse, and I refuse to have it change for the worse.