"I don't want to think while I play, so no one should be allowed to."

[Shougun]

I don't know about you but I felt pretty darn rewarded when my HW era drk was doing more dps than the dps and getting big D healing numbers due to said dps increase with stance dancing, lol.

I did it for this reason, the difference was substantial- it felt irresponsible not to stance dance... But I didn't enjoy the mechanic at all and I've personally* enjoyed playing tanks far more since it removed.

*Not all jobs have to appeal to all players- of course... and it's worth noting, though I'll stand by my point that I don't think stance dancing is pinnacle design example even if you were targeting a wider / different range of players. Something doesn't sit right with me on the idea of purposefully hobbling your main theme goal in order to accomplish a main theme meta goal of the game, obviously in the few pages we've seen some suggestions so it's not like you can't have technical gameplay aspects replace stance dancing.. It just conceptually doesn't sound like a good idea to me (and I enjoy reading people's suggestions to replace it, keeping something technical but not antithesis to theme of the job).

I would be be for concepts that approach antithesis but are not even, for example Dark Knight might cut their own hp temporarily but then gain X greater hp back at the end or Y Defense (eHP increases)- and this would fit the Dark Knight theme certainly.

But there are things that work well in team sRPGs like losing control of your character (dragoon jump, self confuse huge damage increase, etc), or subverting a concept but you've a team you can pre-balance around (lose control of your dragoon in FFT? No problem you still have the rest of the party to play with and plan around)... that I think can sometimes just look.. 'bad' when you've lost that element of self checking because you've moved into a multiplayer space (like Warrior berserk esuna would probably be fine in an sRPG, but it's just plain silly in an MMORPG unless you're always with skilled team members who like babysitting that.. which is a subset of a subset of players, I think too obscure to specifically implement in a job that is meant to exist across all content). Or why I maintain diamondback on blue is just awful, even though it's very very powerful.