"Balance team tests the fights themseslves"

[ForteNightshade]

HP got reduced, problem solved. Mistakes were made, apparently. I understand the problem, but it's making mountains out of mole hills.

Would you say that if it were other content? How about if the upcoming Criterion Dungeons see no balance changes, thus leading to Warrior being the undisputed best tank due to Bloodwhetting being hilariously broken in an AoE environment? What if Deep Dungeon was made nearly unclearable with certain jobs for similar reasons? Players who enjoy early progression only have a very limited window for their particular content. So far we've had two tiers out of three with a complete failure of job balance. Some jobs, like Machinist, have been suffering for years. At what point does it stop being a "mole hill" and actual criticism the dev team simply isn't addressing?

isnt that running risk of homogenizing if all jobs perform the same? Shouldnt it be as long as its "doable with all party comps" then it doesnt really matter how fast it gets cleared?

Homogeneity is better than uniqueness for the sake of it.

Case in point, let's look back at Heavensward. Paladin and Dark Knight were both unique as the physical and magical tank, respectively. Unfortunately, most mechanics are designed around magical damage. Therefore, Paladin's uniqueness had literally zero value. In an expansion worth of Savage tiers, there were maybe 2-3 fights where you'd even consider Paladin over Dark Knight. Ironically, these two tanks would have a similar problem in Stormblood, albeit reversed. Only Dark Knight lacked in AoE mitigation, supposedly due to its superior single target mitigation—namely TBN. This didn't matter since both Warrior and Paladin had near equal defensives while contributing the highest damage output. In a fight like UCoB, Dark Knight was a liability. Could you still clear? Of course. You just made it harder on your healers.

Certain aspects of job design need to be somewhat homogenized for balance sake. Hence why tank CDs are largely the same.

If you took Reaper and simply pumped up some numbers, nothing about the job changes. It won't suddenly be Monk or Samurai with a scythe. It'll just deal comparable damage without being a detriment. Likewise, Warrior isn't going to suddenly play like Gunbreaker if they give it another 100-ish DPS to better close tank balance. There are easy solutions to the problem. SE just remains incredibly hesitate to do anything. That, or they're stubbornly caught up on aspects of jobs which don't contribute nearly as much as they believe they do. Warrior's massive healing, for example, doesn't matter when autos deal 20k. Dark Knight can handle those just fine without Equilibrium. In fact, I take more damage on Warrior in P7 than Dark Knight because the latter will always have TBN + Dark Mind + Oblation for every single buster.

Like it or not, damage is king in this game. Any job lagging too far behind simply can't justifiable its existing because nothing else is rewarded.