Quote Originally Posted by Payadopa View Post
The solution is simple. Design fun jobs first, then try to balance them, sure, but not into the ground. Perfect balance is unachievable. Don't cater to the people screaming the loudest about balance and inject some much needed fun/diversity back into the game. We tried it long enough. It's not worth the sacrifice.
Additionally, much of the balancing to be done without reduction-to-the-lowest-common-denominator can be done through encounter design, starting with undermechanical depth. Give us stagger and armor/part break; give us a Z-axis and flying enemies and Dragoons able to leap to said flying enemies. Give fights things worth Cover-ing to the benefit of uptime (be that for damage or securing a difficult heal-check). Create a place for snap aggro, to the benefit of NIN and/or, say, a more old-school Warrior. Etc., etc.

Finally, extend content scaling, granular difficulty levels, and perhaps offer small additions, while giving further incentive to find value on less meta jobs. Where a more defensive job would otherwise quickly lose value as people outgear the content of a small number of difficulty levels, that's not the case as the difficulty continues to scale onward. Similarly, a Warrior and Monk on a fight with a bunch of flying enemies would sound absurd... right up until the Warrior, say, takes up a glyph that allows Holmgang to grapple multiple enemies and reduces its CD if little damage is taken over its duration and the Monk pumps enough stagger out of Phantom Rush to crash the whole flock to the ground as it blitzes across each.

That shit would, to me at least, actually be quite fun. Simple? Gods no. But probably worthwhile nonetheless for a 7.0-onward course of redesign for decent strategic and playmaking depth with more distinctly kit-ed jobs. And that starts, as Dzian put it, with "deep and engaging systems to interact with."