Why do the devs hate MCH so much?

[Shurrikhan]

Doesn't matter how we got here, we are here and 6.XX is a good time to step back and re-tool the Battle System and address what isn't working. Here some examples:

Every Job has an MP bar, why?

My hope is that we eventually...

• consolidate MP and TP to reduce UI bloat and allow for the DRK and PLD resource-duality in any other way (or, failing that, give casters some use for TP beyond just sprint),
  
  
• make MP more about potency and less about starvation (e.g., MP regen up to quadruples as %MP falls low, but potency can fall to a half by that time) and potentially leverage that for more granular burst vs. sustain (perhaps even replacing the fixed combo systems such that one can rush combos at equal cost via reduced total potency and increased cost, allowing for a little more flexibility),
  
  
• have MP generation scale with GCD speed (and therefore with Haste, so no stat is left unable to increase actual resource-efficiency,
  
  
• make healer MP economy matter (such as by attaching hefty MP costs to oGCD heals),
  
  
• allow some further utility for skills not typically used in single-target (ranged attacks on melee AoEs, etc.) to make them situationally useful, if costly, in single-target (in place of their having so useless of single-target potencies that they're never used anyways, even if the resource were there), and
  
  
• return at cost, non-CD-based tools to certain jobs for transferring or granting MP (allowing for greater flexibility than was the case with just CDs like Refresh, Tactician, and Mana Shift, and reduced baseline taxation for those utilities).

Job Roles, do they need to be reexamined?

They could be, but there's also little reason to do so beyond the gearing unfriendliness of melee (3 sets required to play 5 jobs, as compared to the 4 sets required to play the remaining 15 jobs). I guess it just comes down to what thematic distributions the game wants to protect across sub-roles.

Personally, I don't hugely mind being stuck with one slot each of 'any of 3', 'any of 3', 'any of 5' and 'any of 11' -- instead of just 'any of 11' four times over -- but it doesn't particularly make sense, either.

I'll save your last two questions/topics for later, as they seem more involved.