So in order.
Quote Originally Posted by Jeeqbit View Post
Should a boss really just repeat 2 mechanics after the first 10 minutes while you spend a further 20 minutes killing it because nobody can press their buttons well?
Not that they shouldn't exist, its that they shouldn't be as rigid as they are.
When mechanics get as hard as they do towards the end of a fight, those tend to be a harder check anyway. I'm not against dps checks, but the game sucks at preparing you for them.
The entire Abyssos fiasco should tell us its not something they test that much anymore either.

Quote Originally Posted by Jeeqbit View Post
Tooltips, job guide, and Stone, Sky, Sea.
Lets be real, these are dogshit. I shouldn't need to go into why but fact of the matter is the game's rotations are community made nothing you really learn in game outside of the standard 123.
Stone Sky is Sea is not at all more useful than a striking dummy in your lawn. It doesn't really simulate uptime/downtime, mechanics or anything, its just there so people cant point to it and pretend there's actually a bridge between casual content and higher end content, which there is not.

Quote Originally Posted by Jeeqbit View Post
The Balance is useful to learn a tip or too for optimization, but the core rotations are pretty obvious if you set it up and read it properly as you're doing it.
Well first of "But a Discord channel!" doesn't excuse the game's short comings, and I'd say the game doesn't really teach you optimal ways to play your job. Nowhere in the Tooltip for enshoroud does it say "waste time in this form by using random non-enshroud gcds so you can fit two enshrouds under the extremely strict timing of 2m raid buffs" as a random example.

I'd also say a lot of tool tips are very vague, poorly worded, or littered with so many "Additional Effect" that figuring shit out isn't as easy as you're making it sound. Of course thats where The Balance comes in, but then that's a community thing, not a in game resource. I'm not going to give the game a pass because it has a wikipedia article.

Quote Originally Posted by Jeeqbit View Post
They have always designed content for both
Kind of? They do make high and low end content, but not in a way that's conducive of offering players a road to get into the hardest content on their own.

The biggest difficulty jump in this game is from Normal baseline content to Extreme. There is very, very little content in this game that could arguably even be placed around this level. I think this is why so many people just MSQ tourist this game, because once the game stops holding your hand and dumps you off a cliff, you're left wondering what there is even to do.

The game doesn't teach you anything outside of the core fundamentals of press 123, avoid aoe. Try even slightly harder content and you'll get utterly stomped. Tanks aren't taught to mitigate, DPS aren't taught the intricacies of their combos, Supports are just a mess really. Its a pretty miserable experience if you don't have outside tools to help you