The damage variance between a Critical Hit and a Non-Critical hit.

[ForteNightshade]

For your NIN example, what is that 80-100k over the course of a 10-minute savage pull? What is it over the course of a night of 10-minute savage pulls? Did the NIN's group hit enrage at 80k? What exactly is the "screw you" here other than you didn't do the theoretical maximum damage on a given pull? We should ask all of the same questions for your slightly below average PLD pulls.

Are any of these things making the difference on clears? (The answer is almost certainly no except for the edgiest of cases, though it's the internet, so I'm sure people will say that they consistently wipe at 73 HP or something.) Since there's no fine measure of damage or DPS in the game beyond threat order, are you constantly finding that order varying wildly pull to pull because of crits (as opposed to variance in gameplay by the player)? If yes (which would truly surprise me), do you think that it would be better for the game to be more static from pull to pull?

Funny story. Yes, my P8S group did week 1. Our Ninja had a run with zero DHCs which was just enough to miss the enrage. Considering how tight that DPS check was, people missing out DHCs on their biggest hitting abilities the entire fight did have an impact in early prog. The "screw you" aspect is it just isn't fun that through zero fault of your own, you simply do less damage. You comment on my "below average PLD skills." I did the exact same rotation, down to the same GCD, which I got from studying top Paladins and got a 97%. What was the difference? Everything Crit that time. It wasn't me performing better. I got lucky. That's why people hate this degree of RNG variance. It isn't skill person when you get up to the higher levels, it's whether RNG is nice enough to you.

Seconds in 10 minutes = 600 seconds, 100K/600 = 166.66 dps

According to everyone's favourite number site, Ninja is doing 10,536 aDPS (since we are using pure damage shown on screen, this is the closest you can get), you then work out the % that 166.66 is in relation to 10,536 and you get ~1.6%.

So, missing that ONE Hyo is equivalent to losing ~1-2% dps over a 10 minute fight.

You do realize that's roughly the equivalent of going into without a single meld come Tuesday, yes? 2% may not sound like much but it adds up, especially when you consider it isn't necessarily only one person rolling low. What if the Dark Knight and Paladin also don't crit their bigger hitters? Now that 2% has climbed up to 4-5% if not higher since Hyosho isn't Ninja's only big potency ability. That difference could be you clearing with even a death or dying to enrage in early prog. Sure, weeks later this is less of an issue but then gear is the almighty balancer.

at this point just remove all secondary stats, equalize all skill potency to the same amount and let every job do the exact same every 2 minutes - we're already at the lowest point anyway

Or... and hear me out because this could be revolutionary. We could... just go back to Shadowbringers or Stormblood where this wasn't a problem. I know, I know, not the extreme example that you're throwing out.

Sarcasm aside, nobody is asking variance to be removed entirely but to make the swings far less dramatic. The issue is SE keeps adding ridiculously high potency skills and Crit scales so incredibly high that it leads to swings in damage that didn't exist in previous expansions. Splitting Crit up also has the benefit of maybe making it not the de facto best substat in the game. You say we're at the lowest point and yet every piece of gear is met with "does it have Crit? No? Trash." Says a lot that one substat is that much better than the others.