How do you define (meaningful) choice?

[Shurrikhan]

Any choice where optimization is contextual and layered enough that one can make a legitimately rewarding gambit based around what smaller aspects of optimization click better for them.

Perhaps the top 1% can immediately crank out the math in their head or memorize every possible scenario, but everyone else, there will therefore be tendencies that can almost feel like specializations, with guidelines that are continually built upon and adjusted over time and over experience within a particular fight.

That usually means, though, that the difference between basic failure and basic success isn't actually that huge. For meaningful choice, the basics can't be so overwhelming in their reward gap that minutial nuances don't have room to operate.

If it's pure waste ever to Dragon Kick two Opo-opo skills in a row or to ever Bootshine two Opo-opo skills in a row, or to ever use the Full Thrust combo twice, sure, you've reinforced the reward for the barest of basic rules... but you've also removed that much room for actual decision-making (e.g., where double-Boot responds to Chakra generation [RNG] to cap Chakra just before Riddle of Fire fades, to get in one more TFC under the damage amp window, and/or maybe sets up the timing so that there will be one more Leaden Fist inside the next RoF under full raid buffs instead of a raw Kick... if you manage also to do everything else perfectly in your now more risky/less flexible rotational strategy).

Luckily, healers' always some degree of playing around other players capacity for error --when the damage intake respective to available healing output is decently high-- adds a fair bit to that equation already, so long as things aren't irrecoverably difficult (which would then just always force the safest options).