Positionals

[ZiraZ]

There are reasons for a lot of these. Nuanced reasons, even that aren't really getting addressed.

Button bloat has to do with human ergonomics and the limits of what fits on a keyboard. MMO mice are not a solution for everyone. Nor are controllers. I have ready access to 16 buttons with a single modifier, leaving 32 for the keyboard, plus another 2+2 for the mouse, for a total of 36. Beyond that I'm hunting for the thing with a mouse. Thirty-six buttons ought to be enough for any job, but there are plenty that require more than that.

Here are some baseline numbers:

Tanks (9 role + 4 general)
PLD: 27 job, 40 total.

Melee DPS (6 role + 6 general)
NIN: 26 job, 36 total.

Ranged Magical (5 role + 4 general)
BLM: 26 job, 35 total.

I would love to see a hard cap of 32 buttons needed for any job just for the human ergonomics. If you can't create meaningful jobs with 32 buttons, I don't know what they're doing. PvP manages to do it with under 12, and BLU hard-limits you to 24 job buttons.

Moreover, I think that what the jobs need is more uniqueness and less reliance on role-abilities and standards. That fact that all tanks get the same 9 abilities causes way more feeling of homogeneity than anything else.

And lastly, as an aside, I think the main argument against DOTs is that SE's implementation of them is broken. Higher Cast SPD should make them tick faster or do more damage or something, but they don't. I like DOTs, but the implementation needs work.

PLD doesn't have 40 keys with roles, pretty sure you're counting extra on all other jobs too
PVP gets it done well with so few keys because it's a fast paced minigame against players, it plays like absolute garbage anytime you are hitting something relatively immobile that won't fight back or respond to your actions in a non-script manner, you simply get bored in less than 15 seconds, so if anything it proves to me that you absolutely need a significant amount of keys to get past a healthy threshold of complexity in a slow paced scripted PvE setting.

BLU hard limit is unique because it needs to add difficulty with choices, has nothing to do with ergonomics, you don't want 1 blue to bring everything into a fight, additionally 80% of a functional blu kit is cooldown based abilities and I would absolutely not call it a ergonomic posted boy, I personally love the blu burst but a ton of people hate it since it's so APM intense and tight, you could play 2 SMNs at the same time you do a blu opener,
While I do think 32 keys is the perfect spot I don't have any issues with PLD and I still got room for a few more keys before I'm strapped and I do not think we should hard cap any of the regular jobs, they seem to be doing a great job right now (except SMN) .
It's specially perfect for jobs like DRG that need a great amount of oGCDs, not a single one is bloat no matter how many people who don't have a clue about the job like to parrot.