The primary gameplay design philosophy is to avoid backlash, rather than being built on a specific design vision. That's why jobs like PCT stay in power for extended periods of time. The devs seem to think that if a job is highly represented as a function of being overpowered, then offending that segment of the playerbase by issuing balancing nerfs will cause them to lose players. What they don't realize is that for that job to retain that power, players who don't like that aesthetic will lose interest in that role and eventually the game itself, which is a bigger loss in the long term.

They try to mollify players on underpowered jobs using a system of supposed 'upward buffs', but we know that these are generally are insufficient and don't result in balance before the end of the expansion cycle, at which point everything is reset back.

There's also the issue that the job design team is small and the people involved haven't changed over the years. So there's a lot of static thinking around job design and I suspect very little oversight to ensure that balance issues are rectified. Like what do you do if the main tank designer prefers WAR and the main caster designer prefers PCT, all on a five person team? You either like the top job's aesthetic for that role or you quit. I'm getting the feeling that the inertia in this system will eventually drive players out of the game.