Quote Originally Posted by Yeol View Post
And from this the question arises: how much should Square Enix listen to the hardcore portion of players, who engage immediately and frequently with the most difficult content that FF14 proposes, seeking to optimize each and every possible movement, in relation to the average and casual player. Who also likes combat? It definitely doesn't sound like an easy task.
The primary reason players had asked for that that was because the mathematical base of the game simply favors stacking damage buffs at the same time. Equally, Trick Attack existed, so in some cases it was just more worth it to sit on your damage cooldowns until Trick was up again.
Additionally, there are more solutions to this problem than to just pour every class through the same mold and call it a day, I recon. So while the community did play a part in this happening, it ultimately would have fallen onto the devs to understand the reasoning behind the request, the possible gameplay ramifications (which is what we are now experiencing) and come up with a solution to all these conundrums.
CS3 could have also just changed how cooldowns stack or play with different timers overall ( <30s, 30s, 40s, 60s all can neatly flow into 120s).

Rather than playing the blame game though, its more productive to say that this approach had just not been working out, which then allows the game to evolve. Were all just human, after all.