Job Complexity and Difficulty

[Aco505]

Hot take, but...
Very little changed in the depth of the job; virtually only the skill floor was affected. Current DRG is effectively just EW DRG but with full Eyes upon entering combat and your Gier/Nost damage dealt over 2 casts per minute instead of 5. Though more punishing for not using your CDs more or less on-CD, it didn't actually offer any additional agency from that. You use High Jump as before. You use Mirage Dive as before. You use Geirskogul as before. Because there wasn't actual choice to be made between generating Eyes and dealing more immediate damage or anything else.

The ceiling was affected too, especially on Ultimates although not exclusively. You cannot choose to do a double or early LotD if you need to due to the fight's timeline or the target dying soon. High Jump and Mirage Dive are not used like before, since they're just damage now and not gauge generators. This also has the effect of making the full kit feel disconnected since actions only deal damage and have no link between each other.

The current iteration is actually less punishing since you can delay your damage oGCDs as much as you can as long as they're still inside your buffs, which you can also delay and be alright unless the kill time severely cuts the burst window, and your burst is always given; there's no preparation or gauge stacking required besides WWT. This also has the effect of making deaths way less punishing than before.

Whatever optimization and ceiling left for the job is minimal (mostly reduced to MD/ePT and to a lesser extent WWT and LS) if we compare it to EW.