I see arguments against the removal of Life Surge - that's fine. It was a suggestion - it's more the idea that to specialise the jobs more, I propose removing an ability from the class arsenal that otherwise has no placement in how the jobs are meant to specialise in. It could be Dread Spike for all we know; it's the concept that I'm more focusing on rather than certain abilities.

@Ryans: Some of those ways you are mentioning are attempting to make the jobs more versatile, something classes already are. Jobs are meant to be specialised, hence that versatility shouldn't be allowed. Thus, they are retracting from the usefulness of classes. Of course, I can understand from that angle, especially with the relic requiring soloing for SB (though I do want to mention that even if WHM only has 4 nukes, Stone and Aero have short recast times as well. Not to mention they are used very regularly in, for example, moogle fight first phase.) I do appreciate the arguments though, and will try my best to explain, but I should make it more obvious that those abilities I chose are mere suggestions; any other ability could be taken out provided that it is not part of the particular job's specialisation.

BLMs shouldn't be even taking damage in the first place (ranged + enmity control) so the risk factor is slightly negated in that. Yea, the red HP would be a !!! alert, but Second Wind will take you out of that red range. And forgive me, but as far as I'm aware, a WHM is there to keep your HP up, haha.

I also feel that there are too little abilities in regards to Bard being a support role, hence why this is just a proposal for when they change or add more abilities. I'm not expecting them to change it NOW, but further along when the armoury and job systems are fleshed out more. One reason why I chose Raging Strike was because I'm expecting additional jobs to branch off the classes - Ranger is another likely job to branch off from Archer. I can see them losing Swiftsong as an ability, as they'll likely be the damage-dealing job of the disciplines branching from Archer, but that's just speculation. You can probably see why I would choose those abilities though. :P

tl;dr: the abilities I mentioned are just suggestions. What I'm aiming for though is discussion on the idea of removing an ability from the job's corresponding class which is not in line with that job's particular specialization.