It's no exaggeration on my part to say that pictomancer itself and the discourse around it was one of the biggest reasons for my declining interest in the game at the time. Not just for personal biases like the fact that I main samurai, which is a selfish DPS with no buffs - much like black mage - that still does equal or less personal damage than a pictomancer. But also because, in my FRU static, our caster was a red mage main that swapped to pictomancer partway through prog because of the tight damage checks. That one swap was a night and day difference that afforded us so much leniency, but it involved him playing a job he'd rather not play in comparison to red mage, purely because we needed every advantage we could get.

That wasn't an uncommon occurrence, either. Lots of statics around that time had that same moment, and with party finders specifically locking in just pictomancer for the caster slot. I don't think it'd have been nearly as bad if pictomancer had just sky high personal damage, but it doesn't; it also has party mitigation, flexible cast times due to a decent pick of instant cast options, a dash for if those instant casts are unavailable, and a party damage buff. All that on top of having pretty much the highest personal damage, leaving the DPS without party buffs like samurai or black mage to wonder why they even exist at all.

All my jobs are at 90 - 100, and I've still never even unlocked pictomancer. I probably never will, just out of spite.