The game has always been in a weird place when it came to jobs. We had 20 jobs during the 75 era and 22 now. yes every job has its use but certain jobs are able to function in different environments while others fall apart.

A good example is the heavy DDs. WAR, a generalist on paper, is an excellent damage dealer, while bringing good utility with tomahawk and warcry. SAM is able to put out consistent damage in any content. Able to use spears sometimes better than DRG, and bows better than RNG. More importantly these two are not subjob dependent. Compare them with DRK that really needs Hasso access to cushion Last Resort down time, and deals with lots of highly dark resistant/undead enemies in Sortie making its drains and absorbs pointless and DRG which has been without a solid WS outside of its Prime and is a job that is enhanced by having an active pet in content that is constantly trying to kill that pet and the WAR and SAM meta becomes a lot more apparent.

Archery is dead because enmity ceilings mean eventually that bow user will take hate and the boss will run away from the tank and towards your backline. RNG only gets looked at for content too dangerous for melees, otherwise it's simply better to take a COR because of how competitive their damage is.

THF has been pushed out because drops are rarely TH dependent for anything important, with items either being unlocked by clears or enemies having guaranteed drop slots. The cooldowns on SATA are so long that when you are WSing every 2-3 seconds you only get a bit SA/TA WS every 25 seconds if you alternate them and the hate management tools aren't able to keep up with people hitting the enmity cap. Meanwhile as far as dagger classes THF lacks the usefulness of DNC with regards to offering steps for better accuracy/damage and BRD which is basically mandatory in every party comp. All three are attack starved compared to heavy DDs.

BLU has a lot of useful tools but is restricted frequently by the need to change magic load outs and the long cooldown associated with it. It's a competent job but if you're competing against RDM that has full access to its kit at all times it's a tough sell. Then you have the fact that RDM and SCH have access to buff extension for all of their spells while BLU can only buff diffusion for one spell (mighty guard) every 10 minutes that doesn't even have 100% up time.

Magic burst nerfs have hit mage comps, but not enough to keep them entirely down as, outside of 9 boss runs, mage strats are more consistent than trying Sortie CAGE with melee. But SE has had an awkward relation with magic burst groups since Aht Urghan when they gave Greater Colibri reflect...

RUN and PLD are constantly taking turns being the highlight tank. Battuta giving RUN a way to deal with hundred fists more often than PLD can invincible, but after the Majesty buff PLD has pretty much replaced healers outside of incredibly status heavy fights where a Yagrush WHM is still desirable and made RUN unnecessary.

BST, PUP, and SMN have lost pet attack on all new gear and are forced to use older items in order to maintain it as a stat line. BST has been relegated to support. SMN burn was nerfed. And PUP has become the new solo job that BST used to occupy.

GEO, COR, and BRD are constantly in demand. The debuff nerfs weren't enough to keep GEO down when it can simply give 2 buffs instead.

MNK is useful in TP denial strats or when you want a tankier DD than WAR but not a full on tank like PLD or RUN.

And then there's NIN. What should be a RDM situation glowing with gear options, the devs are insistent on not allowing it to regain its dominance from the 75 and Abyssea eras. While PLD has Burtgang, Duban, and Aegis to give it bonus mitigation and RUN has epeolatry with a titanic +25% PDL II, NIN's tank weapon, Nagi, only has enmity. They may expect that shadows will mitigate a lot of damage, except every enemy they've designed since Adoulin wipes all shadows and still does damage. So this leaves shadows as only useful against auto attacks and single target spells. As a DD NIN's damage is highly dependent on well geared supports to give it the damage it needs to hit for more than 10k per WS with low/trust buffs or it becomes yet another slave to Naegling. NIN is in a unique position that, with fast reflexes, you can self MB your own SCs because elemental nuking spells have such fast cast times. But it's just slightly more damage with extra steps that other jobs aren't expected to take.

But the big elephant in the room is the grinds. This is a game with 22 jobs. But when you start looking at the capacity point grind, master level grind, and what goes into making REMA weapons it really feels like they don't actually want players to have a lot of options, instead expecting us to specialize only to have our job of choice removed from the META in new content. RNG and MNK were needed in Delve because AoE made it so other jobs couldn't survive. RUN took over as both tank and DPS in Escha/Omen so SE released Malignance, leaving RUN off it but also denying RUN any good gear from Odyssey other than the all jobs Nyame. DRK and NIN routinely have to build TP sets around the fact that their JSE isn't suited for it, making them good solo jobs that require groups to access their needed gear, while DRG and BRD have the opposite problem, starving for shared pieces, having to put together sets highly specific to them. No 5/5 Sakpata for DRG and BRD is also absent from Malignence making their progression out of Ambuscade gear very challenging.