A "full physical party" doesn't mean anything. You could have had 2-3 Rangers and a Warrior to go along with your Rogue, and they would have been the ones doing all of the work up until the point where itemization took over and the Rogue started dealing actual damage compared to everyone else.
It's funny that you keep insisting it's "not much worse" when it clearly is. There's a drastic difference up until level 17 between 0 Warfare and 5-10. Scoundrel does not make up for it at all. I
just finished an all physical group that had a Rogue, and as soon as the option to respec was available I used it to test out the damage. All Scoundrel was awful. I did the same thing at level 15 mixing in Dual Wield (which is crap and only removes the off hand penalty by 50%) and the damge was still significantly worse.
It's still worse even later with better gear, but not as bad, but that has more to do with itemization than anything.
You aren't asking for balance, you're asking to make everyone equally awful in a game that grossly favors all physical because the mechanics have been busted from day one.
Magic is not "bad", although some stuff could use adjustments so that more options would become viable. Mages can do ok (in a sense they can beat encounters too), but it's objectively a lot more work than physical and suboptimal in every way. But imo that's what game is supposed to be on tactician. Meanwhile, regardless of how you put it, physical puts out a ridiculous amount of damage and requires little tactics or adapting to specific encounters. If facerolling encounters is the definition of "fun", yes physical does not need nerfs. But I would suggest classical or explorer for this experience.
Yes, yes it is. It has nothing to do with Tactician either, because it's still a comparative slog trying to play an elemental caster compared to anything physical even on Classic. There are some encounters where they can all unload (Radeka is one of the few) because the enemies are all within a close proximity, or funnel towards you and become bunched up, but most encounters are not like that. Most encounters have enemies that only come in pairs, and the only time they bunch up is when you're taking a long time to kill them in the first place.
Magic not only has to deal with magic armor (that loves to come in higher quantities than physical on most enemies), it has to deal with the surplus of 50% - 100% resists that physical don't have to contend with. Know what happens when you try doing the Gargoyle's Maze with 2x Pyro/Geo and 2x Hydro/Aero? Have fun reloading to an earlier save because the very first encounter has three enemies that are 100% Poison
and Fire Immune.
Edit: If you're counting Summoning, then technically no, "magic" isn't bad. Just everything that isn't Summoning and the tier 1-2 Geo and Hydro spells are. You're also 100% exaggerating about the damage physical does. There's absolutely nothing wrong with it until the back end of the game and that has everything to do with itemization.
