The_Vampire

It's to keep design space open and to minimize developer work.

Let's say we decide to keep an overperforming gun. It does all the things. It has all the ammo, all the damage, all fire rate, all the reload speed. Now, all future weapons have to be made with that as a consideration. Why would players choose this new weapon, when there's the old overperformer? The design space is being controlled and minimized by the overperformer. Players will complain if new weapons aren't on the level of the overperformer.

Now, let's say we have ten weapons with one clear overperformer. Now, we can either nerf a single weapon to bring it in line with the others, or buff nine weapons to attempt to bring them up to the level of the overperformer. Assuming the balance adjustments of each weapon are the same amount of work, that's 9x the effort. However, if we assume we do this extra work to satisfy players, now we have ten overperforming guns and players find the game too easy, so now we also have to buff enemies to match. However, the game isn't designed to handle these increase in difficulty. Players complain if we just add more health to enemies, so we have to do other things like increase enemy count, but adding more enemies increases performance issues. It's a cascading problem.

I consider nerfs a necessary evil. It's absurd to ask developers to always buff weapons and give them so much work when they could be developing actual additions to the game. Sometimes, a weapon really does need a nerf.

Having read your article, I contend it should be:
P(arentheses)
E(xponents)
M(ultiplication)D(ivision)
A(ddition)S(ubtraction)
and strong juxtaposition should be thrown out the window.

Why? Well, to be clear, I would prefer one of them die so we can get past this argument that pops up every few years so weak or strong doesn't matter much to me, and I think weak juxtaposition is more easily taught and more easily supported by PEMDAS. I'm not saying it receives direct support, but rather the lack of instruction has us fall back on what we know as an overarching rule (multiplication and division are equal). Strong juxtaposition has an additional ruling to PEMDAS that specifies this specific case, whereas weak juxtaposition doesn't need an additional ruling (and I would argue anyone who says otherwise isn't logically extrapolating from the PEMDAS ruleset). I don't think the sides are as equal as people pose.

To note, yes, PEMDAS is a teaching tool and yes there are obviously other ways of thinking of math. But do those matter? The mathematical system we currently use will work for any usecase it does currently regardless of the juxtaposition we pick, brackets/parentheses (as well as better ordering of operations when writing them down) can pick up any slack. Weak juxtaposition provides better benefits because it has less rules (and is thusly simpler).

But again, I really don't care. Just let one die. Kill it, if you have to.

To note:

Revenant and Zephyr can both survive using their unique abilities to any level. Zephyr has a harder time of it and they both need casting speed for real safety, but they both can do it (plus Zephyr gets all her other cool tricks, CC, and damage spreading tornadoes). Garuda can also get away with spamming her 4 for invincibility (and 3 for energy) using Molt Reconstruct + shield-gating, and of course there are invisibility frames. Loki with Safeguard Switch is nearly as invincible as Revenant and any invisibility frame (Voruna, Ivara, Ash, Octavia) with rolling guard can survive pretty well even when allies are getting enemies to fire straight at you (at least long enough to reposition out of harm's way or kill the enemies).

If you want to facetank, slotting in adaptation is extremely useful, in addition to Arcane Blessing and Arcane Double Back. Healing is important, though, so I also recommend subsuming gloom, which is the ultimate subsume for HP tanking since it provides tons of CC in addition to lifesteal, and there really isn't any better source of super-consistent healing for most frames. You can get to level 900+ with all of this, especially once you add in umbral mods.

I would also note that Revenant is the ultimate facetanker, but doesn't use HP for it (Mesmer Skin is my favorite ability in the game because it lets me chill even in Steel Path). All he needs is casting speed (recasting Mesmer Skin leaves you temporarily vulnerable and is slow enough that a shield-gate won't necessarily keep you alive, but casting speed will fix that), energy (he's not energy-hungry as long as you don't slot in blind rage and don't use his 4 (though there are builds that work with his 4 rather than abandon it)), and ability strength (though even unranked and with no strength mods Mesmer Skin can keep you alive better than a normal shield-gate build provided casting speed). As a word of warning, a few rare things (mostly barrels/environmental damage) do bypass Mesmer Skin, but Mesmer Skin will keep you alive regardless because you literally cannot go below 2 HP with Mesmer Skin active (though you will assuredly die when you attempt to recast it if you don't have your shield up).

As always, though, the best method of defense is offense. You're going to have trouble taking damage if you just stand still, no matter how much EHP you get. It's important to have weapons that can clear rooms in seconds in Steel Path because you will only have seconds to clear before you die or have to bother with surviving in some way (like refreshing your shield).