To be fair, a lot of games make debuff look bad simply because any "elite" or boss type enemy would be immune to status effects. While buff would always work since there's no such thing as a buff resistant,
They have 3 different types of dps and they get rid of their debuffer because they want to be faster what ? Even if they wanted to be safer and had a limit of how many people you could get you could just get rid of the second blonde dude since he's redundant and get a healer and viola balanced party
Bunch of dumb noobs just get rid of that third dps which is Alvar, clearly the weakest dps anyways. Could replace with a white mage for enchantments and heals or a paladin/monk something that buffs and/or heals.
You guys keep mentioning that debuffs are good and all, but remember that this is a world where they don't know the importance of it, and they can perceive the difference, with that they seem useless to compare to a white mage which they could tell because it directly affects their body.