Re-balancing jobs in FFXI

[Oddwaffle]

I agree. Blu is, atm, exceedingly strong in single party setup. Their strength lie in the fact that they can buff themselves to delay cap and still have high accuracy. They are also exceedingly strong at soloing because of such buffs. Most of all, Blu are less gear dependent when they want to max out their DD abilities. All other melee jobs can not buff themselves to anywhere near Blu's level even when they are maxing out on equipment. A Monk geared to the teeth with the best of the best equips will loose to a Blu with AH weapons and accessories.

A War with 100% Double Attack built and Empy can deal a monstrous amount of damage but he will always need that extra boost from support. Similarly, Sam, Drk and Drg will need extra boost from support jobs. Accuracy is always an issue with normal DD except Blu.

So, in a party of 6, 1 is Tank and the slot goes to healer then you are left with exactly 4 slots. You could have 3 DD and 1 support (1Geo) for mediocre damage, 2 DD and 2 support (Geo, Brd, Rdm) for much better damage or just 3Blu+1 support for devastating damage.

The whole thing stems from the fact that everyone can reach the delay cap. This makes the game extremely fast paced. A lot of traits and job abilities have become near useless or just plain detrimental. Martial Arts is the prime example. Monks are forced on the trait and have their TP reduced at delay cap because they can't take off the trait. By that extension: Dual Wield. The 'stance' abilities like Yonin or Counterstances benefits are marginal in some situations and detrimental in certain situations. Boost is detrimental in most cases while Dark Knight Spells are rarely used because they take up so much time to use and give minuscule benefits.

[Afania]

But if we're talking about pure damage output many other jobs can probably outperform BLU on head-to-head parses assuming delay reduction and accuracy is capped and monster weaknesses aren't a factor. In WS spam situations, Well-geared Empy Warriors and Dark Knights have been absolute wrecking balls lately. In self-SC situations, Dancer is practically worth two DDs by themselves. Unfortunately though, it takes a lot more than high damage to get by in today's metagame as a DD..

What I mean is that, there are always players pop left and right claiming their WAR or DRK outparses equally geared BLU. But I'm not sure if they consider the party setup as a whole.

Say for example, in a pt with reso DRK BLU COR GEO(haste/frailty) GEO(vex/attunement) WHM, assuming the DRK outparse equally geared BLU in this same party, doesn't the party DPS is greater than double BLU setup such as BLU BLU COR GEO(fury/frailty) GEO(vex/attunement) WHM.

And that's because the double BLU setup gains additional DD bubble(Fury) and their WS creates stronger SCs.

Unless we have spreadsheets that can precisely calculate the DPS we won't be able to find out. All we have is word of mouth from people who wins parse against equally geared BLU, but we don't know how much dps they lose from bubbles and SCs.

Also last time I checked, DRK still has lower acc than BLU when equally geared. So that's more DPS gain from losing acc buffs. And once again, without spreadsheet we can't really know whether the higher DPS from other DD make up the difference.

[Shyles]

Say for example, in a pt with reso DRK BLU COR GEO(haste/frailty) GEO(vex/attunement) WHM, assuming the DRK outparse equally geared BLU in this same party, doesn't the party DPS is greater than double BLU setup such as BLU BLU COR GEO(fury/frailty) GEO(vex/attunement) WHM.

Unless we have spreadsheets that can precisely calculate the DPS we won't be able to find out.

Spreadsheets are useful for planning gear sets, but that's about it. They've never been able to accurately estimate a job's true DPS since they can't simulate real time events like battle RNG, status effects, knock backs, and proper JA usage. They estimate damage based on formulas and a fixed number of weaponskill attempts. Also, I'm not sure new spreadsheets with updated Escha NM stats are ever going to be released, since many people just set the target to something they already cap against like soundsplitter bats. So they'll never be a precise estimation of real DPS.

Also, there isn't a "Full Party" DPS spreadsheet. The DPS spreadsheets are job specific. They won't tell you what party builds will yield the highest damage. The only way to determine that is by testing strategies in-game. For party DPS estimations, you would get far more information from an in-game parser like scoreboard than you would from a spreadsheet.

As far as melee-oriented Party DPS though, 3x BLU and 2x Geo is popular because.. well.. it does the job and it's easy to form. And geared BLUs are a dime a dozen. You would likely spend less time finding three available Blue Mages each with AG Almace and Sequence than even one of any other melee with comparable gear. But in the party example you gave, I think a well-geared DRK would absolutely crush a BLU. I will explain why:

• Attack: Dark Knights can get absolutely absurd amounts of attack (I have seen over 3000 ATT with soul eater up!). They have much higher STR and attack than BLU, so they can easily cap attack without support. So Fury isn't as important for them. However, accuracy is harder to reach, so you could probably drop Fury for an Indi-Torpor or Precision instead.
  
  
  
• Haste: As far as Delay Reduction, the DRK wouldn't need the GEO to haste them. With Apocalypse, a DRK can cap JA haste without Hasso, which is notable because that means they can reach 80% delay reduction with just a Haste II. With Caladbolg or Liberator, they can still reach 75%. So assuming the BLU diffusioned Might Guard (don't be selfish, BLUs), then the DRK can reach 75-80% with just a Haste I from the WHM, thereby eliminating the need for Indi-haste entirely. (It's worth noting that a Dancer can also cap with just Haste I, or by picking up an extra 10% DW in gear)
  
  
  
• Absorb Spells: A Liberator DRK with Nether void can absorb up to +69 of any stat. That gives a lot of flexibility as it's a very potent buff AND debuff. That fixes the accuracy problem, since they can nethervoid Abs-AGI for -34 eva down, and then Absorb-ACC for about 54 acc.
  

So in the Party example you gave (DRK, BLU, COR, GEO, GEO, WHM), I think the DRK would surprise you. Also don't forget the corsair with Chaos Roll. You get an extra 9.7% attack bonus just for having the DRK in the party. However, I wonder if you'd get more damage out if dropping the offense GEO in favor of a RDM instead. A Liberator DRK and a RDM with capped enfeeble should provide close, if not more, EVA-down as an idris geo and would cap haste on the DRK. Also, between the DRK, BLU, and COR, you have 3 weapon types. So 3-steps with inundation should be a sizeable damage increase.

[Afania]

Spreadsheets are useful for planning gear sets, but that's about it. They've never been able to accurately estimate a job's true DPS since they can't simulate real time events like battle RNG, status effects, knock backs, and proper JA usage. They estimate damage based on formulas and a fixed number of weaponskill attempts. Also, I'm not sure new spreadsheets with updated Escha NM stats are ever going to be released, since many people just set the target to something they already cap against like soundsplitter bats. So they'll never be a precise estimation of real DPS.

I believe battle RNG is part of math and spreadsheet calculation. It calculates average DPS with battle RNG considered. For example, a BLU can win a parse because all 5 CDC that he did in a fight crit on every single hit, but in the long run his WS avg would still match math/spreadsheet results.

Status effects/knock backs affects all jobs equally, I don't think it's one advantage that a job has over another when having DPS hierarchy discussions.

My opinion is that it's still the most accurate tool that we can have when having DPS hierarchy discussions. Otherwise DPS hierarchy discussions will turn into personal experience arguments, with every player claiming their DPS is the best by selling their job strength, with nothing to prove it except "I outparsed X and Y DD" or "This job has X and Y so it must be good".

Also, there isn't a "Full Party" DPS spreadsheet. The DPS spreadsheets are job specific. They won't tell you what party builds will yield the highest damage. The only way to determine that is by testing strategies in-game. For party DPS estimations, you would get far more information from an in-game parser like scoreboard than you would from a spreadsheet.

Yes but as long as you can obtain the individual DPS, you can proceed to calculate SC DPS by plugging in the WS avg numbers. You can obtain the info such as WS avg(which can be used to calculate SC dmg), WS cycle time and such, which can help people estimate party DPS more accurately.

I don't disregard in game parser's relevancy when having DPS hierarchy discussion. But the information of in game parser is only relevant if:

1) The parse has been done multiple times, to eliminate random factors in battle as much as possible.

2) You are parsing against someone in same level of gears. No point claiming X DPS > Y DPS if X DPS outgears Y in the same parse.

3) (Most importantly) Having parse information from both setup using various DPS.

No.3 is probably the hardest. Those who pop on the forum and claim their DPS isn't bad, probably have parsed multiple times against equally geared LSmate or friends, to get the result that allows them to confidently claim their DPS job > BLU. But how can these people obtain the party DPS parse result from a completely different DPS setup? Say if you have an elite geared WAR and outparse elite BLU in same pt every single run, how can you possibly know if 2x elite BLU do less damage unless you also play BLU and obtained the party DPS parse result?

Either way, my point stands. From what I've seen and read from every single DPS hierarchy discussion, most of them are just words of mouth from people with experience winning parse.

• Attack: Dark Knights can get absolutely absurd amounts of attack (I have seen over 3000 ATT with soul eater up!). They have much higher STR and attack than BLU, so they can easily cap attack without support. So Fury isn't as important for them. However, accuracy is harder to reach, so you could probably drop Fury for an Indi-Torpor or Precision instead.
  
  
  
• Haste: As far as Delay Reduction, the DRK wouldn't need the GEO to haste them. With Apocalypse, a DRK can cap JA haste without Hasso, which is notable because that means they can reach 80% delay reduction with just a Haste II. With Caladbolg or Liberator, they can still reach 75%. So assuming the BLU diffusioned Might Guard (don't be selfish, BLUs), then the DRK can reach 75-80% with just a Haste I from the WHM, thereby eliminating the need for Indi-haste entirely. (It's worth noting that a Dancer can also cap with just Haste I, or by picking up an extra 10% DW in gear)
  
  
  
• Absorb Spells: A Liberator DRK with Nether void can absorb up to +69 of any stat. That gives a lot of flexibility as it's a very potent buff AND debuff. That fixes the accuracy problem, since they can nethervoid Abs-AGI for -34 eva down, and then Absorb-ACC for about 54 acc.
  

So in the Party example you gave (DRK, BLU, COR, GEO, GEO, WHM), I think the DRK would surprise you. Also don't forget the corsair with Chaos Roll. You get an extra 9.7% attack bonus just for having the DRK in the party. However, I wonder if you'd get more damage out if dropping the offense GEO in favor of a RDM instead. A Liberator DRK and a RDM with capped enfeeble should provide close, if not more, EVA-down as an idris geo and would cap haste on the DRK. Also, between the DRK, BLU, and COR, you have 3 weapon types. So 3-steps with inundation should be a sizeable damage increase.

This above example is exactly what I was talking about when it comes ppl try to sell a job's strength but not looking at party DPS from a more objective POV. If you look at BLU's strength, BLU doesn't under perform in situations that you listed when DRK shines.

For example, I can counter your argument about DRK with:

1) Your argument with attack: You argued that DRK excel because of high attack, I can counter with BLU equally excel because they don't need as much attack buffs. Their WS crit(thus their WS avg high even at low pdif), and they have def- spell plus extra spell for attack boost, thus not needing Fury as much. They can drop precision for fury and still hit, or they can drop Fury for another bubble and you won't see their DPS suffer as much with def-/attack+ spells and massive crit.


2) Your argument with haste: Completely moot because 1 BLU can't fulltime MG and in your argument you still rely on BLU to do MG, thus after MG drop DRK aren't keeping haste cap anymore.

2 BLU can full time MG is exactly the reason why people prefer 2x BLU over anything else. Changing 1 melee to none BLU DPS means your haste will drop at one point.

Haste2 doesn't exist in standard melee DD setup, which is Meleex2 COR GEO GEO WHM. If you change any of the above job to RDM for haste 2 it's often less than ideal. Change 2nd GEO to RDM you lose vex/attunement. Change WHM to RDM you lose aoe stat boost, strong bar spell, cure skin and strong aoe cures. If losing better healer resulting DDs need to play more defensively that's also DPS lose.

You pretty much try to sell haste as a strength of DRK, when this is one of the strongest strength BLU has and I don't see many other job can compete with BLU in haste category.

3) Your argument with chaos roll: The chaos roll potency number's off, you lose roughly 5% attack without DRK because COR has 50% of chance to proc job point bonus with relic hat. In most content if you absolutely want 5% more bonus you can drop mage for trust Zeid to force proc job bonus, chaos roll the DD then invite the mage back.

Either way, chaos roll bonus isn't exclusive to DRK and there are ways to reduce the impact of losing the job.

4) Last but not least, your question of "you wonder if you get more dmg out if you drop GEO for RDM instead" is exactly the reason why I think spreadsheet is appropriate to answer all the DPS questions. Because you never know unless you calculate with math.


I'm not here to claim DRK is absolutely a better choice than BLU and vice versa, I'm just pointing out flaws in such discussions. Everytime when I see DPS hierarchy discussions, none of the opinions from people involves math, spreadsheet result nor even party DPS parse result from multiple runs with various setups with detailed info on food/buffs/gears.

All I ever see is people who plays X and Y DPS pop on the forum, try to sell the strength of their DPS because their DPS can do X and Y, then proceed to claim their DPS > BLU because they won parse a few times. With no math, no spreadsheet numbers, nor even detailed info on food/buffs/gear sets in that parse. It's not convincing.

[Afania]

Anyways, tl;dr to above wall of text.

I feel that a lot of people who claim their DPS > BLU because people have this biased opinion toward bandwagoning. They see every PUG ask for BLU only, they see majority of BLU doesn't parse high, so they proceed to claim BLU aren't as strong as people think without spreadsheet nor math results.

Back in 2014/delve era when MNK was the bandwagon DD, I spreadsheeted every DPS such as SAM, MNK, BLU, THF to get the rough idea of where MNK stands in DPS hierarchy before pop on the forum and ask for a nerf. I got the result of THF and BLU being incredibly close to MNK and other DPS outperforms MNK, thus I got the conclusion that there's no need to nerf MNK and became the anti-MNK nerf supporter. Because spreadsheet numbers are way more accurate than people popping on the forum claiming one job is good or bad based on personal experience or eyeballing.

In 2016 DPS is a lot more complicated than 2014. Instead of spamming 1 single best WS with equal buffs, every job now has access to multiple useful WS. Every DD now benefits from different DD buffs and ideally should be using different DD buffs(DRK needs more acc buffs but less attack buffs, BLU doesn't need haste buffs and list goes on). And SC plays a big part in terms of DPS.

DPS calculation in 2016 is a lot more complicated that I wouldn't just pop on the forum and claim X DPS for sure can outparse Y without maths to support the claim. It's really hard to tell whether a DPS is good or not with just eyeballed result and few parses.

[Vae]

Here's the long and short of it:

BLU has ALL up sides, and no downsides, it's OP, end of discussion.

Should it be nerfed, of course, every job I like has been hit with a nerf bat, blu should be hit too. or we could go the intelligent route, and revoke ALL the crappy nerfs from years ago. Apoc haste, ukko/smite crit, rudras, range distance, misers roll, tp return on ws, embrava, alexander PD, etc.

And probably shouldve removed immanence like 2 years ago, just sayin.

[Shyles]

Haste2 doesn't exist in standard melee DD setup, which is Meleex2 COR GEO GEO WHM. If you change any of the above job to RDM for haste 2 it's often less than ideal. Change 2nd GEO to RDM you lose vex/attunement. Change WHM to RDM you lose aoe stat boost, strong bar spell, cure skin and strong aoe cures. If losing better healer resulting DDs need to play more defensively that's also DPS lose.

If we're not allowed to break from a "standard melee DD setup", then I suppose were not allowed to assume changing it would yield better results for other DD compositions. If you want to use mixed DD though, then Red Mage would perfectly capable of taking the place of the "fury/haste" geo since that's the expendable one, not the defensive geo, nor the whm. My point was that between the DRK and RDM, you could make up much of the difference from losing that GEO while at the same time allowing for Haste II and Inundation and other debuffs.

All I ever see is people who plays X and Y DPS pop on the forum, try to sell the strength of their DPS because their DPS can do X and Y, then proceed to claim their DPS > BLU because they won parse a few times. With no math, no spreadsheet numbers, nor even detailed info on food/buffs/gear sets in that parse. It's not convincing.

I wasn't making the point that DRK was "better" than BLU, except in terms of raw damage output using the party composition you gave. You suggested that DRK,BLU,COR,GEO,GEO,WHM would be more detrimental than 2x BLUs, and I'm suggesting that it would probably be the opposite with some adjustments. I'm not an anti-BLU person by any means and I'm certainly not trying to "sell" DRK as some DD god. But I'm not going to crown BLU for their damage when plenty of other jobs are capable of outperforming them.

I feel that a lot of people who claim their DPS > BLU because people have this biased opinion toward bandwagoning. They see every PUG ask for BLU only, they see majority of BLU doesn't parse high, so they proceed to claim BLU aren't as strong as people think without spreadsheet nor math results.

The same thing can be said about people who are biased toward BLU > Everything.

[Afania]

If we're not allowed to break from a "standard melee DD setup", then I suppose were not allowed to assume changing it would yield better results for other DD compositions. If you want to use mixed DD though, then Red Mage would perfectly capable of taking the place of the "fury/haste" geo since that's the expendable one, not the defensive geo, nor the whm. My point was that between the DRK and RDM, you could make up much of the difference from losing that GEO while at the same time allowing for Haste II and Inundation and other debuffs.

I wasn't making the point that DRK was "better" than BLU, except in terms of raw damage output using the party composition you gave. You suggested that DRK,BLU,COR,GEO,GEO,WHM would be more detrimental than 2x BLUs, and I'm suggesting that it would probably be the opposite with some adjustments.

If you think my entire point was to suggest BLU+BLU > DRK + BLU then you misunderstood. My entire point was "I asked for proof from those who states none BLU DPS > BLU and made the statement as an universal fact. "

I didn't make one single statement of BLU + BLU > DRK + BLU nor vice versa because I don't have proof, I only questioned people how can they be so sure when they made such statement as it's an universal fact.

Again, if you think DRK+ BLU > BLU+ BLU, then the only way to validate your point is to present parse result(of different setup with equally geared people) OR spreadsheet result. Without numbers and math, it's just not possible to know.

Without spreadsheet/parse result, IMO there's no point to make the statement as universal fact, because it'll just turn into old DD hierarchy arguments, everyone claiming their DPS is top without proof, like what you did in previous posts.

The same thing can be said about people who are biased toward BLU > Everything.

The issue is that, again, without spreadsheet OR several parse data, it's not possible to know the party DPS hierarchy. So if we don't know the party DPS hierarchy, we can only see the defensive/haste strength BLU brings to the table.

You claim none BLU DPS > BLU in terms of pure DPS, but how much? Does none BLU DPS pt do 5% more DPS than BLU pt? Or does none BLU DPS pt do 20% more DPS than BLU pt? We don't know any of these numbers and we don't know any math, thus it's not possible to even discuss the party DPS hierarchy objectively. But what we do know is 1) BLU has a hell lot more defense, acc, shadows than most other jobs. 2) 2 BLU can cap haste full time without any haste support.

When we don't know about the real party DPS due to the lack of parse data nor spreadsheet result, we can only proceed to compare the job's strength that we can see, and BLU's haste/defensive strength is easily noticeable, while DPS hierarchy is not.....unless we have some sort of data to figure out party DPS of different DD combos.

Again, I'm not here to support one DPS over another in terms of DPS hierarchy. I'm only stating the importance of math that allows us to discuss about DPS hierarchy.

[Immortta]

I love how people are STILL complaining about BLU when all relevant end-game is done with GEO SCH BLM ??? Why not cry to nerf those jobs that are actually required for real content lol.

[Afania]

I love how people are STILL complaining about BLU when all relevant end-game is done with GEO SCH BLM ??? Why not cry to nerf those jobs that are actually required for real content lol.

There's like one person in this entire discussion mentioned the word nerf. Career BLU out there needs to chill.

Exactly how do you want to "Nerf" BLM anyways? Make it get hit by aoe like BSTs? It's used in endgame content because it's the only job that can nuke. By comparison it's not OP when comparing with jobs in the same class because it has no one else to compare with.