Issue with double standards with Se and defining between dps and support.

[Connor]

I do agree that the devs seem to have found defining support/DPS classes pretty difficult. The damage debuffs on support songs aren't a problem for me, but with such limited opportunity to use them on top of the 3.0 DPS craze that Alex Savage brought I can see why people would think the debuff should change (as always, I'm not including For Requiem here because it's very powerful and always useful).
As someone who plays Bard to be a support DPS, its disheartening to be encouraged not to use your support abilities.
Personally I'd rather see Bard songs like Ballad, Paeon and Paean become more worth using in content outside of Savage (and appropriately balanced ofc) and I's happily accept DPS nerfs as a tradeoff.
As for Machinist, it\\'s a bit harder for me to say as I\\'m less experienced with it. I always saw Machinist as being less support and more DPS so maybe they could find some ways to emphasise this whilst still keeping the support through debuffs thing

[AskaRay]

I do agree that the devs seem to have found defining support/DPS classes pretty difficult. The damage debuffs on support songs aren't a problem for me, but with such limited opportunity to use them on top of the 3.0 DPS craze that Alex Savage brought I can see why people would think the debuff should change (as always, I'm not including For Requiem here because it's very powerful and always useful).

Not like you should be including Foe's anyway since it doesn't reduce Bard's DPS at all (unless you're counting the seconds to cast it, in which..........er)

[Connor]

Not like you should be including Foe's anyway since it doesn't reduce Bard's DPS at all (unless you're counting the seconds to cast it, in which..........er)

Yeah haha, I just wanted to make it clear when I was discussing songs that I'm aware Foe Requiem is powerful with absolutely no downside. Wouldn't be great argument for my if I didn't acknowledge that

[JackFross]

Just because content is easy doesn't mean that groups don't fail due to the party composition.

This is patently false. There is no instance in the entire game where party composition will be the sole reason for failing to kill the instance, assuming players are all item level 208-210. This extends to DF, only you just need to assume players average at item level 190+. Meeting these circumstances and hitting enrage implies much more that the PLAYERS ARE BAD than it says anything at all about the party composition.

2. I wouldn't downplay Dragon Kick.

3. Drg has awesome dps and Battle Litany. Battle Litany is an awesome utility imo.

Dragon Kick, even keeping in mind traited Mantra and the presence of Delirium on Dark Knight, does absolutely nowhere NEAR as much utility as Battle Litany and Disembowel. Regardless what you think about Bard/Machinist DPS, Disembowel is a significant boost to raid dps.

Battle Litany cannot by any stretch be compared to Foe Requiem, Hypercharge, Balance/Arrow/Spear, Mage Ballad/Army' Paeon, Promotion, or Trick Attack. All of those bring considerably better overall dps gains than Battle Litany, which is a 15% crit buff for 1/9th of the fight, at best.

I took the top 400 (if available) and averaged the dps.

This is an incredibly inaccurate way to measure DPS parity. The amount of parses make the "top 400" vary WILDLY in quality. If you want to really compare DPS parity, the site already has tools for that:

Faust: http://www.fflogs.com/statistics/7/#class=Any&boss=5001
A1S: http://www.fflogs.com/statistics/7/#boss=18&class=Any
A2S: http://www.fflogs.com/statistics/7/#...Any&dataset=95
A3S: http://www.fflogs.com/statistics/7/#boss=20&class=Any
A4S: http://www.fflogs.com/statistics/7/#boss=21&class=Any

Overall: http://www.fflogs.com/statistics/7/#class=Any

Had to take a smaller sample for A2S because too many Ninjas drive the gobwalker.
A4S is skewed lower due to the fact that the vast majority of Bards and Machinists are sent to explode to Pentacle, since it would be less of a dps loss for them than a melee due to travel time.

tl;dr: The differences are hardly important, and there is no fight in the game where tanks are beating Bards, on average.

Someone mentioned Thordan, so:
http://www.fflogs.com/statistics/4/#class=Any

Though it only takes data from the past two weeks, and most of the top Thordan players have only been selling the past two weeks or they've already gotten what they need and don't do it anymore.



I skimmed most of the thread and picked out a couple of points I felt needed to be stated. I'd also like to take this time to lay out all of the dps classes and what utility they bring to the table, and how that justifies the general ranking seen in a straightforward single-target fight like A3S:

Monk
-- Dragon Kick - 10% INT debuff (doubled by DRK in 3.x)
-- Mantra - 20% healing buff

Black Mage
-- Apocatastasis - 20% magic damage reduction on one target.

Dragoon
-- Disembowel - Buffs BRD/MCH dps, if they're present
-- Battle Litany - 15% crit buff for 20s with 180s cooldown

Ninja
-- Trick Attack - 10% damage boost for 10s with 60s cooldown
-- Goad - TP regeneration on a single target
-- Shadewalker - Transfers enmity to target
-- Smoke Screen - Quelling Strikes for a target

Summoner
-- Virus - 15% INT/MND/STR/DEX debuff on the target
-- Eye for an Eye - 20% chance of 10% damage reduction after physical damage
-- Resurrection - additional party raise

Bard
-- Mage Ballad - regen party Mana
-- Army's Paeon - regen party TP
-- Foe Requiem - 10% damage boost to Magic damage
---- Battle Voice - doubles efficacy of above songs
-- The Warden's Paean - Prevents incoming status curable status ailment

Machinist
-- Promotion - regen party Mana (Bishop) or TP (Rook)
-- Hypercharge - 5% damage increase for ~22s with 120s cooldown
---- Can also double Promotion Mana/TP regen
-- Dismantle - 5% physical mitigation - 0 damage
-- Rend Mind - 5% magical mitigation - 0 damage

The general scale of highest to lowest single-target damage is:
Monk
Black Mage
Dragoon
Ninja
Summoner
Bard
Machinist

If you look at the above utility skills, this gradient makes perfect sense. The more effective utility skills that a job has, the lower its personal dps becomes. I don't think it's very strange. And the numbers shown above show that these differences are more-or-less proportional with the disparities in utility skills.

Shrug. I think Machinist needs a bit of a boost, but I think Bard is fine. If you are unhappy with your own dps as a Bard, I recommend re-evaluating what you're doing, rather than blaming the class. I assure you, it's not the Job's fault.

[Fishi]

I'm more interested in seeing better skilled players than this, atm, though I welcome a buff. I'm face palming when I'm top in fights when I'm a "trash tier" support DPS, MCH. -Looks at random PF parties for thordian and DF-.Sure DF is DF and people snooze through it.. but some people I see... -Face Wall- The only people 'behind' on DPS is people who don't know the fights/class enough to push more dps. Find ways to use that CD, alter an opener if you are able to squeeze in more CDs before boss goes invuln etc.. I'd rather have them develop tutorials on how to play a class.

[whiskeybravo]

I'd rather have them develop tutorials on how to play a class.

The new stone, sky, sea thing will hopefully go a decent ways towards improving in general.. But the problem outside of knowing "how to play" a class is how to optimize the class on specific fights. You can be great on a dummy but horrible in a real encounter. I don't think the devs want to hold players hands through every encounter.

[Lilith_Merquise]

even then, "Playing your class" and "Optimizing your class" are entirely different things. SE doesn't plan out exact rotations taking into account of procs and animation delays, they just have a general flow of how they thing abilities should go and it's the meta of the community that defines the "Optimal class operation." And I"m fine with players playing the class as intended and not as optimal, no problem, my problem is the people that spam 1, AFK through fights, or don't even bother putting up CDs. Thats what gets me.

[RecklessLion]

If this topic's about, "oh my 4 BRDs should would stink in DF!" I must say ... yeah, so? DRK DRK without a NIN would stink. Casters without BRD stacked wouldn't be that great. 4 NIN wouldn't even be that great, they wouldn't coordinate their Trick Attacks too well in a DF this is for certain. There are optimal comps out there, and there are comps that aren't intended, but the difference isn't a big enough deal. You don't enrage in DF content (which is mostly outdated or extremely easy content), you don't fail tight DPS checks (because there aren't any in general); what happens in DF is you get paired with 3-4 other DPS who suck at their jobs to the point where you could be a Shield Oath PLD and probably beat some of them. You don't balance party synergy around what the DF can come up with for a comp, this game doesn't even have serious content to do in DF.

With that being said you just owned this post!!!

[Kelevra]

Dragon Kick, even keeping in mind traited Mantra and the presence of Delirium on Dark Knight, does absolutely nowhere NEAR as much utility as Battle Litany and Disembowel. Regardless what you think about Bard/Machinist DPS, Disembowel is a significant boost to raid dps.

Battle Litany cannot by any stretch be compared to Foe Requiem, Hypercharge, Balance/Arrow/Spear, Mage Ballad/Army' Paeon, Promotion, or Trick Attack. All of those bring considerably better overall dps gains than Battle Litany, which is a 15% crit buff for 1/9th of the fight, at best.

look...the guy I was replying to originally stated 'we don't get awesome dps and awesome utility in the same job'

Dragoon has awesome damage output as well as awesome utility in Litany.

I didn't bring up Disembowel, cause that is the utility Drg has that can be compared to Foe's. One is aoe for as long as you have mana dropping magic resistance by 10%. One is single target, but lasts as long as you have tp, dropping a certain physical resistance by 10% (which has more uptime than Foe's usually does because of how things work). Same can be said for Dragon Kick and Dancing Edge. Again, this is a moot point...which is why I didn't bring it up.

It isn't a question of who thinks which utility is better than which utility.

Utility is utility.

And as far as parsing numbers/fflogs go (something else I didn't bring up)...

if I were to improve my own numbers and start putting out higher results when I raid, I would still be saying/thinking the same thing. Because, after playing Brd for a good bit...it can stand to see a few adjustments here and there for the better.

[Archaell]

This is patently false. There is no instance in the entire game where party composition will be the sole reason for failing to kill the instance, assuming players are all item level 208-210. This extends to DF, only you just need to assume players average at item level 190+. Meeting these circumstances and hitting enrage implies much more that the PLAYERS ARE BAD than it says anything at all about the party composition.

Of course I meant the instances when the groups of bad players fail due to the party composition. When the players aren't that good, which gets them too close to the failing, having 4 support jobs can make the difference .

I am not saying that it has big effect on good players, even tho having too many support jobs in one group can hardly make the content easier.