Job balance/the meta/I'm bad at titles and very tired

[starlesss]

META means Most Effective Tactic Available

Just dropping these here because it blew my mind once. Even tho i understood what meta was i dident know what the letters stand for or even that they stood for anything.

[zuzu-bq]

The game has never been more balanced than it is right now. It isn't perfect at all but only a few jobs are left aside and even those few jobs have their unique strengths in a way or another. People will always dislike jobs that don't buff their damage, even if they aren't META, and this won't change.

[Gallus]

I guess those two 96s I got in v9s and v10s aren’t actually real then. Because my static runs with a MNK.

You should probably actually look at the site before you make silly statements like this.

Maybe I shouldn't have used the words "virtually impossible" but much harder. My point was that BLM and SAM are a lot less wanted in general and people often exclude them because of their lack of synergy and global buffs (MNK has one but it's relatively weak). Most people look for jobs with a lot of synergy like DRG, BRD or NIN. I think FFlogs is partially responsible for that.

The statistics say that there are 8600 parses updated for BLM, 13,500 for SAM and 9,200 for MNK. Then you have DRG with 30k, BRD with 34k and NIN with 25k. My point was that the jobs I've mentioned are being blatantly excluded. That's what the site says.

I suggest you look at FFlogs because the current fastest O12S kill has both Samurai and Black Mage. And the only one who didn't orange was their Dark Knight. Getting oranges is all about speed, not personal buffs. Any combination can get full oranges across the board if the group is skilled enough.

Look at the big picture here. How many BLMs and SAMs are there in FFLOGS compared to NINs and BRDs? You can probably get an orange playing BRD without a DRG but for each orange percentile BRD that doesn't have a DRG in their group you'll find 10 that have DRGs.

[Tiraelina]

META means Most Effective Tactic Available

Just dropping these here because it blew my mind once. Even tho i understood what meta was i dident know what the letters stand for or even that they stood for anything.

It's short for metagame, there's nothing else to it. It barely even applies to group composition aside from the fact most players are going to try to emulate the top. This is powergaming and min-maxing. Balance issues created a stigma and they didn't bother to fix it when it was fresh and still won't invest time into it later on. Everyone else is terrified of them looking into it because it might bite them by making what they are playing not the "top" anymore, such is the life of following the leader.

There can't be synergies between some classes and none for others. They stuck themselves in a black hole of imbalance. Making a class strong enough to perform without them is just adding to the problems. It's an all or nothing deal.

[Sigma-Astra]

Some people go crazy over job synergy but I think it's a big mistake. As long as rotations are different and jobs feel different to play there's no reason to have things like disembowel. At the end of the day the only thing they are doing is limiting the possible amount of team combinations and encouraging people to have a closed mindset.

Not accounting for the fact SAM, MNK and BLM always get the short end of the stick and nobody wants them in statics not only because they bring less global damage but because getting orange numbers in fflogs with a BLM and a SAM in your team is virtually impossible.

....You can't talk about people having a closed mindset when you're already advocating it yourself....

I don't hate sam and rdm, my point was that I don't think they should be allowed to compete against the current meta with how easy they have it, the jobs that are more annoying to play should be more useful.

What on earth....you're a Naruto ninja, aren't you.

[MoroMurasaki]

Maybe I shouldn't have used the words "virtually impossible" but much harder. My point was that BLM and SAM are a lot less wanted in general and people often exclude them because of their lack of synergy and global buffs (MNK has one but it's relatively weak). Most people look for jobs with a lot of synergy like DRG, BRD or NIN. I think FFlogs is partially responsible for that.

The statistics say that there are 8600 parses updated for BLM, 13,500 for SAM and 9,200 for MNK. Then you have DRG with 30k, BRD with 34k and NIN with 25k. My point was that the jobs I've mentioned are being blatantly excluded. That's what the site says.



Look at the big picture here. How many BLMs and SAMs are there in FFLOGS compared to NINs and BRDs? You can probably get an orange playing BRD without a DRG but for each orange percentile BRD that doesn't have a DRG in their group you'll find 10 that have DRGs.

I honestly agree with the vast majority of this, the one issue I have is your choice of the word excluded.

I don't think that PF is excluding those jobs on any real level. Occasionally sure but not overall. I think the disparities you mention exist because people are choosing to play BRD/DRG/NIN and I feel like thay choice is being fueled by the synergy not by an oppressive PFenvironment that won't let them play more selfish dps.

The ironic part is that for most players competence is a much bigger issue than job synergy and having a confident SAM will work out better than a mediocre DRG even with the loss of dps for the BRD... but for some reason people don't see that.

[Ilan]

I honestly agree with the vast majority of this, the one issue I have is your choice of the word excluded.

I don't think that PF is excluding those jobs on any real level. Occasionally sure but not overall. I think the disparities you mention exist because people are choosing to play BRD/DRG/NIN and I feel like thay choice is being fueled by the synergy not by an oppressive PFenvironment that won't let them play more selfish dps.

The ironic part is that for most players competence is a much bigger issue than job synergy and having a confident SAM will work out better than a mediocre DRG even with the loss of dps for the BRD... but for some reason people don't see that.

But people have to play the META. Doesn't matter if they can execute it properly or not!

[Bourne_Endeavor]

The statistics say that there are 8600 parses updated for BLM, 13,500 for SAM and 9,200 for MNK. Then you have DRG with 30k, BRD with 34k and NIN with 25k. My point was that the jobs I've mentioned are being blatantly excluded. That's what the site says.

Excluded or simply less preferred? Those two terms are not synonymous. Machinist has consistently remained the least played job since its release yet it enjoyed a meta dominance from Midas all the way to Sigma. Black Mage, currently, is being discussed as potentially unseating Summoner already. Likewise, Ninja is being threatened for the first time since its inception by Monk. That doesn't mean either will see a significant upswing in static activity even if they wind up being the de facto meta. Why? Summoner and Ninja will still be close, thus people playing those jobs aren't necessarily going to feel compelled to change, especially if they have no prior experience playing either. Black Mage and Monk are also harder to optimize, which is another factor. The Tornado Kick opener is extremely rigid. If you mess up you're timing, you'll likely to suffer a bigger loss than a Ninja would.

You also have to consider in prior stigma. Astro underwent this in Heavensward. Despite being arguably better in current fights than White Mage back in Midas, people refused to play it under the misguided belief it still sucked due to its abysmal launch. While Samurai and Black Mage were nowhere near as poorly balanced in Stormblood, they were noticeably behind. As of Alpha, their respective damage has improved tremendously—enough to finally rival their utility counterparts. Alas, perception does not change quickly. This is why people get so frustrated with the devs when they take forever and a day to make adjustments. The issues with selfish DPS has been known since Heavensward, yet well over two years later and we're only finally seeing them give in. Look at Red Mage. People posted on here, Reddit and asked in Live Letters that Verraise wasn't enough to justify how low their overall DPS relative to Summoner. Yoshida, himself, disagreed and kept referring to Verraise as the reason. And I need only mention the laughably absurd comment, "If we gave BRD/MCH Piercing they would be OP!!"

The whole reason Astro received its insanely overpowered buff in 3.4 is because the devs took so long to fix it, they opted for a desperate plea: "please, please try out Astro! It's better now!"

And finally, player skill or lack thereof is another factor. A common misconception is Black Mage and Samurai are locked out simply due to lack of party utility. While that is undeniable true in some cases, I have both heard and read a frequent reason actually stems from how poorly many players who play those jobs are. Unfortunately, a one-dimensional job necessitates you being very good, otherwise you're useless. There is no middle ground. If a Samurai is pulling 5,000 DPS. They are useless because they offer nothing else except damage. Is this fair? Not entirely, but no amount of re-balancing or shifting the meta will change player experience.

The best the devs can do is make each job close in overall contribution, and respond much faster to potential imbalances. Afterwards, it's entirely on the players.

[KDSilver]

I won't add anything to the debate (sorry about that) but this week, I played savage on pf and most of my group were SAM/MNK/SMN/BLM
Overall dps was good, everyone was okay with this and runs were smooth.
It somehow felt good to just play the best we could and, forgetting about that meta thing and see things working well.
Knowing we were relying more on our performance than party buff was rewarding.

There'll always be a meta no matter what they do.
So except for absolute 100% performance speedkill and stuff, yes, balance could be reworked a bit, but otherwise, maybe it's more okay as long as people know how to correctly press buttons
Depends on what you're looking for in the game I guess.

[Alrin]

Ah magical world of META progression raiding.... This reminds me of my progression raiding in SWTOR where I played as a Balance Sage DPS which was considered one of the worst classes for progression yet I was part of static and nobody was against it. I had better numbers than most of other DPS players in our static who played META classes.

I think that it really depends what class fits you better. Bad DRG may be good MNK. Every class is different and some may feel more natural to you than others. META is working under perfect circumstances when the players plays the class perfectly and the mechanics are favourable. How often does that happen? Is really terrible BRD worth it more with its utility, than good SAM? I think not.