So we get to say Black Mages get excluded because they just weren't played well enough, but we don't get to say that about Red Mages and Summoners huh?
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Its the difference between floor and ceilling thats matter, SMN and RDM have lower floor/ceilling difference while BLM need to make it near the ceilling to make it worth and have far less people that are able to do it, or at least they give that kind of impression...
Edit: OH and lets not forget how a certain site count buff... everybody want more buff for themself than party dps...
I think it's fine if different classes satisfy different niches in the game. RDM has a lot going for it - free raise makes it extremely valuable in casual content as well as savage prog. In Eureka RDM probably outnumbered all other DPS combined. RDM is a really easy class to learn and then do quite good DPS vs. effort put in.
In savage, I think the (raid) damage potential of a class should scale with difficulty. If RDM is as complex as the other casters to play at a high level, then it deserves a DPS boost (I don't know if this is true or not). If not, then I would just learn another class for savage and keep playing RDM in other content.
Ninja is a little different as it's meant to be a raiding class due to Trick Attack. It's also hard to play well - piano key opener filled with double weaves, high CPM, and aligning Bunshin with trick is honestly galaxy brain and needs to be planned for every fight.
This defeats the purpose of having classes with varying mechanics and gameplay elements. Difficulty should not be a factor in overall viability, because you're otherwise telling a set of people to not bother with specific content. Sure, you can tell people to switch mains, but that just breeds discontent.
No, you didn't. That is true. You summarily stated how you would balance based on job difficulty and that it is okay for jobs to fill a niche. Please don't take this the wrong way but I'm glad you don't balance MMOs as that would be a horrid way to balance a MMO. Difficulty is subjective. Ninja and summoner are said to be too complex, clunky, and difficult by the community and guess what is likely to happen in 5.1? I'll wager that the complexity will be lowered. I suspect that all jobs are gradually trending towards less complexity to make them all more approachable. Skill bloat reduction and the homegenization of job roles already happened with Shadowbringers and is likely to happen even more. Those of you who get your jollies off on playing your "difficult" classes may need to find something else to certify your snowflake status.
One more point, in savage content the disparity between BLM and RDM remains near constant across all tiers. The percent difference in DPS between their grey parses is nearly the same as the percent difference between their orange parses. So much for theory that RDMs are doing better due to requiring less skill. In the content that matters RDM is underperforming at all percentiles.
Nice cherry pick there. Now post how MNK/BLM/DRG clears there are. Now figure out how many times that a RDM cleared E4S without the presence of at least one of the "Big three" to carry DPS. RDM is the second to last job in all of Eden savage. The last one, NIN, is getting a DPS increase in 5.08 and a major overhaul in 5.10. RDM needs some love as well.
Nice straw man but I'll address your argument nevertheless. DPS jobs should be balanced based on whether they are ranged, melee, have cast bars, and group utility. DPS should not be even and I don't know anybody that said it should be. The order that they are presently in isn't terrible though I would move a couple jobs around. It's the disparity between the jobs that needs tuning.
My order:
BLM/SAM/MCH=MNK=DRG/RDM=BRD=SMN/DNC=NIN
**NIN only if trick attack stays same.**
I just want the gaps cleaned up. BLM at 13-14% above RDM is not okay.