Picto painting potency should be readjusted

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Originally Posted by Carighan

Those are a good example of why Savages apparently don't truly matter for balancing though. The changes arrived as the tier just became outdated. If M6S had meaningful impact on class balance, they'd have hotfixed them in 2-3 days after deploying the tier.

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Smn buffs came 2 or 3 weeks after savage release after it was clear that smn is too weak for this tier. Rdm and gnb changes were made FOR this tier because of the mechanics that are in the savage fights. With 7.4 ninja got a few aoe buffs for example. Think it was fire and frog potency so it is a gain on 2 targets. M10s is a 2 targets fight, so i would say it was made for this fight in specific.
Also i've never seen them "fix" anything within 2 to 3 days, it always takes them longer. Even the P8s nerf back in EW took them at least 2 weeks to make. They wait until the results become clearer and then they intervene.

Edit: And i know that m10 is a 2 target fight in normal version, too
But normal raids dont matter, normal trials dont matter, dungeons dont matter. There is no enrage, you are not fighting a timer. The fights loop endlessly there and you can still kill by doing only auto attacks for 90 minutes. There is no pressure for you to do optimal dps or keep your rotations aligned and sync your buffs. So it doesnt really matter if the jobs are functional for that type of content. It only starts to matter when the pressure of enrage timers gets added and the chance to fail is there.

I'd disagree that the RDM changes were for this tier. The one fight where the extended range on the melee combo feels useful in this entire tier is M12S p2 and even then its only if you have certain patterns and I think it'd be possible to play around those mechanics.

These change feel way more like a response to Cruiserweight and to make RDM more in line with other casters as a precaution for the future. Unlike this tier where you can mostly manage to stay in range for your combo, Cruiserweight had 2 fights where being a RDM in a caster spot was heavily penalized: M6S, where ranged players were cut from melee range for a full minute during the lava phase, and M7S, where casters had to be tied to the wall far away from melee range for a good portion of P2 and for the second burst of P3.

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Originally Posted by Sarantserel

I'd disagree that the RDM changes were for this tier. The one fight where the extended range on the melee combo feels useful in this entire tier is M12S p2 and even then its only if you have certain patterns and I think it'd be possible to play around those mechanics.

These change feel way more like a response to Cruiserweight and to make RDM more in line with other casters as a precaution for the future. Unlike this tier where you can mostly manage to stay in range for your combo, Cruiserweight had 2 fights where being a RDM in a caster spot was heavily penalized: M6S, where ranged players were cut from melee range for a full minute during the lava phase, and M7S, where casters had to be tied to the wall far away from melee range for a good portion of P2 and for the second burst of P3.

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Valid argument.
Still the changes were made because of savage mechanics, so just further proves my point that they balance around ultimate and savage.
And i think in their explanation they even mention the changes were meant to be a precaution for future fights or something like that.
And it was possible to adjust around for a rdm in m7s, but no standard pf following a guide would ever do this. They want to go in, get loot, get out.

As much fun as you think this would be, you have to actually consider what it would mean. Look at M10S right now...PCT is extremely powerful to the point of being a good 1000 dps over most of the other jobs and 600 over the closest competitor and it's not about the aoe, it's about the downtime. The downtime which lets them paint.

On most fights, increasing painting potencies would be a good thing but because PCT takes advantage of downtime so well it would increase the problem by a lot and in the coming ultimate, most of which seem to have many instances of forced downtime, or more fights like M10S where the boss goes away long enough to paint, it becomes a huge problem. It would be better to reduce the potency of painting but make painting either faster, or give it a potency when it finishes such as a flick of the brush, splashing the enemy with leftover paint and splitting the potency between that attack and the painting itself. For the flavour, the job needs the paintings, but they are a problem because of how they work.

Picto already got nerfed and not in a good way so can we leave it as it is?

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Originally Posted by Carstien

As much fun as you think this would be, you have to actually consider what it would mean. Look at M10S right now...PCT is extremely powerful to the point of being a good 1000 dps over most of the other jobs and 600 over the closest competitor and it's not about the aoe, it's about the downtime. The downtime which lets them paint.

On most fights, increasing painting potencies would be a good thing but because PCT takes advantage of downtime so well it would increase the problem by a lot and in the coming ultimate, most of which seem to have many instances of forced downtime, or more fights like M10S where the boss goes away long enough to paint, it becomes a huge problem. It would be better to reduce the potency of painting but make painting either faster, or give it a potency when it finishes such as a flick of the brush, splashing the enemy with leftover paint and splitting the potency between that attack and the painting itself. For the flavour, the job needs the paintings, but they are a problem because of how they work.

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And PCT is also losing to red mage in half the other fights. I’m not sure why 10 should be people’s only example “oh we can’t do anything it’ll make it too strong in 10” when it’s arguably too weak everywhere else

Shouldn’t that be the point, classes have niches and overperform when given their niche

The norm is 8man solo target full uptime fights and all jobs should be balanced for that.

If picto is only good in 10% of fights then it becomes a job no one wants to main.
Even for m10 you're probably still better off bringing rdm over picto because of clutch verraise recoveries.
They definitely need to look into picto and buff it in a way that keeps it ballanced for downtime fights, too

Lowering cast times of the paintings so that it only takes 1.5s would be a solution which makes it a tiny bit better for uptime fights, but in turn it would lose some of its identity.
Making paintings dh crit would stabilize the damage profile so crit variance isnt so high, but that would just be a bandaid fix.
Making painting only available while you have a target (because the boss inspires you to paint or whatever) would solve the issue once and for all, but that would be a very unpopular solution.

Leaving picto the way it is right now, just makes it a mediocre undesirable job to play because it is just the 3rd choice. Blm and Rdm are just better choices.
I really liked that picto could replace the 2nd melee in a standard comp. Now only blm provides enough damage to enable double caster comps.

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Originally Posted by Kishin12345

The norm is 8man solo target full uptime fights and all jobs should be balanced for that.

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(emphasis mine)

My own hot-take is that every job should be viable in every encounter, but every job need not have an equally-good answer to every mechanic.

If in encounter X, WHM has a superb answer to mechanic A, but is useless on mechanic B, that's okay.

If in encounter X, WHM is simply useless across the entire fight… I feel like that's less okay. Everyone can play all jobs on a single character, but maybe some people have a preference for some jobs over others, whatever the reason?

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Originally Posted by Carstien

As much fun as you think this would be, you have to actually consider what it would mean. Look at M10S right now...PCT is extremely powerful to the point of being a good 1000 dps over most of the other jobs and 600 over the closest competitor and it's not about the aoe, it's about the downtime. The downtime which lets them paint.

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PCT's strength in M10S is not due to downtime but mainly because their 2-target cleave is quite good. The brothers only go away for a small moment just before the 3-minute mark when they use their ultimate attack.

If you want to talk about numbers. Picto is losing to blm (the job it is supposed to be competing with dps wise) in every fight except 10s and 12s p1 by 1k to upward of nearly 2k rdps (looking at you Tyrant and Lindwurm 2). I think people will start screaming if Mnk is that far behind Sam in any encouter. Speaking which, I do think the gap between Mnk and Sam is where Picto and blm should be. Currently, There is very few reasons to go picto over blm or even rdm. You have to put in so much more effort to play picto compared to blm, and your rotation offers significantly less freedom than both Rdm and Blm. Contrary to popular belief, Picto as a job is extremely restrictive in its rotation at a high level of play. The job becomes even more restrictive if you engage with its core optimization tool which is called magenta skipping. The tldr is that it basically took out all your movement tools such as hammer and comet in black since they are used to stall out your aetherhue timer. The job is frankly speaking quite reminiscent of EW BLM. Except that with EW BLM if you do none-standard stuff right, you are rewarded for being among the best dps in the game, while with picto, you don't even get close on 3 out of the 5 savage fights and even get beat by rdm. It's just a lot of efforts for picto to compete for 2nd (and at times 3rd) place. I don't even think it's going to be that great in the next Ultimate unless the whole fight is a 2 target fight. I genuinely think blm will just be as good if there is a trio phase, and I can see mnk beating it as well. but I could be wrong.

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Originally Posted by jd2408

If you want to talk about numbers. Picto is losing to blm (the job it is supposed to be competing with dps wise) in every fight except 10s and 12s p1 by 1k to upward of nearly 2k rdps (looking at you Tyrant and Lindwurm 2). I think people will start screaming if Mnk is that far behind Sam in any encouter. Speaking which, I do think the gap between Mnk and Sam is where Picto and blm should be. Currently, There is very few reasons to go picto over blm or even rdm. You have to put in so much more effort to play picto compared to blm, and your rotation offers significantly less freedom than both Rdm and Blm. Contrary to popular belief, Picto as a job is extremely restrictive in its rotation at a high level of play. The job becomes even more restrictive if you engage with its core optimization tool which is called magenta skipping. The tldr is that it basically took out all your movement tools such as hammer and comet in black since they are used to stall out your aetherhue timer. The job is frankly speaking quite reminiscent of EW BLM. Except that with EW BLM if you do none-standard stuff right, you are rewarded for being among the best dps in the game, while with picto, you don't even get close on 3 out of the 5 savage fights and even get beat by rdm. It's just a lot of efforts for picto to compete for 2nd (and at times 3rd) place. I don't even think it's going to be that great in the next Ultimate unless the whole fight is a 2 target fight. I genuinely think blm will just be as good if there is a trio phase, and I can see mnk beating it as well. but I could be wrong.

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Honestly speaking, if you want to play picto 100% optimally it is the hardest caster to play.
Magenta skipping is more like niche optimization that is not doable with every encounter, because it would take away all mobility tools.
However i go for magenta skips whenever i know i'm fine for the next few mechanics without a lot of mobility.
What i just dont like right now is seeing blm on top, then the whole melee block and then the caster block...
Picto should fit nicely inbetween the melees, maybe a few hundred rdps below monk or so.
I hope we get buffs with 7.45! And i hope it will be buffs that keep the rotation intact. If they buff rgbcym again we will end up not painting again....
Honestly they should buff paintings AND rgbcym

It is possible to hit all of the magenta skips that are available to you in every fight of the tier, even on really hard fight for picto like the lindwurm 2 or Tyrant. It just requires an ungodly amount of spreadsheeting your rotation and performing the skip during your 2 mins, which is unrealistic for most player, and rewards are frankly not worth it as It will nets you at most 500 to 600 potencies in full uptime fight. Most of these gains come from holy in whites funnily enough since you can press that button without the percieved dps loss due to the holies replacing your "skipped" Fire and Aero which is a slight potency gain. But again, extremely niche, and you are probably better off playing normally and not having to sweats for movement options.

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Originally Posted by Sunako

Main problem with PCT is that it does too much damage, if the fight have downtime while not doing enough if the fight is 100% uptime.

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That's not the problem though, that's the solution.

We already have casters with incredibly flat damage profiles that follow a strictly static rotation with no reactivity to the fight and its particular elements and designs. Black Mage.
Hence adding another damage caster late in the game means it has to provide a meaningfully different upside and downside, no? That's Picto. A caster that gets stronger the more downtime breaks there are (ideally many small ones but eh), thereby being at home in fights with downtimes and hating straight-up DPSing (which is where BLM then excels given that's what it wants to do, run its fixed rotation until the end of the universe).

That's... good? That's how you solve the problem of creating more and more classes, new classes are specialists not generalists like the old ones?

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Originally Posted by Carighan

That's not the problem though, that's the solution.

We already have casters with incredibly flat damage profiles that follow a strictly static rotation with no reactivity to the fight and its particular elements and designs. Black Mage.
Hence adding another damage caster late in the game means it has to provide a meaningfully different upside and downside, no? That's Picto. A caster that gets stronger the more downtime breaks there are (ideally many small ones but eh), thereby being at home in fights with downtimes and hating straight-up DPSing (which is where BLM then excels given that's what it wants to do, run its fixed rotation until the end of the universe).

That's... good? That's how you solve the problem of creating more and more classes, new classes are specialists not generalists like the old ones?

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No thats really bad actually. If someone wants to main picto it should be performing well in all situations otherwise just main blm or rdm because they perform well in full uptime AND downtime fights. My favorite caster right now is picto and i felt "forced" to switch to blm just because picto sucks in 90% of the fights. The small downtimes dont really give picto an edge either. It is doing a little bit less damage than rdm in fights with micro downtimes, so in "actual" full uptime fights it would be doing damage like smn.
This game has more and more problems with potencies being too high warping the damage profiles too much.
If this continues every high potency move is forced to get the "always dh crits" treatment in the future.

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Originally Posted by Kishin12345

No thats really bad actually. If someone wants to main picto it should be performing well in all situations otherwise just main blm or rdm because they perform well in full uptime AND downtime fights. My favorite caster right now is picto and i felt "forced" to switch to blm just because picto sucks in 90% of the fights. The small downtimes dont really give picto an edge either. It is doing a little bit less damage than rdm in fights with micro downtimes, so in "actual" full uptime fights it would be doing damage like smn.
This game has more and more problems with potencies being too high warping the damage profiles too much.
If this continues every high potency move is forced to get the "always dh crits" treatment in the future.

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Picto is only a few hundred DPS behind Black Mage on full uptime or mostly full uptime fights such as m11s and m12s p2, and is significantly ahead in the fights where it does shine, like m10s or the latest EX. It's not the strongest in every single situation, but it doesn't suck by any means, even in full uptime.

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Originally Posted by Quotie_Pie

Picto is only a few hundred DPS behind Black Mage on full uptime or mostly full uptime fights such as m11s and m12s p2, and is significantly ahead in the fights where it does shine, like m10s or the latest EX. It's not the strongest in every single situation, but it doesn't suck by any means, even in full uptime.

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M11s isnt full uptime tho. You get a "free" swiftcast painting when taking tower for example, downtime for all other jobs.
And when i check numbers i see picto a few hundred below rdm and blm is ahead 1500 to 2000 rdps. I filtered by 95th% because max is very unrealistic because of crit variance.
In m10s it is only ahead because of cleave damage not really because downtime

I'm hearing some interesting things in here. Never knew about cool stuff like magenta skipping but I agree picto is much harder than current black mage. I struggle to agree it's harder than red mage since red mage is the only true caster left it feels like. The recent change to manafication however does make using melee combo much easier atleast during the 2 minute burst.

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Originally Posted by Carighan

That's not the problem though, that's the solution.

We already have casters with incredibly flat damage profiles that follow a strictly static rotation with no reactivity to the fight and its particular elements and designs. Black Mage.
Hence adding another damage caster late in the game means it has to provide a meaningfully different upside and downside, no? That's Picto. A caster that gets stronger the more downtime breaks there are (ideally many small ones but eh), thereby being at home in fights with downtimes and hating straight-up DPSing (which is where BLM then excels given that's what it wants to do, run its fixed rotation until the end of the universe).

That's... good? That's how you solve the problem of creating more and more classes, new classes are specialists not generalists like the old ones?

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You have such a different perspective from 99% of forum dwellers. I think your point actually makes sense even if it doesn't fit what the community wants. I think for jobs to be balanced in this way then encounters need to be designed in a much more chaotic and dynamic fashion. Old MMO's were better at this but I think the design philosophy of modern MMO's heavily disincentives such things. Again I think you should either make your own game or serve as consul for someone making a new mmo with old school balance design. I think a mix of old and new could shake up the industry for the better.

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Originally Posted by Carighan

A caster that gets stronger the more downtime breaks there are (ideally many small ones but eh), thereby being at home in fights with downtimes and hating straight-up DPSing (which is where BLM then excels given that's what it wants to do, run its fixed rotation until the end of the universe).

That's... good? That's how you solve the problem of creating more and more classes, new classes are specialists not generalists like the old ones?

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It's how you add to the roster, but the extent of the imbalance determines whether you get as many real new choices as you've added jobs, a portion of the new jobs' count as new real choices, or actually end up with even fewer choices than you started with.

Yes, this depends on how deliberately mixed each encounter is to pull on different advantages, as well-mixed fights can offer capacity-centric differences without losing job choice (to differences in overall capacity/value) except based on who else is in the party (pushing parties out of taking all-super-bursty or all-super-sustained, requiring some but not too many AoE "specialists", etc., with any pure "downtime" specialist just being a slightly worst "bursty" outside of fights with forced downtime and slightly overpowered within them, similarly to how Stormblood meant you played comps for anything serious rather than individual jobs), but such fights are few and far between and probably shouldn't be expected to increase in portion.

Moreover, HOW one deals their damage will tend to impact gameplay far more than simply which encounter-characteristics it's advantaged for.

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Originally Posted by Kishin12345

M11s isnt full uptime tho. You get a "free" swiftcast painting when taking tower for example, downtime for all other jobs.
And when i check numbers i see picto a few hundred below rdm and blm is ahead 1500 to 2000 rdps. I filtered by 95th% because max is very unrealistic because of crit variance.
In m10s it is only ahead because of cleave damage not really because downtime

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I see, I was looking at cDPS.

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Originally Posted by Kishin12345

No thats really bad actually. If someone wants to main picto it should be performing well in all situations otherwise just main blm or rdm because they perform well in full uptime AND downtime fights. My favorite caster right now is picto and i felt "forced" to switch to blm just because picto sucks in 90% of the fights. The small downtimes dont really give picto an edge either. It is doing a little bit less damage than rdm in fights with micro downtimes, so in "actual" full uptime fights it would be doing damage like smn.
This game has more and more problems with potencies being too high warping the damage profiles too much.
If this continues every high potency move is forced to get the "always dh crits" treatment in the future.

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That's IMO a very sad attitude to take, but fair enough.

I'd much rather have classes be meaningfully different, and have their own little niches and upsides and downsides. So Picto is the king of the caster DPS in fights where they get to refresh their motifs, but falls below in near-uptime or uptime fights.

Ideally each class also brings a non-damage thing or two only they can do, uniquely, so that there's another reason you'd want each class around (compare the group portal Warlocks in WoW have). But that's a bit tricky while we use so many buttons for these flat and static damage rotations.

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Originally Posted by Reginald_Cain

I'm hearing some interesting things in here. Never knew about cool stuff like magenta skipping but I agree picto is much harder than current black mage. I struggle to agree it's harder than red mage since red mage is the only true caster left it feels like. The recent change to manafication however does make using melee combo much easier atleast during the 2 minute burst.

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I find rdm to be the easiest caster xD but might be biased because i played it for so long that it became second nature. Cleared multiple savage tiers and ultimates on rdm always pushing it as far as possible. Even played it through the tough times in SHB and EW. That hurt the most to see rdm so mistreated.....

Even if you are familiar with another there is no world where SMN isn’t the easier caster. It’s barely even a class

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

Even if you are familiar with another there is no world where SMN isn’t the easier caster. It’s barely even a class

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Well, true that.

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Originally Posted by Quotie_Pie

I see, I was looking at cDPS.

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I mean it's the most complete party contribution metric we have out there so you were right to do so.

Cdps is based on: 1. your damage as if you were hitting a striking dummy, 2. damage gained from other's buffs aka buff feeding, and 3. your own buffs (if you have one). So by definition, it is biased toward jobs that played really nicely into the 2-minute window. Picto has one of the best if not the best 2 mins burst in the game and it brings a raid buff, while blm is notoriously bad at buff feeding, and it has no aoe buff. Picto should be blowing blm out of the water when it comes to Cdps. If it's behind blm on even Cdps, then I would say the job can be argued to be on the weaker side. that said I am not sure if Blm is actually bad at buff feeding anymore after 7.2, they can do penta xenos into a flare star and despair under buff. Each of these hit about as hard as picto's star prism, so maybe I am just wrong here for saying blm is bad at buff feeding.

cDPS is for comparing how the same class performs in different setups, not how different classes perform in the same context (and even then you'd need to first split data so it's only used whenever the other 7 players were the same jobs and performed exactly the same, too).

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Originally Posted by jd2408

Cdps is based on: 1. your damage as if you were hitting a striking dummy, 2. damage gained from other's buffs aka buff feeding, and 3. your own buffs (if you have one). So by definition, it is biased toward jobs that played really nicely into the 2-minute window. Picto has one of the best if not the best 2 mins burst in the game and it brings a raid buff, while blm is notoriously bad at buff feeding, and it has no aoe buff. Picto should be blowing blm out of the water when it comes to Cdps. If it's behind blm on even Cdps, then I would say the job can be argued to be on the weaker side. that said I am not sure if Blm is actually bad at buff feeding anymore after 7.2, they can do penta xenos into a flare star and despair under buff. Each of these hit about as hard as picto's star prism, so maybe I am just wrong here for saying blm is bad at buff feeding.

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I went blm for this tier and blm opener is the weakest among all dps, even bard opener and tank openers are stronger. Blm only starts catching up after around 2 to 3min into the fight. It is ok at buff feeding i would say. Usually a buff window contains at least 2 xenoglossys, 1 flare star and a thunder refresh and as many f4 as possible. In some fights you need the xenos for movement though so buff windows tend to be on the weaker side in those fights. Overall blm is just good at sustained damage over a long period and not really at bursting. So yeah cdps favors jobs that have strong buff windows like nin, picto, drg and so on. I agree with you that picto should beat nearly all other dps when it comes to cdps, but the fact that it doesnt shows that something is wrong there. But the balancing metric remains rdps anyway, so that is what counts. Rdps is the dps that actually is contributed to the raid

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Originally Posted by Kishin12345

Rdps is the dps that actually is contributed to the raid

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cDPS is, not rDPS. aDPS tells the whole contextual picture of job value only for jobs without buffs (and even then not for Dancer comps, where raw DPS is a better indicator, since ST buffs are pruned from aDPS, but rDPS tells the whole picture for no one in any party with even a single raid-buff, let alone a Dancer.

Let's say you have the choice between two DPS. They have the same striking dummy DPS. A and B provide identical raid buffs (be that identically some 5% damage buff or equally having no raid buff at all). But A is burstier than B in a manner aligned with raid buffs. A would have identical rDPS despite increasing the party's total DPS than B does by more by enhancing the value of its buffs.

Acknowledging the value of buff-exploitation is not a "bias". It's the reality. A bias means missing the mark due to some skew in perspective, but here there is no miss, just things as they are.

cDPS favors nothing, it combines rDPS and aDPS together. It gives the whole picture, while other metrics lack to various degrees.

nDPS = your own damage minus anything gained or given from raid buffs
aDPS = nDPS + your damage gained from playing into other raid buffs
rDPS = nDPS + the damage your provided to other players with your own raid buffs
cDPS = nDPS + your damage gained from other raid buffs + the damage your buffs gave to others = rDPS + your damage gained from other raid buffs

Chart differences between both rDPS and cDPS aren't huge since rDPS really constitutes the bulk of everything, but you'll still see some jobs suddenly moving a little up or down depending on their reliance on 2min bursts.

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Originally Posted by Kishin12345

But the balancing metric remains rdps anyway

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The balancing metric is whatever SE decides. While they might check the player-created metrics, they likely use their own internal system for this, so all we can do is speculate on the specifics.

The reason why players look at rDPS, aDPS and cDPS and then get annoyed when job A or B is not where it should be is because the game cannot be balanced around high percentiles. This is because following such a model would mean that buffing jobs would always be worse unless played at a high level and with an appropriate party that can make use of such buffs, because some jobs simply do not buff feed as well as others.

So what the developers probably do is balance around what we'd call the 50-60 percentile ranges, which then translates into buffing jobs being inevitably "favored" when buff windows and kill times are exploited. Many 99 or 100 logs are simply so because the boss dies right after a 2-minute window either through manipulation or chance, and so are not necessarily fully representative of overall job or comp balance.

Additionally, all this mostly applies to organized 8-people content, mainly Savage raids. Ultimates were not the focus when balancing even though recently the developers did increase cleave damage of some jobs due to FRU P4 and later M6S, as well as the nerfs to PCT.

However, outside of 8-people content, non-buffing jobs and some other jobs like PCT reign supreme because of their superior personal damage, that does not rely on the party, and burst power. Just look at how the two new DT jobs have wrecked the level 100 dungeons damage-wise or which jobs besides NIN/SCH have been at the top of the CODCAR rankings.

Importantly two things inherently change how resistant to messing up you are:

* Group buffs
* DoTs

The more of these you have (think Gunbreaker with its two DoTs, or for extreme cases Bard with its 1-2 buffs + 2 DoTs) the lower the risk of reducing your output as more of it is either automated, or does not depend on yourself. This is why Astros used to be ahead while people were learning fights: So long as you spent your buffs, you could "overheal" and spend too many GCDs on that, and still do good rDPS as the DPS you buff are, well, DPSing.

And I readily agree with Aco505 that even those two things alone make looking at xDPS for class balance problematic. It's one thing if you want to argue "Hey, I'm more than 10% (or whatever) away from the average, that seems excessive!". That's fine. But going "Yo in fight X class A is ahead of class B by N% but in fight Y class B is behind by M% and that needs a change to ability 145 by 15 potency to fix" that's faaaaaaar too specific an issue to look at. In fact the moment you compare rDPS vs cDPS or something you not only misuse what those numbers are meant to be used for (cDPS for comparing how well you perform when the rest of the group around you changes but nothing else does, for example, personal improvement and all that), but also try to invent a problem where there likely is none (if you have to look that specific).

Because, like Aco505 says, the devs are trying to balance the game for the actual playerbase, not just the few angry tryhards we represent sitting here on the forum rambling about marginal difference in output in highest-end fights.

[QUOTE=Aco505;6792708]The balancing metric is whatever SE decides. While they might check the player-created metrics, they likely use their own internal system for this, so all we can do is speculate on the specifics. [QUOTE]

What i meant was the playersbase's balancing metric. When rdps is off players complain. That is what people look at.
If you ask me, the devs don't have any balancing metric and if at all very bad inhouse testing.
All we got from them was "we didn't expect picto to do so much damage"

That's not unusual though. Every dev company of every game and most non-games runs into that problem, you can't test internally at scale, and nobody in your team not even professional testers test remotely as close to real-world conditions as your actual users will.

Get it "good enough" and fix it later. Or do the GW2 thing and throw 1.35 million options at a wall, see which stick, then forget about the others (but also never remove them).

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Originally Posted by Kishin12345

"we didn't expect picto to do so much damage"

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A hilarious statement considering there were threads in this very forum on week 1-2 after 7.0 released warning about the job's power.