Damage "taxes" deserve serious reconsideration

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

Even rezz as a “utility”, this tier especially has gone quite hard on body check mechanics which severely reduce rezz uses around the fights harder mechanics, combine that with the fact that rezz is inherently taxed by throwing off your rotation and costing a boatload of MP (at least affecting RDM)

With this tier making rezz harder to justify and it already costing the user I’d say rezz shouldn’t really be taxed, stuff that can actually be optimised around and has defined use that not every class has (curing waltz, improv, magic barrier, expedient come to mind) and don’t intrinsically cost the class to use, they should be what, if anything, is taxed utility wise

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I knew I'd get people talking about rez being a bad utility lol, Yes rez lets you see more of the fight in progression run rez is absolutely a good enough utility to justify a tax in my opinion, letting you see more of a fight and getting enraged is fine for learning a fight and very powerful, but people tend to ignore this, and yeah sure it can save runs but normally a DPS raise is going to help you see more of the fight more then outright clear it.

Sure it's not going to be broken after you learnt a fight and done it a few times but by then damage checks aren't really going to be a issue getting raised and having a damage debuff isn't going to happen nearly as much, the point where Black Mages extra damage comes into question because of this.

Give black mage a raise if you want RDM/SMN to do the same damage, even if you disagree with the raise/utility advantage as useless, if they all did the same total damage you'd have zero reason to bring black mage, you can't have RDM/SMN raise do the same damage, give off even extra utility then Black Mage, why have jobs with utility and same damage it just makes one objectively worse, it creates the same issue of having a large tax for any utility.

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Originally Posted by Rithy255

I knew I'd get people talking about rez being a bad utility lol, Yes rez lets you see more of the fight in progression run rez is absolutely a good enough utility to justify a tax in my opinion, letting you see more of a fight and getting enraged is fine for learning a fight and very powerful, but people tend to ignore this, and yeah sure it can save runs but normally a DPS raise is going to help you see more of the fight more then outright clear it.

Sure it's not going to be broken after you learnt a fight and done it a few times but by then damage checks aren't really going to be a issue getting raised and having a damage debuff isn't going to happen nearly as much, the point where Black Mages extra damage comes into question because

Give black mage a raise if you want RDM/SMN to do the same damage, even if you disagree with the raise/utility advantage as useless, if they all did the same total damage you'd have zero reason to bring black mage, you can't have RDM/SMN raise, give off extra utility then Black Mage and then your take would be justifiable, why have jobs with utility and same damage it just makes one objectively worse, it creates the same issue of having a tax for any utility.

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Easier option - remove rez from all casters.

Also, what's your take on content where rez is disabled? Should RDM and SMN get a permanent 10% damage buff there?

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Originally Posted by Azuri

Easier option - remove rez from all casters.

Also, what's your take on content where rez is disabled? Should RDM and SMN get a permanent 10% damage buff there?

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In the new dugeon content? depends on how the AOE works out, but in general yes I also think they should deal around the same damage in that sort of content. 10% is too much of a difference for raise anyway (gap between casters should be reduced, but also all casters should be higher then they currently are as melee tax shouldn't really be a thing).

I think rez is fine, but removing it so people can have blackmage dps when it doesn't really matter too much, its fine I know people will want their Job to be meta and top dps, I enjoy stuff like raise makes the caster dynamic more interesting for me at the same time its hard to balance around. (You could even remove raise from savage content so more casual players wouldn't be effected)

Personally give a res as a role action with a 2 minutes CD on casters. Odds are we're getting a 4th Caster and I'm gonna be severely disappointed if they split "res caster" and "pure caster" because it'll default that RDM/SMN will never be performing like other casters.

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Originally Posted by Aikaal

Personally give a res as a role action with a 2 minutes CD on casters. Odds are we're getting a 4th Caster and I'm gonna be severely disappointed if they split "res caster" and "pure caster" because it'll default that RDM/SMN will never be performing like other casters.

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You know that's what SE's gonna do, because SE is obsessed with this idea of splitting roles into subroles and subroles into subsubroles.

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Originally Posted by Aikaal

Personally give a res as a role action with a 2 minutes CD on casters. Odds are we're getting a 4th Caster and I'm gonna be severely disappointed if they split "res caster" and "pure caster" because it'll default that RDM/SMN will never be performing like other casters.

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Why should res tax exist? Why should any DPS tax exist outside raid damage buffs?

The wheel of balance inevitably turns and one day even BLM will get to partake of the humble pie and sit at the bottom of the dps charts. SMN and even SAM already had theirs. No one is safe from a "rework". And that will be a glorious day indeed.

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Originally Posted by Mithron

Why should res tax exist? Why should any DPS tax exist outside raid damage buffs?

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To justify the prejudice they treat some jobs with while propping up certain jobs within the same role to keep them above everyone else.

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Originally Posted by Mithron

Why should res tax exist? Why should any DPS tax exist outside raid damage buffs?

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Why should Red mage and summoner perform the same as black mage and bring objectively pretty good utility.
You just look at damage numbers and don't actually think about how it would bring no reason to play black mage over the other casters.

You either remove all utility or make BLM have the same sort of utility, which in my opinion brings down job diversity more then it already has been, which if thats your goal? sure.

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Originally Posted by Rithy255

I knew I'd get people talking about rez being a bad utility lol, Yes rez lets you see more of the fight in progression run rez is absolutely a good enough utility to justify a tax in my opinion, letting you see more of a fight and getting enraged is fine for learning a fight and very powerful, but people tend to ignore this, and yeah sure it can save runs but normally a DPS raise is going to help you see more of the fight more then outright clear it.

Sure it's not going to be broken after you learnt a fight and done it a few times but by then damage checks aren't really going to be a issue getting raised and having a damage debuff isn't going to happen nearly as much, the point where Black Mages extra damage comes into question because of this.

Give black mage a raise if you want RDM/SMN to do the same damage, even if you disagree with the raise/utility advantage as useless, if they all did the same total damage you'd have zero reason to bring black mage, you can't have RDM/SMN raise do the same damage, give off even extra utility then Black Mage, why have jobs with utility and same damage it just makes one objectively worse, it creates the same issue of having a large tax for any utility.

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Did you even read my post, you aren’t seeing more of the fight with verraise when the fights are obsessed with body check mechanics, like if more than 1 person dies to devour then verraise won’t save you on the next mechanic, yet RDM is still taxed as if the rezz is useful in this situation

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

Did you even read my post, you aren’t seeing more of the fight with verraise when the fights are obsessed with body check mechanics, like if more than 1 person dies to devour then verraise won’t save you on the next mechanic, yet RDM is still taxed as if the rezz is useful in this situation

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ok but that's one example and im sure theirs way more of a fight having body check mechs, generally theirs been cases where you need everyone alive at one instance, in the case of that mech it wouldn't be useful but in a lot of situations having a job be able to get up someone before a body check mech happens would actually help prevent that body check mech causing a wipe in the first place.

And if we wanna argue it's a problem with raise? maybe it's just a problem with how they designed the mechanic, it would be more worth complaining about how they're invalidating raise more and more in that case.

Like I said if you want RDM/SMN/BLM all to be equal give them all raise or remove it, you can't have your cake and eat it too.

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Originally Posted by Rithy255

Why should Red mage and summoner perform the same as black mage and bring objectively pretty good utility.
You just look at damage numbers and don't actually think about how it would bring no reason to play black mage over the other casters.

You either remove all utility or make BLM have the same sort of utility, which in my opinion brings down job diversity more then it already has been, which if thats your goal? sure.

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I'd rather BLM be top DPS in the game with no raid damage buffs and a job identity of low mobility hard casting. No raise. I do not think SMN and RDM should have damage tax for raise, but I do think SMN and RDM should have raid damage buffs and thus lower aDPS than BLM, and that all jobs be within 1% rDPS between each other. That way BLMs can feel good about playing their no raise playstyle and you can feel good playing your raise playstyle despite having less personal DPS and everyone be viable because you're all contributing to the same amount of total DPS. You're already losing DPS by having to raise as a SMN or RDM anyway, therefore no further penalty is needed.

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Originally Posted by Mithron

I'd rather BLM be top DPS in the game with no raid damage buffs and a job identity of low mobility hard casting. No raise. I do not think SMN and RDM should have damage tax for raise, but I do think SMN and RDM should have raid damage buffs and thus lower aDPS than BLM, and that all jobs be within 1% rDPS between each other. That way BLMs can feel good about playing their no raise playstyle and you can feel good playing your raise playstyle despite having less personal DPS and everyone be viable because you're all contributing to the same amount of total DPS. You're already losing DPS by having to raise as a SMN or RDM anyway, therefore no further penalty is needed.

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Ok so you just basically want no one to ever touch Black Mage because they bring zero utility and basically output the same total damage as the other two casters got it.

If you gave black mage raise they'd also lose dps for using raise your argument makes no sense, it's less of a dps loss to cast raise then to let someone tank the floor, so casting raise (if your healers can't) is unironically a total dps gain.

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Originally Posted by Rithy255

ok but that's one example and im sure theirs way more of a fight having body check mechs, generally theirs been cases where you need everyone alive at one instance, in the case of that mech it wouldn't be useful but in a lot of situations having a job be able to get up someone before a body check mech happens would actually help prevent that body check mech causing a wipe in the first place.

And if we wanna argue it's a problem with raise? maybe it's just a problem with how they designed the mechanic, it would be more worth complaining about how they're invalidating raise more and more in that case.

Like I said if you want RDM/SMN/BLM all to be equal give them all raise or remove it, you can't have your cake and eat it too.

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Well they balance for savage, if you think the mechanic is the problem because there is too many body check mechanics which is invalidating raise that is a valid opinion, but you can’t have mechanics constantly invalidating raise (like 7 and 8 each have like 10 body check mechanics) and then tax RDM and SMN constantly for their ability to raise you either have one or the other

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

Well they balance for savage, if you think the mechanic is the problem because there is too many body check mechanics which is invalidating raise that is a valid opinion, but you can’t have mechanics constantly invalidating raise (like 7 and 8 each have like 10 body check mechanics) and then tax RDM and SMN constantly for their ability to raise you either have one or the other

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Well I don't think we'll get anywhere with the current state I even disagree with a massive difference between casters, more or less I just find raise a pretty interesting ability theirs plently ways/solutions you can fix the difference without making Black Mage completely useless.

Any one of these would fix the current caster "problem" (Mind you adjusting so theirs less of a gap between casters is fine).
A: Reduce the amount of checks in one fight, make raise more useful, in general to justify a decent dps gap.
B: Remove raise from harder content such as Savage and extremes, They're already doing this for harder dungeons, This would also mean making the damage difference between all casters could be very small.
C: Give Black Mage a raise, All casters would again be on similar terms, BLM would prolly need a timer to avoid triple cast abuse in like a 24 man, as Mp doesn't really matter for black mage.

My main point is, if you want Red Mage/Summoner to do similar amounts of damage you can't have black mage not have any sort of utility you'd need to change something, even if raise was so useless I don't see how removing it (at least for harder content) would make people mad inturn for higher damage, when it's "useless" to those same people.

I'd personally choose A as I enjoy job diversity, but really that's my preference. It would likely be easier to balance the game where the only job utility is addle and faint, because their would be no reason to debate over a utilities usefulness, all jobs doing the same damage.

I don't think the current state is great either BLM compared to red mage and summoner is doing way too much but also compared to samurai it's doing way too little, I think the idea of the ranged tax hurts casters in general more then a raise tax, but both should generally be addressed.

It's correct in principle that having to fight at melee range is a disadvantage. Imagine if there was a "samurai w/ gun" job with completely identical traits, buttons, and numbers to the regular samurai except that all its attacks had range 30y instead of range 3y. That'd be unfair, right?

Of course, it's SE's job to make melee vs ranged mean something. If every enemy in the game had Hephaistos's hitbox, the melee and ranged samurai WOULD be balanced. SE's admitted themselves that they deliberately eased off inconveniencing melee this tier, probably to a greater extent than they should have, but I'd rather just see enemy hitboxes shrink than play a game where action potencies are seesawing up and down based on how big the current pinnacle boss is.

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Originally Posted by Ferrinus

It's correct in principle that having to fight at melee range is a disadvantage. Imagine if there was a "samurai w/ gun" job with completely identical traits, buttons, and numbers to the regular samurai except that all its attacks had range 30y instead of range 3y. That'd be unfair, right?

Of course, it's SE's job to make melee vs ranged mean something. If every enemy in the game had Helhaistos's hitbox, te melee and ranged samurai WOULD be balanced. SE's admitted themselves that they deliberately eased off inconveniencing melee this tier, probably to a greater extent than they should have, but I'd rather just see enemy hitboxes shrink than play a game where action potencies are seesawing up and down based on how big the current pinnacle boss is.

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Except in the current climate outside of the hitboxes themselves what is actually riskier about being in melee range, we all get hit by the same mechanics; we all spread/stack and resolve mechanics within a range that square has given us, about the last mechanic that actually challenged melees to get uptime on was junction shiva based on how hard mechanical execution was vs uptime reward

Being in melee range isn’t inherently riskier when mechanics are just on a “hit player no matter the distance” style of design

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

Except in the current climate outside of the hitboxes themselves what is actually riskier about being in melee range, we all get hit by the same mechanics; we all spread/stack and resolve mechanics within a range that square has given us, about the last mechanic that actually challenged melees to get uptime on was junction shiva based on how hard mechanical execution was vs uptime reward

Being in melee range isn’t inherently riskier when mechanics are just on a “hit player no matter the distance” style of design

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It's not necessarily riskier, it's just less convenient. A MCH who had SAM dps could stand either near or far to resolve mechanics, but the SAM has to stand near. If a boss does a circle followed by a donut, a melee character has to stop attacking half the time but a ranged one doesn't.

This, again, comes down to enemy design. To give another extreme example, BLM and RDM cast times would mean nothing against a boss that never requires you to move. It's SE's responsibility to make mage lives harder by killing players who refuse to reposition, just like it's their responsibility to make melee lives harder by killing players who refuse to back away.

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Originally Posted by Aikaal

Personally give a res as a role action with a 2 minutes CD on casters. Odds are we're getting a 4th Caster and I'm gonna be severely disappointed if they split "res caster" and "pure caster" because it'll default that RDM/SMN will never be performing like other casters.

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What's sad about that potential split is it all but ensures Red Mage and Summoner die. I just don't see how they balance it when they're already overvaluing Raise. Fortunately, since Yoshida came right out and said he wanted to axe Resurrection from Summoner, I suspect they'll either leave Verraise (rip RDM) or kill off Caster rez entirely. I'd prefer the latter at this point. They just can't seem to balance around it.

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Originally Posted by Azuri

The wheel of balance inevitably turns and one day even BLM will get to partake of the humble pie and sit at the bottom of the dps charts. SMN and even SAM already had theirs. No one is safe from a "rework". And that will be a glorious day indeed.

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Technically, it already did. Black Mage was all but worthless in Heavensward and most of Stormblood. The former was the height of Range dominance while the latter was when they overbuffed Summoner so much, it killed even Machinist.

Which really makes you think. We once lived in a world where Summoner was a god and Machinist was meta.

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Originally Posted by Ferrinus

It's not necessarily riskier, it's just less convenient. A MCH who had SAM dps could stand either near or far to resolve mechanics, but the SAM has to stand near. If a boss does a circle followed by a donut, a melee character has to stop attacking half the time but a ranged one doesn't.

This, again, comes down to enemy design. To give another extreme example, BLM and RDM cast times would mean nothing against a boss that never requires you to move. It's SE's responsibility to make mage lives harder by killing players who refuse to reposition, just like it's their responsibility to make melee lives harder by killing players who refuse to back away.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9_t7md58v0 Week 1 clear, Ninja's moving like a ranged physical. Not losing any GCD.75% of the arena is a hitbox with no positional. I agree a melee should do slightly more DPS but I can't agree with the current values nor I would agree it's riskier to play a Melee DPS. If anything, Caster DPS is more dangerous.

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Originally Posted by Ferrinus

If a boss does a circle followed by a donut, a melee character has to stop attacking half the time but a ranged one doesn't.

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I disagree with this, SE gives you the tools to keep attacking while dodging this kind of pattern (if we go back to the SAM example, Hissatsu Yaten, Enpi & Hissatsu Gyoten which no longer breaks your combo).
Technically speaking, these abilities give you more options to avoid risks than a machinist who only has sprint.

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Originally Posted by Rithy255

Ok so you just basically want no one to ever touch Black Mage because they bring zero utility and basically output the same total damage as the other two casters got it.

If you gave black mage raise they'd also lose dps for using raise your argument makes no sense, it's less of a dps loss to cast raise then to let someone tank the floor, so casting raise (if your healers can't) is unironically a total dps gain.

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People will continue to play and bring BLM because it does 1% more damage than other jobs due to its lack of utility and people enjoy that job fantasy. My argument still makes sense because there are no mechanics that deaths are necessary. Every death is a mistake, so if you stop making mistakes, there would be no deaths. Doing less damage on top of the time and resources necessary to cast Raise on someone, which is already enough of a DPS loss, losing more on perfect runs means it would always feel bad to play that job in farm, because you would be better off bringing whatever other job without raise tax. The 3 slots of "melee/physical ranged/caster" don't have to be fulfilled. You would simply go 3 melee or 2 phys ranged instead or whatever other combination that doesn't include casters, and always be weighing down your team by playing caster. That's not fun or good balance.

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Originally Posted by Keiisuke

I disagree with this, SE gives you the tools to keep attacking while dodging this kind of pattern (if we go back to the SAM example, Hissatsu Yaten, Enpi & Hissatsu Gyoten which no longer breaks your combo).
Technically speaking, these abilities give you more options to avoid risks than a machinist who only has sprint.

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Yeah but those tools are worse than just attacking normally. It's like when a black mage has to move - they've got plenty of swiftcasts and triplecasts and procs and things so as to not drop a GCD, but having to swiftcast a Fire IV or a Paradox to move right now rather than save that swiftcast for a Despair a couple GCDs down the line is a damage loss.

What I'm saying is that more bosses need to be designed so that having to be in melee range is actually a disadvantage. Melee characters shouldn't trivially enjoy 100% uptime any more than casters should enjoy a 100% static position.

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Originally Posted by Ferrinus

Yeah but those tools are worse than just attacking normally. It's like when a black mage has to move - they've got plenty of swiftcasts and triplecasts and procs and things so as to not drop a GCD, but having to swiftcast a Fire IV or a Paradox to move right now rather than save that swiftcast for a Despair a couple GCDs down the line is a damage loss.

What I'm saying is that more bosses need to be designed so that having to be in melee range is actually a disadvantage. Melee characters shouldn't trivially enjoy 100% uptime any more than casters should enjoy a 100% static position.

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Wherever the melee have to stack is where the group stacks, doesnt matter if its inside the boss or at max melee range. People dont stray too far unless mechanics demand it due to the fact that all heals are radial. You never stray far from your healers.

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Originally Posted by Ivtrix

Wherever the melee have to stack is where the group stacks, doesnt matter if its inside the boss or at max melee range. People dont stray too far unless mechanics demand it due to the fact that all heals are radial. You never stray far from your healers.

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That's why boss hitboxes could get smaller, bosses could do more PBAoE or self-centered proximity blasts, etc. Striking at range should actually be an advantage, although it barely matters in the current raid tier (which SE has explicitly acknowledged, at least).

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Originally Posted by Ferrinus

That's why boss hitboxes could get smaller, bosses could do more PBAoE or self-centered proximity blasts, etc. Striking at range should actually be an advantage, although it barely matters in the current raid tier (which SE has explicitly acknowledged, at least).

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If you're constantly forcing the melee players to disengage in this hypothetical, it becomes unfun for both them and tanks. Especially now with how job design is so incredibly rigid. Constant disengagement can completely throwing off your rotation. Proximity AoEs and whatnot aren't fun either because there's no way to greed them. You just die. I do think the hit boxes have gotten ridiculous but the whole fun of melee is finding the spots to greed. A bunch of mechanics that simply force you off the boss is the worst of both worlds.

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Originally Posted by ForteNightshade

If you're constantly forcing the melee players to disengage in this hypothetical, it becomes unfun for both them and tanks. Especially now with how job design is so incredibly rigid. Constant disengagement can completely throwing off your rotation. Proximity AoEs and whatnot aren't fun either because there's no way to greed them. You just die. I do think the hit boxes have gotten ridiculous but the whole fun of melee is finding the spots to greed. A bunch of mechanics that simply force you off the boss is the worst of both worlds.

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I agree, the fun comes from "Hey, I can greed this way".
It was satisfying to find melee uptime in P3S for example.

E8S was the complete opposite, forces you to disengage without any other options.
It's not hard, it's just annoying and without depth.

P1S shows that you can do in and out without forcing melees to disconnect.
It was also fun to mix that in and out with multiple mechanics.

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Originally Posted by ForteNightshade

If you're constantly forcing the melee players to disengage in this hypothetical, it becomes unfun for both them and tanks. Especially now with how job design is so incredibly rigid. Constant disengagement can completely throwing off your rotation. Proximity AoEs and whatnot aren't fun either because there's no way to greed them. You just die. I do think the hit boxes have gotten ridiculous but the whole fun of melee is finding the spots to greed. A bunch of mechanics that simply force you off the boss is the worst of both worlds.

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Well, they gotta find a balance of some kind. I don't think making 100% melee uptime a baseline expectation is the way to go. Maybe bosses on which it's easy to give four players constant melee uptime but next to impossible to guarantee that to five or six players (so that MMRR maxes your damage but MMMR is a loss, at least to one of your tanks) is the way to go, but I wouldn't want to see ranged jobs just deal the same damage as melee jobs without additionally having to worry about staying near the boss.

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Originally Posted by Ferrinus

Well, they gotta find a balance of some kind. I don't think making 100% melee uptime a baseline expectation is the way to go. Maybe bosses on which it's easy to give four players constant melee uptime but next to impossible to guarantee that to five or six players (so that MMRR maxes your damage but MMMR is a loss, at least to one of your tanks) is the way to go, but I wouldn't want to see ranged jobs just deal the same damage as melee jobs without additionally having to worry about staying near the boss.

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Yeah, its easy to identify the issues but much harder to solve them. SE has been really clear in language in the past Liveletters and other media that their design intent is to be less frustrating to melee. Its obvious the pendulum has swung rather hard in that direction. Theres no need to allow it to swing back, then we are back to 0 in terms of design philosophy. I am sure they are paying attention to the feedback across the media channels they do listen to.

It really depends where they draw the line. In the current way they design fights, theres no reason for ranged to really be behind at all. Even fights like P6S with good timing from a smart player, melee lose maybe 1 GCD max. It they return to a design where melee are inconvenienced by just being melee, then theres a stronger case for a disparity between ranged and melee.

But yeah, solving the issue is difficult and theres a lot of different ways they could go. If I had any good ideas, id be sharing them not discussing the problem with anyone else.

mchs problem isn't even really damage taxes its that a selfish p range dps was a really really stupid idea

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Originally Posted by Mithron

I'd rather BLM be top DPS in the game with no raid damage buffs and a job identity of low mobility hard casting. No raise. I do not think SMN and RDM should have damage tax for raise, but I do think SMN and RDM should have raid damage buffs and thus lower aDPS than BLM, and that all jobs be within 1% rDPS between each other.

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Then you aren't advocating for actual balance

I do think it's correct that difficulty shouldn't correlate to damage; a hypothetical MCH which is exactly the same but you have to press an extra button every five seconds or else take a damage down shouldn't get extra damage for its trouble but instead not have the trouble. What SHOULD be worth extra damage is fragility, ie the capacity to lose damage to factors outside your control. For melee characters that (used to be) a combination of short range and positional requirements; for spellcasters it's the conflict between attacking and moving. Ranged physical dps could on the one hand be "buffed" by the existence of bosses which give melee and caster characters legitimate positioning and movement problems, or with their own slightly inconvenient or inflexible mechanics (occasional cast times or self roots, attacks that do LESS damage with proximity, etc).

I don't think they will backtrack on boss design favoring uptime.

I don't think there is anything wrong with the current design for melee to be honest, ranged jobs just need to be doing a LOT more damage than they are.

I think rather than discussing what type of raid design would give mobility high worth, maybe just accept that it's a very minor advantage and any damage loss should be similarly minor.

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Originally Posted by Aurora428

I don't think they will backtrack on boss design favoring uptime.

I don't think there is anything wrong with the current design for melee to be honest, ranged jobs just need to be doing a LOT more damage than they are.

I think rather than discussing what type of raid design would give mobility high worth, maybe just accept that it's a very minor advantage and any damage loss should be similarly minor.

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I dunno, I think downtime can be healthy for a game, and encouraging greed can increase the skill cap between good players and great players. That kind of stuff creates fun, in my opinion. The reason they're trying to remove downtime is mostly because it completely destroys their current design of 2 minute party burst. So rather than nuking that and making the game better and more fun, they're just redesigning all jobs and fights to fit the 2 minute party burst. I think that's the main overarching problem, here.

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Originally Posted by Mithron

I dunno, I think downtime can be healthy for a game, and encouraging greed can increase the skill cap between good players and great players. That kind of stuff creates fun, in my opinion. The reason they're trying to remove downtime is mostly because it completely destroys their current design of 2 minute party burst. So rather than nuking that and making the game better and more fun, they're just redesigning all jobs and fights to fit the 2 minute party burst. I think that's the main overarching problem, here.

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I don't think that's the issue. A majority of savage fights this expansion throw wrenches in the 2 minute burst, almost as if it was a mechanic.

Regardless, the amount of downtime it would take to justify the ranged tax is ridiculous to the extreme where something along the lines of 8-10% damage loss in downtime would be required. People seem to forget that the tax failed to justify itself even in early ShB. Additionally, I don't think that amount of melee downtime would necessarily be engaging.

No matter how you spin it, all Ranged need substantial buffs.

Oh I absolutely agree ranged need buffs right now, but I don't find 100% up time necessarily fun and it would restrict a lot of creative boss mechanic design. If every job was more individual rotation designed, like some had power spikes at 40s or 90s, then some jobs would naturally shine more on some fights where downtime was forced, and I think that's good and healthy for the game.

I don't think the fight design is an issue. It was pretty rough to play melee in the past and it's always more enjoyable to beat on a target dummy. But lowering the skillcap this way on melees should have the consequence to remove that tax ranged and casters been paying for a while.

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Originally Posted by Mithron

People will continue to play and bring BLM because it does 1% more damage than other jobs due to its lack of utility and people enjoy that job fantasy. My argument still makes sense because there are no mechanics that deaths are necessary. Every death is a mistake, so if you stop making mistakes, there would be no deaths. Doing less damage on top of the time and resources necessary to cast Raise on someone, which is already enough of a DPS loss, losing more on perfect runs means it would always feel bad to play that job in farm, because you would be better off bringing whatever other job without raise tax. The 3 slots of "melee/physical ranged/caster" don't have to be fulfilled. You would simply go 3 melee or 2 phys ranged instead or whatever other combination that doesn't include casters, and always be weighing down your team by playing caster. That's not fun or good balance.

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So having options to raise a player as RDM/SMN using the raise action itself on someone's mistake is a DPS gain, you argue that it isn't a gain in that situation, it doesn't matter if it's someone elses mistake it's still a total gain in that situation to raise a player, You should consider that mistakes are a thing in progression runs and the only way you're going to learn a fight in hard content is actually making mistakes that the SMN/RDM can help make it a bit more smoother to learn.

People don't even play Black mage as much as red mage right now, because people actually recognise that bringing a BLM is more a determent unless you need a reach a DPS check, Having a battle raise is nice to have around, having mobility and utility on smn is very nice also, theirs a actual reason why people are choosing those jobs outside of "more damage".

Do I think the gap should be so big as it is now? no I think BLM should be ahead realistically speaking around 3-4% (roughly) of SMN/RDM, Red Mage likely slightly ahead of Smn because they also have mobility problems, Black Mage Should be top dps. I want groups to have more variety then 2 melees, 1 caster, 1 ranged meta

I think theirs also a point where raises aren't designed that well in this tier where their usefulness comes into question, AGAIN. fix that and let raises be useful in more harder content or just balance it so theirs no raises between casters or theirs raises between them.

I feel like your "Solution" is to make black mage borderline useless.

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Originally Posted by Rithy255

So having options to raise a player as RDM/SMN using the raise action itself on someone's mistake is a DPS gain, you argue that it isn't a gain in that situation, it doesn't matter if it's someone elses mistake it's still a total gain in that situation to raise a player, You should consider that mistakes are a thing in progression runs and the only way you're going to learn a fight in hard content is actually making mistakes that the SMN/RDM can help make it a bit more smoother to learn.

People don't even play Black mage as much as red mage right now, because people actually recognise that bringing a BLM is more a determent unless you need a reach a DPS check, Having a battle raise is nice to have around, having mobility and utility on smn is very nice also, theirs a actual reason why people are choosing those jobs outside of "more damage".

Do I think the gap should be so big as it is now? no I think BLM should be ahead realistically speaking around 3-4% (roughly) of SMN/RDM, Red Mage likely slightly ahead of Smn because they also have mobility problems, Black Mage Should be top dps. I want groups to have more variety then 2 melees, 1 caster, 1 ranged meta

I think theirs also a point where raises aren't designed that well in this tier where their usefulness comes into question, AGAIN. fix that and let raises be useful in more harder content or just balance it so theirs no raises between casters or theirs raises between them.

I feel like your "Solution" is to make black mage borderline useless.

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Honestly I think a 3% gap between BLM and the other ranged is completely fine, with melee at the 1.5% mark between them.

I think 150-200 DPS above and below melee for BLM/other ranged is completely healthy.

Most importantly, this would bring MCH up to third place in personal damage where it should be as MNK (and RPR, but it has issues right now) both provide more than that value in raid buffs.

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Originally Posted by Aurora428

Honestly I think a 3% gap between BLM and the other ranged is completely fine, with melee at the 1.5% mark between them.

I think 150-200 DPS above and below melee for BLM/other ranged is completely healthy.

Most importantly, this would bring MCH up to third place in personal damage where it should be as MNK (and RPR, but it has issues right now) both provide more than that value in raid buffs.

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I'm not a numbers expert but that sounds around right, MCH should do more personal damage then everyone but BLM/SAM but including raid buffs it should be lower then the rest of the melees (if that makes sense)

I'd love to see more comps viable then 1 ranged, 1 caster 2 melee I think stuff like this would actually push more general diversity into the game