Why is everyone anxious about a PLD Rework?

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Originally Posted by Melethron123

the problem with that idea is that the devs want every job to be able to clear every content, so the bosses will always be designed around any party comp (that first the proper role distribution) having the necessary tools to overcome the mechanics, so at the end of the day, that "unique utility" ends up never being relevant. Cover is the perfect example of this

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But you can see with healers that fights have to be designed around one barrier one pure, both healers generally have different utility kits. With tanks they have different invuls, sustain ect. I think in general that's actually fine and fun, most people play tanks/healers for their utility and not simply damage rotations.

I think when a tank (lets use PLD as a example) has extra utility, it helps a lot in "Progression" to have certain mitigation tools to help if something went wrong (like a vun stack), a tank that's more beefy in general might help save some resources for healers and make the run a bit smoother.

I think you're downplaying how utility can effect the game, SCH speed boost is another example it's unique to the scholar, but its generally nice to have around even if not required to beat the fight.

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Originally Posted by Melethron123

the problem with that idea is that the devs want every job to be able to clear every content, so the bosses will always be designed around any party comp (that first the proper role distribution) having the necessary tools to overcome the mechanics, so at the end of the day, that "unique utility" ends up never being relevant. Cover is the perfect example of this

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And so is Raise, yet 6 or so jobs have it. Almost nobody plays perfectly. And those who did needed to get there in the first place. It doesn't make sense to pretend everyone does and then remove stuff only to shaft the rest.

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Originally Posted by Payadopa

And so is Raise, yet 6 or so jobs have it. Almost nobody plays perfectly. And those who did needed to get there in the first place. It doesn't make sense to pretend everyone does and then remove stuff only to shaft the rest.

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all the healers have the exact same utility skill (raise)? yeah, that's what i mean.
now imagine if only one of the healers had raise, how bad that would be for balance

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Originally Posted by Melethron123

all the healers have the exact same utility skill (raise)? yeah, that's what i mean.
now imagine if only one of the healers had raise, how bad that would be for balance

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True, but that's not what I said. You mentioned Cover. I'm just pointing out the same can be said about Raise. We shouldn't listen exclusively to people who only care about numbers. The end result ist just boring for the rest. I'd rather have fun jobs to play than 'perfect' balance, that isn't even achievable in the first place unless every job plays identical. Shouldn't give SE any ideas. Haha

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Originally Posted by Espon

So what does Goring Blade do now that it no longer applies a DoT? Apply a 10% Fight or Flight?

I'm guessing Bulwark will be 100% block chance for 10 seconds or something on a 1 min CD since Holy Sheltron now just reduces damage taken.

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My guess is that we're going to get Divine Might out of it, and it's going to stack up to 3/4 times. Essentially, what this does is give PLD a big hit before Requiescat during FoF; but the question becomes now how are they going to change the potencies around? The one thing that stood out in terms of damage contribution for PLD was DoTs, since that contributed at least 25% of PLD's damage from the Blade DoT and the Goring DoT. With those gone, we now have to chalk it up to pure potency and figure out our rotation that provides the most damage.

FoF sounds like it's still in for the most part, however by removing DoTs it's not longer heavily weighted on whether we get the DoT on the end of FoF or not(which was a major issue due to Atonement Drift); it's about how much potency we squeeze into the rotation now. This doesn't get rid of the 18s opener though. On reopening we still are stuck with the Blade combo since that's our strongest raw potency that we can provide, with Confiteor at the staggering 1,000 potency. With the Blade DoT gone, they'll probably buff the end of the combo to be close to Confiteor, but probably 100 - 150 potency below it to accomodate for the missing DoT damage.

This is only a hypothetical on what information we have so far, but on the 10th of January we'll be able to see what they truly did to PLD's rotation.

Also, about Bulwark - it's going to be 100% Block Chance. It has to be. Bulwark back then provided 60% Block Chance before it got trashed with the big reset in Shadowbringers. Considering they've been running on us having 100% Block Chance with Sheltron from Shadowbringers onward, I doubt they'd put Blocking at what it was before. As others have been relating it to Camouflage(Parrying, which goes up to 15% reduction), Blocking(Max 20% Reduction) has a higher max reduction and makes it different. The long-needed addition of a 4th personal mitigation was what we've wanted the most, especially in regards to DoT Tankbusters and autos after that the other three tanks have a response to.

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Originally Posted by HyperiusUltima

Also, about Bulwark - it's going to be 100% Block Chance. It has to be. Bulwark back then provided 60% Block Chance before it got trashed with the big reset in Shadowbringers. Considering they've been running on us having 100% Block Chance with Sheltron from Shadowbringers onward, I doubt they'd put Blocking at what it was before. As others have been relating it to Camouflage(Parrying, which goes up to 15% reduction), Blocking(Max 20% Reduction) has a higher max reduction and makes it different. The long-needed addition of a 4th personal mitigation was what we've wanted the most, especially in regards to DoT Tankbusters and autos after that the other three tanks have a response to.

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With Sheltron going to flat % mitigation to cover 'haha this has a bleed too' TBs like current tier, it would make perfect sense to me for bulwark to be 100% blockrate as a 90s CD, to be the 'tertiary' CD alongside Camo/Thrill and Dark Mind (though that one's a 60s). I can't see them having PLD have 'a chance to block' and not taking the obvious design route of 'this is a CD that makes you block more often'

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Originally Posted by Payadopa

We shouldn't listen exclusively to people who only care about numbers. The end result ist just boring for the rest. I'd rather have fun jobs to play than 'perfect' balance, that isn't even achievable in the first place unless every job plays identical. Shouldn't give SE any ideas. Haha

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You complain about people caring only about numbers, but really what else are we supposed to care about? If you're a warrior player your job has already reached braindead gameplay in ShB and other jobs are quickly following suit, so when 75% of it consists of mindlessly hammering your basic combo what else are you supposed to care about?

The fight for gameplay that isn't sleep inducing is already lost and you watched all the people who only touch your job for expert roulette applaud when all it's nuance died.


If my choice is between awful gameplay+bad damage or awful gameplay+good damage you can bet I'm going to complain about numbers.

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Originally Posted by Absurdity

You complain about people caring only about numbers, but really what else are we supposed to care about? If you're a warrior player your job has already reached braindead gameplay in ShB and other jobs are quickly following suit, so when 75% of it consists of mindlessly hammering your basic combo what else are you supposed to care about?

The fight for gameplay that isn't sleep inducing is already lost and you watched all the people who only touch your job for expert roulette applaud when all it's nuance died.


If my choice is between awful gameplay+bad damage or awful gameplay+good damage you can bet I'm going to complain about numbers.

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It's funny, we called it braindead in ShB. But it's like preparing your doctorate thesis compared to what we have now. I'm impressed they managed to make WAR *that* dumbed down. If you're going to take away every meaningful opportunity for the player to screw up and lose significant amounts of DPS then you really should just make the combat completely automatic and make it purely based off of executing mechanics.

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Originally Posted by Gserpent

It's funny, we called it braindead in ShB. But it's like preparing your doctorate thesis compared to what we have now. I'm impressed they managed to make WAR *that* dumbed down. If you're going to take away every meaningful opportunity for the player to screw up and lose significant amounts of DPS then you really should just make the combat completely automatic and make it purely based off of executing mechanics.

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from what i've heard DSR is the hardest encounter ever even though people are playing "brainded jobs that are impossible to screw up", so...

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Originally Posted by Melethron123

all the healers have the exact same utility skill (raise)? yeah, that's what i mean.
now imagine if only one of the healers had raise, how bad that would be for balance

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Jobs such as tanks and healers should share the same baseline utility, such as mits, raises, heals, sustain, Tank stance, prevoke but they can also differ in other areas. Raise is pretty much a role action on healers with a repaint anyway, so I don't understand this point.

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Originally Posted by Melethron123

from what i've heard DSR is the hardest encounter ever even though people are playing "brainded jobs that are impossible to screw up", so...

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Ultimate is designed to be difficult even if your job is braindead, that's what the mechanics exist for.
All DSR proves is that they can make mechanics difficult enough to create an engaging encounter even with lackluster job design.

But this is exactly the problem. Sure DSR has hard mechanics, the other ultimates do too, even some savage fights have hard mechanics, but you know what doesn't? The other 95% of the game where the mechanics can't make up for how lacking the actual gameplay is and in which these ultra simplistic jobs just make everything so incredibly boring that you question why you subject yourself to 95% crap for those 5% that are actually good.

The game previously managed to strike a decent balance between the difficulty of just playing your job, or as I'd like to call it how engaging your job could be to play, and the difficulty of an encounter's mechanics. Now everything has to be carried by the mechanics and where those are lacking the entire fight is lacking.

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Originally Posted by Melethron123

from what i've heard DSR is the hardest encounter ever even though people are playing "brainded jobs that are impossible to screw up", so...

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I'd like to be able to hop on and play with friends and be engaged when playing my job instead of having to join an Ult static to allot time each week to prog one singular fight for months to get engagement out of my job. There is only 1 current level 90 Ultimate, and with 6.3 there will only be 2 for the entirety of EW. "Play Ultimate" isn't the solution for jobs being boring in 99% of other content

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Originally Posted by Nizzi

I'd like to be able to hop on and play with friends and be engaged when playing my job instead of having to join an Ult static to allot time each week to prog one singular fight for months to get engagement out of my job. There is only 1 current level 90 Ultimate, and with 6.3 there will only be 2 for the entirety of EW. "Play Ultimate" isn't the solution for jobs being boring in 99% of other content

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Now where have I heard this before? Oh yeah...HEALERS.

If enough tanks start to complain over 7 years, they'll come running. If too many healers complain, they'll ignore it.

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Originally Posted by Nizzi

I'd like to be able to hop on and play with friends and be engaged when playing my job

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Then play high end content. This is true for every Job in the game

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Originally Posted by Absurdity

Ultimate is designed to be difficult even if your job is braindead, that's what the mechanics exist for.
All DSR proves is that they can make mechanics difficult enough to create an engaging encounter even with lackluster job design.

But this is exactly the problem. Sure DSR has hard mechanics, the other ultimates do too, even some savage fights have hard mechanics, but you know what doesn't? The other 95% of the game where the mechanics can't make up for how lacking the actual gameplay is and in which these ultra simplistic jobs just make everything so incredibly boring that you question why you subject yourself to 95% crap for those 5% that are actually good.

The game previously managed to strike a decent balance between the difficulty of just playing your job, or as I'd like to call it how engaging your job could be to play, and the difficulty of an encounter's mechanics. Now everything has to be carried by the mechanics and where those are lacking the entire fight is lacking.

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would you like to see the rest of the game having more complex mechanics to compensate for simpler job design?

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Originally Posted by Melethron123

would you like to see the rest of the game having more complex mechanics to compensate for simpler job design?

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Nah. I'd rather see more interesting job design and you pick the intensity of the content you feel like that day.

It doesn't have to be complicated or complex. Most of the jobs only need maybe one more layer or one additional mechanic and they'd probably be in the sweet spot (For me at least).

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Originally Posted by Kabooa

Nah. I'd rather see more interesting job design and you pick the intensity of the content you feel like that day.

It doesn't have to be complicated or complex. Most of the jobs only need maybe one more layer or one additional mechanic and they'd probably be in the sweet spot (For me at least).

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personally i'd rather jobs with varying complexity within each role, and you pick the one you feel like that day

IE: SMN very simple, RDM with middling complexity and BLM for 500iq pro gamers

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Originally Posted by FireMage

Then play high end content. This is true for every Job in the game

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High end content has more engaging mechanics, but it does not change the fact that the jobs are actually boring as fuck to play. As I've said many times, *progging* "high end content" is pretty fun but reclearing it is not.

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Originally Posted by Melethron123

personally i'd rather jobs with varying complexity within each role, and you pick the one you feel like that day

IE: SMN very simple, RDM with middling complexity and BLM for 500iq pro gamers

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The problem with this is that players will still expect SMN to post numbers comparable to BLM, at which point why would you ever play BLM? You're doing more work for the same results.

I’m waiting for se to specifically not annihilate rework black mage, despite it being necessary for their new paradigm. If it is destroyed, the live letter might be pretty telling though.

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Originally Posted by Gserpent

The problem with this is that players will still expect SMN to post numbers comparable to BLM, at which point why would you ever play BLM? You're doing more work for the same results.

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aren't people complaining that they want more complext jobs because they think simple jobs are boring? there's your reason
you play BLM because you think SMN is boring

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Originally Posted by Melethron123

aren't people complaining that they want more complext jobs because they think simple jobs are boring? there's your reason
you play BLM because you think SMN is boring

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No a easy to pick up and perform job requires less effort for the whole raid group to actually deal with, BLM is generally annoying to position, people would rather have a SMN, because it's easier to play, SMN should never do the same numbers as BLM in it's current state.

damage being the same on every job in its shared category makes no sense and never considers what other jobs bring to the table. The appeal in BLM is "BIG DAMAGE, PEW PEW" the appeal in summoner is "I press one button, have good mobility!" It's ok to have two jobs do two different things, perform slightly differently in terms of dps, Summoner is honestly is more then viable enough.

Feels like it just comes from summoners wanting their job to perform at blm levels instead of looking at obvious balance reasons of why it can't. but y'know all casters need a slight buff anyway imo (same with phys ranged)

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Originally Posted by Deceptus

Because the past is prologue and the FFXIV has an abysmal track record with re-works

• Healers in general
• Old Bow Mage Bards
• DRK becoming a Warrior clone
• Summoner
• Samurai

It's almost always 3 steps back, 1 step forward.

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Only the one (bolded) among those results saw those leaps in such a discrete step, though. For most, it's hardly even a whole step at a time, and most of them circling the objective or at a diagonal.


Take Bow/Gun Mages, for instance.

ARR Bards: We don't like having lower rDPS on the mere basis that we have perfect, unrestrained mobility -- that usually ends up stupidly excessive anyways. It's nice that one or two of us will have guaranteed slots anyways, but we'd like some fflogs parity.
HW Devs: Okay, here's a way to dump your excess mobility for tighter rDPS parity. Outside of cleave situations, it won't make a huge outside of your CD burst, and we won't reduce your floor, but there you go.

The aim was fine; the issue was the tuning (including insofar as the cooldown of WM/GB) and, as so often in XIV, the quirks of the code/implementation (in that you'd be locked into the challenge-increasing state after consuming the cooldown [as per Cleric Stance], rather than locked out of reentering that state [as per BotD, Enochian, etc.]).


Similarly, had Tsubame-Gaeshi just been faintly more lenient (e.g., via a 5-second holding period, until one generated another Sen, until another Iaijutsu was ready to be cast, or even holding the most recently cast Iaijutsu indefinitely) and Meditation had reduced the Meditation stacks cost of the next Shoha instead of granting (potentially/likely redundant) Meditation stacks directly, later Shadowbringers would have been far better than Stormblood's -- more accessible, yet with greater total depth and visual appeal.

Critiques not getting into the fine details is how we often end up with "Just do more of the same! (differently viewed/defined by players and devs)" resulting in additions that actually reduce gameplay or "It all sucks (even if really just due to some very small, correctable issues)" and large reforms where none were necessary, let alone beneficial as responses to the problems most often mentioned by anyone looking at them more concretely.


Disclaimer: The (d)evolution of XIV healers are their own S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat-level mutant beast I neither wholly understand nor expect my sanity would survive an understanding of.

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Originally Posted by Rithy255

No a easy to pick up and perform job requires less effort for the whole raid group to actually deal with, BLM is generally annoying to position, people would rather have a SMN, because it's easier to play, SMN should never do the same numbers as BLM in it's current state.

damage being the same on every job in its shared category makes no sense and never considers what other jobs bring to the table. The appeal in BLM is "BIG DAMAGE, PEW PEW" the appeal in summoner is "I press one button, have good mobility!" It's ok to have two jobs do two different things, perform slightly differently in terms of dps, Summoner is honestly is more then viable enough.

Feels like it just comes from summoners wanting their job to perform at blm levels instead of looking at obvious balance reasons of why it can't. but y'know all casters need a slight buff anyway imo (same with phys ranged)

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Playing with BLM players is obnoxious compared to any other DPS, and its not even worth the payoff. The job likely wont be touched due to the favortism problem though

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Originally Posted by Rithy255

No a easy to pick up and perform job requires less effort for the whole raid group to actually deal with, BLM is generally annoying to position, people would rather have a SMN, because it's easier to play, SMN should never do the same numbers as BLM in it's current state.

damage being the same on every job in its shared category makes no sense and never considers what other jobs bring to the table. The appeal in BLM is "BIG DAMAGE, PEW PEW" the appeal in summoner is "I press one button, have good mobility!" It's ok to have two jobs do two different things, perform slightly differently in terms of dps, Summoner is honestly is more then viable enough.

Feels like it just comes from summoners wanting their job to perform at blm levels instead of looking at obvious balance reasons of why it can't. but y'know all casters need a slight buff anyway imo (same with phys ranged)

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then tell the people asking for more job complexity to stop complaining about jobs being simple :)

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Originally Posted by Melethron123

then tell the people asking for more job complexity to stop complaining about jobs being simple :)

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You can't simplify mobility on summoner unless you want it to hard cast and play like blm.

I'm fine if they gave SMN more complexity but it's also fine to have a mix of simple and complicated jobs, simple jobs shouldn't do the same dps for less effort still.

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Originally Posted by Rithy255

You can't simplify mobility on summoner unless you want it to hard cast and play like blm.

I'm fine if they gave SMN more complexity but it's also fine to have a mix of simple and complicated jobs, simple jobs shouldn't do the same dps for less effort still.

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it's fine if the simple jobs deal 1 less dps than the complicated jobs

Historically summoner has been competitive with black mage, the highly questionable decision to nuke it and all complexity it as much as looked at has left the caster role in this absurd state. Black mage and summoner can no longer exist in the same niche without a major rework of one or that niche being conspicuously broken. Summoner being more braindead than red mage, the designated easy caster. Given past justification for inflicting reworks, it seems black mage should be next on the chopping block (low player count, modicum of skill required, been as it's been for ages, not fitting in with the 2min thing) but we all know it won't.
Each member of role - caster, ranged, punchy, healer and tank has to provide roughly the same utility (damage) as the others because there's no other metric that affects ease of clearing, particularly with the overreliance on body checks this tier. Summoner and black mage being such polar opposites in skill requirements means both deal the wrong amount, black mage being undertuned and summoner significantly over. 2 minute buffs have not helped this in the slightest, but I think it's more likely to be two things going wrong simultaneously than directly at fault here.

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Originally Posted by Melethron123

it's fine if the simple jobs deal 1 less dps than the complicated jobs

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No, unless they're all doing so little that 1 less DPS could somehow offset the massively reduced reliability of the harder and more situationally-constrained job. Until they are both competitive choices for a majority of reasonably skilled but imperfect players, parity on paper / for the highest 1% of players simply means imbalance for everyone else, including even at levels over which one would normally be learning the harder job (but would then be largely barred from doing so due to more easier / reliable jobs producing, until perfect play, greater output than the harder ones).

We should balance risk to reward for those ambitious enough to learn harder jobs, if their vibe and challenge click with them. That means doesn't simply bribing anyone and everyone to learn them through overcompensating those risks (truly perfect play across any composition should be at least barely able to clear Ultimate, etc.), but it does mean providing enough to offset those added risks and allow the vast majority of players who would even consider the harder jobs to do so competitively, rather just the top 1% of players.

Edit: All this refers to rDPS, not nDPS. Please do not conflate them.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

We should balance risk to reward for those ambitious enough to learn harder jobs, if their vibe and challenge click with them.

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so if someone happens to think warrior has cooler aesthetics, theme, and animations than DRK, they should just be relegated to dealing less dmg because the devs arbitrarily decided jobs with more buttons should deal more damage? that sounds like a garbage design philosophy

and that's not even including the impact that latency has on this game. you'll already be performing worse due to the inherent delay on your actions, and the few classes you're able to play effectively (the ones with fewer OGCDs) have an artificial performance tax on top...

then there are people with disabilities who might want classes that have lower APM or fewer overall keybinds, etc

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Originally Posted by Melethron123

it's fine if the simple jobs deal 1 less dps than the complicated jobs

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It's not. SMN should be at the bottom with MCH. That is proper balance

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Originally Posted by Melethron123

so if someone happens to think warrior has cooler aesthetics, theme, and animations than DRK, they should just be relegated to dealing less dmg because the devs arbitrarily decided jobs with more buttons should deal more damage?

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They should be "relegated" to dealing roughly the same damage in-practice, rather than the simpler and less contextually-punished job dealing less damage in-practice for 90+% of players.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

They should be "relegated" to dealing roughly the same damage in-practice, rather than the simpler and less contextually-punished job dealing less damage in-practice for 90+% of players.

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what were you even trying to say with this reply..?

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Originally Posted by Melethron123

what were you even trying to say with this reply..?

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That your insistence that every job should do the exact same damage even when perfectly rotated on a striking dummy means that all but the easiest jobs will underperform for all but the best players and all but the jobs least restricted by context (movement requirements, etc.) will underperform in most content.

You are not asking for parity as it would affect anyone but the top 1% of speedrunners. You're just asking for the likes of MCH to be better than everyone else for the vast majority of player skill levels and the majority of content.

The game shouldn't balance for on-paper theoretical performance alone. The game should balance for whatever best expands choice in-practice, and that means giving harder and more vulnerable jobs at least some degree of reward for their added risk.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

That your insistence that every job should do the exact same damage even when perfectly rotated on a striking dummy means that all but the easiest jobs will underperform for all but the best players and all but the jobs least restricted by context (movement requirements, etc.) will underperform in most content.

You are not asking for parity as it would affect anyone but the top 1% of speedrunners. You're just asking for the likes of MCH to be better than everyone else for the vast majority of player skill levels and the majority of content.

You don't balance for on-paper theoretical performance. You balance for whatever best expands choice in-practice, and that means giving harder and more vulnerable jobs at least some degree of reward for their added risk.

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i'm not basing my arguments on striking dummies, i'm basing them on actual raid dmg numbers and the statements from people who have been raiding at a high level for years (some of them since 2.0)

what are you basing your arguments on, if you don't mind me asking?

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Originally Posted by Melethron123

then there are people with disabilities who might want classes that have lower APM or fewer overall keybinds, etc

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There are people with quite significant disabilities that have cleared ultimates when classes were much harder to execute than they are now. There's a pretty well-known speedrunner who runs some incredibly complex games and he does it using his fucking *feet.* I have personally played and raided with someone with some pretty severe mobility issues in their hands and arms and they still play *dramatically* better than the overwhelming majority of presumably able-bodied players out there.

I don't really think "but disabled people!" as a token excuse is viable. I do think that effort should be put into making things as accommodating for people with various disabilities as possible, but I frankly think it's a damned insult to act like "disabled people need classes to be brainless and homogenized so they can play the game too."

The problem so many people have, and apparently including Square-Enix's design teams themselves, is that *skill floor and skill ceiling are not directly linked.* While there's some amount of connection between them... a low enough floor will inevitably result in a lowered ceiling... it's not proportional. You can lower the floor and still maintain a decently roomy ceiling. As I keep referring to, WAR in ShB was a very good example of this - it needed a bit more going on, the ceiling was a little low, but the floor was *exactly* where it should have been and they shouldn't have fucked with the class in EW beyond the necessary changes to fit their 2-minute redesign.

WoW, in most of its iterations from Cata or MoP on forward (basically, where you'd say "classic" ended and "retail" began) is another fine example. The floor for any given class or spec tends to be quite low, but there's still a decent ceiling available to work within.

FWIW, a skill floor is "you must be this tall to ride." It represents a minimum level of knowledge and competence necessary to play the class as designed (e.g. not freestyle SAM, ice mage BLM, etc.) Meanwhile, a skill ceiling is the reasonable upper limit of performance for that class. Since DPS is the only measurement worth a damn in XIV, this would simply be the difference between "understands the basics but makes errors" and "makes minimal errors and optimizes every opportunity they get." You can have a low, accessible floor while still having room for optimization and improvement.

Moreover, because they quite intentionally design normals, Ex, and MSQ duties to be *extremely* generous... it wouldn't even matter if the floor was comparatively high to what we have now. Trying to freestyle SAM might cause you grief in savage and force you to actually learn how to play the class (climb up onto the floor), but it would be completely fine for normals and it would probably still be alright in Ex as long as you were performing mechanics correctly.

There was no damn reason for them to lower skill floors more than they already had with ShB, and even less reason to bring skill ceilings crashing down across the board. If they were trying to get more people to participate in savage (content where floor-level performance is the *starting place*, not where you should think "okay I'm good enough"), then maybe they should have gotten off their lazy fucking asses and put some actual damn teaching tools into the game instead of obliterating meaningful decision-making and class design. Even if a noob player *wanted* to "git gud" and learn to do things properly, they fucking can't, not without going outside of the game and consulting third-party resources.

It's frankly inexcusably bad design.

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Originally Posted by Melethron123

i'm not basing my arguments on striking dummies, i'm basing them on actual raid dmg numbers and the statements from people who have been raiding at a high level for years (some of them since 2.0)

what are you basing your arguments on, if you don't mind me asking?

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You were arguing just earlier against jobs like BLM having even a theoretical rDPS lead, regardless of how much greater a portion of their damage they would lose to complexity or the constraints of specific fights. How else am I supposed to interpret that outside of asking for parity on-paper instead of parity in-practice (within the contexts of actual fights)?

So long as you're asking for parity in practice, then sure, I'm all for that. Buff non-BLM Casters and physical ranged slightly, so in a typical fight (within such a span of content as any of this would matter, such as no easier than Extreme) with a typical player (but one typically open to learning) they're neck-and-neck.

But you're going to have a degree of imbalance regardless so long as the jobs themselves are imbalanced in terms of complexity and contextual loss (from movement, range, spans of uptime, raid synergy, or whatever else); if the likes of MCH were perfectly balanced against BLM even in BLM's few ideal scenarios, then MCH would necessarily be outperforming it everywhere else, which ultimately means that BLM stops being a competitive option and instead becomes "griefing" or "an ego-pick", with more reliable jobs like MCH being pushed over them.

A typical BLM should likely slightly underperform a typical MCH in fights especially bad for the likes of BLM, but the inverse should also be true; in fights decent/good for BLM, they should slightly outperform MCH. That fight-specific gap shouldn't be so great that you end up with "barred" jobs and/or "must pick" jobs, but so long as the two operate so differently, so should their outcomes differ -- with, yes, BLM coming out ahead at least as often as not.

If we want the likes of MCH to be competitive across a larger gamut of content than that, though, it also needs a larger gamut of gameplay behind it between its floor and ceiling commensurate to that balance.

1st = there are different types of disabilities and different types of people, in case you've never noticed. one or two exceptions doesn't invalidate a rule.

2nd = i never said people with disabilities want "brainless classes" did i? i specifically mentioned APM and total number of keybinds.

3rd = the problem with "skill ceiling" is when it comes from mechanics and systems that are unintuitive to the players. "how can i maximize my lava bursts and overall number of casts in this encounter" is a great way to differentiate great players and good players, but when the skill ceiling requires using tons of macros (arms warrior in cataclysm) or literally ignoring your job design to squeeze more potency by tracking mana ticks with 3rd party software (like the current BLM transpose rotations), that's a problem.

4th = in case you mistook my argument: i never said anything about lowering skill ceilings being better for the game, i said jobs should be properly balanced to deal close enough damage to others of the same role. two completely different things.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

You were arguing just earlier against jobs like BLM having even a theoretical rDPS lead, regardless of how much greater a portion of their damage they would lose to complexity or the constraints of specific fights. How else am I supposed to interpret that outside of asking for parity on-paper instead of parity in-practice (within the contexts of actual fights)?

So long as you're asking for parity in practice, then sure, I'm all for that. Buff non-BLM Casters and physical ranged slightly, so in a typical fight (within such a span of content as any of this would matter, such as no easier than Extreme) with a typical player (but one typically open to learning) they're neck-and-neck.

But you're going to have a degree of imbalance regardless so long as the jobs themselves are imbalanced in terms of complexity and contextual loss (from movement, range, spans of uptime, raid synergy, or whatever else); if the likes of MCH were perfectly balanced against BLM even in BLM's few ideal scenarios, then MCH would necessarily be outperforming it everywhere else, which ultimately means that BLM stops being a competitive option and instead becomes "griefing" or "an ego-pick", with more reliable jobs like MCH being pushed over them.

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it's not "theoretical" mate... they're the numbers people are actually doing in actual raids

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Originally Posted by Melethron123

it's not "theoretical" mate... they're the numbers people are actually doing in actual raids

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No it's absolutely theoretical, you're talking about how much dps these jobs deal on paper.
Let me give you an example. Dark Knight deals significantly more dps than Warrior, but if all I did was look at the Dark Knights I've had in pugs I'd think they need to buff that job. Now why is that? Because these people aren't playing Dark Knight as optimally as it could be played, so they get outdps'd by a warrior which is about as hard to play as remembering to put on pants.

Dark Knight does significantly more damage than warrior when played by a top 1% player, not when played by your average joe in savage pugs.

If we did what you want and make all jobs equal on paper then the jobs that actually require a degree of mastery would almost always severely underperform, because the people playing them aren't all top 100 players.

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Originally Posted by Absurdity

No it's absolutely theoretical, you're talking about how much dps these jobs deal on paper.
Let me give you an example. Dark Knight deals significantly more dps than Warrior, but if all I did was look at the Dark Knights I've had in pugs I'd think they need to buff that job. Now why is that? Because these people aren't playing Dark Knight as optimally as it could be played, so they get outdps'd by a warrior which is about as hard to play as remembering to put on pants.

Dark Knight does significantly more damage than warrior when played by a top 1% player, not when played by your average joe in savage pugs.

If we did what you want and make all jobs equal on paper then the jobs that actually require a degree of mastery would almost always severely underperform, because the people playing them aren't all top 100 players.

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you never heard of logs, have you?