Anyone else think caster has suffered this expansion? (hopes for the future)

SMN just got the treatment MCH got an expansion earlier. I do wonder which job is gonna be next on the chopping block.

Feels like they're trying to make rotations and jobs as mindless as possible because the only thing they care about those days is hectic encounters where moving all around in pixel perfect action game scenari is somehow favored over better paced, thoughtful encounters.

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Originally Posted by Valence

SMN just got the treatment MCH got an expansion earlier. I do wonder which job is gonna be next on the chopping block.

Feels like they're trying to make rotations and jobs as mindless as possible because the only thing they care about those days is hectic encounters where moving all around in pixel perfect action game scenari is somehow favored over better paced, thoughtful encounters.

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you've never played Smn in current Savages or Ultimates, saying Smn is mindless..
... you need to plan A LOT, which primal summons when, order of move sets within Ifrit, Garudas Slipstream / Swiftcast etc.., or you're ffed.., and need to be fully focused durinh Demis, or the final cast won't go off
...
but on easy / nornal content, Smn is mindless (but imo so are orher classes. , but yep Smn can be a sleeping pill during dungeons or any pre 90 content..), but its nowhere near as mindless as some are trying to make it out to be in savage / Ultimates

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Originally Posted by Valence

SMN just got the treatment MCH got an expansion earlier. I do wonder which job is gonna be next on the chopping block

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Theoreticly should it be the dragoon or Astrologian. ^^
Arent they becoming a rework to 7.0?

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Originally Posted by Shiroe

you've never played Smn in current Savages or Ultimates, saying Smn is mindless..
... you need to plan A LOT, which primal summons when, order of move sets within Ifrit, Garudas Slipstream / Swiftcast etc.., or you're ffed.., and need to be fully focused durinh Demis, or the final cast won't go off
...
but on easy / nornal content, Smn is mindless (but imo so are orher classes. , but yep Smn can be a sleeping pill during dungeons or any pre 90 content..), but its nowhere near as mindless as some are trying to make it out to be in savage / Ultimates

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hahahahahaa

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Originally Posted by Shiroe

you've never played Smn in current Savages or Ultimates, saying Smn is mindless..
... you need to plan A LOT, which primal summons when, order of move sets within Ifrit, Garudas Slipstream / Swiftcast etc.., or you're ffed.., and need to be fully focused durinh Demis, or the final cast won't go off
...
but on easy / nornal content, Smn is mindless (but imo so are orher classes. , but yep Smn can be a sleeping pill during dungeons or any pre 90 content..), but its nowhere near as mindless as some are trying to make it out to be in savage / Ultimates

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I gotta say now that I think about it, you make a good point. SMN is braindead, but it has little nuances in its kit that you have to pay attention to. And that can be so mindnumbing and subtle, that you will eventually either miss some timing or fall asleep. You kinda convinced me a little bit, not bad. It's a sleepy job at the end of the day lmao.

But overall my savage experience was pretty solid and straightforward with SMN. I gotta say as simple the job may be, timing the summons is atleast some fun - even tho that is rather quickly figured out as well.

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Originally Posted by Shiroe

you've never played Smn in current Savages or Ultimates, saying Smn is mindless..
... you need to plan A LOT, which primal summons when, order of move sets within Ifrit, Garudas Slipstream / Swiftcast etc.., or you're ffed.., and need to be fully focused durinh Demis, or the final cast won't go off
...
but on easy / nornal content, Smn is mindless (but imo so are orher classes. , but yep Smn can be a sleeping pill during dungeons or any pre 90 content..), but its nowhere near as mindless as some are trying to make it out to be in savage / Ultimates

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You say that, but there's no record of you clearing current ultimates on new summoner, just uwu. Sure it's still an ultimate, but between gear sync, better consumables and the frankly comical balance at 70 it's not quite the same calibre as TOP or Dragonsong. Moreover there's no record of you doing harder content on anything but summoner which does raise the question of just how you can compare its difficulty to other jobs.

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Originally Posted by Semirhage

There's a long essay in my head that I won't type out now, but I think this is both true and a phenomenon not unique to FFXIV. It's something I frame as "fighters vs mages". The gaming landscape shift of "oh thank god, Action Combat is here to finally provide real, good battle content" is a product of catering to people who prefer twitch reflexes and having 2-3 buttons to mash (fighters) over strategic placement, spell fencing, chess fights (mages). Action combat isn't "better", it's a preferred playstyle hip-checking mage players to the wayside by designing combat systems to favor high mobility and button mashing, turning RPG combat largely from an INT check to all DEX checks.

Needless to say I'm not fond of the industry shift to Action Combat, but here we are. Your mages are no longer reality warping turrets with powers both mysterious and gross. They're sparkle archers. You will alternate ze attack and dodge roll button and you will like it.

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Okay, I feel like an essay. Keep in mind that FF14 has many of these symptoms, but I'm also talking about modern RPGs in general. Think of your most recently played one. How many of these things apply to it?

Once upon a time, in RPGs long ago, "pure" casters and physical classes were very, very different (often with a few hybrid options, but we won't go there). The designers often favored casters as the "complex, smart person" classes that had a ton of extra mechanics to justify their higher outputs and wider capabilities. Casters could stop time, teleport, see the future, control the elements, change the weather, dominate the minds of the weak, fly, raise the dead, upend physics, create and dispel illusions. To pay for these things, they had a huge list of drawbacks. Lower health, lower defense, needing to concentrate or stand still, provoking opponents into attacking them more often, spell slots or mana, spell components, lower strength, difficulty in locating new spells, cost of ink and paper and herbs and gems and lab space making it an expensive vocation, becoming powerless in an antimagic field, needing to plan ahead and select/precast the right spells, having a slower wind-up time than melees if they were caught unaware, just to name a few. Many of these things came to video games through their tabletop origins.

Did this frequently lead to massive unbalance? Of course it did. Clever casters often found ways around their restrictions. The things they could do more than made up for them. Melees were bored that their classes didn't get nearly as much attention as the casters. They were often just "Hit the thing skill". "Other hit the thing ability". "Hit three things in front of me" classes. So the landscape began to shift. Stripping tabletop abilities off mages faster than they remove the restrictions that justified them. Giving fighters dashes and teleports without adding any restrictions to them at -all-.

What we're left with is today: casters are sparkle archers and fighters are anime superheroes. Stopping time, seeing the future? What's that? You get spells that are cosmetic coats of paint on top of a copy of anything a bow-wielder can do. Fireballs are reskinned arrows. Icebolts are reskinned bullets. Just with mana costs, because lol mages have to spend mana on things right? Oh, they're not any *stronger* than those arrows despite the fact that arrows just magically appear in archer quivers cost-free now, no management required, but keeping that cost on mages is totally fine. Damage interrupts your casts still? Of course it does! Damage has always interrupted casts! That's just part of being a caster! Nevermind the fact that those spells have been nerfed down to similar effect that uninterruptable, cost-free physical abilities have, now they just have a downside with no upside! Balance! Lower defense? Of course mages have lower defense, they've always had lower defense. Except that lower defense justifies....what exactly? Still being weaker than melees in the DPS department?

And fighters, ho boy. They've eaten real good over the last few decades. They've gone from mace go swingy to flight, chi fireballs, sword lasers, rage explosions, dashes, avatar summoning...you'd be forgiven if you mistook them for casters. Except they've lost zero of the extra defense, extra health, resource-free advantages for it. A lot of this is Old Elezen Yells At Cloud, but you've got to admit there's a grain of truth here: mages have been nerfed and nerfed and nerfed and nerfed for the last ~20 years with maybe half of their old restrictions eased, and fighters have been granted magic powers for free, and now we're at a point where, frequently, everyone just kinda swings damage at things and the main difference between fighters and casters is that fighters are tankier, frequenly do more damage anyway, and never have to spend MP to use their abilities.

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Originally Posted by Semirhage

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Based and your view of the situation is very intriguing. I noticed the catering to more action oriented jobs/games in general, and while it is cool to see this dynamic switch in the modern age which is so different from the oldschool games and class design back then, it certainly doesn't help in variety and complexity. I also agree that they wanted to equalise both job types, but balance can be a hard topic. Instead of keeping complexity/variety they made them the same. I also dont prefer action combat but that is besides the point. Mages are disguised archers lmao. Everything is sacrificed for dynamic movement and combat and they lack identity because of that. I personally hope they find a way to include mages better eventually and find true balance, instead of onesided care.

The point you made and homogenization as a whole are probably the main culprits of current job design/balance.

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Originally Posted by Semirhage

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Historically, that differentiation was based off of level progression rather than skill, which is a convention that dates back to early pen and paper games. Wizarding types started out weak and vulnerable, but grew exponentially more powerful than everyone else with reality altering spells (most famously with 'Wish'). Short of catching one unawares, your hope of winning a 1v1 confrontation with a max level spellcaster was practically non-existent. There was nothing clever about this.

By that same token, the concept of a 'tank' was a later invention as well. Melee types were historically more resilient across the board, which made them more likely to survive to later levels in games with permadeath. MUDs then introduced the concept of 'rescue' to allow melee players to save a squishy lower level caster friend to allow them to survive to maturity, and thus tanks were born. Tank damage output was then reduced to differentiate them from traditional melee, and 'aggro' systems were superimposed to make the programming around mob targeting all work out despite the lower damage output on tanks.

If you really want to get into it, traditional caster types were very much about preparation. So if you wanted to be able to cast that fireball, you would need to memorize it the correct number of times before starting your next day. Final Fantasy 1 adopted a modified version of this, wherein you have a certain number of 'spells' per level, to be replenished only at an inn. This meant that casting was a war of attrition, and you had to be very selective on what fights you were going to be using those spells, lest you run out of Cures before reaching the bottom of Gulg Volcano. It's not surprising that this was not exactly popular, and later games swapped over to a softer MP system.

You'll quickly see that modern casting is nothing like this, and there's been a push towards casters being able to cast whatever they want, whenever they want. Even within this game, a lot of the resource-management issues that constrained casters are largely gone. You could even say that MP is progressively becoming vestigial at this point.

I get that you want to look for this historical precedent in which casters are more powerful than everyone else without any effort, simply because they picked a privileged job. Truth is, those good olde days were reserved for systems in which you would have had 1d4 hit dice, AC 0, permadeath, and had to decide whether you wanted to memorize your singular daily fireball spell for use in P10S or P12S. In modern systems, none of these things are relevant, resource management is non-existent, and the people who pick casters do so because they prefer to observe the battle from the distant safety of their couch rather than dancing with death in close range. You want more damage? Work on your uptime, same as everyone else. No shortcuts to being good.

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Originally Posted by Shiroe

you've never played Smn in current Savages or Ultimates, saying Smn is mindless..
... you need to plan A LOT, which primal summons when, order of move sets within Ifrit, Garudas Slipstream / Swiftcast etc.., or you're ffed.., and need to be fully focused durinh Demis, or the final cast won't go off
...
but on easy / nornal content, Smn is mindless (but imo so are orher classes. , but yep Smn can be a sleeping pill during dungeons or any pre 90 content..), but its nowhere near as mindless as some are trying to make it out to be in savage / Ultimates

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The problem is, that's not the case. Technically he had been passed off as a "strategic" class that had to weigh very carefully the choice of its summons. It was basically an attractive class, but the problem is that it has 6 seconds of cast on 60 seconds of rotation. The problem is that he has nothing to worry about: he doesn't have to think about casts, he doesn't have to pre-position himself, he doesn't have to think about what will happen in the future, he doesn't have to think about dots or manage resources because it hasnt, everything is consequential. He's not a caster, he doesn't have to weigh anything except using ifrit in down time. Play the blm but trivially also the rdm, you change your mind immediately. I don't know if you've ever played the old smn, you change your mind immediately. This class is a joke. Even if I personally didn't mind the idea that smn had been passed on.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

I get that you want to look for this historical precedent in which casters are more powerful than everyone else without any effort, simply because they picked a privileged job. Truth is, those good olde days were reserved for systems in which you would have had 1d4 hit dice, AC 0, permadeath, and had to decide whether you wanted to memorize your singular daily fireball spell for use in P10S or P12S. In modern systems, none of these things are relevant, resource management is non-existent, and the people who pick casters do so because they prefer to observe the battle from the distant safety of their couch rather than dancing with death in close range. You want more damage? Work on your uptime, same as everyone else.

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You always interpret what everyone says as the "I want to be stronger than everyone else for no effort" strawman, then attack that interpretation as if that was their entire argument.

That's not what I said at all.

What I said was, back in the day balance was *nominally* (rarely in practice, but in theory) achieved via adding a bunch of restrictions to casters. Modern video games are an alien universe to those days, but they still contain vestigial remnants of that time, even when those remnants make no sense anymore (because they were part of a "balancing" act that doesn't exist). If I'm playing a solo caster in Palace, why do my spells occasionally get interrupted by damage? Yeah, "use Surecast", but why then do the mobs have no positional requirements? Because modern game design has this lens where they view traditional caster weaknesses as "being part of casters" while not creating weaknesses for melees.

Many modern games (and especially MMOs) are all about cutting out non-combat utility and focusing on faster actiony combat which favors playstyles preferred by people who like physical classes.

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You want more damage? Work on your uptime, same as everyone else. No shortcuts to being good.

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Bullshit. Yeah there are, just play a melee in Meleewalker. They get a bonus 10% damage just for being melees.

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Originally Posted by fulminating

You say that, but there's no record of you clearing current ultimates on new summoner, just uwu. Sure it's still an ultimate, but between gear sync, better consumables and the frankly comical balance at 70 it's not quite the same calibre as TOP or Dragonsong. Moreover there's no record of you doing harder content on anything but summoner which does raise the question of just how you can compare its difficulty to other jobs.

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ive been doing Ultimates on/ off.., only had a static for part of UWU, cleared in PF, .. rest done in only PFs, like halfway of TEA and TOP.., might go back to PFing TOP after this tier.. (but want BIS 1st from this tier, but could take a bit with my luck :/..,)
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when playing TOP, last savage tier, this tier again..,you have to plan those Ifrits, depending on the moment / mech, work around the Ifrit casts / melee part, be flexible on the ruin 3 placements, and try to get full Demi casts out each time..
.. if you get caught with moment during a hardcast, u usual only have ruin 4 to help out (Swiftcast is almost always on CD)
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Smn plays different on savage & ultimates, .. like Blm has to plan ahead (while in normal fights Blm always has some movement tool ready, in savages & ultimates its plays different, need to be more attentive and plan, just Blm need to be more attentive and plan more, but Smn has the same tasks, just with more instant casts and less emergency casts , still ofc easier than Blm, but not that much in the harder content)

that said.., Blm are finally doing ok as a caster (great rota, high dps..)

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if I were in a full static, would have probably switched back to Blm this tier..., but (in PFs) Blm take longer to optimise, and PFs have less patience, so Smn feels PF friendlier .. + a rez can still go far in prog or 1st kills (even if deaths in late savage often mean wipe very fast.., )
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still Rdm & Smn could use a dps bump

My issue with casters in expac is just how under damaged we are.
i main RDM (gets dubbed rezmage by my static, i despise it, but they're not wrong) and yeah, we're getting shafted hard.
we're the lowest in RDPS because ... reasons? because we got "verraise"? please, take verraise, i don't want it, people should just get good and not die to every other mechanic.
i got vercure? so? it's a GCD cast, meanwhile melee and phys ranged get second wind, an OGCD heal, the only time vercure is good is if i need something i can cast to prep a dual cast because they love making bosses untargetable.

during P7S last tier, during the purgation sprint, i could do it as RDM by saving my melee combo which should be in burst, but using it outside of the burst to make sure i can keep full time, using all my insta casts and hard casting plenty of spells with sprint on, meanwhile melee and tanks just get to walk casually to the next spot no issue, wasn't the whole point of melee being stronger that they have to work for their uptime?
not in arenawalker, where the boss hitbox is either 75% of the arena or if the boss can move around and has positionals the boss' hitbox is 65% of the arena.

Rdm should have imo the lowest dps of casters, but both Rdm & Smn are too low compared to mekee & Blm.., just too low (double caster should be allowed.. , but as there are more melee classes, can see why Yoshi us pushing for double melee, but than again, there are soo many Smn players out there..)

Next expansion it be caster will be strongest due all melees will not have positionals. Believe it!

After the ranged tax, introducing to you the new melee tax, soon in a place near you.

They should do that actually, make P-Ranged do the same damage as melee, casters the same too, then have BLM be like 8% ahead of everyone, 'because it's BLM'. Watch all the melee players complain that it's so unfair and etc

Alternatively, SE should balance melee in such a way that they do the same damage as P-Range/non BLM casters, if they hit 50% of their positionals. If you hit them all, you creep ahead because of your skill. There should be zero opposition to this idea, as standing on the boss's rear allows you to hit at least 50% of the positionals by default, and some jobs have more rear-pos than flanks anyway, like DRG or NIN. Like, I cannot think of any reason anyone would be against this merit-based rewarding of 'you do more number on the funny number site', other than 'I want to do 10% more damage by dint of having a 6y attack range instead of 25/30y'

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Originally Posted by ForsakenRoe

Alternatively, SE should balance melee in such a way that they do the same damage as P-Range/non BLM casters, if they hit 50% of their positionals.

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That's already the case. Just checked a recent log, NIN 45p with approx 66% positionals met pulling out the same rdps than my 90p BRD.

On nDPS, pulling out 1k more.

I like the explosions of BLM too much rn.

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Originally Posted by Shiroe

Rdm should have imo the lowest dps of casters, but both Rdm & Smn are too low compared to mekee & Blm.., just too low (double caster should be allowed.. , but as there are more melee classes, can see why Yoshi us pushing for double melee, but than again, there are soo many Smn players out there..)

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The only possible defense of this position isn't even true in FFXIV. Summoners are so much better at being prog mage than Red Mage for so many reasons, not least the extreme mobility they have compared to Red Mage. All of their support being dps neutral is a nice bonus too, and by the time more than 1 caster raise is needed, the run is dead anyway.

In Endwalker, there is no reason SMN should do more than RDM.

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Originally Posted by SaberMaxwell

The only possible defense of this position isn't even true in FFXIV. Summoners are so much better at being prog mage than Red Mage for so many reasons, not least the extreme mobility they have compared to Red Mage. All of their support being dps neutral is a nice bonus too, and by the time more than 1 caster raise is needed, the run is dead anyway.

In Endwalker, there is no reason SMN should do more than RDM.

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I've said it before, and I'll say it again. Summoner is the only caster that is designed for the fights the encounter developers are actually making. Really, the damage doesn't matter. There's a reason why BLM is simultaneously the highest DPS job in the game (in theory) and second least played job outright (behind Bard.) The caster role of sitting still and casting is essentially being waged war on by the devs. The classes flat out aren't fun to play in the fights, and most players, who don't play casters, love running around the boss all the time.

I'm a caster main. I want to sit still, and cast. But the devs want caster mains to basically quit the game with how they're actually designing the fights, or to start playing caster like a poor man's machinist. Which is not, at all, why I play casters.

Between that, the pacing of most mechanics rivaling Nael from UCOB, and the extreme movement, it's no wonder the role feels like it's been shafted the entire expansion.

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Originally Posted by Taranok

I've said it before, and I'll say it again. Summoner is the only caster that is designed for the fights the encounter developers are actually making. Really, the damage doesn't matter. There's a reason why BLM is simultaneously the highest DPS job in the game (in theory) and second least played job outright (behind Bard.) The caster role of sitting still and casting is essentially being waged war on by the devs. The classes flat out aren't fun to play in the fights, and most players, who don't play casters, love running around the boss all the time.

I'm a caster main. I want to sit still, and cast. But the devs want caster mains to basically quit the game with how they're actually designing the fights, or to start playing caster like a poor man's machinist. Which is not, at all, why I play casters.

Between that, the pacing of most mechanics rivaling Nael from UCOB, and the extreme movement, it's no wonder the role feels like it's been shafted the entire expansion.

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first, the smn is not a caster. the sch is a caster. The smn no (also because if smn is a caster, so are rpr and sam). Second point, I don't see all this problem in forcing the caster to think about how to keep uptime, when you choose the caster you are aware that you will have to study the fight in order to keep uptime (it is the essence of the caster) and it is also the essence of the caster to sacrifice uptime when needed to reduce the damage lost as much as possible. True that 1) fights are becoming more and more dynamic making this search for uptime much more challenging.
2) the strats that players think and implement are not always friendly with the caster and here it is the player who should prevail: I let you make your beautiful strats to keep the melees uptime, but I too have needs that if they are respected they benefit everyone and the entire party dps.
If a new *true* dps caster is added in the next expansion and if the hitboxes remain quite large, it's no wonder if the balance is upset and we return to having casters dominate the dps charts like in shB and sB.

It's also a matter of the least path of resistance, let's be honest a minute. Which jobs are the most played by far? SMN and DNC (closely followed by samurai I guess). The fact that MNK and BRD (besides BLM), followed by RDM, are also low there on the spectrum is pretty telling.

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Originally Posted by Valence

It's also a matter of the least path of resistance, let's be honest a minute. Which jobs are the most played by far? SMN and DNC (closely followed by samurai I guess). The fact that MNK and BRD (besides BLM), followed by RDM, are also low there on the spectrum is pretty telling.

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sure, but if the smn didn't have the absurd dps it has in savage/ultimate it wouldn't be so much preferred, as the mch wasn't for 3/4 of the expansion.

If one plays the rdm it is because he is in love with the class, same thing with the blm. The smn, maybe there is (?) someone who likes it, but it is also used because it is outrageously strong for a 1 spam button class.

So clearly, especially the rdm, it has a really sinking treatment, given that the stupid cousin performs better in everything.

SMN has an absurd damage now? It's literally with the bottom group of mobility taxed dps... The reason it's still being taken is because the two alternatives as casters are 1) not better in the damage it brings and more complicated and 2) way better and playing in the first group of non taxed dps jobs, but way more complicated and inaccessible for a good chunk of the playerbase, especially in lower percentiles.

It's not a problem of damage, it's a problem of alternatives within the same role.

I didn't say it does absurd damage in general, I said it does absurd damage for being a class no caster 1 spam button. It's different. It is a ranged and it is taxed. Okay. But it's relatively taxed (it's still in line with the dps required of a caster) too bad that the rdm doesn't have to spam a single no cast button to *get close* to the smn's dps. Too bad the rdm doesn't even have half a personal shield to survive a raidwave.

There is too much disparity between magic ranged classes, and penalties that just don't make sense to exist.
And this disparity is so glaring since they put a class that isn't a caster into the magical ranged role that has always been casters.

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Originally Posted by Ggwppino

I didn't say it does absurd damage in general, I said it does absurd damage for being a class no caster 1 spam button. It's different. It is a ranged and it is taxed. Okay. But it's relatively taxed (it's still in line with the dps required of a caster) too bad that the rdm doesn't have to spam a single no cast button to *get close* to the smn's dps. Too bad the rdm doesn't even have half a personal shield to survive a raidwave.

There is too much disparity between magic ranged classes, and penalties that just don't make sense to exist.
And this disparity is so glaring since they put a class that isn't a caster into the magical ranged role that has always been casters.

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Yes, but it's not because the devs have made the summoner a very mobile 4-button job with a personal shield that he has to suffer the consequences of the catastrophic balancing of casters of endwalker,
for this it is imperative that the devs make changes to 7.0 and reduce the summoner's mobility in a thoughtful way by adding for example 1.5s cast in bahamut and reworking the whole system behind the elemental summons.

Frankly we shouldn't expect anything before 7.0 it's the only occasion where they could make major changes on the whole role, and especially reduce the strange DPS difference between the different DPS roles.

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Originally Posted by Ggwppino

I didn't say it does absurd damage in general, I said it does absurd damage for being a class no caster 1 spam button. It's different. It is a ranged and it is taxed. Okay. But it's relatively taxed (it's still in line with the dps required of a caster) too bad that the rdm doesn't have to spam a single no cast button to *get close* to the smn's dps. Too bad the rdm doesn't even have half a personal shield to survive a raidwave.

There is too much disparity between magic ranged classes, and penalties that just don't make sense to exist.
And this disparity is so glaring since they put a class that isn't a caster into the magical ranged role that has always been casters.

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I never subscribed to the mentality that jobs potential should be based on "difficulty to play" so you won't get much from me on that side.

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Originally Posted by remiff

Yes, but it's not because the devs have made the summoner a very mobile 4-button job with a personal shield that he has to suffer the consequences of the catastrophic balancing of casters of endwalker,
for this it is imperative that the devs make changes to 7.0 and reduce the summoner's mobility in a thoughtful way by adding for example 1.5s cast in bahamut and reworking the whole system behind the elemental summons.

Frankly we shouldn't expect anything before 7.0 it's the only occasion where they could make major changes on the whole role, and especially reduce the strange DPS difference between the different DPS roles.

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Ironically enough I kinda feel seeing what they did with melees in EW, that casters are next in line and will probably line more and more on the SMN model. Big question mark when it comes to BLM though, since they have always been unwilling to change it like all other jobs.

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Originally Posted by Valence

I never subscribed to the mentality that jobs potential should be based on "difficulty to play" so you won't get much from me on that side.

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You said that smn and dnc are the classes that are used the most in raids. I made an observation saying that if smn was treated like mch, I think we wouldn't see as many smn in savage/ultimate. The smn is in a position that is just worth carrying, always. minimum effort, maximum output and you also have the ress to easily replace the rdm with the addition that you survive raidwave if you are underequipped.

The smn is just cynically more worth carrying around. It's factual.

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Originally Posted by Valence

Ironically enough I kinda feel seeing what they did with melees in EW, that casters are next in line and will probably line more and more on the SMN model. Big question mark when it comes to BLM though, since they have always been unwilling to change it like all other jobs.

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Originally Posted by remiff

Yes, but it's not because the devs have made the summoner a very mobile 4-button job with a personal shield that he has to suffer the consequences of the catastrophic balancing of casters of endwalker,
for this it is imperative that the devs make changes to 7.0 and reduce the summoner's mobility in a thoughtful way by adding for example 1.5s cast in bahamut and reworking the whole system behind the elemental summons.

Frankly we shouldn't expect anything before 7.0 it's the only occasion where they could make major changes on the whole role, and especially reduce the strange DPS difference between the different DPS roles.

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I agree with Valence. I have a strange feeling that the casters in 7.0 will have dark days, because they will be completely disowned as done with the smn.
And no, I don't expect any major changes since we're at 6.4

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Originally Posted by Ggwppino

You said that smn and dnc are the classes that are used the most in raids. I made an observation saying that if smn was treated like mch, I think we wouldn't see as many smn in savage/ultimate. The smn is in a position that is just worth carrying, always. minimum effort, maximum output and you also have the ress to easily replace the rdm with the addition that you survive raidwave if you are underequipped.

The smn is just cynically more worth carrying around. It's factual.

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But SMN is currently treated like MCH though? Or RDM, or BRD or DNC. They're all in the same puddle of second rate DPS jobs.

yes, but before nobody wanted the mch because it wasn't worth bringing it to raid.

It's true that it doesn't make sense for melee to do more than a caster. it's a matter of principle. (as fights are designed, casters should be by far the classes that carry raids). But the general balance of the macro categories works. Raids are meant to have these percentages for each class, so in practice it's not that influential. On the other hand, the fact that there are individual classes relegated to the various roles that suffer because there are others of the same role that outclass them in everything with minimal effort is influential, this is a problem.

It's really difficult to do a proper comparison on 'role difficulty'. Even if all jobs in a given subrole were completely interchangeable gameplay experiences, you will always be biased towards your preferred progression job in subjective experiences of 'difficulty'. How does a caster main without any melee jobs raid-ready have any idea what melee progression was like this tier? Yet the subforum gets filled with this sort of rhetoric from players hoping that the next set of caster buffs will finally clear them through the next fight.

I don't think that melee needs preferential treatment. The only reason the rDPS difference exists is because, if you haven't already noticed, all the fight designs push for a two melee/two ranged composition. If you eliminated the physical ranged/caster divide, you'd very quickly erase the erroneous perspective that casters are a 'superior' form of ranged. Equalize rDPS across the board, and lock the slots into two melee/two ranged of any physical/magical flavor. You will very quickly eliminate any further debate on the subject.

And if casting is widely reported as 'too hard' in the feedback, you know what SE's response is going to be in 7.0.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

It's really difficult to do a proper comparison on 'role difficulty'. Even if all jobs in a given subrole were completely interchangeable gameplay experiences, you will always be biased towards your preferred progression job in subjective experiences of 'difficulty'. How does a caster main without any melee jobs raid-ready have any idea what melee progression was like this tier? Yet the subforum gets filled with this sort of rhetoric from players hoping that the next set of caster buffs will finally clear them through the next fight.

I don't think that melee needs preferential treatment. The only reason the rDPS difference exists is because, if you haven't already noticed, all the fight designs push for a two melee/two ranged composition. If you eliminated the physical ranged/caster divide, you'd very quickly erase the erroneous perspective that casters are a 'superior' form of ranged. Equalize rDPS across the board, and lock the slots into two melee/two ranged of any physical/magical flavor. You will very quickly eliminate any further debate on the subject.

And if casting is widely reported as 'too hard' in the feedback, you know what SE's response is going to be in 7.0.

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I agree that if the melee rdps is so high it is precisely to push the double melee (because the fights are punctually designed to have two melees, given that there are 5 melees) which if a new magical dps comes out in the future (hopefully caster), it will no longer be so obvious, since there will be 4 roles that will compete with each other for a spot. It must be said that unlike melee that their main point is to stay close to the boss (clearly and rightly), having a double caster, or two first ladies, maybe it is more difficult to manage them because they would "get in the way" of each other. It's already difficult for a party to find the right precautions for a single caster (they be flabbergasted when you remind them that making me run to the other side of the arena is madness when I can stand still), I don't imagine with two.


That said, I don't agree that you can't compare 2 classes of the same role (I would like to underline role) and find points of comparison: which can be for example challenge in finding uptime, challenge in movement, challenge in managing one's resources, challenge in managing one's dots, challenge in managing one's procs, challenge in managing one's burst times, challenge in finding the correct positioning , challenge to vary one's own rotation but simply one's own rotation.
I also disagree with holding 2 melee and 2 ranged (caster or not). Casters unlike ranged non casters, have the *challenge* not *difficulty* of keeping uptime and with the same optimized rdps and competition for the "ranged" spot, the caster would be clearly disadvantaged. The physical ranged have/had other things to think about even if over the years and with the expansions it has been a bit lost both because by now all the classes have become utility classes with buffs and mitigations, and because they have lost utility skills (like Refresh).

On the other hand introducing a weaker output for rphys jobs in order to prevent the 3 ranged dps party syndrome you'd get otherwise, you're also introducing the potential risk of getting 3 melee comps at times, which is only barely avoided by cumbersomeness and the party bonus from rphys (which the role is essentially reduced to, it brings nothing else that truly valuable). And it's actually funny to see in early patches of every expansion SE buffing rphys because they're lagging behind the rest by more than 10% damage, which flirts way too hard or even outpaces the gain from the party bonus. Happaned in 5.1 ShB, happened in 6.1 EW it's almost pathetic. It's only been going downhill so far because casters are now subject to that as well, and it's made even more janky because it doesnt affect BLM.

I don't think you are likely to see a three melee comp even if the dps output somehow justified it, because one of them almost certainly would be forced off the boss for mechanics (and you know how melee feel about that).

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Originally Posted by Ggwppino

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The raid slots themselves are a reflection of fight design, and the usual clock/pair/TM/HR setup that groups put together. If that wasn't immediately obvious, it's also worth noting that Criterion/Criterion Savage treat Physical and Magical Ranged as a single category as far as the four role slots are concerned, so hopefully these will be merged into a single subrole category in the future. The total number of jobs themselves aren't really indicative of anything, otherwise we'd only be seeing new tank and healer jobs for the next few expansions until the numbers caught up (which would be fantastic, but unlikely).

You might be able to do a comparison of two jobs within the same subrole, but that assumes that you've cleared the tier and can actually play both jobs at the same skill level. Realistically, it's unlikely for you to be able to do a fair comparison, because there will always be one job that you have invested more time in than the others. And it's even less reasonable to expect that comparison to be made between different subroles. You're essentially asking for Dunning-Kruger cognitive bias at that point.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

You might be able to do a comparison of two jobs within the same subrole, but that assumes that you've cleared the tier and can actually play both jobs at the same skill level. Realistically, it's unlikely for you to be able to do a fair comparison, because there will always be one job that you have invested more time in than the others. And it's even less reasonable to expect that comparison to be made between different subroles. You're essentially asking for Dunning-Kruger cognitive bias at that point.

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In fact, the comparison is not based on "how I find it easier to play", but on actual challenges.
Having one or more dots, easy to manage or not, is a challenge. Having and measuring the cast time is effectively a challenge and therefore the search for uptime is also a challenge, having procs is a challenge, having resources to manage is effectively a challenge.
Simple or not (which varies from player to player), they remain challenges and points of comparison can be drawn up.

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Originally Posted by Ggwppino

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How do you intend on to drawing up comparisons between those subjective 'challenges', though, without an understanding of the nuances of each job and their interactions with all of the mechanics this tier? Stating that you have a 'cast' is meaningless without context. A melee cast that occurs during the SC1 burst window or the Pangenesis burst window is a specific context, because then we start talking about decision making. Can I cast and then teleport to the appropriate shape/tower at the last second? Do I utilize dummy GCDs to delay the cast to buy me time to get in range and then cast after teleport? Can I pre-position based off of buffs/shape position? What are the downstream effects of my decision on GCD alignment? The same is true for positionals. The boss is slightly north of centre prior to Para3, and I predict it will turn south then north. Do I hold my 60s burst and use my south positional first, or do I burst while the jump happens and then go for the positional after? You don't need procs to see that there are multiple cases for every significant mechanic.

I think if you aren't at the point where you've seen and considered all of these little variations that occur based on shifts in tank positioning, spawn points of various objects in the arena, and so on, then you're not really at the point where you can describe the decision-making for your chosen job, let alone anyone else's.

My point here is that this completely subjective comparison even for a player who has completed the tier on their chosen job to make, let alone anyone else. And what's particularly bad for this community is when players start pushing claims that an entire subrole is 'inferior' to theirs simply because of feelycraft, without taking the time to even attempt a more nuanced analysis based on experiences with the tier as a whole.

What you have described are solutions to challenges. Well if you have a challenge, you have solutions rightly so. The challenges are not subjective, they are decided at the table when creating a class or a fight. Subjectivity is the dexterity with which you solve these challenges which varies from individual to individual. Keeping uptime is a challenge. The solution of how to keep it, is the solution of how to keep it, nothing more, nothing less. Class A must challenge at 1,2,3,4. Class B must challenge at 1.2, class C must challenge at 1.
It is objective that there are challenges, it is subjective how these are faced by the player.
Which I'm not saying anything absurd, since that's what the designers of this game have always said based on balance. But it also doesn't strike me as absurd in general to balance a game based on the challenges a certain class faces. That said, to me that the sam does more damage than the rdm doesn't change much for me, because objectively it doesn't create me penalties in the game. The penalty is created when the entire role is not balanced.