upcoming rdm changes?

Gruntler is IMO correct, that how the job is viable for prog is one of most important pieces in balance puzzle for PVE.
Speedruns and "optimal" runs affect incredibly small percentage of playerbase.

RDM can rezz good and Vercure can be that critical heal, that will keep fershly rezzed person from being immediately downed by incoming AoE. It is stronger utility than people like to admit.

If the RDM was *very* close in dps to more pure-dps jobs, It would see very high uptick in being used.
So the key is to boost it with very light touch, I feel.

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Originally Posted by Adventica6

It pays way too much for it's utility for the damage that it deals, plain and simple. Either remove vercure and increase it's damage or remove verraise and increase it's damage, we don't need both.

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Limiting Verraise use in combat would be more than enough to remove that excuse from the table. That Verraise a) can be cast at any time and b) interacts with Dualcast is largely the problem there. The only content where Vercure makes or breaks things for RDM is palace of the dead, but it doesn't make as much of a difference in other content (especially content with tight DPS checks where every GCD counts).

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Rdm's in FFXI were way, way, superior to what we have here, by leaps and bounds.

A jack of all trades does not mean do everything poorly, it means do everything decent, please follow your own job identity that has been in place since 1987.

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Having recently played XI's RDM, that version of the job doesn't do anything inherently well or even passably well aside from certain gimmicks (lolenfeebles which are borderline useful and refresh which is stat independent). The only reason XI's RDM was able to get away with as much as it did was because gear swaps allowed it to do things it would never be able to do in most other MMOs. Seriously, do a thought experiment of situations with XI's RDM and remove the ability to swap through the MND, INT, MAB, MDB, PDT, MDT, STR, DEX and +Attack sets that a RDM is expected to carry around. Your stats end up either spread too thin or you're basically stuck with a MND set and forced into healing (since RDM lacks the multiple MAB traits to pump up its damage and is very far behind everyone else in terms of melee gear selection, to name two).

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Originally Posted by RylaBee

Gruntler is IMO correct, that how the job is viable for prog is one of most important pieces in balance puzzle for PVE.
Speedruns and "optimal" runs affect incredibly small percentage of playerbase.

RDM can rezz good and Vercure can be that critical heal, that will keep fershly rezzed person from being immediately downed by incoming AoE. It is stronger utility than people like to admit.

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But that's the opposite problem then. You can't put too much weight on progress performance and tax RDM's overall damage output because it can raise and/or sometimes save someone with a miraculous VerCure, when this part of RDM isn't that valuable 85% of the time when you are back in weekly clears.

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Originally Posted by Gruntler

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I don't know if you misread my post or you're getting a bit flamed by the discussion, but we do agree in principle. My post cleary says that progress has to be considered too, and I said "look mainly at optimal play". Mainly. That does not mean just one parse, one extract of data, or one percentile in particular. In fact, I don't really agree on the 95+ logs because I'm not even sure that's how the devs look at numbers on their side. But you have to consider optimal play too because as I said, it's a question of trickling down on how the job performs in different players' hands.

Reading back your reply, you're making things deliberately harder than they actually are (beside the contemptuous tone).

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Originally Posted by Gruntler

It's very obvious. In a PvE game, the object is to overcome the environment. One vector of balance must therefore be in the capability of overcoming said environment.

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Originally Posted by RylaBee

Gruntler is IMO correct, that how the job is viable for prog is one of most important pieces in balance puzzle for PVE.

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It's not correct for a very simple reason. You know what is an equally important if not more important part of prog? Meeting the dps check. Technically this is not a part of prog, but still before overcoming the challenge. And you know how each job's dps can be measured? With dps percentiles.

Again, not denying that prog is unimportant. But here lies the heart of the debate, that the "utility" of these powerful prog-heavy features come with an unjustified dps cost. How RDM has a reputation for being a "prog job" and is often swapped to a higher damaging caster when the damage is needed. Or how in the current Ultimate, death is extremely punishing and unrecoverable (for a good portion of the fight), rendering battle raises to have little value. Or how SMN is also able to provide a raise, albeit not as powerful, but also providing much higher damage output at the same time. There is a balance that can be achieved, but in whichever way, it's clear that putting so much value in prog and claiming it to be standard for balance is a misleading mindset.

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Originally Posted by OneTrueMiqote

It's not correct for a very simple reason. You know what is an equally important if not more important part of prog? Meeting the dps check. Technically this is not a part of prog, but still before overcoming the challenge. And you know how each job's dps can be measured? With dps percentiles.

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No, this is a part of prog and this is reflected in clear rate data as well. Notice, that I am not saying dps output is not important, but the dps output at 95% doesn't tell you anything about the dps output in prog; it's the wrong data for the wrong story.

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Again, not denying that prog is unimportant. But here lies the heart of the debate, that the "utility" of these powerful prog-heavy features come with an unjustified dps cost.

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A question which will never be answered looking only at mastery-level parses; you can never answer whether a job is a liability or a benefit in prog through balance when you're not looking at the entirety of data, when you deliberately exclude prog from the data specifically to only look at one vector. That's my point; you pose an important and valuable question, and looking at 95s only will not get you any closer to an answer. Looking at prog data does.

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How RDM has a reputation for being a "prog job" and is often swapped to a higher damaging caster when the damage is needed.

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Which is actually not what the data is showing. The data is showing that more people are not bothering to prog with RDM at all, and that's the biggest issue facing the job. It's not making it in the door to prog, so there is a problem there. RDM should be stealing clears, it's kit is about stealing clears. If it's not stealing clears, then it's paying too much dps cost for its utility. If it IS stealing clears, then it's actually fine, because it's doing what it's supposed to do.

See? The data has some value in answering these sorts of questions, if we just look!

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Or how in the current Ultimate, death is extremely punishing and unrecoverable (for a good portion of the fight), rendering battle raises to have little value. Or how SMN is also able to provide a raise, albeit not as powerful, but also providing much higher damage output at the same time. There is a balance that can be achieved, but in whichever way, it's clear that putting so much value in prog and claiming it to be standard for balance is a misleading mindset.

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Untrue. It's a PvE game--the balance is first, and foremost, in the struggle. Mastery tells you nothing about the difficulty in getting there. And I want to be clear: My standpoint is not 'look only at prog' either. It's look at ALL the data. It's ALL important. It's not about deciding 'which data points are more important than others' blah blah blah. It's not about deciding 'which percentile' is best. It's about not restricting your data point and looking at a broader picture; it's about being holistic in examination, and not trying to force compromise data examination where it's unnecessary and detrimental.

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Originally Posted by OneTrueMiqote

It's not correct for a very simple reason. You know what is an equally important if not more important part of prog? Meeting the dps check. Technically this is not a part of prog, but still before overcoming the challenge.

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lol

I said, that prog is one of the most important parts of PVE balance.
And you say that I'ts not correct, because dps check is important part of the prog.

Where did I said that dps check is not important part of the prog?

You are saying, that I'm incorrect about something I did not said, do you realize that? ;)

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Originally Posted by RylaBee

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If you want to be pedantic about this, sure. The argument was about both different aspects, one regarding the prog itself and focused on seeing more mechanics, and one regarding the dps check once all mechs have been seen. What you agreed on was an argument for and the focus on the former. The context you gave was on this focus, and I said such focus is not correct because of the other important aspect.

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Originally Posted by Gruntler

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First of all, as many comments before you have pointed out, no one said to only look at a single percentile.

There are basically 2 points you're making. You are saying to look at all data (as more than just percentiles). I've responded to this before, "they did not say you should only balance off percentiles, but rather if you do, you should be balancing off the high end."

You're also saying "dps output at 95% doesn't tell you anything about the dps output in prog". This is false. There is certainly a correlation between dps percentiles (and by extension, top percentiles) and how much one can expect to output in a fight. Specifically I am talking about the part to meet the dps check, as this is where the damage matters. At this point in the fight, most players would aim to optimize for damage and utilize the most out of their job's kit, which is what is shown by seeing a job at its fully realized potential.

And also the plethora of reasons to why top percentiles should be prioritize over other percentiles mentioned by others here.

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Originally Posted by OneTrueMiqote

The argument was about both different aspects, one regarding the prog itself and focused on seeing more mechanics, and one regarding the dps check once all mechs have been seen.

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Neither of which are 95th percentile barring week 1 stuff.

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First of all, as many comments before you have pointed out, no one said to only look at a single percentile.

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Then there should be mentions of a range, not a single cutoff point.

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There are basically 2 points you're making. You are saying to look at all data (as more than just percentiles). I've responded to this before, "they did not say you should only balance off percentiles, but rather if you do, you should be balancing off the high end."

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Which is if one is balancing for speedruns and mastery. Which, if that's the argument, then that'd be an effective technique.

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You're also saying "dps output at 95% doesn't tell you anything about the dps output in prog". This is false.

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If you present a hypothesis and call it data, I'm going to call shinanegans.

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There is certainly a correlation between dps percentiles (and by extension, top percentiles) and how much one can expect to output in a fight.

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Shinanegans

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Specifically I am talking about the part to meet the dps check, as this is where the damage matters.

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Shinanegans

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At this point in the fight, most players would aim to optimize for damage and utilize the most out of their job's kit, which is what is shown by seeing a job at its fully realized potential.

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Shinanegans.

If your hypothesis were true, then you would see a uniform distribution where job performance at median percentiles would be proportional to 95th percentile. You do not. If your hypothesis were true, you'd see more players acheiving 95th percentile during prog--which is mathematically impossible.

If you want to see what jobs are doing during the 'beat dps checks' phase of prog, you look at people progging, because that's DIRECT OBSERVATION. 'We expect jobs to do x in prog' is a question you can directly answer by looking at prog, and only hypothesize by looking at players that are not progging. Direct Observation > Extrapolation in all cases.

You're trying to make the argument that extrapolation is preferable to direct observation when we have access to direct observation. There is nothing more that needs to be said after that--it's a bad argument on its own merits. Everything else is trying to justify bad practice.

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Originally Posted by Sora_Oathkeeper

I agree with more or less everything you're saying. My only issue I have though is you are comparing all percentiles. This is including the worst of the worst players and they actively bring down job balance moreso than they should. For a better look at balance it's better to look at 90+ (discounting max because every single 100 percentile has insane lucky crits). 90+ is generally skilled players optimizing and not dying that know how to play. It skews balance when comparing all percentiles, RDM is partically punished at lower percentiles; take a bad rdm in an already bad group and then have it lowering dps further by rezzing instead of doing DPS.

https://www.fflogs.com/zone/statistics/29#dataset=90

As you can see RDM is above MCH. But as I said, all 4 of them need further buffs, none of those jobs should be that low.

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Well at least that gives a little clearer picture.

It does show the jobs are not that terribly far apart in actual DPS in the top percentiles where few other factors but DPS is involved, ie equal gear, same amount of familiarity with the raid etc no longer factor.

The difference between Samurai, Black Mage, and Summoner are miniscule.

The only real disparity that exists are between the top six... and the bottom 4

Which are Red Mage, Machinist, Dancer, and Bard.

That face when Red Mage wasn't even used as a prog mage in Ultimate. World first clear was SMN+BLM. It's also worth noting that the opportunity cost of verraise (and yes, vercure) is compared to Resurrection. Most if not all Red Mages who have cleared TEA are career Red Mages, my own group's Red Mage included, and yes verraise is more or less useless throughout the fight (although we had good results with raising pre-wormhole, for fairness' sake, just to practice the mechanic itself). Vercure is laughably weak, it heals for less than SCH's physick and I can count on one fist the number of times a physick was the difference between wiping or not. At least Summoner's healing support is passive, meaning it doesn't pay anything to be a regen on the party where RDM has to sac a large amount of potency for such a weak heal.

Is it supposed to be the prog mage? If so, why isn't it objectively the best (ie, loses the least for raising, has the best healing support, etc) at prog? Why does Summoner dance all over it? If you're gonna hoist a job up as a progression mage, then make it the best darned prog mage one could possibly get. Otherwise it should be in line with its peers; not over, but not as far under as it is either.