Why did DRG's Disembowel get nerfed?

I just can't get around the fact that Disembowel got nerfed.

It only affects the DRG & usually 1 other party member (BRD or MCH)

While other classes get a 10% slashing debuff which isn't only 5% higher than disembowel but also affects way more classes than Piercing damage.

I feel like i'm missing something.

Old disembowel is the whole reason why the meta during 3.4/3.5 was DRG+NIN+MCH+BRD- the two ranged dps benefited immensely from the damage buff and you had immense buff synergy.
They probably didn't want this comp dominating, especially seeing neither SAM nor RDM could fit in it.
I actually think that it was a good move, as that comp was leagues above anything else.
Ofc then they butchered DRG alongside the Disembowel nerf... which is part of the issue.
Hilariously, of the jobs that weren't meta, only MNK managed to get a spot in this time around- so they swapped DRG with MNK, the other jobs that weren't meta still aren't meta, and MCH ended up falling out of favour.
Let's see what 4.05 brings...

Double ranged was meta in 3.4, and in fear of another meta akin to that, SE probably double contributes Piercing Debuff damage on Dragoon's behalf in the off-chance teams would bring two ranged again.

Honestly though, they could either spread the debuff to other classes and count it as a less of a damage contribution when balancing DRG, or retain the 5% buff for Ranged and revert it to 10% for DRG.

Disembowel was nerfed so that MCH and BRD aren't so reliant on having a DRG in the party. If you do not bring a DRG, then that also sort of precludes bringing a MCH or BRD, because not having a DRG limits their DPS potential so severely.

These changes are not made in a vacuum. They don't just nerf an ability for such a reason without also considering the impact it would have on the original job. DRG received numerous other buffs and new actions to enhance their damage. They may have lost 5% damage from Disembowel, but if you look at DRG parse records, you'll also see that Mirage Dive accounts for about 5% of their DPS. Sadly the changes they made just weren't enough to bring DRG up to a level that is competitive with other melee dps. The excuse that DRG damage is lower because it brings more party dps is a flimsy one, because Battle Litany and Dragon Sight are so minor. The only real party benefit they are offering is the piercing debuff, but even if you do bring a MCH/BRD, it still doesn't really equalize DRG with other melee dps.

It is because it wasn't 'synergy' it was 'dependency'. Synergy was NIN not needing to apply slashing with a warrior in the party missing an entire combo string and gaining like 60 potency each time they would have had to use it. If they had NO way to apply slashing then it would have been much worse. As other have said 10% is quite massive. If it were the same nowadays, BRDs would be getting like 300-400 dps from having a DRG as opposed to the 100-200 they currently do.

I also agree with the nerf, but they underestimated how much it actually neutered DRG. To put it simply, despite them focusing on DRG as the support melee it now provides LESS support than it used to. This is somewhat due to Dragon Sight being absolute shit (0.13% raid contribution, 1% for the tethered player) and Litany not being as potent as the scaling of crit has been reset due to the expansion. This is where DRG gets fucked as they lowered its ceiling (3rd out of 7 to 7th out of 9 while still being as rigid as ever) Oddly enough it pretty much did a reverse NIN; It lost utility and lost relative DPS because the dev team calculated wrong, while NIN kept utility and gained a lot of relative DPS (5th out of 7 to tied 4th out of 9). Difference is NIN has always been more flexible to play so it thrives a lot more in fight scenarios while DRG has always been somewhat hampered by fights that had a lot of shit going on so while NIN is at the best it has ever been, DRG is pretty much the same as 2.0 DRG: Can still clear literally everything, but why bring it when there are now 3 jobs that do its role better rather than 1.

Oh I see. The nerf makes a lot of sense to me now. I just wish they would have given DRG something to compensate though. Like maybe an extra 5% on Heavy Thrust or something.

I feel like DRG is fine utility wise (More utility than MNK, SAM & BLM at least) but it's their personal DPS that's lacking.

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Originally Posted by IchiExorz

Oh I see. The nerf makes a lot of sense to me now. I just wish they would have given DRG something to compensate though. Like maybe an extra 5% on Heavy Thrust or something.

I feel like DRG is fine utility wise (More utility than MNK, SAM & BLM at least) but it's their personal DPS that's lacking.

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Issue is, these utilities still don't close they gap between MNK and SAM, its counterparts. This is because personal DPS is STILL rDPS just in pure numbers. There will always be a best and worst, and I honestly think DRG is gonna remain the worst but as long as the difference between the top melee DPS and the bottom melee DPS is about 5%, I don't care (factoring all utility ofc, atm NIN is at top and is about 10-20% ahead of DRG, utter nonsense.)

I still don't understand, with it at 10% you could feasibly have two competing endgame comps. Double ranged / dragoon and everything that is slashing. Keeping it at 5% only ensures a slashing comp. oh and really, monk should be begging S/E to change their damage type to piercing.

I'm sure it was bc ranged were basically top dps in HW due to ir, although now even if it was still 10%, the dps difference between ranged and every class bar DRG and SMN ensures it wouldn't even come close. I think another reason they did this was so ranged didn't have to rely so heavily on a DRG to do huge damage.

To disincentivize the use of double Physical Ranged Compositions.

It probably would have made more sense to give Bard and Machinist some way of proccing their own piercing debuff so they weren't eternally shackled to Dragoon in order to bring out their damage potential.