Let's Talk about The Meta - And How We Should Dismantle It from the Job(s) Up

Thread title says it all.

My drop in the bucket is generally why do we have Disembowel again? Oh, that's right. Because DRG has a piercing damage weapon. So...what will happen if you changed Disembowel's potency by that meager 5% and removed the debuff altogether? That's just a question I want to think about because DRG is literally what's holding BRD/MCH together at this point.

The meta does not matter, play what you want. The only people who care about the meta are speedrunners. If you see a pf only wanting the meta, just simply don't join.

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Originally Posted by Nockvryca

The meta does not matter, play what you want. The only people who care about the meta are speedrunners. If you see a pf only wanting the meta, just simply don't join.

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Sure, but tell me: Why does the community always bandwagon off of the whole World First Schtick?

Edit: Also, there's a severe imbalance between Casters and Ranged atm due to raid utility being stronger over flat DPS.

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Originally Posted by Nockvryca

The meta does not matter, play what you want. The only people who care about the meta are speedrunners. If you see a pf only wanting the meta, just simply don't join.

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Yes and no. While the meta isn't required to clear any content, certain jobs offer far superior utility. The mere existence of a DRG vastly increases the damage MCH, and especially BRD, provide. Even without proper buff alignment, you will see noticeably increases in rDPS assuming all players are reasonably competent. This is what actually prompts PF groups blacklisting the more selfish DPS. Consider it like this, if a casual group struggles with DPS. What offers a better solution to their problem: a SAM with no utility whatsoever or a DRG that buffs their BRD, among other perks from Litany and Dragon Sight?

Do you need the meta? Absolutely not, but it does helps even the lower tier groups. And this isn't even factoring in how invaluable raises are from SMN and RDM whereas BLM offers absolutely nothing. In fact, despite 4.2 buffs, it still only barely parses ahead of SMN.

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Originally Posted by Nockvryca

The meta does not matter, play what you want. The only people who care about the meta are speedrunners. If you see a pf only wanting the meta, just simply don't join.

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This is accurate but a bit naive, I think. If you watched the Live Letter you'd see there was a significant amount of balance questions/concerns revolving around jobs and their party utility buffs, implying that the playerbase isn't at the point yet where they've moved past the "meta" mindset. On the healer subforum we still get discussions on how WHM needs some party damage increases, even, despite their insane throughput and great raid representation for these past two raid tiers. Meanwhile, you have situations where if a DRG isn't in a party with MCH/BRD you might be asking, "why bring this job, should've brought a SAM", so it happens in the opposite direction as well - when you have a specific job-to-job interaction like that if the two jobs AREN'T partied together they're inherently weaker than other jobs standing alone.

Unpopular opinion maybe, but I think interactions like that need to go (or at least be drastically cut back). Even AST cards, for all I loooooooove buff jobs/classes, get inherently less value the weaker your parties' contributions are, and the class by itself has a weak personal contribution to balance that. Right now, assuming you get perfect AOE Balance uptime, your team's DPS needs to be a collective of 20,000 to make up for the difference between an AST's DPS and a SCH's DPS (and that's with the very best possible outcome you can get as an AST). Now, 20,000 isn't impossible to achieve for a competent group, and a good AST can outdps a bad SCH while still providing those buffs, but it's a point of discussion that I think is worth having with regards to the almost absurd proliferation of "party utility" we have now.

AST I think is the job who has an entire schtick built around buffing players, so removing it (while keeping their EXTREMELY lackluster/copycat healing kit) would be a poor idea, but does SMN really need Devotion? Do MNKs need Brotherhood? Why are the devs continuing to be forced to balance "pure DPS jobs" around "buff jobs" that are so hugely contingent on the performance of other players (thus innately harder to balance)? Note that these buffs aren't even that exciting, they're literally fire-n-forget button presses that aside from cases like Brotherhood have next to no interaction with rotations or kits (aside from aligning them with your personal CDs or TA if you go that route). Are they really necessary to uphold some misconception of uniqueness/flavor? I feel like XIV's DPS jobs at least have always been unique and don't need pigeonholes to keep them that way. Meanwhile, if all the devs have to balance is their straight numbers, we'd see a better variety of jobs represented at the top levels of play overall.

You will never get rid of the meta unless party sizes allow for every job to join. At most current meta jobs might be switched out with current non-metal ones.

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Originally Posted by Dualblade

You will never get rid of the meta unless party sizes allow for every job to join. At most current meta jobs might be switched out with current non-metal ones.

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While this statement is true, you should also realize that there's quite an imbalance currently in this meta. It's almost the same as Heavensward, in fact. The focus of this topic is to attempt to find the outliers to try and find ways that will allow better balance overall across all jobs instead of just a select few that dominate the current setting.

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Originally Posted by HyperiusUltima

Thread title says it all.

My drop in the bucket is generally why do we have Disembowel again? Oh, that's right. Because DRG has a piercing damage weapon. So...what will happen if you changed Disembowel's potency by that meager 5% and removed the debuff altogether? That's just a question I want to think about because DRG is literally what's holding BRD/MCH together at this point.

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If they remove piercing, then they should remove all the other resistance down debuffs as well. Why do you think NIN wanted WAR in Heavensward? So that they didn’t have to apply Dancing Edge’s Slashing Debuff—the potency of the DE combo was less than Aeolian Edge, which resulted in a net DPS loss for the NIN, because they have to upkeep the Slashing Resistance Down debuff in order to maximize their own damage. Every DE combo subbed for AE was a loss, unless there was a WAR. Then they could just ignore DE combo all together because WAR handled the Slashing debuff. NIN remains part of the meta now, not only because of TA, but because of the aggro management it provides—tanks that like pushing personal DPS get to do so more easily with a NIN in the group because of Shadewalker/Smokescreen; they basically never have to touch their tank stance after establishing hate. NIN has actually been in the meta ever since it was introduced, and that’s because of its utility—Heavensward just solidified it even more.



As it stands right now, taking a DRG/BRD or DRG/MCH pair is enough to offset the total damage that would be provided by substituting out DRG for, say, SAM, or subbing out BRD/MCH for BLM. Disembowel alone gives BRD/MCH ~250 additional DPS in a given fight on average. Adding in a BRD/MCH also adds in more DPS for the raid as a whole due to a BRD’s/MCH’s own utility/party buffs (Battle Voice/passive Crit Buff and Hypercharge), plus it brings in things like Refresh/Tactician. So groups that want that optimization are going to take the jobs that optimize well together—SAM does not optimize as well as a DRG does with a BRD/MCH; BLM is in the same boat. And, if the BRD/MCH is one that particularly enjoys personal optimization, they’re going to ask for a DRG over any other melee, because their damage is directly affected by it.
Speaking personally, since I main and raid with BRD, when I have a DRG, my opener alone bursts for more than when I don’t have one—without a DRG I can net about 6~7k burst; with a DRG, I’m pushing close to 9k (and I have broken 9k before when running the meta and there’s an AOE Balance/Spear out). And I’m not an orange-tier BRD either; I have no oranges.

That being said, the people that want the meta generally do so because they enjoy the optimization. The meta is not needed to clear content, but people that want to optimize should not be “hated on” because they don’t want to take a job that won’t provide them with the group optimization they seek. I’m not part of any hardcore static—my static is about as casual as you can get—nor do I want to be because I just don’t want to dedicate 5-6 hours a day for raiding (I also can’t because I’m in school). However, I told them that, if they wanted me to stay with them for this tier, I wanted a DRG because I sacrifice a lot of personal damage by not having one, and I didn’t want another tier where my damage was less solely because I didn’t have a DRG. I do enjoy optimizing, and I do enjoy pushing myself. Do I need the full meta? No. But is it nice to see what I can do given it? Absolutely.


Until SE can properly balance the jobs they deem “selfish DPS”, people that enjoy the meta are going to continue to run the meta because it will offer more benefits to the group as a whole, than one selfish DPS will. Like Bourne_Endeavor said, even at the highest level, BLM is barely doing more than SMN, whilst receiving significantly more padding (i.e., Balances) than the SMN—the best BLM parse received nearly 13 Balances as opposed to the best SMN parse, which had 7~8. That’s not how it should be—if the developers want to continue with this idea of “selfish DPS jobs”, the selfish jobs should be significantly stronger than the “non-selfish”/utility jobs. The utility jobs are also desired because they benefit everyone in the group, where as the selfish jobs do not provide enough to offset the group benefit.

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Originally Posted by Nockvryca

The meta does not matter, play what you want.

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This. Furthermore, I don't think this will really stop ppl from making some unnecessary meta that is only useful for 1% of the game 1% of the time by those 1% that can do it effectively while making it fun. Nerf a jobs meta and ppl with either say it sucks now or still try to force the original meta (or, make a new one, that still doesn't really matter much).

I think it would be better to change a certain job for class balance or when a meta gets too meta and starts ruining the fun of the game (...even now the "healer dps" stuff isn't really going away, and now I'm seeing and reading tanks that don't even bother to use Grit or Shield Oath. Lovely, for my BLM, that needs to aoe the 10+ guys that the tank pulls, but can barely get three hits in without ripping hate, because the lovely tank thinks one aoe aggro skill is enough).

A lot of good points already from others, it seems; that I'm glad about. Though, what can be done for the jobs that are left out? Considering SMN, MNK, SAM, and BLM are all left out completely, what can be done to even the playing field for these four jobs? Also, there's a statement I want to ask about regarding BLM from Yoshida's recent Q/A Live Letter(translated by iluna minori in the Reddit XIV Discord:

To give BLM any abilities to use party utility is going to break BLM's job identity badly.
First of all, by doing so, if they're giving BLM utility, they're going to nerf BLM's DPS very hard to compensate(edited)
and Yoshida is urging people to stop being too absorbed into thinking party utility is everything for a job.

Why does he think this?