What's with SE and balancing

I feel like after Stormblood, SE just somehow forgot how to balance jobs and started to use pointless excuses to justify the weaknesses of certain jobs.

I remember back during Shadowbringers that BLM outclassed RDM and SMN, where RDM was basically unplayable until both SMN and RDM were buffed to be within a good range of caster damage.

Come Endwalkers, BLM is back to severely outclassing the other casting jobs, as they now sit with the Phys Range jobs. I know people will justify BLM being the top casting DPS because they are a selfish DPS, but SMN and RDM with their added raid damage is severely overshadowed by BLM's personal damage.

YoshiP believe's that BLM is a "Busy" job, but statistics show it's anything but, and over the course of time, BLM has been given more abilities to be mobile, easy to play, all while at the same time given more buffs to top the charts.

Back in Stormblood, there was a lot of synergy, where using a combination of jobs made them good. During this time, PhysRange jobs were actually able to top the charts, and believe it or not, 2 PhysRange was actually a valid comp for doing high end content.
Transitioning to Shadowbringers, SE removed that synergy, and did not buff PhysRange to compensate for the loss, leaving them in the dust. As of the start of Shadowbringers, PhysRange is no longer being seen as another equal job, but as a NEED for a bonus in order to force every class type in a party.

The only thing that's stopping PhysRange from being outcast is that not having one makes a comp "Illegal", and I'm sure you all know what that means.

At the end of Shadowbringers, you didn't need a PhysRange in your party... You just had to have one. 2 Melee and 2 casters severely outdamaged the need of PhysRange and their 1% bonus, and SE was very content with that matter to keep it.

Now that people are seeing the severe flaw of Phys Range, not many people are playing them, and I'm seeing more and more people asking where they Phys Range are when trying to do their weeklies. The answer? They're playing a job that isn't intentionally shafted for silly reasons like "Mobility" and "Utility".

Instead they're playing jobs that are just as easy to play and do more damage and get buffed for silly reasons like being "Busy" or "Not equal to RPR".

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Originally Posted by Lunaru_F

At the end of Shadowbringers, you didn't need a PhysRange in your party... You just had to have one. 2 Melee and 2 casters severely outdamaged the need of PhysRange and their 1% bonus, and SE was very content with that matter to keep it.

Now that people are seeing the severe flaw of Phys Range, not many people are playing them, and I'm seeing more and more people asking where they Phys Range are when trying to do their weeklies. The answer? They're playing a job that isn't intentionally shafted for silly reasons like "Mobility" and "Utility".

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Both these statements are objectively false.

Comp requirement for FFlogs is simply two tanks, two healers and four DPS with no job overlap. You could bring all four Melee and the log will still count. More importantly however, two Melee and two Casters do not "severely out damage" the Prange and the 1% bonus. They don't out damage it at all. I don't know who told you otherwise but they're wrong. The 1% is literally all that keeps the Prange relevant right now otherwise the speed meta would have abandoned them.

Personally, I just dont understand the following logic:

Melee dps must have a higher base potency because they will have less uptime. And so to bring it back to normal level it is needed.

When I first started taking this game seriously on higher end content, I understood this as "basic potency should be higher so at the end all dps would have the same dmg"

But then comes the concept of "utility should be a trade for dmg" - which is so strange to me as a SMN main cause my only team utility that I use in high end content is the dps buff that Reaper has better and the 1 person targeted heal of my phoenix which I cannot decidedly control the timing of and mostly don't need to use on anyone else but myself, if the healers are competent...

I don't really get what justifies difference between melee and melee or tank and tank?? It is just so strange to me. I just don't understand. So I just accept and thats it :D

Officially we should be able to clear all content with all jobs.
(But I would be super pissed if I was a WHM and trying to join a P3S party, when people lock Astro)

I could rant about the design issues on Jobs all day and i agree, Jobs do lack synergy among each other outside of mere dps buffs, as well as MANY other things that havent been adressed properly on the side of gameplay.

I find it incredibly annoying that Squeenix just designs Jobs arround "working" in Endgame Raid content and completely neglect the rest, and to add salt (and darkness) to injury the Community just keeps on wearing their Tinfoil Hats and thinking that placebo changes on Potencies and simple hotfixes that should have been adressed YEARS ago are akin to the second coming of Jesus Christ.

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Originally Posted by Anhra

I could rant about the design issues on Jobs all day and i agree, Jobs do lack synergy among each other outside of mere dps buffs, as well as MANY other things that havent been adressed properly on the side of gameplay.

I find it incredibly annoying that Squeenix just designs Jobs arround "working" in Endgame Raid content and completely neglect the rest, and to add salt (and darkness) to injury the Community just keeps on wearing their Tinfoil Hats and thinking that placebo changes on Potencies and simple hotfixes that should have been adressed YEARS ago are akin to the second coming of Jesus Christ.

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We really don't think that though, it's just the stage we have all reached since playing ARR and realizing they're just not going to change anything at all, so the last thing we have is potency. We used to all have DoTs, and self Buffs, and all sorts of synergy, but the greater lower skill players constantly complained about them, so they've removed them.

We aren't ever getting it back; we're never getting Healer interesting dps back, we aren't getting back an interesting Dark Knight, and we aren't getting a semblance of real explainable balance decisions. They essentially stopped communicating completely after Heavensward. I'm really not even sure what the point of the forums is anymore really, as they don't reply directly and choose to ignore a massive amount of feedback or play ignorant.

If a dev or someone can actually reply to this explaining something, or just to show your watching, I would totally take my statement back; however, I'm not naive, and I know you won't. So *shrug*

The status quo of no communication will always exist in this game. Be thankful that DPS Jobs are at least somewhat interesting to play now, though that will likely go away in future expansions.

these threads feel like bait

Blm is prob the hardest job to play by a large degree at a high level. You have to sync your rotation with your mana ticks which are invisible for console players. You need to resync everytime you move.

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Originally Posted by Shuuli

(But I would be super pissed if I was a WHM and trying to join a P3S party, when people lock Astro)

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Tbf people tend to take the road of less resistance because AST makes any fight less tighter for healing mechs especially for P3S where if you didn't have PI, there's a high chance of failure due to latency cutting things bit close.

I hope that the devs take a good look WHM whenever they do decide that WHM is a garbage dumpster and needs a rework.

As for the topic at hand, the balance in this game is actually pretty good (in comparison to WoW and other class-based games) but they're not perfect. All jobs are playable and that's on the brightside of things. It's just sad when it's clear that the devs don't see the glaring problems that some jobs are going through and don't even want to comment on it.

DRK's entire design is horrible and unoriginal.

Phys. Ranged as a whole is fighting to be the best at best rDPS when they used to rule because of their utility. They actually had a place in SB (ShB was the beginning) whereas everyone is now seeing their current state. NIN is in the same boat.

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Originally Posted by Hawuhawuu

Blm is prob the hardest job to play by a large degree at a high level. You have to sync your rotation with your mana ticks which are invisible for console players. You need to resync everytime you move.

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Objectively, any job is easy if you spent a huge amount of hours on it. Black Mage is extremely mobile now and strats are created to minimize caster movements and melee downtime.

BLM becomes a lot more enjoyable and easy if you go for the spell speed BiS. Fire IV turns into a 2.47s cast from a 2.8s which is pretty huge. You can use your sharcast procs to move, your ice paradox and xenoglossy to move around so you can keep Triple Cast for DPS purposes mainly.

The moment you've figured out the dance and your movement, you can just save all the mobility on demand to purely use it for DPS. You can save your triple casts, Xenoglossies during the 2 minute burst window. It feels really good.

I will say that MNK is the "hardest" because it requires cursed knowledge which is inaccessible for none PC players if you don't have the ping to double weaves on MNK. BLM? It's about just knowing when to move and when you can use your stuff for damage. Both have fairly low actions per minutes compared to Gunbreaker or Machinist.

I posted this on a new topic and I would like to apology. I no longer think MNK is the hardest job. It's pretty brain dead since you can delete True Strike and Snap Punch and get a pink log.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7oqi_4stdg

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Originally Posted by Aikaal

Objectively, any job is easy if you spent a huge amount of hours on it. Black Mage is extremely mobile now and strats are created to minimize caster movements and melee downtime.

BLM becomes a lot more enjoyable and easy if you go for the spell speed BiS. Fire IV turns into a 2.47s cast from a 2.8s which is pretty huge. You can use your sharcast procs to move, your ice paradox and xenoglossy to move around so you can keep Triple Cast for DPS purposes mainly.

The moment you've figured out the dance and your movement, you can just save all the mobility on demand to purely use it for DPS. You can save your triple casts, Xenoglossies during the 2 minute burst window. It feels really good.

I will say that MNK is the "hardest" because it requires cursed knowledge which is inaccessible for none PC players if you don't have the ping to double weaves on MNK. BLM? It's about just knowing when to move and when you can use your stuff for damage. Both have fairly low actions per minutes compared to Gunbreaker or Machinist.

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I run sps blm goes from average to extremely hard when you use paradox to switch between fire and ice for the 3% increase.

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Originally Posted by Shuuli

Personally, I just dont understand the following logic:

Melee dps must have a higher base potency because they will have less uptime. And so to bring it back to normal level it is needed.

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Okay but then SQEX must design content where you can't have +95% uptime.
My maximum number of ranged attack on a clear (as a tank) was 11. I wanted to respect as much mechanics as possible.

To be then reduced to 6, then 4 ranged attacks.
Maintaining melee uptime is in now way hard, especially when SQEX delivers encounters with half the map as a hitbox or full hitbox without positionals.

I do agree with the statement, but not in this current context and raid design..

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Originally Posted by Aikaal

I posted this on a new topic and I would like to apology. I no longer think MNK is the hardest job. It's pretty brain dead since you can delete True Strike and Snap Punch and get a pink log.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7oqi_4stdg

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I still can't believe how Monk got to this point. Even if you take a look at his chart with/without raid buffs you do slightly less DPS with Dragon Kick spam but it's 100% easier to do and requires very little effort.

This expansion is full of surprises. Really hope the Live Letter is forthcoming with adjustments for DPS, Tanks and Healers.

And with Monk you can begin your journey of Dragon Kick bullshit at lvl50 and carry it all the way to 90.

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Originally Posted by CKNovel

Okay but then SQEX must design content where you can't have +95% uptime.
My maximum number of ranged attack on a clear (as a tank) was 11. I wanted to respect as much mechanics as possible.

To be then reduced to 6, then 4 ranged attacks.
Maintaining melee uptime is in now way hard, especially when SQEX delivers encounters with half the map as a hitbox or full hitbox without positionals.

I do agree with the statement, but not in this current context and raid design..

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95%? More like 99.4% according to the loggers.

https://i.imgur.com/aCjPRzc.png

Only actual downtime is invuln phases which impacts everyone. SE said they would catter to melees for fights so the design of taxing mobility makes no sense.

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Originally Posted by Aikaal

95%? More like 99.4% according to the loggers.

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I mean on a prog level.
I know you can extend the uptime to 99.5%.

The argument is that uptime is not difficult at a low player level. 99.5% is someone who already optimize their uptime.

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Originally Posted by CKNovel

I mean on a prog level.
I know you can extend the uptime to 99.5%.

The argument is that uptime is not difficult at a low player level. 99.5% is someone who already optimize their uptime.

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Agreed! Anyways. Can I introduce you to the bane of min-maxers. Theorycrafter fears this man.

https://i.imgur.com/lwKrRFA.png

BEHOLD THE DRAGON KICK MONK MAIN

Time to drop Reaper folks. Tifa Lockhart is here.

Devs: You can now Fell Cleave every GCD.

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Originally Posted by Lunaru_F

Back in Stormblood, there was a lot of synergy, where using a combination of jobs made them good. During this time, PhysRange jobs were actually able to top the charts, and believe it or not, 2 PhysRange was actually a valid comp for doing high end content.

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Look, I'm going to be real, this is revisionist history. People hated how annoyingly strong the best comps in SB was. Trick was still outrageous and basically a requirement. So many PFs and statics would not step foot into a raid if you didn't bring a ninja. Phys ranged was really strong, but that wasn't because phys ranged itself was just on steroids, it was because of foes and dragoons OUTRAGEOUS piercing debuff that straight up added 10% extra damage to the phys ranged. This was awful. Since you still needed a phys ranged for the party buff, and foes at the time was really strong, you either brought a dragoon or gimped yourself fullstop. It SUCKED, people fucking hated it. You can google "stormblood piercing debuff" and find post after post asking for it to be removed. It didn't help that dragoon's buffs besides the pierce damage up was also ridiculous.
Well wait a minute, if dragoon and ninja feel necessary to bring to 90% of the playerbase, that means you have both melee filled! Well hang on, what about samurai? Yeah there's a reason people said samurai sucked in SB and was godlike in ShB. The only fight to my memory people brought a samurai on was Omega M/F.

But wait, if both melees are filled, what about the other jobs? Well, Machinist was technically functional on paper, if you had any lag or messed up at all, your damage tanked and really didn't feel worth it to most. Not to mention it was just unfun trash at the time. So realistically, it was bard 90% of the time. That leaves the single option you are allowed to flex with, which was caster. Even then, some people only saw RDM as 'prog-mage' even back then. Still, that was the biggest point of variety on SB team compositions and it wasn't enough.
Tanks were lucky enough to all be viable, even if DRK felt worse than it's HW version. Granted, Warrior was always present because they were a bit cracked, but the other two were flexible. healers though? Jesus christ that was the era of criminally underpowered WHM. Bringing a WHM felt like trolling at times much more than it's current still-underpowered form. SCH and AST were so much better in terms of damage output and healing tools that WHM was just not even considered.

To recap, the commonly accepted and enforced composition at the time was

WAR
DRK/PLD
SCH
AST
BRD
DRG
NIN
Caster of choice

No matter how annoyed at balance we get these days, me and my static still to this day say "at least it isn't raiding in stormblood" because of how obnoxious the meta was. I refuse to be told it was the glory days of experimentation and flexibility, because no it just wasn't.

I get the feeling that people think that things like piercing and slashing debuffs were just "neat little bonuses" when, in reality, not having them made the game outrageously more difficult. It wasn't a cool little job synergy thing, you were literally telling every tank except WAR to go fuck themselves if you didn't have slashing debuff, every phys ranged to go fuck themselves if you didn't have a DRG, and every caster to go fuck themselves if you didn't have Mage's Ballad. Stormblood was the low point of this game's job design in every imaginable way, outside of some rotations being a little more fun and involved. But outside of the stuff that activates the monkey brain neurons of the average casual, it was horribly unbalanced and a large portion of job mechanics that gave the illusion of variability just stopped existing the moment you got good.

It wasn't a skill floor or skill ceiling thing either. It was a skill "take one step up and suddenly you do 15% more DPS without actually having to work for it" ladder.

Heavensward was the peak of combat design given the debuffs meaning anything, Tank stances and enmity being required, Accuracy requirements needing to be met. Stormblood was when they started to dumb everything down to what it is today.

So instead of jobs with identity and pierce meta comp we now have jobs that mostly feel the same and half of them are broken.

HW required Tank Swaps even in some normal raids, and there was definitely heal checks that needed to be met. As it is right now they have made the game way too easy.

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Originally Posted by AziraSyuren

I get the feeling that people think that things like piercing and slashing debuffs were just "neat little bonuses" when, in reality, not having them made the game outrageously more difficult. It wasn't a cool little job synergy thing, you were literally telling every tank except WAR to go fuck themselves if you didn't have slashing debuff, every phys ranged to go fuck themselves if you didn't have a DRG, and every caster to go fuck themselves if you didn't have Mage's Ballad. Stormblood was the low point of this game's job design in every imaginable way, outside of some rotations being a little more fun and involved. But outside of the stuff that activates the monkey brain neurons of the average casual, it was horribly unbalanced and a large portion of job mechanics that gave the illusion of variability just stopped existing the moment you got good.

It wasn't a skill floor or skill ceiling thing either. It was a skill "take one step up and suddenly you do 15% more DPS without actually having to work for it" ladder.

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'Well you didn't NEED to take ninja' said by people who had no idea that things like God Kefka existed and if you didn't have a ninja for its threat tools one of your healers would get autoed to death, just straight up deleted.

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Tank stances and enmity being required, Accuracy requirements needing to be met.

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Heavensward was the start of 'turn off tank stance and forget it' and there's nothing smart about 'you must have exactly x in this one stat, no more, and no less, or you're shit mate'

Honestly, HW was just silly dumb jank.

Now, it was silly, fun jank with a hilariously disproportionate gameplay-to-damage-reward ratio, but there's no need to pretend it was anything else. HW was even more unbalanced but at least that lack of balance led to fun gameplay. It felt like more of a traditional RPG in that sense, for better or worse.

To be fair... Jobs currently are pretty freaking balanced with eachother. Despite the many flaws, things are nowhere near as far gone as they were in ARR and HW where some jobs were completely mandatory for certain content, not mention the far worst balancing in many other mmos. A lot of people dedicate themselves to only 1 or 2 jobs and and when changes roll in cant help but hate.

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Originally Posted by Gruntler

'Well you didn't NEED to take ninja' said by people who had no idea that things like God Kefka existed and if you didn't have a ninja for its threat tools one of your healers would get autoed to death, just straight up deleted.



Heavensward was the start of 'turn off tank stance and forget it' and there's nothing smart about 'you must have exactly x in this one stat, no more, and no less, or you're shit mate'

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Some Bard literally quit my static in Stormblood because I went Monk over Dragoon. Imho, good riddance because Monk was pretty viable.

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Originally Posted by Aikaal

Some Bard literally quit my static in Stormblood because I went Monk over Dragoon. Imho, good riddance because Monk was pretty viable.

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Viable, yes. Good? Not so much. I can't really fault your Bard for leaving. They're taking a 5% penalty the entire fight because you wanted to play Monk, which was objectively worse than Dragoon. Not say you should be forced to stay either but rather this is why the whole damage type debuff system was awful.

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Originally Posted by ForteNightshade

Viable, yes. Good? Not so much. I can't really fault your Bard for leaving. They're taking a 5% penalty the entire fight because you wanted to play Monk, which was objectively worse than Dragoon. Not say you should be forced to stay either but rather this is why the whole damage type debuff system was awful.

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This. It sucked SO HARD to be told "sorry, I like this more, and because of that you are just going to hold this fucked up L and do garbage damage because of it."

Everyone celebrated the damage type debuffs being removed because they legit sucked. They were awful in 2.0, and they were awful until the day they died and everyone said they were awful for every part of it.

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Originally Posted by ForteNightshade

Viable, yes. Good? Not so much. I can't really fault your Bard for leaving. They're taking a 5% penalty the entire fight because you wanted to play Monk, which was objectively worse than Dragoon. Not say you should be forced to stay either but rather this is why the whole damage type debuff system was awful.

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Yeah but quite frankly, I shouldn't be pressure to play a job because your job was doing 5% less damage to begin with. Tbh, with how FFLogs are, I wouldn't have mind it in SB to play DRG because BRD/MCH would have been the bottom anyways because all that sweet 5% damage should have been credited to the DRG and not BRD.

Nothing personal but... if you care about orange and pink logs during progression, please just reconsider your choices. Nobody cares. I also remember WAR being the top dog tank but world first UCoB had a Paladin and a Dark Knight for the clear.. Won't deny that WAR + PLD would have been better but it'S really cringe to prevent a player to play what he wants lol. It's also pretty petty to just yeet a group because said Bard doesn't have his personal DRG.

To begin with, BRD/MCH were the lowest DPS since, like, forever. The difference is Piercing Debuff damage bonus was credited to their damage so they "became" better with a DRG according to logs. Everybody know this is BS.

After reading up that one Thread from Sebazy (Link here: https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...ealer-designer.) and digesting it for a while, all the changes we got from Stormblood onward, kind of start to make sense.

The removal of TP, elemental defenses, materias, oversimplified Job changes, the fact that were getting less and less Dungeons/Trials/Difficult Content and the neglect of PvP content, it all happened because of Squeenix Buisness choice of saving Money and keeping the Battle System Team understaffed with only 4 People the entire time.

Personally, i am already considering leaving the Game for good depending on how the new PvP content turns out to be, because there is no way im going to pay for a Game monthly that doesnt even plan on improving and building up on the core aspects of a Game, which should be GAMEplay.

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Originally Posted by Aikaal

Yeah but quite frankly, I shouldn't be pressure to play a job because your job was doing 5% less damage to begin with.

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Yes! This is exactly why the debuffs sucked and had no place in the game.

Not only did the bard player feel miserable because their DPS actually tanked for no reason other than someone else said "Monk looks fun"
But the guy playing Monk will feel bad because they know that just because they think another job is fun, they're actively making another player worse.

What a mistake lol. I'm so glad we're past it.