Comprehensive breakdown over Endwalker job balance

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1...pBFFUD2YA/edit

I wholeheartedly agree with pretty much everything here. What do people think of this?



Full credit to ZhephZaeora for making this. This is their Twitter: https://twitter.com/ZhephZ

The last several paragraphs ("Basically, in Endwalker, the devs have standardised so many jobs to 2 minutes...") are worth a read, especially because they end with an opinion on the situation. The rest are well-written and fill in some of the math behind the conclusions.

he articulated it well, especially for dumb people like me who understood the issue with the game but didn't know how to properly communicate it

So, you can post wherever you want...but why is this in General, and not in the Job Section?

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Originally Posted by Zanarkand-Ronso

So, you can post wherever you want...but why is this in General, and not in the Job Section?

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https://files.catbox.moe/asxxzw.png

Slow down there backseat moderator, this is the forum where the game tells people to leave feedback and suggestions, of which a document called "The problem with Endwalker's balance explained" fits the criteria.

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Originally Posted by Nizzi

Slow down there backseat moderator, this is the forum where the game tells people to leave feedback and suggestions, of which a document called "The problem with Endwalker's balance explained" fits the criteria.

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Backseat Moderator?
Lol it was a question. But I didnt question why the thread was made, but I questioned if it was in the right section where it should get the proper attention

I'll be honest, I still dont get the technical details even after reading this document. Which is due to me being super casually oblivious to the meta of this game as all I care about is if the job feels "fun" to play rather than numbers.

But from what I understand is that every job is being homogenized with 2 minute burst damage windows which is bad/less fun? or something like that so the balance is kinda wack.

Anyway Im interested to see how SE responds to this since Im also seeing these complaints beyond the usual forum whining so thats GOT to warrant some actual issue being at play here.

The 2 minute window was to be expected, considering how the playerbase for many years was actively aligning the burst windows to begin with. The devs just made it that much easier for the alignment. And the coordination was never a choice to begin with in Savage IMO, it was a necessity. When you balance around raids, you take into account how players think in raids, leading to things being adjusted for raids. Just like how the upcoming PLD rework will be to help deal with the fact that PLD is struggling with its rotation...in raids.

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Originally Posted by RyuDragnier

Just like how the upcoming PLD rework will be to help deal with the fact that PLD is struggling with its rotation...in raids.

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Is it a Full rework, or just adjustments?...
Either way, bracing to hate my Favorite Tank...guess we had it good for too long.

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Originally Posted by Zanarkand-Ronso

Is it a Full rework, or just adjustments?...
Either way, bracing to hate my Favorite Tank...guess we had it good for too long.

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They're probably going to be working on the rotation for PLD. Since the reason it's suffering is because it doesn't fit normally in the 2m burst window, it's very likely they're about to change a few things to make it so it DOES fit in the burst window. Since the magic side seems to fit just fine there, I suspect we might be seeing some cleaning on the physical attack side to help streamline it. If I were to take a guess, you may be losing Atonement, and with a worst case scenario, Goring Blade as well.

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Originally Posted by RyuDragnier

The 2 minute window was to be expected, considering how the playerbase for many years was actively aligning the burst windows to begin with. The devs just made it that much easier for the alignment. And the coordination was never a choice to begin with in Savage IMO, it was a necessity. When you balance around raids, you take into account how players think in raids, leading to things being adjusted for raids. Just like how the upcoming PLD rework will be to help deal with the fact that PLD is struggling with its rotation...in raids.

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It's just like the decision to make all AST cards 'The Balance', is it not? Players were already doing this, so the devs streamline it, which according to some players removes all the fun right out of the job, and strips it of its identity.

My question is how much fun are players having if they feel they need to put the kind of time and effort it takes to articulate the subject explored in the 'comprehensive breakdown'? My other question is who is it for? The devs don't need a breakdown of their own design. Do players really think that they are not aware of things like the burst window, and an RNG factor? Players who are frustrated will just be inclined to agree with it. And for casual players like myself, it douses and flame of curiosity to venture into this content because nothing about it seems fun at all if it is taken this seriously, and impact the RLs of the participants. IOW, is it just candy service to provide copium to the participants who are frustrated?

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Originally Posted by RyuDragnier

The 2 minute window was to be expected, considering how the playerbase for many years was actively aligning the burst windows to begin with. The devs just made it that much easier for the alignment. And the coordination was never a choice to begin with in Savage IMO, it was a necessity. When you balance around raids, you take into account how players think in raids, leading to things being adjusted for raids. Just like how the upcoming PLD rework will be to help deal with the fact that PLD is struggling with its rotation...in raids.

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That is not true, coordination in savage for previous expansions all had room for error. If you mistimed something in, say, Titan Savage, it wouldn't be the end of the world. It kind of ties into this next point I'll make:

For every expansion's raid tier (aside from Goridas lol) and even ultimate fights, having a meta comp just meant more room for error. People liked meta because it gave you more room to breathe if you fumble something. A meme comp in Dragonsong's Reprise is still completely fine in terms of ability to clear the fight. But for P8S (before 6.21, on week 1) you HAD to have a meta comp or almost full meta carrying deadweight (e.g. MCH) just to barely make the check, hence the overreliance on meta then that means people are upset over job balance and subsequently stuff like this docs highlighting their philosophy on 2 minutes having a bunch of problems.

Oh and I don't buy the reasoning they gave for nerfing P8S at all. I am almost positive they just ninja tuned it for week 2 tomes but didn't want to actually say that was why.

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Originally Posted by localareanetwork

Oh and I don't buy the reasoning they gave for nerfing P8S at all. I am almost positive they just ninja tuned it for week 2 tomes but didn't want to actually say that was why.

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You have to consider that the devs can instantly change their loadouts because they have access to everything. Were they all in pentamelded crafted gear doing it (lolno)? Were they at max ilvl (630) for this patch? Were they around i615? There's a lot of different choices they could have made for testing it. Were they using the meta setup? Were they using a mix of meta and average setups without PLD or MCH in the party? There's so many ways they could have done these fights, and so many ways they could have easily missed it. Had they done minimum ilvl with pentamelded crafter gear for the tests, and used PLD or MCH, it's likely it never would have been as high in HP as it was. They likely would have also noticed the job imbalance. I'm personally hoping this leads to them actively testing what the players consider the weakest jobs in these fights from now on.

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Originally Posted by RyuDragnier

You have to consider that the devs can instantly change their loadouts because they have access to everything. Were they all in pentamelded crafted gear doing it (lolno)? Were they at max ilvl (630) for this patch? Were they around i615? There's a lot of different choices they could have made for testing it. Were they using the meta setup? Were they using a mix of meta and average setups without PLD or MCH in the party? There's so many ways they could have done these fights, and so many ways they could have easily missed it. Had they done minimum ilvl with pentamelded crafter gear for the tests, and used PLD or MCH, it's likely it never would have been as high in HP as it was. They likely would have also noticed the job imbalance. I'm personally hoping this leads to them actively testing what the players consider the weakest jobs in these fights from now on.

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They specifically said in the Famitsu interview that it was all balanced for i610.

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Originally Posted by localareanetwork

They specifically said in the Famitsu interview that it was all balanced for i610.

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Then they did not test all the jobs for it, which is definitely a fault on their end.

Honestly, looking at their overview note over PLD’s potency tweaks made me think that they want PLDs to just facepull raid bosses with Requiescat.

EDIT: inb4 they buff Requiescat reach to 25y to facilitate this cursed opener.

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Originally Posted by Sweetness

Why don’t they just get rid of all the 120s skills and factor in as potency buffs for all the classes? i don’t see why this wouldn’t work but then again I’m not a spreadsheeter
How can we make the combat less rigid? I can only think of that option…

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The old system of having raid buffs with different cooldowns of 60,90,120,180 seconds worked perfectly fine. I honestly just think they're too stubborn to admit that funneling all damage into 2 minute windows was a mistake.

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Originally Posted by RyuDragnier

The 2 minute window was to be expected, considering how the playerbase for many years was actively aligning the burst windows to begin with. The devs just made it that much easier for the alignment. And the coordination was never a choice to begin with in Savage IMO, it was a necessity. When you balance around raids, you take into account how players think in raids, leading to things being adjusted for raids. Just like how the upcoming PLD rework will be to help deal with the fact that PLD is struggling with its rotation...in raids.

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Absolutely this.

The players decided on the burst window first, you align with it or you do less damage. If you happened to be on a job that didn't naturally align with the burst window then you had to jump through hoops and perform other such acrobatics to your rotation in order to fit in there anywayn often in ways that were completely detached from the intended design of the job.
Used to be things like predrawing cards before a pull and making everyone wait 30s before the fight could start. 20s pre pull openers for Monk and Dancer, etc.

This 'homogenisation' is merely QoL adjustments to those outlying jobs.

I agree with a lot of what Zheph highlighted in his tweets and document. I genuinely dislike the Endwalker era combat design philosophy centered around 2 minute raid buffs/bursts. It makes so many classes feel very same-y, and pretty homogenized. It feels super punishing that that a disproportionate amount of our damage potential is tied to the burst phase, especially in prog situations. While the big direct crit numbers under the raid buff window tickle a part of my monkey brain that dispenses the dopamine, I find it overall less fun than some of the past expansions combat design philosophies, and hope that in 7.0 the Developers reconsider this 2 minute window homogenization and make things more interesting by reverting some of these things.

I expected to see something a little more "comprehensive" than reducing combat to a square wave analysis for made up burst numbers, though the goal of this analysis seems to be more about explaining the new timing windows in fights and how that's changed.

Would be a bit more comprehensive to see an analysis with actual potency numbers and calculations.

Could someone explain this a bit more?

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DPS checks now have to be tuned low enough to account for mistakes rather than being tuned for average play with room to do even better.

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What distinguishes average play from making mistakes in rotations? I would think average play is equivalent to making mistakes.

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Originally Posted by Panthurrr

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I think it depend on the type of mistakes. Is it a rotation mistake ? Is it a mecanics mistake (Inducing Damage down for 30 sec or a death penalty for almost 90 sec ) ?

Making a mistake into a rotation isn't as bad as a mecanics mistake that would cost much more DPS and damage.

But balancing savage fight is made by taking into account that player want a challenge. Extreme is a end-game difficulty for people who are not interested at all into the savage. Savage (and Ultimate) are High-end difficulty content were mistakes may cost you a run.

Not easy to balance for some average play, and even then, what is an average play ? This definition will be different for every person. It's too abstract

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Originally Posted by Panthurrr

What distinguishes average play from making mistakes in rotations? I would think average play is equivalent to making mistakes.

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For my own job, I would define 'Average play' as playing the bog standard loop regardless of the encounter, and not really making super serious attempts to optimize the jobs kit around the fight. A more concrete example would be something like missing an entire usage of Requiescat because a player chooses to play 'standard' instead of using an opener like -18s or -4s fof that gives them more value in a phase.

On the other hand, an optimized player making a rotational mistake is something like accidently drifting your damage buff by a GCD, or clipping something in a way that denies you an extra GCD before the boss jumps away.

On the topic of Paladin...

PLD in EW feels like it's in an extremely weird position... As Holy Spirit and the Confetior combo are spells and completely unaffected by Skill Speed, using 4 Holy Spirits and the combo they always take up 20 seconds of your 25 second Fight or Flight so it essentially becomes your entire burst window. Maybe fitting in 2 of your 3 Atonements at the start, as using the 3rd one would make Fight or Flight end before Blade of Valor...

Also, with how Fight or Flight shares the same 60s CD with Requiescat, and as there's no reason to not use both at the same time, they might as well just become one skill...


And if they want Sustained DPS to be good, make fights with that in mind. If a class is "bad" because their specialty is dealing sustained DPS rather than bursting, that's a problem with encounter design rather than class balancing.

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Originally Posted by CaptainLagbeard

[...]Also, with how Fight or Flight shares the same 60s CD with Requiescat, and as there's no reason to not use both at the same time, they might as well just become one skill...

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Why would you want to use both at the same time? FoF only buffs PLD's physical attacks. Holy Spirit/Circle, Confiteor, and all Spellblades aren't affected.

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Originally Posted by Rein_eon_Osborne

Why would you want to use both at the same time? FoF only buffs PLD's physical attacks. Holy Spirit/Circle, Confiteor, and all Spellblades aren't affected.

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Does it not affect them? I haven't done any deep testing so I am not certain, and if it doesn't I guess I am in the wrong on that one.

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Originally Posted by CaptainLagbeard

Does it not affect them? I haven't done any deep testing so I am not certain, and if it doesn't I guess I am in the wrong on that one.

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FoF only works on physical damage, Holy Spirit, Confiteor and your entire Blade combo are all magic damage so Fight or Flight does literally nothing for them.


The way paladin is set up is that you alternate between your buffed physical dps phase and your buffed magic dps phase, with 1 unbuffed physical combo afterwards before it repeats.
It doesn't really have a burst phase and is one of the very few remaining sustain dps jobs, although their magic phase deals quite a bit more damage than their physical phase.

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Originally Posted by CaptainLagbeard

On the topic of Paladin...

PLD in EW feels like it's in an extremely weird position... As Holy Spirit and the Confetior combo are spells and completely unaffected by Skill Speed, using 4 Holy Spirits and the combo they always take up 20 seconds of your 25 second Fight or Flight so it essentially becomes your entire burst window. Maybe fitting in 2 of your 3 Atonements at the start, as using the 3rd one would make Fight or Flight end before Blade of Valor...

Also, with how Fight or Flight shares the same 60s CD with Requiescat, and as there's no reason to not use both at the same time, they might as well just become one skill...


And if they want Sustained DPS to be good, make fights with that in mind. If a class is "bad" because their specialty is dealing sustained DPS rather than bursting, that's a problem with encounter design rather than class balancing.

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even though it's "weird", it's pretty disheartening to know that they're intent on reworking Paladin to be cookie cutter and less unique

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Originally Posted by Atelier-Bagur

I'll be honest, I still dont get the technical details even after reading this document. Which is due to me being super casually oblivious to the meta of this game as all I care about is if the job feels "fun" to play rather than numbers.

But from what I understand is that every job is being homogenized with 2 minute burst damage windows which is bad/less fun? or something like that so the balance is kinda wack.

Anyway Im interested to see how SE responds to this since Im also seeing these complaints beyond the usual forum whining so thats GOT to warrant some actual issue being at play here.

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To try and summarize it succinctly: Because every job now aligns buffs at two minute intervals, these windows cause monumental swings in damage. This is compounded by the devs' new obsession for Direct Hit, Crits which also occur in that window. If RNG isn't kind to you during during these windows, you can deal noticeably less damage than another player of the exact same skill, performing in the exact same way. We essentially have no control over our damage output.

While damage variance and RNG have always existed. The impact was balanced by having raid buffs spaced out across different timed intervals. Crit variance was also nowhere near this massive, partly because Direct Hit didn't exist nor was either guaranteed. In an effort to homogenize everything for ease of balance and accessibility, they've actually made balancing the worst it has ever been in the last six years. Even from an accessibility perspective, it doesn't work because players misaligning buffs will have a much bigger loss than they would have in say, Stormblood.

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Originally Posted by CaptainLagbeard

And if they want Sustained DPS to be good, make fights with that in mind. If a class is "bad" because their specialty is dealing sustained DPS rather than bursting, that's a problem with encounter design rather than class balancing.

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No, it's a problem with class balancing and how buffs work.
Encounter design doesn't punish sustained dps more than burst dps; SE would need to design encounters so that they frequently force you to lose uptime outside of burst windows while having easy uptime during burst windows but they don't. Sustained damage being less attractive than burst damage stems from class design and how buffs work, not from encounter design.

Let's say two players deal exactly 1.000 damage over 2min.
One does it by sustained damage output which stays fairly even over the 2min.
One does it by dealing 500 damage outside burst and then the remaining 500 during a 15s burst window.
Raid buffs can easily turn this 500 damage into 665 damage with 3 generic "increases damage by 10%" buffs while the one with sustained damage may only get 50 additional damage.
Now what's more attractive: 1265 damage or 1050 damage?

It was far easier to balance burst dps vs sustained dps when we had raid buffs on different timers because people with sustained dps could strew in a strong skill here and there under every buff while burst dps classes might have missed a 60s or 90s window with their strong skills but had more for 2min buffs. Now with burst dps getting exponentially stronger with the streamlined 2min buffs, sustained base dps has to be inherently higher than burst base dps because nobody with buffs profits from it.
Case in point: PLD.
A DRK has an opener burst that is so strong, it has highest melee card priority. Even above NIN which is known for having some insanely high burst. And since it's impossible to run a 0 buff comp unless you're taking either dbl SAM, dbl BLM or dbl MCH, you will have buffs. Several of them even.

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Originally Posted by Zheph

So what is my proposed solution? Honestly, just go back. Revert buffs to their original unique timers. Leave the ones at 2 minutes that it makes sense for, but don’t do it to everything. Reduce the size of hitboxes to give some room for melees to improve above what is expected, and squash the potencies of abilities! An ability doesn’t have to be 1000+ potency for people to get a dopamine rush from critting it.

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Even simpler fix. Adjust the scaling on weapon damage so you don't have to have these 1000 potency attacks.

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Originally Posted by Absurdity

FoF only works on physical damage, Holy Spirit, Confiteor and your entire Blade combo are all magic damage so Fight or Flight does literally nothing for them.

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Which could be easily fixed by changing the modification value from :MagicDamage to :AllDamage (not the exact coding but you get the point)

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Originally Posted by Deceptus

Even simpler fix. Adjust the scaling on weapon damage so you don't have to have these 1000 potency attacks.

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Changing weapon damage is going to do nothing about the relative strength of actions as that is all potencies are, a way to show relative damage. That 600 potency attack is always going to do twice as much damage as that 300 potency attack, regardless of stats. So, if you want the 1000 potency actions to be less impactful, you need to reduce the potency of said actions, not adjust weapon scaling.

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Originally Posted by Mikey_R

Changing weapon damage is going to do nothing about the relative strength of actions as that is all potencies are, a way to show relative damage. That 600 potency attack is always going to do twice as much damage as that 300 potency attack, regardless of stats. So, if you want the 1000 potency actions to be less impactful, you need to reduce the potency of said actions, not adjust weapon scaling.

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Why not both.gif

You can increase the base amount and decrease the potency so we don't have this Potency arm's race. That was the whole point of the number squish.