What jobs actually need Raid Buffs?

I've been beginning to wonder why we even have raid buffs at this point. There's no real strategy to using them since they've devolved into yet another button to press for the 2 minute burst.

Them having different timings and CH/DH buffs doing nothing for moves that guarantee them used to require a little more thought into when some jobs should be using theirs. It's sounded like it may have limited party composition a bit too much, so I'm guessing that was the main thing they wanted to address with the EW changes.

But I think that ended up contributing a lot to the balancing problems right now since they disproportionately benefit bursty jobs more than sustained damage jobs. DT I think made it worse by making all of them 20s without reducing the strength of any, while also making adjustments and adding new skills that moved many more jobs to be more burst-oriented.

I don't really think going back to them having different cooldowns is the way to go, but I do think they should go back to having different effect times, with some lasting quite a bit longer with a lower buff amount to benefit sustained jobs a little more, and that they should be on fewer jobs than now. I'm not sure which ones should/shouldn't have one, though.

Also maybe we could have some jobs be buffers with multiple kinds of buffs on a shared cooldown/resource, maybe as a stance-like skill they could turn on/off at will. It sounded like BRD's Foe Requiem was somewhat along this line.

"Raid buff cooldowns limit team composition" is the biggest lie that has been told and repeated for so long that a lot of people start to hold it as truth. No one with a basic understanding of mathematics ever chose team compositions according to raid buff cooldowns.

90/60/180 all align at 180, 60/120 align at 120, and every single raid buff aligns at 360 no matter the cooldown.

People chose team compositions according to synergy and buff exploitation, not cooldowns.

The reason raid buffs feel vapid and pointless now is because every job was forcefully smashed into the burst style of gameplay where it's 20s (previously 15s in EW) of mashing every button you have and then 100s (previously 105s in EW) of filler.

Changing raid buffs back to different timers won't really change much, this is true, but only if that's all that changes. If jobs have diverse damage profiles again where certain jobs can pool resources and exploit different buff timers again (like maybe a BLM dropping a Xenoglossy in various different buff windows to not overcap while stocking for the full alignment burst at 6 minutes in), that would make you think more about when and how to align.

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Originally Posted by Azurarok

I've been beginning to wonder why we even have raid buffs at this point. There's no real strategy to using them since they've devolved into yet another button to press for the 2 minute burst.

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Here's a hot take: There's no real strategy to anything so long as encounter design proceeds along fixed timelines with, at best, the occasional coin flip that determines whether you get Version A or Version B of Some Mechanic. The only opportunity for "strategy" is if you play a job whose role or actions make you responsible for addressing other people's mistakes.

I would like it if raid buffs were retooled to be more like attacks that have a synergy mechanic to the like Brotherhood or Arcane Circle. Like make the buff percent weaker in favor of stronger, more involved attacks -- like Brotherhood could be a 3% buff, but The Forbidden Chakra hits twice each use under the buff.

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Originally Posted by mallleable

I would like it if raid buffs were retooled to be more like attacks that have a synergy mechanic to the like Brotherhood or Arcane Circle. Like make the buff percent weaker in favor of stronger, more involved attacks -- like Brotherhood could be a 3% buff, but The Forbidden Chakra hits twice each use under the buff.

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That would just increasingly turn them into even less interesting personal damage buffs... You'd have turned BH, for instance, into purely RoF-2, but where it gives you and foolproofs the very thing it buffs, so that it's addition, outside of popping it right at 4 Chakra, reduces skill expression instead of emphasizing/accentuating exploitation of your damage window.

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Originally Posted by Aravell

"Raid buff cooldowns limit team composition" is the biggest lie that has been told and repeated for so long that a lot of people start to hold it as truth. No one with a basic understanding of mathematics ever chose team compositions according to raid buff cooldowns.

90/60/180 all align at 180, 60/120 align at 120, and every single raid buff aligns at 360 no matter the cooldown.

People chose team compositions according to synergy and buff exploitation, not cooldowns.

The reason raid buffs feel vapid and pointless now is because every job was forcefully smashed into the burst style of gameplay where it's 20s (previously 15s in EW) of mashing every button you have and then 100s (previously 105s in EW) of filler.

Changing raid buffs back to different timers won't really change much, this is true, but only if that's all that changes. If jobs have diverse damage profiles again where certain jobs can pool resources and exploit different buff timers again (like maybe a BLM dropping a Xenoglossy in various different buff windows to not overcap while stocking for the full alignment burst at 6 minutes in), that would make you think more about when and how to align.

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No yeah I get they still did align eventually, just not as often. I had the impression some folks preferred to just make parties of specific alignments for that reason (mainly exclude 120?). I suppose them being staggered/more frequent like that would benefit non-burst better too.

i get what you're coming from OP, but many jobs are defined by the raidbuffs they provide like bard and dancer. ninja's trick attack was iconic and moving it to mug sucks imo.

I do think that timed raid buff make thing too stiff. Beside i think raid buff should exist.

Getting rid of all timed raid buff would allow more creativity imo in jobs and more flexibility when you play them (and i do think it would make them more pleasant to play). As today i think the job system is completly... bloated with all those buff/debuff and make thing over complicated the more they add things to jobs every expac (some jobs actually suffer from button bloat every 2min and yet are very much boring between like SMN/BRD/NIN... many others)



I can really much imagine a job system with no 60/90/120 raid buff and yet still buff something.

Look Bard with their songs... back in the day slashing/blunt/percing debuff that needed to be up every time (of course i don't like type debuff but... let's say a constant trick attack or something like this), or a SCH chain strat that need to be re-applied.

Bring back MP Foe Requiem and MP Hypercharge

not sur about that cause it will still make thing stiff... but a modern version why not ?

Honestly I wouldn't want any "raid" buffs outside of dance partner & bard songs (not the 2 minute 20s ones).

Raid buffs are hurting job design as of current as you can't have any sustained damage jobs like old Paladin, the only reason why I would want raid buffs is if they add back different timers but I doubt that we will get that any time soon.

Imo either we have interesting different timer raid buffs or we shouldn't at all.

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Originally Posted by Rithy255

Honestly I wouldn't want any "raid" buffs outside of dance partner & bard songs (not the 2 minute 20s ones).

Raid buffs are hurting job design as of current as you can't have any sustained damage jobs like old Paladin, the only reason why I would want raid buffs is if they add back different timers but I doubt that we will get that any time soon.

Imo either we have interesting different timer raid buffs or we shouldn't at all.

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You can still have sustained damage profiles. They just tend therefore to be OP in light party content if tuned appropriately for full party content, since their own DPS will be a larger portion of cDPS (damage contribution *in practice* in a fitting party).

As we don't have any serious light-party mainline content (as would actual worthwhile rewards / cumulative progression or a difficulty out of reach of any standard assortment of roles, whatever their jobs) and the devs have explicitly declined to make any, that's not an issue, though.

So you'd just tune each job for their 8-man value in practice, and some would be easier to get reliably that value out of than others, perhaps with a barely noticeable consequent debuff in 8-mans but also a decently noticeable advantage in 4-mans.

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Originally Posted by Valence

Bring back MP Foe Requiem and MP Hypercharge

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Was MP hypercharge a thing too? I'm having a weirdly hard time finding info on old Hypercharge.

I really like the idea of some jobs being able to choose when to use a buff while weighing resource costs instead of being hard locked to a cooldown timer, so they can adjust to whatever your party comp has for burst windows. Could even have mode where it drains MP slower for a weaker buff that'd benefit sustained jobs better than burst.

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Originally Posted by Azurarok

Was MP hypercharge a thing too? I'm having a weirdly hard time finding info on old Hypercharge.

I really like the idea of some jobs being able to choose when to use a buff while weighing resource costs instead of being hard locked to a cooldown timer, so they can adjust to whatever your party comp has for burst windows. Could even have mode where it drains MP slower for a weaker buff that'd benefit sustained jobs better than burst.

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Hypercharge behaved like Battle Voice and Foe Requiem combined in HW: 20s duration, drains MP from the MCH down to 0s, doubles turret attack damage and inflicts damage vuln (magical from bishop, physical from rook). The debuff vuln duration being 10s meant the whole debuff window lasted approximately 28s with pulse/attack ticks. 10% either magical or physical in HW, 5% all damage types in SB. Big difference with Foe Requiem was that it was on a 120s cooldown though.

In SB it was possible to pull 45s long Foe Requiems with MP refreshes like manashift on BRD. Or just have funky burst patterns like 0min, 2min, 3min, 4min, 6min etc.

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Originally Posted by Valence

Hypercharge behaved like Battle Voice and Foe Requiem combined in HW: 20s duration, drains MP from the MCH down to 0s,...

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Hypercharge didn't drain MP, it was just a 120 second cooldown that lasted 20 seconds. The one that drained MP was Promotion, which was the MCH equivalent to Mage's Ballad and Army's Paeon (Bishop for MP and Rook for TP).

Source

If you ask me, support abilities you actively plan out and use relative to the situation like Foe Requiem / Ballad and Paeon / Autoturret Promotion will always be superior to ‘just hit it once then the long ass cooldown will decide when to use it’.

Like yeah they might have all had their issues as anything does, but I’d say they’re the lesser of two evils when compared to 120-sec mind-rot meta

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Originally Posted by Mikey_R

Hypercharge didn't drain MP, it was just a 120 second cooldown that lasted 20 seconds. The one that drained MP was Promotion, which was the MCH equivalent to Mage's Ballad and Army's Paeon (Bishop for MP and Rook for TP).

Source

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Thank you for jogging my memory.

The thing is if you want to remove raid buffs, you have to remove all of them -- including from BRD, DNC, and AST (these are the most popular exceptions). Back when Trick Attack was a 60 second buff, pretty much all jobs' rotations, and openers were theorycrafted to play into Trick windows. And those practices carried over even if you didn't have a NIN in your party. Everything orbited around Trick Attack, and everything still does. So you have to remove, and not add any possible source of damage synergy.

Hard disagree with removing all raid buffs. That would just turn content from cooperative efforts between players into 8 solo players freestyling in the vicinity of 7 other players.

Everybody doing their own thing, don't even care what anyone else is doing, they could be mashing 1 singular button for all you care, everyone soloing the boss in their own little world until someone trips up and blows up the entire party.

Does a solo experience near 7 other people sound fun to you? Because a game where you don't have to cooperate with anyone in your team sounds like a dreadfully boring MMO to me.

That's surely more and more where the game has been heading outside of raid buffs. Less healing required, tanks that cannot die, no more prey mechanics or damaged directly targeted at anything else than the tanks, more and more onus on mechanics that require individual completion than truly cooperative actions...

The more I think about it the more I'm finding raid buffs that can be turned on/off at a cost to be a more meaningful approach than one on hard cooldowns. That or balance/spear + royal road ewer/spire. Limit its usage but have control on when to use it.

Maybe this is a bad take (like, genuinely not sure), but when the cooldown does the synchronization for you the effort seems to lean more on the selfish jobs to adjust to drift and such. Imo it would feel more like you're contributing with them if you're the one that needs to time it to your party's burst timings.

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Originally Posted by Azurarok

The more I think about it the more I'm finding raid buffs that can be turned on/off at a cost to be a more meaningful approach than one on hard cooldowns. That or balance/spear + royal road ewer/spire. Limit its usage but have control on when to use it.

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The issue with that is that smarter minds than me will math the optimal use out ~instantly. And at that point, it's no different than one with a CD, just with one the UI - needlessly - refuses to show you. Like if you had something you can turn on/off and it turns out that the optimal use is to have it on for 25s every 90s, why not just make it 90s CD / 25s duration? That's how it ends up being used, and there's no reason to make this needlessly "Go to The Balance Discord" for newcomers, just bake the tutorial (which in this case is the CD!) into the game.

Likewise with usaged. If the optimum one is back-to-back, just make it last longer and adjust the CD as needed.

The issue is here not tha those mechanics would not be interesting on paper. The issue is that it's not how they end up being used at even moderately-optimized levels of play. And MMORPG as a genre is way too old and established to still do anything by vibes, it's all optimization, all the time.

A better way of doing it would maybe be to hide the actual synchronization of raid CDs under personal mechanics that don't clearly show what they are?

Like if you got a proc on any of your main filler rotation attacks that has a medium~low chance to happen, and unlocks another oGCD. That oGCD in addition to doing X gives you a charge of Y. At 5*Y, you can use it for a raid buff that has no other CD.

The key here is that the proc chance is... fudged. You'll use that raid buff every 120s, maybe 5-10s out either direction (so make it weaker + longer to compensate, like Summoner one). But it can never drift more than that unless you stop using your filler combo entirely. The fudging is baked into the proc which is on a 5-per-90s PPM rate that quickly escalates the chance per attack until you get a proc, then drops back down to near-nothing. Meaning you can't realistically get 6 procs, either.

Feels better - random proc chance, clearly it varies which attack it procs on, varied gameplay, no clear "press this every 120s"-button. But ultimately it satisfied the need for aligned optimization, just invisibly to the player.

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Originally Posted by Carighan

The key here is that the proc chance is... fudged. You'll use that raid buff every 120s, maybe 5-10s out either direction (so make it weaker + longer to compensate, like Summoner one). .

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The issue is when you get unlucky and you get access to the buff late, it is going to feel bad. Your raid buff has gone out late due to something out of your control.

To make a comparison, how frustrating is it when you don't get the Verfire/Verstone procs on RDM or Refulgent Arrow doesn't want to proc on Bard? The difference here is that it only affects your own rotation, but, if you are expecting a raid buff to come out at a certain time, and it doesn't, do you delay your burst? How long are you going to be waiting? How many cooldowns are you holding onto for an unknown timeframe, etc.

As you have stated, players are always going to optimise MMOs, and if you have a job that can delay bursts for something out of their control, it will likely push that job away from being used.

Really, the thing to take away is bad RNG is frustrating when that RNG also screws over other people. This is why SB ASTs were getting frustrated when they couldn't AoE Balance or Spear and the game just refused to give it to them.

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Originally Posted by Carighan

The issue with that is that smarter minds than me will math the optimal use out ~instantly….

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Isn’t this kinda the reasoning the 120-meta even exists though? ‘We [devs] don’t want players stressing and checking guides for optimisation so we made it all happen at the exact same time’. It seems like you’re arguing against it but then you’re justifying the exact reason it exists (because ‘everyone will just math out things they can control’, which to the devs means ‘nobody should control anything except the game itself’. Player tension and all that). Which honestly I think is how the whole ‘120s-meta’ started; devs somehow managing to take the wrong messages from player feedback.

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Originally Posted by Carighan

Like if you got a proc on any of your main filler rotation attacks…

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I’m not sure ‘give the player little control’ is really any better than ‘you have control over it but there are [expectations] on usage’ though, personally. I mean, in an ideal world abilities could exist on their own merit and not as optimisation tools lol, especially since not everyone is playing with a parser as thus can’t really optimise anyway (cuz you can’t see if dps goes up or down lol). Plus, it would turn the vast majority of dps into ‘proc style dps’ if their raid buffs were made into procs, which might not go well for certain jobs (idk if there’s jobs with literally 0 procs or not lol)

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Originally Posted by Carighan

The key here is that the proc chance is... fudged...

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I’m a bit confused by this. So raid buffs would become random chance procs and thereby cannot be pre-optimised? Isn’t RNG predictable though? Like as a Bard you always have a sense of when the next proc will happen even though it’s technically % based - because on average it generally will happen in a specific ‘rhythm’ (or you just use Empyreal Arrow lol). It might not be exact, but after enough times you start to average out the ‘expected window’ for that proc, right? So people would still expect the skills to be mapped out to be used at certain specific times in the encounter and we’d essentially be where we are now but with even less control over our own abilities? Either that or you’d get that one parser addict wiping a raid because they didn’t get the proc for 5 stacks when everyone else did lol

It’s also worth mentioning, SE seems to be extremely against having RNG involved in any mechanics for FFXIV. We’ve seen that with how Astrologian cards turned out, or how they decoupled Bard procs from DoTs to make them more consistent. There’d just be complaints about ‘my dps output is RNG and it’s not fair! (Pushes crit variance under carpet)’, which I vaguely remember being a thing in the past, Stormblood maybe.

I think it’d be a cool idea for a ‘new’ supporter class like another phys ranged or whatever. Having more consistent and/or long duration buffs, but with RNG to balance them out. Then again, isn’t that just pre-Shadowbringers Astrologian? But I think applying that style to ‘raid buffs’ in general wouldn’t really get us much further than where we are now, just in a different direction. Or maybe something along the lines of Astrologian cards in the past, where the support effect itself is RNG but you have certain means of control over it. Thought maybe that’s more what you were suggesting anyway? Best of both worlds? lol.

Addendum: quotes were cut to save characters but I wanted to make it clear which parts I was talking about lol, not trying to take them out of context despite how it looks lol

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Originally Posted by Mikey_R

The issue is when you get unlucky and you get access to the buff late, it is going to feel bad. Your raid buff has gone out late due to something out of your control.

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It wouldn't.

That's my point.

Even if you get the fifth stack one late, that means you fire in-sync with everybody else. And usually you get it 5s earlier, and very rarely 10s earlier, but it lasts 10s longer than it'd need to.

Like I said, hide mechanical homogenization behind non-homogenized systems. We can't avoid the homogenization (at least, according to all even mildly successful MMORPG so far), so might as well do different gameplay and gameplay systems behind which the homogenized parts of balance are automated?

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Originally Posted by Carighan

It wouldn't.

That's my point.

Even if you get the fifth stack one late, that means you fire in-sync with everybody else. And usually you get it 5s earlier, and very rarely 10s earlier, but it lasts 10s longer than it'd need to.

Like I said, hide mechanical homogenization behind non-homogenized systems. We can't avoid the homogenization (at least, according to all even mildly successful MMORPG so far), so might as well do different gameplay and gameplay systems behind which the homogenized parts of balance are automated?

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I think I might have misinterpreted how you wanted it to work. The way I read it was, on average, you get the raid buff every 120 seconds, however due to RNG, this buff could come up up to 10 seconds early OR 10 second late, depending on RNG luck. Obviously, if it is 10 seconds early, because you have the extended period it still covers the '20 second' burst phase. The issue comes when you get access to it late, you miss the first part of the burst. This is the bit I was commenting on.

There is also a case where, if you get continuously lucky, and it keeps coming up early, you will drift the end of the buff so it falls off whilst the burst phase is still going, meaning you have to hold it for a certain period, but this then goes against what you said initially, that is you shouldn't have to track time without some sort of UI element to help you.

Even then, you say it has a low % chance, what is stopping you from getting lucky and getting the raid buff very quickly? Do you hold it or use it? How about unlucky and you do not get the 5 procs (if your system would even allow it?), Even with the 50% chance, I have gone full minutes without Verstone/Verfire procs or even procing the GCDs from Dancer. I have also had the exact opposite where I continually get procs. These might be in the extremes, but they will still happen and need to be accounted for.

Now, there is no reason a job couldn't work on this idea, if it was all personal buffs, especially if there was no limited time raid buffs to account for as well. You could have this job that has a varying burst window and, if you potentially implemented some limited overcap functionality, you could make the job even more flexible, allowing it to cover many different situations. For me, this would be better than trying to 'reinvent' the 120 second raid buff meta. Of course, your opinion may vary.

My problem with raid-wide damage buffs is that they just feel so inconsequential.

HP restoration is lacking or mis-timed? Shields are lacking or mis-timed? Damage reduction is lacking or mistimed? These are all easily felt, because these failures are noticed in relatively short order.

Unless you happen to have some idea of HP bar remaining vs. encounter timeline, there's little in the game to even hint that the party has failed at raid-wide damage buffs. To say nothing of the fact that there are rarely adds or phases where it might actually matter whether damage buffs and burst was saved up. The Chrysalis trial comes to mind here.

What if burst timings aren't all synchronized to 120s, being back to the 60, 90, 120, 180s and such, have different lengths by the job, and the jobs with these buffs also could vary the strengths of the buffs with different costs? Could it not help address how we currently only have one exact way to go about applying buffs no matter who is in your party?


As for AST's card RNG and its lows, I think that inconsistency was necessary for it to be as strong as it is. Theoretically they should have higher highs than WHM could but also risk being lower lows in the worst case, while having enough tools for a skilled player to turn around that bad RNG to keep it from dipping too far low.

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Originally Posted by Azurarok

What if burst timings aren't all synchronized to 120s, being back to the 60, 90, 120, 180s and such, have different lengths by the job, and the jobs with these buffs also could vary the strengths of the buffs with different costs? Could it not help address how we currently only have one exact way to go about applying buffs no matter who is in your party?


As for AST's card RNG and its lows, I think that inconsistency was necessary for it to be as strong as it is. Theoretically they should have higher highs than WHM could but also risk being lower lows in the worst case, while having enough tools for a skilled player to turn around that bad RNG to keep it from dipping too far low.

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I think different burst timings / less standardised cool downs could be a good way to ‘diversify’ things a little. I’d even say to do some as low as 30 sec cool downs. Basically as long as it eventually reaches ‘120’ any cool-down could work while enforcing a specific ‘burst window’. Even like 10-20 second cool downs would still fit in there lol (maybe a bit short but I just mean in theory’. It would still end up the same as what we have now at 120s mark but at least you’d get to use your support a bit more actively.

And I’d definitely say to throw in one or two abilities like Foe Requiem / Turret Promotion that are MP/Resource based as opposed to cool-down. People would optimise everything out of them until there was no choice on when to use them, but they’ll literally do that no matter how the abilities are designed anyway lol. Plus it’s not like ‘optimised play’ is generally a thing people seem to do much outside specific situations I.e savage. In my experience anyway

As an aside, it’s sad seeing the state Astrologian is in now. Astrologian’s ‘stronger but less consistent’ support gave it a fairly unique way to offer the same utility other jobs could. Especially when we had ways to manipulate the random elements to tip the scales in our own favour, like Royal Road, Time Dilation, or Celestial Opposition. Now Draw is basically just ‘Aetherflow with a different name’.

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Originally Posted by Azurarok

What if burst timings aren't all synchronized to 120s, being back to the 60, 90, 120, 180s and such, have different lengths by the job, and the jobs with these buffs also could vary the strengths of the buffs with different costs? Could it not help address how we currently only have one exact way to go about applying buffs no matter who is in your party?

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While variations in raid buffs increase flexibility, it doesn't make the entire system any more interesting unless damage profiles among the jobs are diverse again.

If we go back to 60s/90s/120s/180s, all it does without changing the jobs is that it addresses crit potency scaling, it doesn't really make combat itself more interesting without changing the rigid burst>filler>repeat cycle of every job.

Reverting the buff cooldowns do vastly increase flexibility again though. Pre-EW, if a fight ends at 9:43, you can hold the 120s at 8 minutes and move them to full alignment at 9 minutes with the 180s. Or if a fight ends at 7:50, you could delay 180s at 3 minutes for full alignment at 4 minute and delay 120s at 6 minutes for another full alignment at 7 minutes, so you get 3 full alignments in the fight even if the fight is that much shorter than 12 minutes long.

Post-EW though, if a fight ends at 7:50, that's too bad, you just killed 10 seconds before your next full alignment and nothing you can do will fix it because there's no flexibility.

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Originally Posted by Aravell

Post-EW though, if a fight ends at 7:50, that's too bad, you just killed 10 seconds before your next full alignment and nothing you can do will fix it because there's no flexibility.

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Tbf, only in parse culture does the party killing something 10s before yet another of an individual's burst cycle (i.e., in less time) seem a bad thing...

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Originally Posted by Connor

I think different burst timings / less standardised cool downs could be a good way to ‘diversify’ things a little. I’d even say to do some as low as 30 sec cool downs. Basically as long as it eventually reaches ‘120’ any cool-down could work while enforcing a specific ‘burst window’. Even like 10-20 second cool downs would still fit in there lol (maybe a bit short but I just mean in theory’. It would still end up the same as what we have now at 120s mark but at least you’d get to use your support a bit more actively.

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That's true, so long as everything "aligns", it would not matter for balance purposes whether someone has a 120s burst CD, or a 30s, or even a 240s. So long as the potency numbers and all scale properly to account for the increase respectively decrease in burst windows and the relative gain from alignment, it could all be numerically balanced but feel distinct. I mean in virtually all ways Pallies are on a 60s burst cycle, not 120s.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

Tbf, only in parse culture does the party killing something 10s before yet another of an individual's burst cycle (i.e., in less time) seem a bad thing...

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Maybe fflogs should start ranking individuals on speed and not damage... Maybe.

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Originally Posted by Valence

Maybe fflogs should start ranking individuals on speed and not damage... Maybe.

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They could, but then you'd be even more directly ranking individuals based on their teams. /shrug

For my part, I'd just like to see it based on relative potency (with Crit chance counted proportionately each strike instead of only on crits but stat options counted), as to not count differences in gear-based primary stat or Crit luck.

Imagine being ranked by team in a team based game. Rip PF players I guess.

But that should already tell all there is to say about the competitive/ranking part of fflogs...

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Originally Posted by Valence

Imagine being ranked by team in a team based game. Rip PF players I guess.

But that should already tell all there is to say about the competitive/ranking part of fflogs...

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I think the point being raised here is that it'd be like aDPS, a metric that depends heavily on party comp compared to rDPS (which still does but to a lesser degree). It's happened before, the best speed times were often with BLM in EW, for instance, but the best rDPS numbers didn't necessarily have to be so since SMN had good buff contribution in 15s buffs.

I'm just curious if there's a way that when a PCT draws their motifs when unable to target an enemy, that the damage is reduced when used. Say Unable to look at the object, the PCT draws it from memory, hence will not be as potent as when able to draw it when looking directly at it.

So when they draw it during fights normally the potency is more justified and doesn't affect it unless it's during downtime

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Originally Posted by Aco505

I think the point being raised here is that it'd be like aDPS, a metric that depends heavily on party comp compared to rDPS (which still does but to a lesser degree). It's happened before, the best speed times were often with BLM in EW, for instance, but the best rDPS numbers didn't necessarily have to be so since SMN had good buff contribution in 15s buffs.

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And this is where people finally start seeing the light and understand that no matter the metric, fflog will heavily bias ranking toward specific, different metas emerging for different metrics.
Still, my original reaction was to the comment that current rankings tend to favor delays for specific kill times, which feels kind of funny when one thinks about it. You're holding the kill. For a better number.

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Originally Posted by Valence

And this is where people finally start seeing the light and understand that no matter the metric, fflog will heavily bias ranking toward specific, different metas emerging for different metrics.
Still, my original reaction was to the comment that current rankings tend to favor delays for specific kill times, which feels kind of funny when one thinks about it. You're holding the kill. For a better number.

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No metric is perfect or will ever be, but they're the best thing we have. Each of them tells a different story and is going to thrive in different environments. Since FFXIV's battle content tends to be fights against one boss or gauntlet of bosses one after the other in Ultimates, this is how we can check balance. In another game like WoW, the differences are noted depending on encounter type (Patchwerk, cleave, spread cleave, adds, etc.).

Metrics are simply a tool to help us analyze. A useful tool; they cannot be looked individually in a vacuum but overall and compared with each other. It is also important to note that all metrics from that website were created due to community suggestion.

DNC, BRD, AST.