1. I don't think the 3 subroles of dps have much identity after shadowbringers. They all exist purely to deal damage and mechanics meant for specific roles to handle can usually be handled be other roles. Look at the extra viper used for m6s gimmie cat instead of phys range.
2. Jobs within the same subrole have their personal damage output balanced around if they have team wide damage buffs or other utilities like reapers regen. This makes jobs like samurai and viper have high personal damage and jobs like ninja and dragoon be a bit lower but the dps they contribute to other's personal damage is supposed to (but not always) make up for it.
3. Melee has been overly catered to over 3 expansions. They have the most jobs and consistently have higher damage while bringing just as much utility as the other jobs in other dps subroles. Is there any reason for black mage, pictomancer or machinist to not be more inline with Melee with the current encounter design? The 4th dps slot should be a flex spot for any role not just melees 99% of the time. We had picto being a viable choice until people cried for nerfs because it dared overshadow their precious Melee mc complex. Shadowbringers removed resistance down from jobs with the purpose of less restrictions for team building but ironically that made every comp 1 phys range 1 caster 2 Melee. In stormblood you could see stuff ranging from dragoon, bard, machinist and summoner to double caster with summoner and black mage.
This may not sound like a big deal but it exasperated certain jobs getting locked out of their role slot. When machinist is strong nobody brings bard/dancer and machinist personal damage is t high enough to bring it to the flex slot anymore. Machinist is selfish and would love to use the buffs the other phys ranged brings but it literally can't. The casters had 1 window where red mage picto was strong but now that's gone and we're back to melee walker. The current role restrictions on party comps is going to make certain jobs always feel problematic.
My proposal would be to normalize the rdps of ALL the dps or throw out the current role restrictions. Double ranged shouldn't suck for no reason.
Help me understand why dps can't be closer in damage output
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09-21-2025, 08:32 AMReginald_CainHelp me understand why dps can't be closer in damage output
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09-21-2025, 06:15 PMValence
The stated reason from the devs has always been that they do balance jobs around effort vs damage output. They do consider ranged physical jobs, jobs on training wheels because they do not have to deal with uptime considerations and that they also bring more party utility than others, yet do not want to give them more involved rotations or class mechanics to make up for it. They also do consider SMN through a similar lens (since SMN is a rphys in disguise). Then they start adding more arbitrary considerations notably for RDM that's widely considered those days one of the hardest casters to play, especially since the BLM simplifications, where they justify that the job brings too much value with raises and heals for it to compete directly on damage with BLM and PCT.
Why are jobs like VPR at the top even though they require zero effort? Idk, you tell me. It's just the devs being ultra conservative and biased in their choices if anything. Sometimes they feel completely out of touch with things, much like when they thought adding gil to the rare chests in OC had somehow any value, so that's pretty much the vibe they've always given me with this as well. -
09-22-2025, 06:53 AMRaikaiI'd fully expect RDM to be on top of the DPS charts in 8.0 if we follow their logic and if they make Phoenix Down availabe to the rest of the duties, lol!Quote:
Originally Posted by Valence
I was shocked how BLM became easier than RDM and PCT, and yet it's often the best DPS in the charts according to the log sites. Even in AoE dungeon scenarios now that you don't usually have to use the High aoe spells anymore. -
09-22-2025, 08:45 AMaiqa
BLM and VPR completely invalidate the difficulty argument. It always seemed like a weird reason for the design, but it's now completely obvious they just used it as a post hoc argument.
And even if they wanted difficulty based performance, I don't see a good reason why only rotation and ranged related difficulties should count. If you want top parses for BRD/DNC your whole team needs to perform well, and you need a specific composition. For SAM/VPR/BLM you just need yourself. That is an added difficulty layer. If they want difficulty based performance, that should count too... but doesn't.
In modern fight design, melee is not in significantly more danger than ranged classes.
And caster classes have a lot of mobility options these days.
Resurrect on casters is now less useful than ever, and there is a clear path towards completely removing that anyway.
So imo, there is no good reason for the different damage tiers inside the dps role. -
09-22-2025, 02:10 PMShyxx
Because they have some kind of arbitrary "difficulty tax" saying VPR for example is harder than BRD because its melee which is ridiculous. I have a friend who wants to play DNC but cant because he cant keep track of procs while doing harder fights. Difficulty is subjective and balancing around it is dumb which is why no other game does that
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09-22-2025, 05:13 PMCarighan
The problem is not that they cannot be closer, they are. I don't get the request. We're currently looking at +/-6% damage output, which while not perfect (5% was a common variance to aim for in WoW for many years) is also not far apart at all, giving a maximum 14% between top and bottom. Which is given how FFXIV fights are designed far far far below the DPS check. That's the other thing, DPS checks in FFXIV are... mild, to put it, well, mildly. DPS output balance is nearly meaningless comparing other MMORPGs because it's tested so rarely. It's always a huge deal when it matters as a result, but that's more because it's so rare.
However, separate from the "why isn't our output closer", I guess we should ask "Why are the three sub-roles of DPS designed so badly as sub-roles?" to which I'd answer: think bigger, no class or role in FFXIV is well-designed, on account of the long GCD + significant netcode delay prohibiting good design and hence the devs opting to shove gameplay design into the encounters, not the classes.
It could be improved, but can you imagine the tear-floods if melees lost significant uptime like in older MMOs because being in melee reach is genuinely dangerous, or casters constantly lost 30%-50% of their casts to movement, having virtually no tools to continue while moving (their whole deal)? And in return, when standing still both did 50%++ more damage than others? Imagine how unbalanced that would be for any individual fight, and that's what MMOs used to be like before due to constant player feedback about "Muh damaaaaaage!!!" every edge got sanded off and class/role identities largely eroded.
I play long enough to know when you swapped DPS ideally for every fight. Of course most did not, but you could significantly lower the difficulty of fights if you went from 15 of class X to 10 of Y + 5 or Z for the next one, etc etc. Far more because there wasn't such a small +/- 6% gap, there was often a 50%++ damage increase from one class to the other. And some classes also worked mechanically different, for example in some older MMOs it was assumed that pet classes would not be brought to large AoE-fights because well, their pets took full AoE damage and were not affected by most heals or defensive skills and you had to manually maneuver them around GTAoEs anyways. This was just part of the expected design until WoW reduced pets to external DoTs with model graphics that also fired abilities every X seconds like some form of autoattack. You could trivially remove them at that point at no loss of functionality, but that stuck, see FFXIV now having done the same with Summoners and Scholars. Was this good? IMO no, but I can totally see why the previous design was also disliked by many people, if you were a pet class, good luck doing a whole slew of fights. -
09-22-2025, 05:21 PMCarighanBecause the devs for some reason consider VPR much tougher to play than we players do - or than it is.Quote:
Originally Posted by Valence
Or alternatively, it might be that they considered that you can't be too apt if you think the "dude with 2 swords"-design is in itself "cool" so they had to plan the job for that? -
09-22-2025, 11:47 PMKeichi
Arent the dps very close in dmg?
Its a while, that i looked at a table. But, isnt the difference of the top to the bottom only around 1 to 3%?
Its seems allways for me much closer, as in many other mmo. -
09-23-2025, 04:51 AMaiqaEasy to check really. Just go to fflogs and look at the recent savage tier. People generally use upper quartile as a good way to look at job performance.Quote:
Originally Posted by Keichi
Top is for "all bosses" is DRG at about 33.2k rDPS
Bottom is DNC at about 29.8k rDPS
So DRG rDPS is about 11% higher than DNC. That is to big difference in my opinion. -
09-23-2025, 03:38 PMCarighanIt's 5.5%, when I checked yesterday it was closer to 6% (keep in mind imbalance is done from the median where everyone would ideally be, not from top to bottom).Quote:
Originally Posted by aiqa
It's a bit high, but it's also still quite close, in particular given the comparatively high number of damage classes this game has. Other games have specs and the like, but they generally do not balance except for a "target spec", GW2 in particular is extreme about this with millions of possible specs for a single class but the devs only look at a handful of particular traits and abilities to even balance at all, nevermind balance against other classes.
WoW for a long time aimed for a 5% imbalance or less, in which case yeah, this is too much. I agree in that regard. OTOH in any game before WoW and its massive success of modern-day inclusive raiding where all classes can participate instead of some being intentionally designed for different content, anything below a 50%++ difference would be "eh, close enough!". There was in fact a funny moment somewhere early WoW Cataclysm where the community started focusing on <3% imbalance instead of <5%, and the devs were caught off-guard by it. -
09-23-2025, 05:18 PMaiqaExplain how you got to 6%. People generally use upper quartile to get a "when it's played properly, but not optimized to the extreme" score. And 75th percentile is also the default when looking looking at the "entire tier" scores. So no idea why you claim median should be the default, but median is about the same difference anyway so it doesn't even really matter.Quote:
Originally Posted by Carighan
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09-23-2025, 05:23 PMCarighan
No I meant 6% from the median between the different jobs. In an idealized world you'd nerf the top performing class by 5.5% (in your numbers) and boost the lowest performing class by 5.5% and everyone else according to their divergence from the point where those two outliers have now met. Making everyone have the exact same DPS output, in the middle of what was formerly the spread.
Although in the real world companies need to pick their battles so most (non-SQEX, who hates easy solutions) would pick the top and the bottom performer each patch and nerf the former while boosting the latter. This'll leave the former 2nd best and 2nd worst as the biggest outliers for next patch, but it also means you only got two calsses to focus on each patch. And if you somehow cause secondary effects making for an unplanned extreme outlier, it'll automatically get selected next patch.
To apply this to FFXIV, next patch would buff Dancer by ~1600 rDPS, while nerfing Dragoon by the same amount. -
09-23-2025, 05:32 PMaiqa
Ah I see, but even then it's not 6%. Keep in mind we are talking about median (middle value), not the mean (sum divided by n). There are 13 dps jobs, making the 7th job the median score. Which is RPR.
RPR at "all bosses", upper quartile = 32595
DNC at "all bosses", upper quartile = 29810
29810/32595=0.9145
In that sense DRG is fine.
DRG at "all bosses", upper quartile = 33242
33242/32595=1.0198 -
09-23-2025, 05:46 PMCarighan
Aaah, sorry, I totally missed that part. Yeah I should not have used median, I keep confusing the two. >.<
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09-23-2025, 08:41 PMValence
You're comparing apples to oranges. XIV doesn't have many variables beyond damage, and predictable scripted models of encounters and deterministic rotations for most of them without any customizable talents or builds. Everybody plays with the same buttons without any rng beyond a minority of jobs. This 5% or whatever the number is, is not there by margin of error, but by design.
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09-23-2025, 11:39 PMShaneDawn
Various reasons have been given in the past as to why they decided to start pushing this balancing philosophy, but ultimately it probably boils down to making sure players are encouraged to bring two melee dps over anything else. Justifications such as "difficulty" or "friction" are hard to take seriously when jobs like Viper and the current iteration of Black Mage are performing strong, or when jobs like Bard are fairly weak compared to the effort to get the most out of it.
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09-23-2025, 11:55 PMaiqaI don't see why you should not have used median. Median is a fine way to look at these things.Quote:
Originally Posted by Carighan
And when looking at the mean, that is still not "5.5%, or closer to 6%".
DRK 33237
MNK 33125
BLM 33077
VPR 33014
NIN 32917
SAM 32863
RPR 32593
PCT 31799
RDM 31246
SMN 31044
MCH 30619
BRD 30038
DNC 29813
Mean 415385/13 = 31952.69231
DNC deviation from the mean = 29813 / 31952.69 = 0.933
So DNC deviates -6.7% from than mean, or -8.5% from the median. -
12-14-2025, 07:35 PMNightHour
Because Melee players will throw a tantrum because they don't have the best damage in the game as well as the best limit break in the game against bosses.
The average Melee player will come up with arguments like this to defend the damage difference -
- I have to stay close to the boss to keep up damage
- I don't have freedom of movement
- I have to fight for and optimize my uptime
- Ranged bring raid buffs and utility, melee bring damage!1
Quote:
"I have to stay close to the boss to keep up damage" and "I have to fight for and optimize my uptime"
No you don't.
Yoshi-P has said in the past that they design mechanics for boss fights with melee uptime in mind.
99% of boss mechanics in this game resolve at max melee range, you don't need to fight for uptime, cut the cap.
For the rest of mechanics, strategies that come out are designed with uptime in mind.
The only thing you need to do is read your tooltips and realise which ability requires you to be behind the boss and which one requires you to be at it's side.
In the rare case you're forced off a boss, unless you're a monk you have a ranged attack.Quote:
"I don't have freedom of movement"
Some damage is better than sitting there like a lemon.
I'm sorry but.... What is Brotherhood, Arcane Circle, Dokumori, Battle Litany?Quote:
Ranged bring raid buffs and utility, melee bring damage!1
What is Feint, Arcane Crest, Mantra?
Raid buffs and Utility!
All but 2 melee bring a raid buff, every melee brings Feint. -
12-14-2025, 10:34 PMBrandrThis is the most accurate answer.Quote:
Originally Posted by Carighan
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12-15-2025, 01:50 AMbrinn12
When it comes to FFXIV, sometimes things just don't make sense. We had bosses the size of an entire arena in Endwalker, yet even if melees missed every positional, they would still likely be ahead of Physical Ranged. At most, they'd lose maybe 1 GCD per minute if they played well. In TOP, which many consider the hardest fight in the game, the only mechanic I can remember giving melees trouble was Pantokrator.
Maybe this is just meant to enforce their vision of the game. There are more melee jobs than the other 2 roles, so Physical Ranged and raise taxes will always exist. This also seems to be a trend with newly released and reworked jobs: they're pushed ahead of the curve early so more people will play them. Obviously, this does the game more harm than good, since people are forced to play specific jobs in raids, when one of the game's main appeals is that you can play every job on a single character. We also have roles that are losing players, such as Healer and Physical Ranged.
When players once tried to shift the meta away from that vision, Physical Ranged was buried to make sure it wouldn't happen again. You can also see this in Dawntrail, where we effectively had only 1 strong caster at a time, even though both should be on the same level, according to Yoshi-P. In an ideal world, taxes would be around 5%. -
12-15-2025, 06:28 AMZakuyia
its funny cause in other games range dps is just as respected as melee dps. This game literally only ever favors melee. Tanks - Mount / Title Melee DPS - Bonus Damage based on you using your skills right Magical DPS - Blm Deals allot of damage i wonder why??????? Range DPS - LMAO doesnt really need to be used if your team is smart.
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12-15-2025, 08:16 AMCatastrophe573
Melee: But I have positionals!
On what, normal dungeon trash mobs? All the raid bosses are wall bosses or huge circles.
You have two charges of True North.
You could miss every positional and still beat phys ranged.
Melee: I need more HP because "I'm in the melee".
Maybe back in 3.0 when this game had TP? Nobody gets hit randomly. All autos go to the tank, even in dungeon trash. All boss damage is scheduled. As a healer I will sit basically on the boss during normal raids to maximize range. Nobody gets hit more than anyone else.
Melee: I don't have free movement.
Yeah actually you do. I don't see any cast bars. What I do see are melee players constantly dancing around in a zig-zag pattern. Partially because they can, partially for positionals.
Melee: Ranged have buffs, Melee has damage.
Neither is impressive. The buff classes merely press one extra button every 2 minutes.
If anything doesn't this mean the buff classes are harder to play? Their drift affects everyone.
Melee: My class is harder to play.
Ninja, with failed ten-chi-jin: yes.
Viper, with auto-combo: no!
So I'll pick a middle example. RPR has two gauges to manage. Like RDM and MCH. -
12-15-2025, 08:34 AMCatastrophe573
Bonus hot take that no one asked for: casters have the highest skill expression in this game. With casters, the faster you get at reading and pre-positioning for mechanics, the faster you can plant, and the more GCDs you can send. Plus slidecasting is real. It is way easier to keep your GCD rolling on melees and phys ranged. Considering that casters are also the squishiest (for no good design reason other than stereotypes) I can't believe it isn't the casters on top.
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12-15-2025, 08:57 PMNightHourLiterally every melee has a defensive ability too, except Dragoon and Viper.Quote:
Originally Posted by Catastrophe573
Dragoon has more health than other melees to account for the lack of defensive cooldown.
Samurai has Tengetsu aka Third Eye.
Monk has Riddle of Earth
Reaper has Arcane Crest
Ninja has Shade Shift which is basically TBN.
Let's not forget they also have Second Wind, Bloodbath and Feint.
The only difference is they have to find which ability requires them to be behind the boss or at the side of the boss.Quote:
Melee: My class is harder to play.
Which takes a whole 30 seconds of reading tooltips.
WOW such difficulty!
The only jobs in this game that I'd consider "hard to play" would be Astrologian and maybe Ninja.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Zakuyia
In World of Warcraft for example -
A well played Ranged can beat a poor played melee.
A well played melee can beat a poor played ranged.
In XIV - The melee wins by default even if they play like shit.
There's only 2 ways a melee loses to a ranged.
1. The ranged is a competent Black Mage
2. The Melee has a brink of death and a damage down.
The difference between DPS classes should be 2-3% at most, not the 6-10% it is right now.
Look at the tanks, now gunbreaker lost like 1-2% dps in exchange for a change that makes the class feel better to play... Tanks are so damn balanced between each other, they're probably the most balanced archetype along with healers.