The argument"MCH/Bard have utility so their damage should be lower"

[Panasync]

I think ...

If they wanted to strictly hobble Bard DPS they could have edited BRD only abilities. They nerfed the abilities as CC across the board, not just on Bard, so to state that they did it strictly to hobble bard means you were either told that by the dev team or you're making assumptions that fit your opinion.

Potential is irrelevant...

No it's not irrelevant, it's the main point. Jobs being played at their maximum can do, this, then compare them. If you're telling me that shitty bards can do better than shit melee/casters, that's an issue with the players, not the jobs. We're arguing about the jobs capabilities.

As I see it -...

Bards are punished by a flat % on their damage when the majority of their songs are used, that should be punishment enough. No other jobs with support abilities are punished for using them.

[Viviza]

No it's not irrelevant, it's the main point.

It's irrelevant because these hypothetical numbers don't play out in practice. If they did, you would see mathamagicians work out the absolute best DPS potential for every job, and you would see figures close to this in every fight. You could make an ironclad statement about the damage potential of every job.

But it doesn't work this way. Every fight has unique mechanics and issues for every job. If monks lose stacks it hurts them a lot. Fights like ravana are fantastic for jobs like BLM because of the dedicated burn phases and their ability to disregard his reflection shields. But on fights with lots of movement BLM suffer terribly. These are the numbers that matter, and they vary wildly on an encounter-by-encounter basis.

Potential does have it's merits though.

Only in the very most general sense of getting a feel for what you are capable of doing, for purposes of improving a rotation for example. My point is that it's the figures in the fights that matter, because the point is to kill internet dragons, not produce numbers.

[Panasync]

It's irre...

Sorry for the late response...

That being said if you don't want to talk potential you have to show parses of two equally skilled players doing the absolute maximum or there is literally no way to know how they compare, unless, you guessed it, you do the math and show potential. I will take either, but you cannot show two equally skilled players, who is judging? How do you know? The reason we use potentials and math is to take those issues out of the equation. Once we know the potentials of the jobs we an easily see and adjust to how it will translate into actual fights.

People posting parses on dummies are attempting to show the jobs potential, they're not fighting dummies and dodging fake AoE's to simulate an actual battle. Another reason we HAVE to use just math in this case is because we don't have a 2.0 server with 2.0 jobs, and since we don't you can't just make up claims you have no evidence for other than anecdotal.