Wanderer’s Minuet, Gauss Barrel and Positive Gameplay Additions

[Raist]

You can't compare them directly dummy parse VS dummy parse due to this, because the moment you add 2+ Mobs then BRD/MCN DPS raises so much, and the Potency/second Ratio with WM/GB On VS Off skyrockets.

Umm...you can do AOE tests with the dummies too. The point is to be doing your comparisons in a controlled environment...or at least with as much control as you can. The dummies make it really easy too since you don't need third party parsers. They all start at 100%, and you compare how many you take down and then how low the last cycle is when the time is up.

Pre-58 it can be a tight comparison...and even after completig things to 60 it almost requires you to be slamming everything you've got in the kit in the right rotation to keep a double digit lead percentage wise. Slip up, and you may find yourself in the 6% range...a little more out of synch and you cross into a difference more akin to making better choices in gear or food.


Alternatively, SE could have given us Valor Minuet as a flat boost to attack for self and members in range and given us the extra skills and basically not forced a different (and less forgiving) play style after nearly two years and 50+ levels of gameplay.

[Judge_Xero]

Unless I'm looking at it wrong, they're still behind the true dps jobs (even for the occasional ninja, but they in general are incredibly under-represented due to the current meta like MCH/PLD) by a good amount on all the fights. And even with FFlogs, it shows the incredible outliers on all jobs, and even with that it still has BRD/MCH still being a bit under other jobs on average even under ideal circumstances of multi-dotting or dealing with no mechanics. While it's not directly 20% (because I've used this as a broad example, it's closer to around 10-15%) it's still lower overall damage on average given the best circumstances (assuming every group runs this log).

I think some of the issue though is that people are comparing FCOB Bard to 1st Alexander Bard. Because of the level cap and new gear, BRD is starting back at that lower Crit Tier, which would be similar to a First Coil comparison. People do not give Crit on BRD enough credit, but it lessened the gap between BRD and Melee DPS by ~ 10-15% between First Coil and Final Coil, with gear progression.

So with the level cap, BRD went from ~50%+ Crit Rating, to ~25% @ i210.

First Coil had BRD at ~20% on average, lower than Melee. First Alexander has BRD @ as you correctly stated 10-15%. For most fights it is closer to 10% other than A3S. So you can imagine the trend we will see with further Crit on gear.

Most of the best players seem to use fflogs, which is probably the best representation of job performance.

Umm...you can do AOE tests with the dummies too. The point is to be doing your comparisons in a controlled environment...or at least with as much control as you can. The dummies make it really easy too since you don't need third party parsers. They all start at 100%, and you compare how many you take down and then how low the last cycle is when the time is up.

Pre-58 it can be a tight comparison...and even after completig things to 60 it almost requires you to be slamming everything you've got in the kit in the right rotation to keep a double digit lead percentage wise. Slip up, and you may find yourself in the 6% range...a little more out of synch and you cross into a difference more akin to making better choices in gear or food.


Alternatively, SE could have given us Valor Minuet as a flat boost to attack for self and members in range and given us the extra skills and basically not forced a different (and less forgiving) play style after nearly two years and 50+ levels of gameplay.

Of course you could do AOE Dummy tests, but that still is not representative of actual fights. The only environment where class performance really matters is endgame. So there is no need for a tightly controlled environment when you can look at the DPS values of endgame Raiders to see how much closer things are. The rest of what you are saying I can't really understand, the point you are trying to get across.

[raela]

Or if you're spamming an ability while waiting for GCD, on some occasions, it will clip the GCD, forcing you to recast it (a loss of .5sec or so). Sometimes, this mishap will cause you to lose out on timing IJ, meaning you'll have to reapply your DoTs one by one. It's such a weird situation, one that I've never experienced with the other casting jobs.

If I understood this correctly, then it does happen to me on sch/blm when lagging. About 25% into a cast it'll say something like "can't use this skill right now" and cancel it. I think I've also had it happen on melee combos. Thankfully, my connection is rarely that bad, but yeah.. Odd GCD handling.

[RiceisNice]

...

I think it's because we both trying to get points across that's missing the mark or context. On my end, I'm seeing you say "BRD dps isn't that far off and it's really close to melee". I'm personally fine with our DPS the way it is, but I don't see your point being made when I look through the logs and still see that BRDs on average are still behind true-dps in relative sense that's the same as FCoB days.

The gear thing, you have to keep in perspective of the itemization of everything. Whether its because they have no crit or not, that comes down to what the gear itself carries (and whether or not crit is even feasible if it keeps getting paired with say, too much or not enough accuracy). If a job becomes so contingent on secondary stats for their dps to be optimal and the itemization doesn't allow for it, it becomes a bad design at a specific point when we get gear that does not cater to those stats. And even then, it's also a huge assumption to think that our stats will the same as it did in 2.0 as our ilvl goes up at cap.

[Raist]

Of course you could do AOE Dummy tests, but that still is not representative of actual fights. The only environment where class performance really matters is endgame. So there is no need for a tightly controlled environment when you can look at the DPS values of endgame Raiders to see how much closer things are. The rest of what you are saying I can't really understand, the point you are trying to get across.

For a proper comparison you need to make sure your are testing in a controlled environment. You want to be comparing results against a consistent target...one that is only being affected by your job. When you get into a party environment against an active foe, you are up against inconsistent variables...things like buffs and debuffs that go up and down from actions out of your control. Such things have potential to dramatically skew results.

By using something like a test dummy you have a static target with static stats until you put up your job/class specific buffs/debuffs. Trying to do a comparison otherwise is risking corruption of the data because of how another job's kit (or the target itself) may be augmenting the target's state.

You want an objective comparison of just your job based on it's own merits or shortcomings. What you proposed is open to a lot of outside influence and thus prone to inconsistency.

The rest is echoing what has been stated before. Until you unlock most (if not all) of the kit, it is hard to perceive a direct positive impact on performance. The fact that rotations in WM are far less forgiving than without just compounds the matter further. So it isn't just about WM causing the problem, but the difficulty in properly integrating everything else with it up. The flow is considerably more difficult to manage under WM than without, and that is causing more harm than good for the perception of the job at this point in it's evolution. This was not the case with most of the other jobs.

If SE had opted to boost BRD like they did other jobs by simply giving them a song/ability that boosted the job on a timer or other limited resource (or more of what the job already does like positionals) , it would have played out far better over all. And if it was an AOE (a la a traditional song of valor to boost party members), it could have shifted a little more focus to BRD utility in the support category...something that has been lacking for a while now.

[CosmicKirby]

If, instead, BRDs and MCHs were at 85% or 90% of a melee's damage at level 60 with WM/GB active, they'd feel like they had *gained* something for giving up their mobility. Since their relative DPS hasn't increased, they feel as though they gave up something and got nothing in return except a different playstyle that they probably don't enjoy (if they were the sort of players that enjoyed cast time mechanics for DPS, they'd probably already be focusing on BLM or SMN)

And honestly. If they had outright come and said it, if they had just said, "We're giving BRDs/MCHs Cast times because we don't like your mobility." I would have felt way better about the whole thing. I mean, a nerf is a nerf is a nerf, and I'd disagree with them on the issue, but I'd take it and move on.

The problem for me is, that this was supposed to be a new toy to play with. This is a new ability that carries drastic and persistent downsides with it, contrary to virtually every other ability in the game. Much less, it feels like Square just completely scrapped cool ideas for MCH, they went on at length about how cool "attachments" were supposed to be, just for them to amount into a nerf. (An identical in every single way ability for both classes)

[Alahra]

Fights outside of being single boss tank + spank, BRD/MCN is nearly on par with melee DPS.

I decided to take a look. Percentages below are based on the average DPS for the top 30 of each class listed. Taking averages is helpful for direct comparisons especially because of BRD’s reliance on random procs for DPS spikes, which can lead to some outliers. NIN is not included below because direct comparisons are difficult for them since Trick Attack counts for “their” damage in a sense, which means we can’t see a NIN’s “true” DPS. (The same is arguably true for DRG because of Battle Litany, but their DPS is generally still on par with MNK so they’re useful as a second data point). I stopped at 30 samples because that’s as many samples for MCH as there are available on Manipulator. These are just rough figures, don't take them as the gospel truth.

Alexander numbers are from the Savage versions of the fight.

Oppressor

• BRD: ~1319 DPS
• MCH: ~1215 DPS
• MNK: ~1369 DPS
• DRG: ~1361 DPS
• SMN: ~1349 DPS*

As suggested, multidotting does a lot to help BRD here. They’re only about 5% behind DRG and MNK. MCH doesn’t do as well (because their single DoT is less useful for multidotting) and is about 10% behind them.

SMN is included here just for point of reference, as they’re fairly capable of multidotting as well, and we can see that Oppressor is *very* friendly to BRD as a result.

Cuff of the Father

• BRD: ~1773 DPS
• MCH: ~1621 DPS
• MNK: ~1938 DPS
• DRG: ~1742 DPS

BRD slightly surpasses DRG here (which is to be expected on an AoE heavy fight), and they’re about 10% behind MNK. As with Oppressor, MCH doesn’t fare as well, coming in below DRG and almost 20% below MNK.

Living Liquid

• BRD: ~1170 DPS
• MCH: ~1123 DPS
• MNK: ~1339 DPS
• DRG: ~1296 DPS

There’s still some potential for multi-dotting here, but not to the degree available in AS1 and AS2. Both BRD and MCH are about 10% behind the two main melee classes, which isn’t near as extreme as the 20% I was assuming.

The Manipulator

• BRD: ~1102 DPS
• MCH: ~1021 DPS
• MNK: ~1424 DPS
• DRG: ~1359 DPS

The differences here are more pronounced, as should probably be expected, since Manipulator is primarily a single-target fight. BRD is just about 20% below DRG and almost 25% below MNK here. Far fewer MCHs are clearing the fight than BRDs so their average is likely lower as a result of that. With more samples, we could probably safely assume that MCH would be at about the same position as BRD, though probably a little lower based on other fights.

Ravana EX

• BRD: ~813 DPS
• MCH: ~687 DPS
• MNK: ~982 DPS
• DRG: ~933 DPS

Samples for Ravana are spread out over a longer period of time for the top 30 (some of which are prior to the MNK damage increase, I believe), so these numbers aren’t as useful as the ones from Savage. However, I consider them relevant because a much larger portion of the playerbase has done Ravana than is attempting Savage Alexander. BRD is on average almost 20% behind MNK and a bit over 10% behind DRG. As with Manipulator, there are fewer samples for MCH here, so their number is probably somewhat low.

This post is already overlong, so I won’t also go into numbers from Alexander Normal (though a cursory glance suggests the breakdowns are about the same).

With varied fights taken into account, the general difference between BRD/MCH and DRG/MNK tends to hover around 10%, rather than the 20% ballpark I gave and have used prior to now in the thread. That does mean they’ve gained some, at least at the highest echelons of play, relative to their assumed position at level 50. I wanted to include numbers from FCOB for comparison, but it seems that FFLogs no longer tracks them. They may have been further behind than 20% or closer than 20% to the other physical DPS in FCOB, but unfortunately, I’m not aware of any substantial databases for FCOB that would be of use here.

For single target fights, BRD and MCH are further behind, and this has probably contributed to the perception that the gap is farther than it is in reality, as the community tends to look at single-target DPS and dummy DPS more often than they do multi-target scenarios, which results in an overly narrow viewpoint.

That being said, I’m glad to be proven wrong on the number—they’re higher than I’d believed them to be (though MCH seems to be doing notably a bit worse than BRD). My overall feeling that Wanderer’s Minuet and Gauss Barrel could stand to be better in and of themselves in terms of design still remains, but the “numbers” part of my argument (at least at 60) was based on incorrect assumptions, for sure.

And honestly. If they had outright come and said it, if they had just said, "We're giving BRDs/MCHs Cast times because we don't like your mobility." I would have felt way better about the whole thing. I mean, a nerf is a nerf is a nerf, and I'd disagree with them on the issue, but I'd take it and move on.

I agree--I think if the developers had said they felt BRD was too mobile and wanted to change that, the overall sentiment would be quite different. Then we would know that WM and GB weren't *intended* to be new toys, but rather a tool by which to balance an area of the classes that were too strong in the developers' minds. We don't know if that's what they intended them for, of course, so at the moment, it's probably safer that they intended for us to be excited about them. If that is in fact true, there are still some issues with implementation, as there's not much that's very exciting about a 5-10% relative DPS increase in return for the acceptance of mobility-limiting and "flow-inhibiting" mechanical changes that the two stances provide.

[RiceisNice]

If SE had opted to boost BRD like they did other jobs by simply giving them a song/ability that boosted the job on a timer or other limited resource (or more of what the job already does like positionals) , it would have played out far better over all. And if it was an AOE (a la a traditional song of valor to boost party members), it could have shifted a little more focus to BRD utility in the support category...something that has been lacking for a while now.

Numbers aside, this is my primary ache with BRD/MCH as it's what the topic is trying to encompass. I'd be fine with cast times (although putting it on both jobs is pushing it a bit) if that was not all there is to it. Like the attachment thing I brought up a w hile back, it could have been tuned to significantly increase TP cost and cast times but your dps as well, turning BRD into a job that has to actively manage their TP (and then they'd gain skills that give them a net-gain in TP regen, something to replace paeon for example). Having to actively manage your resources is a hell lot more exciting than slapping cast times ( a concept that already exists on casters) on a job that doens't have it.

I agree--I think if the developers had said they felt BRD was too mobile and wanted to change that, the overall sentiment would be quite different. Then we would know that WM and GB weren't *intended* to be new toys, but rather a tool by which to balance an area of the classes that were too strong in the developers' minds. We don't know if that's what they intended them for, of course, so at the moment, it's probably safer that they intended for us to be excited about them. If that is in fact true, there are still some issues with implementation, as there's not much that's very exciting about a 5-10% relative DPS increase in return for the acceptance of mobility-limiting and "flow-inhibiting" mechanical changes that the two stances provide.

If you try to sum up everything the jobs gained in 3.0...

Warrior - We got a DPS stance, a 500 potency hit and a 1300 potency self-cure.
Paladin - We got damage shields, guaranteed block and non-enmity combos
Black Mages - We got enochian to buff our damage, the means to keep it up 100% of the time, and a mechanic that requires us to add an extra layer of complexity to astral/umbral (refreshing enochian and maintain astral since IV doesn't refresh it)
Dragoon - We got BotD to buff our jump damage, the means to maximize uptime, and a skill to lower the duration since we don't waste uptime.
Ninja - We got enmity reducing skills and a skill to extension our huton, allowing us to use an extra damage ninjitsu. We also gained positionals so we cannot stay on the rear the entire time.
Monk - We got better means to maintain, build and use up GL3 for the times that bosses decide to bugger off, as well as ways to minimize our downtime due to the loss of GL3.
BRD - We got cast times and a couple of oGCDs. The cast time also interfere with our 2.0 traits.

Taking that for face value, BRD really did not get much added that improved their gameflow or otherwise "evolved" their character, but instead their implementation actually works against their 2.0 counterpart due to the nature of oGCD weaving and BL resets. The other job that arguably "lost" something was NIN not being able sit on the rear the entire time and still maintain full dps, but even then if they hadn't added a positional to aeolin, AC would still have a positional on top of extending hueton timer. I can't make an example for MCH, DRK and AST because they had no 2.0 counterpart, but they, for the most part, come with their own niche that may or may not work (specifically AST's overall lower healing potency and debatable support, and DRK if they were to up PLD's dps and make encounters cater to physical mitigation), while others just don't do much except get mirrored by an existing job by having the same functional abilties (MCH and BRD)

[Alahra]

Taking that for face value, BRD really did not get much added that improved their gameflow or otherwise "evolved" their character, but instead their implementation actually works against their 2.0 counterpart due to the nature of oGCD weaving and BL resets.

Pretty much, yes. MCH is, honestly, in a similar boat. It has a similar load of oGCD use (especially now with Quick Reload on a 15-second cooldown) to that of BRD, and the difference between playing MCH at 50 and with GB at 60 is comparable to that between BRD at 50 and BRD at 60 with WM. MCH tends to "flow" a little better, as their proc system for the main combos seems to update client side better than Straighter Shot does for BRD, and they don't have something like Bloodletter that constantly resets, but a lot of the oGCD awkwardness is still there.

[RiceisNice]

Pretty much, yes. MCH is, honestly, in a similar boat. It has a similar load of oGCD use (especially now with Quick Reload on a 15-second cooldown) to that of BRD, and the difference between playing MCH at 50 and with GB at 60 is comparable to that between BRD at 50 and BRD at 60 with WM. MCH tends to "flow" a little better, as their proc system for the main combos seems to update client side better than Straighter Shot does for BRD, and they don't have something like Bloodletter that constantly resets, but a lot of the oGCD awkwardness is still there.

Honestly there is no oGCD awkwardness for MCH imo because you don't have an oGCD that resets it's cooldown, or otherwise an oGCD that has a cast time. Any time you double up or otherwise clip into your weaponskill, it boils down to your fault for hitting two oGCDs in one weaponskill. BRD can't help it when they have an oGCD that resets it's cooldown and a oGCD cast time that's also 1.5 seconds (which will clip no matter what when you have a weapon skill that has a 1.5 second cast time in a 2.5 GCD)