Tank Gear's Value for the Future.

[Kaurie]

Okay, not sure if anyone else pointed this out since I am only skimming through these forums. However, while Oppressor is a more accessible fight, it is VERY "padding" friendly. Classes that NEVER single target as much as others, i.e. SMN and Bard, come out on top simply because of double DoT'ing. Not to mention the opportunities to AoE targets each time adds spawn during Emergency Deployment without breaking rotations. WAR can cheese so much here by replacing a FC with Decimate each time adds spawn. Just like how summoners and scholars can Bane those adds. So Oppressor information should not be a good fight to use as measurement to be frank.

I also compared Thordan, where WAR did better. As for A1S, BLM actually comes out on top, because single target is superior there. I'd also advise against a SMN using bane on the adds, but that is another discussion. However, if you are curious, that top WAR did use Decimate and it contributed to 3% of their damage.

FFLogs in general is a very bad a tool to measure DPS, imo. A lot of the top numbers in there only happen if the whole team agrees to pad a single member's DPS, meaning they come up with strategies that caters that that 1 person's strengths to make sure that they do the most DPS possible at the expense of other people's DPS. Heck, to pad our healer's HPS on Faust for lols, we had the WAR tank the adds while facing them towards the group (getting the group cleaved lol). At the same time, the WAR kept spamming Overpower and I actually used Bane... So much padding opportunities for laughs and kicks.

I already addressed the concern of FFLogs top tier players. They do have percentiles, and I showed the difference in each bracket - including the bottom 10th percentile. Not everyone on FFLogs is working to pad numbers.

Take A2S for example, with the way my group does it, no matter how I personally spin my CDs and rotations, or who I DoT first, I never broke the 2030 DPS. Simple because they cater to a more single target DPS heavy group. We run a monk + DRK + MCH, so I don't have Foe's at my disposal either. Mobs are rarely stacked in an optimal way where I can bane from a 5 vulnerability stacked mob to the rest.. And when they are, the other mobs are already dying because everyone's DPS is near the 2K DPS. On the other hand, we could've strategized to prioritize stacking invulnerability while mobs stack so I can DoT first, I could also wait for bombs to spawn before I Bane and/or Deathflare, and I would easily break the 2400 DPS. Actually a few weeks ago, I stopped using SMN in there and started using BLM since our strategy is really more priority target focused than AoE oriented. (Granted I used SMN the last couple of weeks because otherwise I wouldn't use my Gordian weapon ).

I don't fully understand the relevance of this paragraph.

TL;DR: FFlogs is not a good indicator for class DPS balance.

I don't think you made a good argument against that. Have you looked at the statistics which look at various percentiles? You are actually around the 75% percentile for SMN on that fight, http://www.fflogs.com/statistics/7#boss=19&class=Any (75th percentile for SMN is 2083).

As for single target and AoE balance percentages like you posted, I don't necessarily agree. Mainly because I believe it shouldn't be a matter of individual DPS, but raid DPS. You have NIN doing more ST than DRG when NIN brings, by far, the most utility out of DPS jobs after BRD/MCH.

DRG brings the most raid DPS, which is why I had it lower than NIN, and I had both NIN/DRG lower than MNK due to their utility.

Another problem in your approach to DPS balance, is what if you end up with a group that has only the lowest guys in there? So AST+WHM and PLD+DRK and BRD/MCH/SMN/BLM?

I am not 100% sure I see the problem with that. That said, we currently have similar issues at the beginning of raid tiers already.

Also on what bases should BLM be lower than DRG and NIN? BLM has no means to increase anyone else's DPS like DRG and NIN do. You basically are asking for BLM to not be competitive at all since all 3 melees are better and the utility of BRD and MCH are indispensable. As it stands, BLM should be doing exactly the same DPS as MNK. Why? Well, MNK can't leave target or he drops stacks, BLM can't move or he drops Enochian. MNK is risky because melee. BLM is still risky because movement (and dodging) hurts DPS. MNK only has some defensive utility, so does BLM. MNK does not increase raid DPS, same as BLM. Raid contribution should remain the same! But then MNK "can" run out TP, BLM can refill MP indefinitely. I guess BLM has to pay a bit of DPS for that as a price.

BLM should be lower due to higher AoE and the ability to sustain DPS much more easily with MP regen vs TP outages. There is also the factor that they are ranged.

I too would like to raid with four monks in my raid group.

If this was sane it would be more like MNK/BLM 100% > DRG 98% > NIN/SMN 96% > etc.

That makes sense, and I appreciate your input on it. I was just throwing out numbers and didn't calculate anything. It was more to give an order in terms of DPS and a comparative value between DPS and tanks. If people are concerned over the precision, I can edit my original post.

They did say the numbers were only meant to give a general scope.

Thank you for understanding.