Quote Originally Posted by Sparhwk View Post
Really shouldn't be this hard to balance. Also should haven't havea utility vs solo damage setup. Everyone gives some minor group utility. Dps numbers are balanced. Be good you do best dps. not here's a new class that's easy to play and does 10-20% more than everyone else.

Honestly I can't expect we'll get anything after that little quip that DRG provides great utility.
It's even not really true to say SAM has no 'utility'. They have the slashing debuff, which not only is greater than the DRG piercing one, it is guaranteed to affect another party member since all 3 tanks do some kind of slashing damage (and you won't necessarily have a WAR or NIN in group to provide it as well), while you can easily get a group where the DRG is the only source of piercing damage.

Also, people misread damage 'utility' as a good thing. If it's a damage buff, it's designed as a synergy, but if the synergistic parts together don't exceed that of non synergistic parts, then there's no point as non synergistic parts are more resilient in the abstract since losses are linear.

If the 'utilities' are referred to as dependencies (as they are), people will think differently about it.

And no ability demonstrates the dependency concept (which is true of all damage 'utility') of this better than Dragon Sight and it's visual, visceral graphic.