MCH vs BRD (And why MCH need serious help)

[Elnidfse]

It's not "far" better at all. 0.4% isn't huge (though it's something)

1.8% is baseline when put in a vacuum. In reality the boost to DPS is higher than MCH relative DPS boost. Because crit and direct hit are additive, not multiplicative, when determining their benefits. But to answer you, it is huge. You provide 50% more strength to RDPS than a MCH, which results in a faster clear time. That 0.4% boost that you're scoffing at is multiplied over 7 players, reality 5 or 6. It absolutely is a big deal. And it's a bit distressing that you would undersell the difference in dps done by a team with a BRD/MCH in it and one without it. But I guess this is the problems with numbers in general. When you place them bare, all you see is 0.4% and not "hey this class has twice the supportive capacity". Moving on. Lastly is this

[Elnidfse]

Everyone has defensive support now, Bard just has a collection of weaker buttons to make it feel more supporty, when it isn't that much so in reality.

it's not about damage, it's about raw supportive output. Your support tools last longer and have a big impact. I would like to say "hey on demand dismantle is better". But it's not. In aoe barrages that aren't snapshot to the boss on release or generate on the boss post release, 10% on demand is nothing. You think you'll be able to use that when the boss does their LB after the add phase? Nope. How about shinryu when he jumps? That's not happening either. Bombs that have a delayed landing and no cast time. Ain't working there either. And then there are the fights that do large amounts of aoe, or big single target to the tank, throughout the fight in general. The ability to consistently create periods in which damage decrease is guaranteed to decrease that lasts longer than 5 seconds is amazing.

[Elnidfse]

Dismantle

Let's also pretend that dismantle is some all in one magic box that can solve the worlds problems with good usage.

Even if we were to take the easiest examples like susan and lak. We get one dismantle for both of their aoes. Susan has a period of two aoe's that a bard can cover that a MCH can not. Susan's And at a 90s cooldown Square should seriously rethink that. Because even in omega right now, a window for what's to come later, there are no bosses who widespread aoe or tank buster rolls over every 90 seconds. As a MCH you're not even consistent with the damage you can prevent. You can't get consistent Brightstorms. You can't even get consistent Ukehi's. But you know who can with practice?

[Elnidfse]

And let me also vent a little bit about dismantle and rDPS defensive tools. I HATE dismantle. But I LOVE using it. That being the case...:
Why is it 90 seconds for 5 seconds of use. I can get why they split them up. Removes the guesswork. In a climate when quite literally everybody can slot a better defensive mechanic including melee and casters why the hell is it the only one that still leaves a lot to be desired.
Feint is a better 3.0x Dismantle
Addle is a better 3.0x Rend Mind

And yet RdPS get palisade. The supposed support role gets a 150 second CD ability that only works on physical attacks for a single target and has 30 seconds longer on the recast. But this is what we have to work with Palisade which is effectively a non thing for (most) tankbusters and AOE we have right now dismantle. An ability that can't even be used consistently or as a clutch button. And you know maybe it was intentional to design it as it is. Because as it stands now our only defensive option that works universally is dismantle.

To wrap this up, and I know this has been long. Please do not say something silly like "BRDs defensive raid utility is not good". This isn't "oh it's not that good" territory. It's flat out better. It's one of the best. This isn't' even debatable. Troubadour even though it requires match knowledge to cycle your songs correctly, prevents more incoming damage than dismantle can. That's just a flat out fact. And even if we tried to use dismantle for tank remedy's it doesn't work there better either. Because Nature's minne exists and provides a far bigger boost to tank survival than Dismantle ever will. So I really don't want to hear "BRD defensive support is not good" I'll have none of it.

And sheesh 1000 characters is not enough space. Get it together Square

[Greedalox]

And sheesh 1000 characters is not enough space. Get it together Square

You can avoid the character limit by editing a post :3

Just write out the whole thing, copy it, post a bunch of gibberish over 10 characters and then edit it and paste.

[Elnidfse]

Consider my mind blown
Well now it'd look weird if I deleted everything. I'll just leave it there.

[Shunye]

i'm pretty sure SE doesnt take defensive utility into mind when they balance damage numbers. and from the people who have run the numbers, mch bring slightly more damage to a group than bards. which in theory justifies mch being slightly behind bards in overall damage. So technically everyone is right where they should be despite what the doomsday predictors will tell you.

[Id_Slayer]

I'm ok with the way heat is handled right now except flamethrower and hotshot feel 'off'- maybe hotshot should be 25 heat like pvp? or 10 heat sub 50, with +5 heat to next shot.

Mostly though, I think the fairest balance is gauss barrel bonus goes from 5% to 10 or 15% while within 50-100 heat. That further encourages the player to stay in the 'optimal range' of heat. I'm adjusting and feeling generally ok about the heat generation and balance but flamethrower feels like it is from another job entirely and doesn't belong. We need the dev who had the vision to add flamethrower to explain his or her vision, or dump it completely or fix it...

[Elnidfse]

i'm pretty sure SE doesnt take defensive utility into mind when they balance damage numbers. and from the people who have run the numbers, mch bring slightly more damage to a group than bards. which in theory justifies mch being slightly behind bards in overall damage. So technically everyone is right where they should be despite what the doomsday predictors will tell you.

Except MCH brings less rDPS than BRD. A fact that has already been mathed out several times to death and to which you can do your own theoreticals right now. We do roughly 40% less for rDPS than BRD. There's quite literally no reason for any such gap to exist negatively than in our favor.

[Cetonis]

Because crit and direct hit are additive, not multiplicative, when determining their benefits.

I know that. It has nothing to do with anything.

Direct Hit has diminishing returns, for the same reason Det does. So if people stack Direct Hit, which they will, BV gets slightly worse.

Crit's benefit is based on whether people are stacking Crit or not, because your Crit stat (not bonuses) determined how much your crits actually increase damage by. Most jobs should not stack Crit, so that buff isn't quite as strong as it looks in a 3.x mindset.

We do roughly 40% less for rDPS than BRD.

Wow, you're not even trying to be reasonable. Did you know that BLM does 100% less for rDPS than RDM? What a nonsense number to pull.

It's 0.4% raid damage, which is about 65 DPS when you correctly exclude the MCH/BRD themselves. Not huge. Total gap is damage contribution is then 3-4% depending on what percentile / day you're looking at. You want to say it's 0.6% gap in raid damage, then fine, it's a 4-5% gap instead. So what?

There have been points in the game where jobs were 10-15% behind their competition. 3-5% hardly warrants the kind of melodramatic hysteria that I see in threads like this one. It should be fixed, but jeez. You'd think this was the worst balance issue the game has ever had from the way people are acting.

As for the difficulty / punishment level of the job, it still doesn't sound like much to me at the end of the day. As much as I haven't played MCH, you seemingly haven't played BRD either, and none of the stuff you mention sounds substantively worse than the myriad of ways that Bard can lose hundreds of potency due to mechanic interference.

More constructively, what is your proposed fix? I think a simple raising of Hot Shot to 10% would be fine for a first move, though I'd rather SE do a more complete set of fixes surrounding dealing with the piercing debuff.