The state of SAM, BLM, and MNK is disappointing. "Selfish" isn't viable in this game.

[zuzu-bq]

If you play without AST, everyone cries.
If you play without SCH the BRD cries.
If you play without WAR, the other tank cries.

This is mostly an issue of how the community percieves meta jobs and the ranking competition of our favorite website. People don't really wanna work out of their comfort zone or lose "points".

[Fourbestintoner]

They are barely selfish, a sam only does like 500 more damage than drg and currently smn does more than blm, the idea of selfish dps can only work if they are actually wiling to do it, a nin brings like 1000 or 1500 dps to the entire party, sam and blm should do all of that rdps themselves, both should do 500-1000 more damage.
But like some of you said, people only care about their own damage, some groups still wouldn't want them.
The bads will cry nerfs but what do they know? Nerfing blm damage is one of the stupidest thing they have done tbh.

[Llugen]

We just need to get through to SE to end the idea of "selfish DPS" completely. There is no such thing.

Stacking utilities/synergy is stronger and will always be stronger than "selfish DPS," and parties would rather all be fed than feed one person.

All jobs need to bring some kind of utility no matter how small, otherwise they WILL be overlooked.
Fight me.

[zuzu-bq]

Balancing selfish jobs is easier than balancing party utility. SE just seems afraid to give them damage.

[Shurrikhan]

We just need to get through to SE to end the idea of "selfish DPS" completely. There is no such thing.

Stacking utilities/synergy is stronger and will always be stronger than "selfish DPS," and parties would rather all be fed than feed one person.

All jobs need to bring some kind of utility no matter how small, otherwise they WILL be overlooked.
Fight me.

That is entirely arbitrary upon potency values. (Also, note that it is impossible to viably feed one DPS's throughput, and only one job (AST) is even capable of that.)

DPS itself is utility. Its group dependence (or independence) is irrelevant to that throughput.

The only issue is that one is scalar and the other flat, and thus undertuning will occur to one or the other based on party size and total alignable strength so long as the additive relative power of party-dependent job' rDPS tools are not effectively balanced by diminished relative power in other areas of their party-affecting toolkit. That's more a scaling issue in those toolkits specifically than it is a matter of "this exists; therefore, it must exist universally and uniformly."

[Eyvhokan]

If selfish ever gets numbers to be in par (to total contribution), the buff classes are automatically obsolete because they have dependencies.

The only utility is providing burst but you can get this regardless of being a buffing class or not with class design (see WAR)

[Okamimaru]

I feel like the way they made buffs for slashing, piercing, and blunt damage and physical damage buffs in general is the core of the problem... they would have been better off incorporating elements into combat... i think the combat would be a bit more engaging than what we currently have... the synergy would be less class based and more flexible...

[Shiroe]

seeing how complet almost "perfect" a sam is (has an answer for everything and doest get punished as hard as other classes) and gets almost all group buffs as physical dps

blm with its heavy movement punishing playstyle and getting less buffs than a physical dps, should be doing way more dps than a sam in all fights, by a bigger margin than it does atm

[Llugen]

I'm a bigger proponent of fixing BLM's mobility in various ways than I am just increasing its damage and making it continue to struggle hard with mechanics/movement. A pure damage fix doesn't really make the job any more desirable to play during progression.

The job certainly doesn't need to be a movement machine like SMN currently is, but if the Astral/Umbral timer alone was more forgiving (say, let Foul and Thunder also refresh the timer, and give Firestarter procs from Fire IV) then it would be A LOT less damage lost to having to deal with mechanics.

[Shiroe]

increasing the blm SS ny a large amount could help the blm mobility ... and ofc dps (just the foul timer would need a build up of ca. 25 sec instead of 30)

or like others mentioned, allow blm to save up more procs.. or like double the "proc keep" timer

but if just blm flat potency is increased by a large margin, even if blm dont get more mobility, the high potency could still compensate for movment dps lose