This whole Meta Party thing is hurting me. x_x

[Shurrikhan]

DRG does offer nearly that amount, especially due to how much of BRD's damage is rooted in Crit. Those numbers only increase with both physical ranged hence the year long prevalence of DRG/NIN/BRD/MCH. They all circle buff one another. Granted, BLM is far better off now than it has been in a while. SAM, on the other hand, is borderline useless.

Agreed, which is why I will continue to insist that SAM needs certain small buffs. I just find some of the awkward gimmick raid support ideas others have come up with to this effect (e.g. 15% Slashing), on the assumption that no one will take a job that cannot improve the others' ability to pad their FFlog percentiles, downright scary.

Another factor regarding Meta preference is the inherent safety net. An average BLM offers nothing whereas a comparably average DRG at least increases BRD/MCH's damage. Therefore, it's a safer gamble to take the DRG.

The safety net would technically work in the reverse there, if considering just the piercing damage. Now two players, up from just one, both need to perform to the best of their ability to maximize the job's potential. In reality, it's the Bard/MCH and the DS target especially, but also anyone who stands to benefit from Battle Litany. That's a lot more dependence than simply expecting one DPS to do his DPS correctly. If both could consistently produce the same total DPS (personal and raid combined), and the BLM isn't somehow at higher risk by nature of the fight, then the BLM is technically lower risk; you only need one wholly skilled player to execute all that damage, rather than 3 (DRG, DS-target, Ranged) to 8. There's less interdependence, fewer ways to lose out.

(And it's not like the DRG can continue contributing DS or piercing debuffs (beyond the remainder of the Disembowel duration) while he's dead, either.)

I'd generally assumed that is precisely why the interdependent means of damage tended to be tuned slightly harder: they really are more fragile, and therefore more high risk. Other parts of the meta toolkit may help to mitigate that risk, but that interdependence makes it still very much a part of meta play at the moment.

Now I will agree people overstate just how beneficial meta jobs are. BLM, for instance, is in a pretty strong spot right now. That being said, it's equally disingenuous to claim those utility jobs aren't better because, statistically, they are.

I've never said they aren't. My post just before this pointed out that there is a statistically significant difference.

I've merely said that those far too many of those enforcing the meta are doing so via secondhand knowledge alone, and do not fully understand or are even capable of calculating their actual benefits, whereas those who are thus capable have also been the same ones to prove that the numbers are free to shift within the right conditions towards new optimals.

While it'll take a couple more weeks to really see all that everyone is capable of, best of the best parses are starting to throw the dominance of interdependent contribution methods such as through our meta compositions into question. The difference between 7.5k and 6.8k is really quite a lot for even Piercing, DS, and BL to take on, for instance. Naturally, that gap has been inflated as people will play towards their strengths with non-AoE cards and the like, but at the very least it shows incredibly tight proximity.