Disembowel: Please Fix this Mess

[Kabooa]

Moment over btw. Every job is viable: perfect balance achieved then?

Viability and balance are not the same thing, but the only balance people seem to care about is DPS balance.

If this is the only metric by which a job is measured, then we're going to have a fair amount of unhappy people regardless, and if we equalize that across the board, we're going to have a fair amount of people unhappy there as well.

The more tools a job brings exclusive to itself / its role is a DPS tax. In this regard, the question is how much of a tax is fair, and in the current state of the game, Bard and Machinist are taxed fairly for what they bring (Opinion)

Inconsistencies among Jobs for similar tools, however, is the fault of the developer and should be remedied, and in most of those cases, outright removal and patching up afterwards makes the most sense.

[Dualgunner]

Viability and balance are not the same thing, but the only balance people seem to care about is DPS balance.

You're the one who said:

Every job is currently capable of meeting and exceeding the enrage, so claiming that Disembowel is somehow required for Machinist is wrong. The two, bard and Machinist, put neck and neck against each other come out close to even.

In which the first comes with the implicit claim that "If a job can meet and exceed enrage, it's good." Well, groups with DRK could meet and exceed enrage. Groups with SAM could meet and exceed enrage. Groups with BLM could meet and exceed enrage. Then the second part isn't necessarily true, given the examples provided from Herokuapp which shows BRD consistently ~400 to 500 above MCH in terms of total contribution.

If this is the only metric by which a job is measured, then we're going to have a fair amount of unhappy people regardless, and if we equalize that across the board, we're going to have a fair amount of people unhappy there as well.

Given the state of FFXIV, yes, DPS is really one of the only metrics measured, and yes, many are unhappy about it.

The more tools a job brings exclusive to itself / its role is a DPS tax.

Would be nice if this rule held true in all cases, but SMN still fights BLM for top DPS in a lot of areas.

In this regard, the question is how much of a tax is fair, and in the current state of the game, Bard and Machinist are taxed fairly for what they bring (Opinion)

That's a fair opinion to have. I don't necessarily disagree with it, only that Machinist doesn't bring enough to level itself out with bard.

Inconsistencies among Jobs for similar tools, however, is the fault of the developer and should be remedied, and in most of those cases, outright removal and patching up afterwards makes the most sense.

Bard and Machinist are inconsistent with the tools they bring. If you have the option of bringing a bard or machinist, you bring a bard hands down. Why? Because passive 2% crit buff on top of foes on top of battle voice annihilates Machinist's unforgiving lag-dependent rotation and Hypercharge by a country mile.

[Remedi]

I think that in the end the game is too much buff centric and BRD bringing that much skews the balance towards himself. I mean disembowel would mean much less if you wouldn't need to bring a BRD to a group to the point I wonder if you would really bring him.
I honestly think that both of you are right tbh though

[Wayfinder3]

Machinist and Bard suffer from the distribution of utility issue where Bard got all of the utility but doesn't really lose enough dps to pay for it. Machinist pays utility for dps however much like rdm when compared to smn, it's doesn't do enough damage to warrant the utility it has when compared to other jobs.
Bard is Red Mage done right however, you could argue Red Mage is a more balanced Bard
Machinist is Summoner done wrong however, you could argue Summoner is just overtuned amongest it's role

This is really the problem with job balance and individuality, alot of people claim bard to be overpowered and needs a nerf but then when it ends up like rdm. it's under powered and needs a buff. Granted rdm has more issues as verraise isn't bad utility it's just niche. a more fair arguement is that Summoner is overpowered amongst the casters but if we nerf it, it'll just be in the same positionm that machinist is. If we buff machinist then Bard may end up like RDM. None of this even takes into consideration the fact that you could just stack them both in the same party. what happens when disembowel is removed but mch gets buffed to the point where double ranged is still viable. This issue is very complex

[Remedi]

Personally i consider Brd to bee too good, but not really OP or asking him to get nerfed, actually I'd rather have the game make other choices more attractive. Even encounters design should be used to impact meta, some jobs should have "THAT thing" that makes them shine, that something that could make you say "Dude, if I had come as a SAM/BLM we could have killed this so much faster". I know it's hard to make it happen, but frankly i'd rather SE takes their time to add layers to the combat, I'd rather not repeat what happened on wow with them removing all buffs to the point only your pdps matter (and some gimmick like Warlock gates). It make the game boring in my opinion

[Wayfinder3]

Personally i consider Brd to bee too good, but not really OP or asking him to get nerfed, actually I'd rather have the game make other choices more attractive. Even encounters design should be used to impact meta, some jobs should have "THAT thing" that makes them shine, that something that could make you say "Dude, if I had come as a SAM/BLM we could have killed this so much faster". I know it's hard to make it happen, but frankly i'd rather SE takes their time to add layers to the combat, I'd rather not repeat what happened on wow with them removing all buffs to the point only your pdps matter (and some gimmick like Warlock gates). It make the game boring in my opinion

I agree, i think your philosophy would work if we had a support role and lowered the dps ceiling of jobs that are classified as such but raised the utility as compensation. RDM/BRD/NIN would all fair better if they we're apart of this sub category

[Kitfox]

Then the second part isn't necessarily true, given the examples provided from Herokuapp which shows BRD consistently ~400 to 500 above MCH in terms of total contribution.

The RDPS app is skewed for class-to-class comparisons, in the BRD vs MCH comparisons especially. MCH abuses raid buffs more than any other class, which makes the providers of the buffs appear higher on the final rdps number while the benefiting classes like MCH lose out. It's an issue of how the balance between the abuser and the provider is not equally distributed. The app also skews Foe Requiem higher than it should probably be, especially in double Ranged comps where MCH provides a lot of the MP needed for it. Mana Shift in caster comps is also part of it, all that MP utility is drained by BRD under the Foe numbers. Then there's the differences in mitigation that change healer dps numbers, gains again attributed to healers and not the defensive utility provider.

If MCH was truly 500 dps behind the other classes in overall efficiency, there's no way the class would appear anywhere near the top rankings. The RDPS app just can't be used for class comparisons in a simple manner like that without a lot of contextual information and statistics, neither which the app provides.

[Dualgunner]

clip

The rDPS app does, however, cut a lot closer to what can be described as accurate than FFLogs itself, though, is that an unfair claim to make? Is it also unfair to make the claim that, with the inaccuracies you posted in mind, there is still a gap and Machinist is still on the lower end of that gap? None of this, mind, at all changes that without having the proper classes to abuse bonus strength off of, Machinist's damage isn't all that great.

[Kitfox]

The rDPS app does, however, cut a lot closer to what can be described as accurate than FFLogs itself, though, is that an unfair claim to make?

I wouldn't say the RDPS app is any more accurate than fflogs is. If anything, it's less accurate because of all the limitations the fflogs API has. They measure different things, but neither measure class-to-class efficiency. One measures personal damage while the other the effectiveness of raid buffs. If we wanted to make proper class comparisons, we'd actually have to make party composition comparisons and look at how the total party dps changes between setups. This isn't really possible with the current tools we have and there's no full party simulators out (at least yet) that we could use to compare outputs without RNG, human and strategy factors.

Is it also unfair to make the claim that, with the inaccuracies you posted in mind, there is still a gap and Machinist is still on the lower end of that gap? None of this, mind, at all changes that without having the proper classes to abuse bonus strength off of, Machinist's damage isn't all that great.

As far as the gap between BRD and MCH goes, there is one no doubt, at least a perceived one. But haven't seen any convincing numbers on how big that gap is in reality. Let's not forget that BRD also loses a lot of dps in a non-crit focused party comp.

[Kabooa]

Bard and Machinist are inconsistent with the tools they bring. If you have the option of bringing a bard or machinist, you bring a bard hands down.

Nothing about what I said is inconsistent.

Ignoring perfect buff windows (Because 99% of us aren't perfect), a Bard is something like 2.1% more RDPS on average (This spikes up according to buff windows, but as I said, small enough a case where it can be shuffled off to "Super math land".)

A Machinist is 1.25%.

If we take an average raid team doing 33k DPS, this amounts to 630 and 375. A difference of about 255. Using single target boss encounters as multiple boss enemy encounters favor the Bard due to double dotting (So using Chadernook and God Kefka), the Machinist is on average at 75th percentile about 200 ahead of the Bard.

The Machinist brings Dismantle which is superior to Troubadour due to its on demand nature and significantly shorter cooldown.
Regarding Mana Song, as the Machinist does not use MP for anything, the timing on Mana Song is more flexible for the Machinist, which has implicit value but hard to quantify.

Nature's Minne is hard to quantify its value, but a pre-pull Adlo isn't that much stronger for it and even spamming it on CD likely doesn't see much value (As abilities don't benefit and Regens must be reapplied with Minne else it has no value)

Paen doesn't work on anything important as far as I know.