It would be nice not to be hated

[Wayfinder3]

Say you buffed sam or blm damage up to the point where they were doing so much more damage that it was even meta for speed runners. They would STILL be locked out of pugs and many statics solely because everyone else in the group would have worse parses. If they did so much damage that it was clear to everyone that they should have a sam, it would just replace one issue with another, they would replace drg and with that brd.

People don’t directly lock sam and blm out because they don’t have utility, they lock them out because they’re not strong enough to off set the lack of utility or are misinformed of how strong the job is in general. For example, BLM will give more to your party than an equally skilled RDM because of how low it’s personal dps is and thus the probability to increase their logs and kill time is higher. Embolden is mainly considered weak because RDM isn’t strong enough for embolden to fill in the disparity between its dps and the other jobs while brd and nin personal dps are equally as low both their utility fills in the picture for them. I promise you, if BLM and SAM were meta, they would not be locked out of any content regardless of utility since the community would have a far better opinion of them. SMN utility kit isn't exactly the most powerful, however it's high dps does a great job in filling the holes. Utility is important but the best jobs are properly balanced around their personal dps too, just having utility doesn't mean your job will be perceived as good

The "Hate" you're worried about is the product of the top players memeing the job into oblivion and everyone else just assuming the job is dysfunctional. The only valid issue with BLM and SAM is that they're far too risky to bring because they have no utility and aren't nearly as powerful if you choose to do so. if the reward was better, you'd see these jobs more

[Wayfinder3]

I mean, suppose you (theoetical 'you') are a crappy bard. You still benefit from nin+drg melees (and further from the mch vuln up too). You don't need to be a top end speedkiller in a high end static. Even if a person is average or bad, they can still take advantage of and benefit from synergies.

I don't think you used a good example but i agree to an extent. having meta party members doesn't make you better, you still have to be good on your own to maximize those buffs with disembowel being the only exception. a BAD bard isn't going to look good in a meta comp, thats not how it works. A good bard will however look worse in a non meta comp and that is the better argument to make.

If trick attack is used and you're spamming heavy shot, then that trick attack is only going to be as good as the what you put in to it so player skill is far more important to utility than you're accounting for and this is the same for all utility besides the resistances i.e disembowel.

[HyoMinPark]

I don't think you used a good example but i agree to an extent. having meta party members doesn't make you better, you still have to be good on your own to maximize those buffs with disembowel being the only exception. . .

A better example would probably be that a bad or even substandard BRD will still benefit the raid if they at least Foe's and BV in the opener, Refresh when needed, and have songs active for the Crit buff, where as a mediocre SAM or BLM is just a hinderance. While this is anecdote, I've noticed that there tends to be very little middle ground with the selfish DPS - you're either god-tier or you're far below adequate.

If trick attack is used and you're spamming heavy shot, then that trick attack is only going to be as good as the what you put in to it so player skill is far more important to utility than you're accounting for and this is the same for all utility besides the resistances i.e disembowel.

As an aside, BRD optimization centers entirely around managing DoTs and DoT snapshots to make the most out of your Repertoire mechanic. Ironically, double snapshots are not a thing for TA; BRDs mostly just go about their standard rotation as the duration is too short to make much use of it, and only snapshot TA if it's paired with, say Litany or Chain - which at that point, they're snapshotting for the latter two more so than TA.

[Wayfinder3]

Yes but I think comparing the SAM and BRD isn’t exactly valid considering they’re not competing for the same slot. If you replaced it with say a mediocre Nin who drift trick attacks further as the fight and clips his gcd. Then the mediocre sam has a more fair argument since that’s really the only difference between them. BRD has an entire role kit that’s different from SAM. Nin’s personal dps is low enough that if they’re not good with trick attack, a mediocre sam will be better than them for a party

[FeliAiko]

Snip.

Still requires coordination though, which is why the meta jobs work in the first place (and expecting coordination wrt to raid buffs in PF groups is unlikely). Just having those Jobs present is not going to get you good numbers, and a bad player is a liability regardless of the Job they're on. As for giving selfish jobs utility, well MNK was a selfish Job that got utility and it still wasn't enough to dislodge the DRG-NIN partnership so I don't see it as being that simple.

[HyoMinPark]

Still requires coordination though, which is why the meta jobs work in the first place (and expecting coordination wrt to raid buffs in PF groups is unlikely). Just having those Jobs present is not going to get you good numbers, and a bad player is a liability regardless of the Job they're on. As for giving selfish jobs utility, well MNK was a selfish Job that got utility and it still wasn't enough to dislodge the DRG-NIN partnership so I don't see it as being that simple.

MNK hasn't dislodged DRG because of Disembowel. If you have one physical ranged, they're going to want Disembowel for their damage (for example, I raid on BRD, and I will not run with a static that doesn't have a DRG because I care about my damage, and like to chase FFLogs after I have floors on farm - not after dealing with not having one for two tiers now, and having my damage suffer for it because others wanted to play SAM). And if you have both, you're a fool to sacrifice a free ~600 rDPS from just Disembowel (not including DRG's other utility) for a MNK. Plus your physical ranged are not going to be happy about losing their 5% if they care at all about their own personal damage numbers. MNK also doesn't have an answer for TA (Brotherhood is weaker, and less frequent in terms of application), nor for Shadewalker/Smokescreen, the latter of which benefit the tanks greatly. However, MNKs are liked by WARs because Brotherhood always lines up with Inner Release for more pure damage.

That being said, NIN+DRG is still extremely powerful. While I don't have an answer for NIN, the removal of piercing resistance down would at least open up for subbing out DRG for MNK if you go with a double melee + double ranged (physical or magical) comp.

[whiskeybravo]

Memes, meta or not. Good SAM and BLM are hard to find, especially in PF. I can only think of a 2-3 SAMS I've ran into the past nearly-6 months that have actually done the DPS a SAM should be doing. What's the point of bringing a 5k SAM? There isn't one..

They're as bad as BLMs about making the party adjust so they can keep uptime, so on top of providing nothing to the group they want the group to cater to them just so they can have a chance at competing with other dps. It gets old tbh. I wouldn't mind running with a SAM that actually knew wtf they were doing. Sadly, many of them seem intent on keeping up the stigma.

[Kabooa]

As someone who traps a ton, can confirm most people look at Sam/blams with a healthy amount of skepticism.

While you never know what you're getting, at least with other jobs you know they have buttons to push that make you better too.

[Zerathor]

As someone who traps a ton, can confirm most people look at Sam/blams with a healthy amount of skepticism.

While you never know what you're getting, at least with other jobs you know they have buttons to push that make you better too.

To be fair, isn't that the majority of pf jobs in general? Bards who don't keep songs up, ninjas who drift TA time, tanks who never leave tank stance, healers that don't dps, ect. They might bring some buffs but it still hurts almost the same.

It's just easier to notice when a pure dps job isn't performing well because you can just look if they're #1 on damage or not. But at the end of the day, pf crowds are almost always a nightmare.

[Remedi]

Considering how often we say that the prime reason for bad dps is bad OGCD usage, GCD clipping and bad buff syncronization I don't think we can safely say that bringing buff to the party is enough.