Are 10 second burst windows causing a balancing problem?

[DRKoftheAzure]

So it is more about how they designed fights around a burst window/encounter balance, rather than the actual job balance itself, and I do know that DRK loses out on MP refresh during those down times if they have Darkside active(which they they made worse in the media tour stuff), so would those MP refresh ticks during downtime by turning off Darkside help alleviate the lack of burst, or would it still be a wipe?

[Sylvain]

So it is more about how they designed fights around a burst window/encounter balance, rather than the actual job balance itself, and I do know that DRK loses out on MP refresh during those down times if they have Darkside active(which they they made worse in the media tour stuff), so would those MP refresh ticks during downtime by turning off Darkside help alleviate the lack of burst, or would it still be a wipe?

Well yes, it's about how they designed fight. Each encounter has a dps requirement, the more you advance the higher it is, however, each additional point of dps is harder to get than the last one. It is easy to understand why. Even if you were to do tons of rotation mistake, not used DA, overcap your blood, clip a lot, forget to use some CD such as Salted Earth etc, as long as you somehow smash your key in a not so random fashion, you would do 2000 dps.
Going from 2000 to 3000 wouldn't be so hard, basically just play decently,
Going from 3000 to 4000 would require you to good
and finally to go from 4000 to 5000 you would need to have an indepth understand of the fight, exploit party buffs, be very mindful of your ressource and play quite optimally in the end.

So for the first savage boss 2.5-3k might be enough, but for the last you'd need to aim for a 4k(for instance).
(And gear is here to help you reach those numbers)
The important point I want to stress is, no matter how good you do the strat, how your team opperate the boss, if your team, as a whole, doesn't do the require dps, it's a wipe. End of the story, and for the last tier, the dps requirement tend to be quite high on patch day.


Regarding dps job balance
Well, in order to achieve some sort of balance, job are actually balanced around the buff they provide (but never they receive)

For instance, because NIN brings TA, which on average was around 800-1200 dps depending on your group their personal dps would be lower to compensate.
(the better the group the higher the value of the TA is, like, poorly timed TA can make the benefice drop to as low as 300dps)

In the same manner, a DRG personal dps is lower than a SAM because it brings Lythany and the infamous 5% piercing.

Finally, BLM and SAM have very high personal dps, but they bring no buff
**So jobs are balanced around what they bring and not what they receive**

(So in general, poorly organised group not aligning any buff will have better dps with high personal dps job such as BLM and SAM, and the more organised your group is, the more you can exploit those buff and burst window and the more you lean toward the infamous "meta")

Regarding Darkside, (altough u won't have to bother in 4 days), yes, during lengthy transition, you could drop Darkside to get mp back from either natural regen, refresh from bard or even a mana shift ! a full mp bar is 4 DA.

The odd that 4 DA would change the outcome aren't very high (as it is "only 620 potency) but it's not impossible.
I've seen a UwU wipe with Ultima having 5k hp left.

My point was more around the DRK not having a good burst CD to exploit burst windows. It doesn't mean DRK dps was bad, just that they where the most penalised for not being able to attack (lack of DoT, burst, etc)
Which is why the changed Delirium (imo) to its new form.

**Do note that this change is only meaningful for the highest level of play.** When on patch day group race for the world first. Yes, even an difference as insignificant as 200-300dps can be the difference between a kill and a wipe.
Just taking a 8min fight (the average length), 300dps difference would be 144k damage. That's a bit less than half a lb3.

If you want to stay away from savage (especially the last tier I would say), aiming to do your rotation properly without looking too much into optimisation is enough
Ex Trial do not require more than basic rotation and uptime. And regarding savage, even if you want to give it a shot, as long as you don't want to clear the whole thing in 2-3 weeks, gear will carry you(and your group). Just as long as you'll do decent basic dps. (like, proper combo, using ogcd whenever up and having okay uptime and not too much clipping)


If you want some guidance for stepping into harder content in ShB, feel free to mp me.