What is the Caster Role for 5.0 Going Forward and Where is balance?

[Miskatonic]

Atm BLM isnt up to par with the avarage melee or physical ranged dps. However.. we never know. Maybe its just a stats thing and having better gear coming up in coming patches will fix it a bit.. maybe a little bit help of the devs and it will all be fine.
It probably is not the best time to already talk about who needs buffs and who needs nerfs though so not gonna go further at that.

For now however BLM is pure damage with 0 utility. When we stand still 24/7, the damage is equal to dragoon/samurai (if lucky) .. however.. the moment we have to move even a cm, we get shot down to the amount of dps some good off-tanks already can manage
As a pure damage job, thats never a good sign

BLM is consistently the highest dps in all current content among all levels of skill. IE fflogs.com. Where are you getting your numbers from?

[Lina_Slayer]

BLM is consistently the highest dps in all current content among all levels of skill. IE fflogs.com. Where are you getting your numbers from?

Just a small nitpick, BLM only takes top spot after 70th percentile on Innocence EX, but you are mostly right, we BLMs have nothing to complain at level 80 content right now (low level BLM sucks tho) performance is great and the jobs feels just right to play.

[Miskatonic]

Just a small nitpick, BLM only takes top spot after 70th percentile on Innocence EX, but you are mostly right, we BLMs have nothing to complain at level 80 content right now (low level BLM sucks tho) performance is great and the jobs feels just right to play.

My bad I should have clarified I was looking at both trials combined, and dungeons combined too

[DaulBan]

Its not high though atm. Not compared to the other DPS.
Thats the issue XD

BLM is the DPS with far and away the highest DPS though.

Just a small nitpick, BLM only takes top spot after 70th percentile on Innocence EX, but you are mostly right, we BLMs have nothing to complain at level 80 content right now (low level BLM sucks tho) performance is great and the jobs feels just right to play.

Sort of irrelevant. Sub-80th percentile is, given the competitive level of fflogs, generally a failing of your ability to perform the basic duties of your job and maintaining your ABCs. If you're dying and not playing the job correctly that shouldn't really be taken into consideration for whether a job is 'good enough' in the way Timeraider is talking. There's a separate consideration for skill floors and ceilings, but saying BLM doesn't do well (ie, isn't topping other jobs by notable margins at reasonable percentiles) because you personally might not be doing well is similar to saying tanks should be nerfed because you personally are doing less dps than them in a dungeon.

BLM is currently very competitive at a farm level, and (hopefully) can continue to maintain that level going forward. it's likely to be a pain during prog but that's nothing new, and it's likely it will become the best caster when prog is over. That being said I'm not sure what the magic numbers are for SMN and RDM going forward to have similar performance. They're already better during prog, but as someone else in this thread pointed out it's not necessarily fair to pay the prog tax forever. At the same time there's a reason we can gear multiple jobs, and it's not unreasonable to prog on one job and switch to another (I personally might go MCH first then swap to BLM when we're done for example).

[Quor]

BLM dps is great as is. If a BLM is having trouble with a fight then that's on them. Even in random comps that don't cater to a BLM's strengths (i.e. running a MNK/SAM/DRG as the other 3 dps) BLM can pull some hefty weight on their own. Knowing the fight is more key for a BLM than arguably any other dps class due to how critical it is to minimize movement.

As for casters in general, or really any kind of "off-role" ability, I like that stuff. Making everything fit within too tight of a role confine reduces it's interest and value as a unique job. If RDM and SMN lost raise, or BRD lost it's Esuna, or DNC lost Curing Waltz, then you kill a little bit more of what makes each job different. As a DNC I like knowing that I can top off the raid after a stack aoe, and the healers I've been running with have come to appreciate that as well.

[Zyneste]

BLM dps is great as is. If a BLM is having trouble with a fight then that's on them. Even in random comps that don't cater to a BLM's strengths (i.e. running a MNK/SAM/DRG as the other 3 dps) BLM can pull some hefty weight on their own. Knowing the fight is more key for a BLM than arguably any other dps class due to how critical it is to minimize movement.

As for casters in general, or really any kind of "off-role" ability, I like that stuff. Making everything fit within too tight of a role confine reduces it's interest and value as a unique job. If RDM and SMN lost raise, or BRD lost it's Esuna, or DNC lost Curing Waltz, then you kill a little bit more of what makes each job different. As a DNC I like knowing that I can top off the raid after a stack aoe, and the healers I've been running with have come to appreciate that as well.

Bard Esuna/prevention and DNC's Curing Waltz get to see the light of day because they are OGCD and cost nothing. Those who use them effectively are fundamentally better at their role than those who don't, but don't affect your personal DPS at all.

Raise spells cost GCDS. You have a direct disincentive to raise. You're losing DPS and who knows the healer might be getting them up as you cast your raise as well. On top of that MP is a real issue this time around. Our MP sustain is about equal to what we spend. If we raise someone, without a break in the fight well have to carry that raise burden on our MP for the whole fight.

I loved the feeling of control I had on STB RDM. 2 Mitigative tools against magical attacks. A small heal to make up for the difference of a vuln stack. Manashift to keep your healers healthy. MP that could recover fairly easily.

Now I'm down to just 1 mitigative tool against magical attacks and MP so weak I have to decide if I can afford to use Vercure during downtime to proc Dualcast.

The caster role has become pretty 1 dimensional already. Moving raise to the OGCD on a 60 second timer, would help to at least balance SMN/RDM and keep them balanced in RDPS/PDPS since you couldn't tax one more than the other since they would have the same raise potential.

[Archwizard]

Hot take: I think an effort needs to be made to flatten out the slope between casters.

No, I don't mean that every caster needs to be equal or homogenized -- go on leaving Raise out of the hands of a BLM.
But, Raising itself needs a standardized DPS value like other utilities; SMN and RDM both have access to it, but SMN suffers a lower damage penalty for having it (since it can't game Dualcast) and also brings some hefty utilities aside that massively increase its value. RDM on the other hand virtually just brings Raise and still pays a full tax for holding it, meaning its value plummets after progression. Standardizing the value of Raise means reducing this tax on RDM, which opens avenues for either higher damage or (more fittingly) even stronger utility that can retain a value throughout progression, such as En-elementing allies' weapons or hastening spells.

And what do I mean by standardizing? Well for a start, make Verraise an exception to Dualcast, so RDM isn't treated like it theoretically casts it 4 times a minute (since it shouldn't).
Perhaps reduce the penalty for healers throwing Raises as well, so that it isn't "preferable" for a DPS to spend their own MP doing so.

I also think this means BLM should have a utility in some form. At the going rate, BLM's our Magikarp, gaining all of its QoL effects late in the leveling process and gaining its value late in progression when death is a non-issue (both meaning they don't have to sit out for someone with Raise and that their value isn't 1:1 scalar to Weakness) and gear amplifies their output.
I'm not saying BLM needs to plummet in the damage rankings, but something small to stabilize their value within a group could go a long way.
Besides, throwing out curses is pretty iconic.

[DaulBan]

1. Raising should be considered to have a damage (rDPS) value.

This is pretty much an unworkable concept. Reason being is that while yes, you do get a damage gain from raising people (alive people do more damage than dead people after all) it's incredibly flawed.

1. While raising someone is a dps gain like trick attack, the situation you're in to make it a gain is incredibly situational (someone is dead) and is inherently a 'lose less' effect. Unlike trick where it's always good to use (you always gain), and there's more value to it the more you use it and the better your placement is, the more you use Raise the more terrible a situation you're in. The fact it gets better (substantially so) the worse your party is doing means that it's the best tool in the game under ideal (everything is terrible) circumstances. Thus, the penalty should be high to have a raise because it lets you clear when any other raid buff or utility fails you.

2. It's a tool two members of your party are required to already have. As long as deaths occur no more than twice a minute your healers can almost always get everyone up, and if the healers have it covered it's meaningless to have it. This isn't like trick where having two ninjas gives you two trick attacks, it just gives you another move you probably should never touch. In that way, having a raise is completely meaningless.

So which do you choose? Is the flexibility to raise when both healers dead the most powerful tool in the game and should thus be considered meta-defining? Should it be expensive not only in resources but also DPS? If you had a job that was as impactful as a heal LB3 on tap every minute or more should it be crushed by the weight of a tool that you should never want to use?

Do you balance Ninja's as if they don't have trick because they might never use it?

For raises I feel it's pretty evident that giving them a real value in rDPS or whatever is meaningless. When they're needed they're more powerful than any buff in the game (so clearly they should do less DPS than Dancer) but when they're not they're a powerful tool you never ever use.

[SaberMaxwell]

Atm BLM isnt up to par with the avarage melee or physical ranged dps. However.. we never know. Maybe its just a stats thing and having better gear coming up in coming patches will fix it a bit.. maybe a little bit help of the devs and it will all be fine.
It probably is not the best time to already talk about who needs buffs and who needs nerfs though so not gonna go further at that.

For now however BLM is pure damage with 0 utility. When we stand still 24/7, the damage is equal to dragoon/samurai (if lucky) .. however.. the moment we have to move even a cm, we get shot down to the amount of dps some good off-tanks already can manage
As a pure damage job, thats never a good sign

Where are you getting this data? From the site that shall not be named, 75th percentile on Titania X, BLM is heads and shoulders above the next guy (SAM). In the other primal, the second highest DPS does 88% of BLM's damage.

What metrics is BLM subpar by, especially compared to melee DPS, the strongest of which (SAM) is about a thousand on average behind it.

[Shurrikhan]

...

I feel like the rDPS that can be provided by Raise is far too variable, and its unquantifiable value far too situational, to attach any strict pDPS cost to compensate for. You should not attach a notable dps cost to something that already requires another dps loss in order to see any use. In either case, though, its only value would be in the time or resource (MP or Swiftcast where somehow valuable outside of rezzing, itself) saved for healers, which is relatively minor. One could easily say, even, that the Raise cost for RDMs was often greater than for that of healers, if limited to a single use per minute.

Moreover, especially in regards to SMN, the "dps tax" from Raise has always been disgustingly overstated. SMN's lower pDPS relative to BLM could already be comprehensively explained by Devotion and Contagion in SB. Without a single caster, it was already competitive with BLM without needing a single Raise. With a BLM, that BLM's damage during Contagion nearly guaranteed SMN the highest tDPS of any job. I would argue that the same applies to RDM; RDM didn't fall behind other casters because it was a rez- (aka optimization-procrastination) machine, but because it was quite simply undertuned. In its optimal compositions after its buffs, however, its tDPS was no joke, its best runs falling more closely to highest tDPS contribution than any two runs by the same max percentile player of any other job (i.e. within the standard deviation of just crits from one run to another).