Is Blm gonna be the only accepted range option now? :(

[Tanker4444]

Pretty much this, it kills my enjoyment of playing machinist when I see a black mage outdpsing me by almost 3k even though my gear is better

I can accept black mage being the highest dps class, but not by a whole 2-3k, that's just plain ridiculous and makes me think of maining a different class just because of the huge imbalance.

I wouldn´t worry about it. After all, during SB MCH needed a buff and it got it. Just gotta wait until patch 5.5 !

[Capn_Goggles]

I wouldn´t worry about it. After all, during SB MCH needed a buff and it got it. Just gotta wait until patch 5.5 !

You're getting tunnel-vision. There's a massive difference between Stormblood balancing and Shadowbringers balancing, the most important of which is that you don't have DPS utility enforcing its own meta. In stormblood, a buff to a ranged DPS meant a buff to dragoon, because if you have a dragoon you're always going to bring ranged, and you're ALWAYS going to have a dragoon because he makes every job stronger. And of course, because you have dragoon and ranged DPS get a free 5% damage buff, you're going to bring bard because it's ranged, also bard buffs everyone elses' crit rate and damage, which is just inflating the power level again. Buffing machinist in Stormblood wasn't *just* buffing machinist, but an indirect buff to Dragoon and Bard who were already oppressively strong.

Compare this to Shadowbringers where you no longer have piercing/slashing debuff, and BRD no longer universally buffs everyone just by virtue of existing, and now you can finally start tweaking jobs at an individual level without worrying about the insane cascading effect of buffing one minute part of a job. Furthermore, it wasn't a "buff" MCH needed in stormblood, it always had a guaranteed spot in the speedkill meta, it needed an entire rework because the stormblood kit was complete nonsense and was zero fun to play.

Pretty much this, it kills my enjoyment of playing machinist when I see a black mage outdpsing me by almost 3k even though my gear is better

I can accept black mage being the highest dps class, but not by a whole 2-3k, that's just plain ridiculous and makes me think of maining a different class just because of the huge imbalance.

Black Mage is in a fine spot. This is the first time a DPS with zero utility deals enough damage to justify its own existence rather than being flat out useless because it's completely overshadowed by raid-wide damage buffs. The real problem is that the bottom half of the jobs are underperforming to a pathetic degree. I'd also like to point that despite being closer to the bottom of the DPS charts, SMN only does 800 rDPS less than BLM at the 50th percentile, and only 1200 less at the 95th percentile, so if a black mage is overshadowing you by 2-3k they're just playing better and/or are better geared (or you're a dancer)... Theoretically anyway, because I would never think about looking at aggregated date from an unsanctioned game addon.

I'm not saying this to insult your skill level either, only that you shouldn't be discouraged from playing your job because of Black Mage being exactly where it's supposed to be at.

[Kabooa]

it needed an entire rework because the stormblood kit was complete nonsense and was zero fun to play.

Machinist in Stormblood only had an irreconcilable difference with required latency to play effectively.

The kit itself was solid, and fun's subjective, but I personally found it a ton of fun after the learning curve.

[Dogempire]

You're getting tunnel-vision. There's a massive difference between Stormblood balancing and Shadowbringers balancing, the most important of which is that you don't have DPS utility enforcing its own meta. In stormblood, a buff to a ranged DPS meant a buff to dragoon, because if you have a dragoon you're always going to bring ranged, and you're ALWAYS going to have a dragoon because he makes every job stronger. And of course, because you have dragoon and ranged DPS get a free 5% damage buff, you're going to bring bard because it's ranged, also bard buffs everyone elses' crit rate and damage, which is just inflating the power level again. Buffing machinist in Stormblood wasn't *just* buffing machinist, but an indirect buff to Dragoon and Bard who were already oppressively strong.

Compare this to Shadowbringers where you no longer have piercing/slashing debuff, and BRD no longer universally buffs everyone just by virtue of existing, and now you can finally start tweaking jobs at an individual level without worrying about the insane cascading effect of buffing one minute part of a job. Furthermore, it wasn't a "buff" MCH needed in stormblood, it always had a guaranteed spot in the speedkill meta, it needed an entire rework because the stormblood kit was complete nonsense and was zero fun to play.



Black Mage is in a fine spot. This is the first time a DPS with zero utility deals enough damage to justify its own existence rather than being flat out useless because it's completely overshadowed by raid-wide damage buffs. The real problem is that the bottom half of the jobs are underperforming to a pathetic degree. I'd also like to point that despite being closer to the bottom of the DPS charts, SMN only does 800 rDPS less than BLM at the 50th percentile, and only 1200 less at the 95th percentile, so if a black mage is overshadowing you by 2-3k they're just playing better and/or are better geared (or you're a dancer)... Theoretically anyway, because I would never think about looking at aggregated date from an unsanctioned game addon.

I'm not saying this to insult your skill level either, only that you shouldn't be discouraged from playing your job because of Black Mage being exactly where it's supposed to be at.

I mean I agree with you that black mage is at where it's supposed to be, it's just that selfish dps vs selfish dps machinist isn't even in the running in a competition. Machinist should be a good 1000 dps higher than it currently is at at the very least.

As for the better geared, it was Titania so basically a giant punching bag with phases of small amounts of movement, but still ridiculous regardless. I had a 470 wep and was 462 in item level while they had full pentamelded 450 gear and a 475 wep, so not really better geared.

[ForteNightshade]

Black Mage is in a fine spot. This is the first time a DPS with zero utility deals enough damage to justify its own existence rather than being flat out useless because it's completely overshadowed by raid-wide damage buffs. The real problem is that the bottom half of the jobs are underperforming to a pathetic degree. I'd also like to point that despite being closer to the bottom of the DPS charts, SMN only does 800 rDPS less than BLM at the 50th percentile, and only 1200 less at the 95th percentile, so if a black mage is overshadowing you by 2-3k they're just playing better and/or are better geared (or you're a dancer)... Theoretically anyway, because I would never think about looking at aggregated date from an unsanctioned game addon.

I'm not saying this to insult your skill level either, only that you shouldn't be discouraged from playing your job because of Black Mage being exactly where it's supposed to be at.

This is actually incorrect. Black Mage either matched or outright exceeded Summoner by Alphascape, and consequently, saw far more use than it ever throughout Stormblood. The issue was FFlogs maintained a pDPS ranking, thus it always benefited your parse to have utility jobs. With the recent shift to rDPS, that is no longer an issue. Nevertheless, Black Mage isn't fine. No job should be leading another by over a thousand rDPS. "Only 1,200? at 95th percentile"? That's absurd. What use does Summoner have when it gets utterly demolished despite rDPS purposely accounting for both jobs' overall contributions? Attempting to dismiss these numbers because you dislike their source is, frankly, disingenuous at best... unless you have statistics to offer. Now that isn't to say FFlogs is the end all be all, but it's what we have publicly available. And it's what the vast majority of the raid community uses.

[Capn_Goggles]

This is actually incorrect. Black Mage either matched or outright exceeded Summoner by Alphascape, and consequently, saw far more use than it ever throughout Stormblood. The issue was FFlogs maintained a pDPS ranking, thus it always benefited your parse to have utility jobs. With the recent shift to rDPS, that is no longer an issue. Nevertheless, Black Mage isn't fine. No job should be leading another by over a thousand rDPS. "Only 1,200? at 95th percentile"? That's absurd. What use does Summoner have when it gets utterly demolished despite rDPS purposely accounting for both jobs' overall contributions? Attempting to dismiss these numbers because you dislike their source is, frankly, disingenuous at best... unless you have statistics to offer. Now that isn't to say FFlogs is the end all be all, but it's what we have publicly available. And it's what the vast majority of the raid community uses.

During Deltascape summoner consistently put out higher personal DPS than Black Mage while also bringing party DPS utility. In Alphascape we finally saw black mage pull ahead of summoner, but by this point if somebody *was* going to bring a caster DPS they'd still bring summoner because the rDPS it brought still beat black mage out by a solid margin. It wasn't until Alphascape when Black Mage provided a viable alternative to Summoner by offering MORE personal DPS than summoner's rDPS. So yes you're correct that Black Mage was finally viable by the end of the patch cycle AFTER all of the balancing.

Also when I say "just" 1200, what I'm trying to say is that black mage isn't pulling 3k higher than other jobs like some people like to exaggerate. The issue is that Summoner and Red Mage are NOT where they are supposed to be at, and the solution isn't to nerf Black Mage because you're just going to create another expansion where nobody wants to bring along black mage because its difficulty of play and lack of party utility doesn't make up for the damage that could be brought by playing a better job.

[ForteNightshade]

During Deltascape summoner consistently put out higher personal DPS than Black Mage while also bringing party DPS utility. In Alphascape we finally saw black mage pull ahead of summoner, but by this point if somebody *was* going to bring a caster DPS they'd still bring summoner because the rDPS it brought still beat black mage out by a solid margin. It wasn't until Alphascape when Black Mage provided a viable alternative to Summoner by offering MORE personal DPS than summoner's rDPS. So yes you're correct that Black Mage was finally viable by the end of the patch cycle AFTER all of the balancing.

Also when I say "just" 1200, what I'm trying to say is that black mage isn't pulling 3k higher than other jobs like some people like to exaggerate. The issue is that Summoner and Red Mage are NOT where they are supposed to be at, and the solution isn't to nerf Black Mage because you're just going to create another expansion where nobody wants to bring along black mage because its difficulty of play and lack of party utility doesn't make up for the damage that could be brought by playing a better job.

How am I rewriting history when I specifically stated "by Alphascape"? You're assuming an argument I never made. Regardless, my point was the two jobs were actually close near the end of Stormblood and now the gap is worse than it's ever been.

That's debatable. Frankly, it doesn't matter if Black Mage, Dragoon and Monk are brought down or the remaining five are brought up. The end result is the same; all jobs should be far closer in damage to one another. How they achieve that doesn't matter.