5.08 Patch - DPS still not balanced.

[IruruCece]

You act like monk is the only class with "mechanical issues."

Find where I have said, ever, that Monk is the only job with issues. I only have so many posts on these forums, so it shouldn't take you very long to check.

Any job becomes easier the more you play it—which is why we shouldn’t say “X job is harder/more complex to play, so it should deal more damage”. Jobs that are more complex should feel more rewarding—but that doesn’t necessarily mean that they should be top damage dealers, and the “easy jobs” stay at the bottom.

If I am honest, I do feel that simpler jobs should absolutely be pulling numbers at the bottom of the heap. They also shouldn't be pulling in 1k-1.5k less dps than other jobs for their trouble when played well. Otherwise, what actually IS the reward for playing a more complex DPS? The satisfaction/endorphin rush you get for saying you main X on the official forums? Personal satisfaction means precisely nothing in a setting where people are excluding jobs for not being able to perform even at that wonderful 95+.

Where did I say that RDM should be used as an excuse to not address SMN?

I never said that you did, but I was addressing your concern that if we "fixed" SMN, then RDM would be dead, which to me sounds like an excuse to leave a job as is. The answer shouldn't be "fix SMNs issues and leave RDM dead", it's "fix SMN issues AND also address the severe disparity is RDMs performance across the board." These things are mutually exclusive only to people who want them to be in order to make a (bad) point.

It sucks to wait for fixes. They'll happen.

you seem opposed to balancing around the 95+ percentiles.

I'm opposed strongly to treating a fraction of the player-base as the end-all-be-all opinion on what balance should be, since apparently their focus so narrow, the numbers alone are enough to justify ignoring mechanical issues with Jobs they have beef with.

Where was I talking about nerfs?

The part where you say "utility" is why Monk's shouldn't be competing with SAM or BLM for damage could be construed as a call for nerfs. Correct me if I'm wrong!

Several jobs have issues right now

See my reply to Katie. I'm very well aware that pretty much every DPS in the game has weird mechanical issues of one sort or another. Explain how any of that proves that we can't address the DPS disparities with some jobs unless we nerf others.

[ForteNightshade]

From the last liveletter digest:

Unfortunately, this response alone is rather disconcerting since it implies they balance Samurai around the belief we pad them. It certainly would explain why after two bloody years they still can't figure out Samurai needs much higher potencies. The problem is... we don't. Why would we buff Samurai when Monk is pulling higher numbers? I really don't understand Yoshida's thought process there.

If I am honest, I do feel that simpler jobs should absolutely be pulling numbers at the bottom of the heap. They also shouldn't be pulling in 1k-1.5k less dps than other jobs for their trouble when played well. Otherwise, what actually IS the reward for playing a more complex DPS? The satisfaction/endorphin rush you get for saying you main X on the official forums? Personal satisfaction means precisely nothing in a setting where people are excluding jobs for not being able to perform even at that wonderful 95+.

In a word? Yes. Complexity should be its own reward not something you balance around. Some people dislike Dragoon due to its linear rotation and adored old Ninja. You cannot balance around a subject parameter, especially because if the supposed "complex" job is noticeably higher, you'll have people expecting you to learn it. Furthermore, exclusion is only occurring due to the enormous gap in damage between the now big five and remaining five. Warrior, for instance, is undeniably the worst tank, yet you'll never find a single party locking it out. Why? Because the discrepancy between it and the remaining tanks is so close, no one cares.

If the DPS were similarly balanced, then the response would also be similar: no one would care what you played.

[Kabooa]

Unfortunately, this response alone is rather disconcerting since it implies they balance Samurai around the belief we pad them. It certainly would explain why after two bloody years they still can't figure out Samurai needs much higher potencies. The problem is... we don't. Why would we buff Samurai when Monk is pulling higher numbers? I really don't understand Yoshida's thought process there.

You realize he most likely just signs off on stuff, right? He probably doesn't sit down with the battle team to go over PPS calculations and the like.

[HyoMinPark]

If I am honest, I do feel that simpler jobs should absolutely be pulling numbers at the bottom of the heap. They also shouldn't be pulling in 1k-1.5k less dps than other jobs for their trouble when played well. Otherwise, what actually IS the reward for playing a more complex DPS? The satisfaction/endorphin rush you get for saying you main X on the official forums? Personal satisfaction means precisely nothing in a setting where people are excluding jobs for not being able to perform even at that wonderful 95+.

The reward for playing a complex DPS job is making it feel as if the play is worth the effort you put into it—which also ties in to the exclusions that people are predicting/that are already happening right now to some of the jobs. People don’t exclude the jobs for being unable to obtain 95+ percentiles. They exclude them because, even at the 95th percentile, one of the Big 3 perform better at a lower percentile. A 50th percentile BLM does more than a 95th percentile DNC, for example. The BLM can literally die and still do better than a DNC performing at a high standard with no deaths. That is a serious problem. And it also leads to feeling as if the more complex jobs aren’t worth anything—much like SMN. You can be a 95th percentile SMN, but you will never touch a BLM, and BLMs at some percentiles lower than you are still doing more.

There should be some differences between selfish jobs and utility jobs. But not like there is now. The gap we see right now has very little reason to exist, and complexity doesn’t play any sort of factor into it.

I never said that you did, but I was addressing your concern that if we "fixed" SMN, then RDM would be dead, which to me sounds like an excuse to leave a job as is. The answer shouldn't be "fix SMNs issues and leave RDM dead", it's "fix SMN issues AND also address the severe disparity is RDMs performance across the board." These things are mutually exclusive only to people who want them to be in order to make a (bad) point.

I never said that the answer was to fix SMN and leave RDM dead on the floor—please stop assuming that I’m saying things like this when I’m very clearly not.

I merely said that, if the developer significant buff SMN and give RDM nothing, RDM is going to die. There’s just no contesting that. And it’s quite likely that this is what will happen, as they haven’t made much mention about RDM with regards to changes/buffs, other than what we already know (i.e., that Verraise is their reasoning for lower pDPS). And the physical ranged will also be at risk if SMN’s damage is high enough to offset losing the 1% party bonus for a BLM/SMN comp.

It sucks to wait for fixes. They'll happen.

Will they, though? SB DRK, MCH, and WHM would love to have a word with you about the fixes they never got. Whether you want to acknowledge it or not, the developers already have a history of ignoring certain jobs that have issues—be it because they don’t see the problem, or they want to ignore it in favor of things like personal design (WHM Lilies) or viability (“DRK cleared UCoB World First so it’s fine”).

I'm opposed strongly to treating a fraction of the player-base as the end-all-be-all opinion on what balance should be, since apparently their focus so narrow, the numbers alone are enough to justify ignoring mechanical issues with Jobs they have beef with.

I’ll ask again: who are we supposed to balance around then?

Can you provide me an answer this time, or are you going to continue to dodge the question?

Balance can occur at the 95th percentile for all jobs without ignoring mechanical issues. It certainly shouldn’t occur any lower, because then we aren’t seeing jobs at near maximum potential.

The part where you say "utility" is why Monk's shouldn't be competing with SAM or BLM for damage could be construed as a call for nerfs. Correct me if I'm wrong!

No. The part where I say MNK having utility is why it shouldn’t deal more damage than SAM is not the same as me saying to nerf MNK. If I’m saying anything, I’m saying that SAM is horrendously undertuned for a job that literally offers a party nothing. It should be performing to BLM levels since both are selfish jobs with no raid buffs (like Brotherhood) or party utility (like Mantra).

See my reply to Katie. I'm very well aware that pretty much every DPS in the game has weird mechanical issues of one sort or another. Explain how any of that proves that we can't address the DPS disparities with some jobs unless we nerf others.

You seem really set on me calling for nerfs, when I haven’t done anything of the sort. Perhaps stop inferring this from my posts? If I was going to say “nerf X job”, I would come right out and say it. I don’t mince words.


Damage disparities can be fixed in a couple of different ways:

1. Buff the jobs that need buffs simply by boosting potencies,
2. Increase certain party buffs by a small amount,
3. Re-add features that have been removed to add in a bit more rDPS, while balancing the other jobs in a role against this (via raid buff potency increases or straight potency increases to weaponskills/abilities),
4. Look into mechanic issues, like excessive clipping, and find ways to rectify them.

1 is obviously the “easiest” solution—add 20~50 potency to X skills, and hope that ups a job’s pDPS. 2 is something that was done in SB with MCH’s Hypercharge (it was upped to 6% from 5%... but then later nerfed back to 5% because it was supposedly “too strong”—yet BRD still utterly dominated over MCH for the entirety of an expansion). 3 would be something along the lines of re-implementing a utility such as Foe Requiem to BRD (to give an example), and then boosting the other two physical ranged to match BRD’s new rDPS. 4 would be something like the 4.3 Malefic change to AST: by reducing how often AST clipped its casts with card stuff, their damage significantly increased as a result without any buff to Malefic’s base potency.

Nerfing jobs isn’t always what needs to be done. However, when there are jobs that are utterly broken, sometimes it becomes necessary to nerf them to prevent them from killing other jobs in their role. 4.1 SMN is a decent example of this: the developers utterly broke the job, and then latter brought it back down in line when they realized how it was too strong. One has to be careful with just buffing without nerfing, because you can also end up with the HW BRD/MCH problem, where they had been buffed so much by Creator that they were dealing more damage than jobs like MNK and BLM.