Ranged DPS role is about to be excluded from all content

[Lastelli]

I really hope we get some information in the next live letter on the 15th because the last mention of ranged balance was from late Stormblood when SE finally buffed MCH and said that we should be ready for nerfs in Shadowbringers again. But it seems like they forgot in their haste to remove Disembowel and Refresh that they can't use the same balancing anymore. There's no utility that would guarantee our spot and no Disembowel synergy to save us. While they probably have their hands full with the NIN and SMN mess, ranged classes really deserve a band-aid potency patch like NIN and SAM.

At least a confirmation that they're aware of the imbalances would be nice. It's awful to be in the dark and not know if the feedback is reaching the devs.

Well, do you remember when Yoshida said that they couldn't gli piercing res down to ranged dps because then they'd be "too op"? It all makes sense now...they probably never meant for ranged dps to be as strong as melee dps like they were in previous expansions.

[Kitfox]

Well, do you remember when Yoshida said that they couldn't gli piercing res down to ranged dps because then they'd be "too op"? It all makes sense now...they probably never meant for ranged dps to be as strong as melee dps like they were in previous expansions.

In Stormblood context, giving ranged their own piercing would've been too powerful. That's because we had Refresh which was pretty much mandatory to have for any harder content and already guaranteed our party slot. We no longer have that utility so we need to have more dps in its place to justify our existance. We literally have to be as strong as the melee and casters, at least when role bonus is accounted for. Tactician, Troubadour and Shield Samba are no better than Addle and Feint so we bring nothing of value to the party besides our dps, so it needs to be higher.

Being weaker is all well and good, until we're so weak that literally every other job can do our job better. We simply can't use Stormblood balancing for Shadowbringers because we don't have the same utilities anymore.

[HyoMinPark]

Well, do you remember when Yoshida said that they couldn't gli piercing res down to ranged dps because then they'd be "too op"? It all makes sense now...they probably never meant for ranged dps to be as strong as melee dps like they were in previous expansions.

I don’t think people are asking for the physical ranged to be as strong as a melee class in terms of personal damage. They’re just asking for them to not be as weak as they are. Right now, one could play one of the Big 3 (MNK, DRG, BLM) at an average level and still beat out playing a physical ranged at a high level.

[Karja]

Let me start my post by saying that it's pretty obvious that all ranged dps except for BLM currently need help.
I think everyone knows that at the heighest level BLM currently from all ranged jobs does by far the most damage.
My question(s) would be at which level should these jobs be balanced?

What I specifically mean with that is I checked E4S for the last week on FFlogs and looked at difference in DPS for the 10, 50, 95 and 100 percentile.
And DNC at 50% deals 9.36% less than a BLM at 50% but at 100% DNC deals a staggering 14.34% less.

I also looked at the DPS difference between 10% and 100% e.g.
BLM 11782 compared to 15815 (4033 difference or 34.23%)
DNC 11108 compared to 13547 (2439 difference or 21.96%)

or 50% and 95%
BLM 13194 compare to 14767 (1573 difference or 11.92%)
DNC 11959 compare to 12901 (942 difference or 7.88%)

It's a similiar case for the other jobs in the ranged role where no other jobs even reaches 25% difference in the 10-100 category or 10% difference in the 50-95 category.

It seems to be the case that while BLM on all levels deals more damage than the other ranged (even at 10%) it also scales better with player skill and/or gear.

If I manually adjust DNC dps at the 50 percentile to 13,194 which would be BLMs DPS at 50 percentile and add the same % increase DNC currently see going from 50-95% on FFlogs for this fight it would be at 14234 DPS for the 95% bracket and be 533 DPS (or 3.61%) behind BLM.
BTW I know that it would probably not play out like this entirely if SE buffs DNC or any other ranged dps.

If I do the same thing going for both jobs going from 50 percentile to 100 percentile
BLM 13194 -> 15815 (19.87% increase)
DNC 11959 -> 13547 (13.28% increase)
New DNC 13194 *1.1328 = 14946

DNC at 100% with parity on 50% on BLM would still be 869 dps (5.5%) behind BLM.

I don't try to justify BLMs DPS here I'm just genuinely interested what peoples thoughts are about this, how much influence on DPS should player skill and general job difficulty have.

[kajv95]

I don't try to justify BLMs DPS here I'm just genuinely interested what peoples thoughts are about this, how much influence on DPS should player skill and general job difficulty have.

General job difficulty can be split into two aspects - a skill floor and a skill ceiling. The skill floor should not have any bearing on the end balance of the job if the goal is for them to be theoretically balanced in such a way that job difficulty is included, since just because something is easy to start out with, does not mean it can't be equally difficult at the end level.

When it comes to the skill ceiling, if the balance of a job is skewed due to a higher intentional complexity in order to justify higher dps, then there should be an endgame imbalance. However, this would mean that the job is also not liable to receive QoL updates to decrease difficulty, something Level 80 Black Mages may note is exactly what Xenoglossy is. This difficulty must also be something that can be objectively perceived, not just something on a subjective level, since players may excel at different things, and to punish a player for being who they are (as a person) is something that shouldn't happen.

With player skill, well, this is where the skill floor shines. A job with a more lenient skill floor will have a shorter gap to cross by default. The end goal should still be noticable as a difference. The jobs can also be centered more around bringing something else to the table, allowing the jobs to effectively be weaker in damage but strong in their own right, which is what I believe FFXIV's current balancing tries to achieve, but fails because the tools are overtaxed.

The goal of this design is to make every job unique for their own tools, but strong enough to compete in their own right. Bringing an edge of extra damage can be considered the top jobs' edge, but just as a Machinist's tactician is on a 3 minute cooldown, so too must the edge of damage be minor enough that you can clearly say "RDM is slightly weaker, because it has the tool of a raise, but BLM brings damage which could prove useful to get through a difficult dps phase check".

I'd say that 543 DPS difference you picked out is actually a reasonable ballpark to hit for the dps difference between something that has the niche of just bringing more damage as opposed to having one or two tools at their disposal. It also simply plays well with how other jobs can reach their full rDPS potential by buffing said higher damage options, since a party composition with a BLM will be able to pad said BLM further increasing the party's overall numbers as opposed to the previously mentioned RDM.

As for what these options should be like, in the case of Phys. Range DPS, this is already more or less entirely in place save some problems with them being incredibly weak. With DNC being focused around 1 Party Member more than BRDs (previously) party-wide effects, where DNC gains such tools as Devilment on the Dance Partner while BRD has Battle Voice, and Curing Waltz being an instant option of HP as opposed to a timed heal up effect which relies on someone else to take use of it. This is how the classes can be varied while still being in the same role, and not eating each other alive. As for taxing movement on these, just... no. If they do that, then they have to stop designing fights around some jobs having movement options. Mostly every job with high movement capabilities already have supportive skills with limited range, and that is where movement tax is already apparent. Else I'm going to have to start advocating a gap closer on ranged...

and perhaps this would also make it fun to think about which sets of jobs work together best, though it'd be scary if something of the sort gets overtuned and makes the whole thing break down again, which is why aside from fixing the problems with support feeling stupidly weak on classes whose lore screams support, I'll advocate bandaid balancing via pdps first before they try and make everything work in a nicer way.

tl;dr, the way the game is currently being balanced is not properly in accordance with how the game is presented by the developers, where jobs should all be close to each other in terms of end result in order to prevent meta-based exclusion. In this current design ideology, no job should be so much weaker that it can be argued that bringing something else and foregoing a role bonus is a better dps option. varying skill floors will always exist, and skill ceilings will too, but only if the design of the game itself changed, should this be taken into account. Player skill should always be rewarded, but that is a given when designing jobs' endgame to be closer to each other.

[Akiudo]

-snip-

i would say balance around the 90-95% range, balancing for a potential max is futile as at this point there come things like a bard that suddenly has a procc rate of 65% on his dots, blackmages that didn't move an inch from the pull whereas the group worked around them in a way you wouldn't try to please the lord himself if he came down to earth and groups literally waiting for an extra 5 seconds so classes can get in their big 1500+ potency finisher that just went ready. Balancing for the low end on the other hand may not have this inherit problem, however and that i feel is important, people can allways better themselves, i don't mean this in a "just try harder" way, but if classes are close enough at the lower brackets people can overcome this through simply being better (or more experienced) at certain classes, take mch and bard, they are so close (all the time btw) you literally cant go up a single bracket on fflogs (so 20->25->30->40->50.......) without the bard in the higher bracket beating out the mch in the lower one. Also ideally you take more than one fight, because obviously some fights favor certain classes more than others.

[Karja]

i would say balance around the 90-95% range.

But what would that mean in RPDS?
If I apply BLMs RDPS at 95 percentile as RDPs for DNC and then use the same % decrease DNC currently has it would deal more RDPs than BLM at 50 percentile by nearly 500 dps.
Another point is how good must a player be to currently achive 50% in a fight like E4S? And must a player be as good to do it on another Job e.g. is 50% for a DNC equally demanding thant 50% on BLM?
Should this even matter?

When it comes to the skill ceiling, if the balance of a job is skewed due to a higher intentional complexity in order to justify higher dps, then there should be an endgame imbalance. However, this would mean that the job is also not liable to receive QoL updates to decrease difficulty, something Level 80 Black Mages may note is exactly what Xenoglossy is. This difficulty must also be something that can be objectively perceived, not just something on a subjective level, since players may excel at different things, and to punish a player for being who they are (as a person) is something that shouldn't happen.

The difficulty of BLM isn't alone that you are less mobile compared to a physical ranged (even with xenoglossy the mobility is nowhere near the same for BLM and ranged physical, DNC even has En Avant) but also the fact that skill weaving is significantly harder on BLM than on physical ranged since you have very few options for weaving.
And the lastly that your big DPS cooldown in Leyline forces you to stand in a small place for 30 seconds, I'm currently not aware of another DPS buff that has such a requirement.
There are certain DPS spells like salted earth though.

[Akiudo]

But what would that mean in RPDS?
If I apply BLMs RDPS at 95 percentile as RDPs for DNC and then use the same % decrease DNC currently has it would deal more RDPs than BLM at 50 percentile by nearly 500 dps.
Another point is how good must a player be to currently achive 50% in a fight like E4S? And must a player be as good to do it on another Job e.g. is 50% for a DNC equally demanding thant 50% on BLM?
Should this even matter?

which is a big reason why i said to use more than one fight and also said "balance around" not "make every class perfectly equal at" if we take an average fight, and on this average fight a dancer (with all contributions) at 50% is 300 dps above blackmage and at 95% is 200 below that is perfectly fine, that would mean in an extremly movement heavy fight dancer would probably even pull ahead, whereas if there's a fight with absolutely minimal movement the 50% blackmage would most likely equal the dancer whereas at the high percentile it would pull away by 500 instead of 200 dps. Also, people tend to throw together the skill ceiling with the skill floor, balance for the upper end, and if one class has to hard a falloff below a certain percentile then try to raise the floor for that class

This doesn’t happen anymore. Repertoire is fixed at a flat 40% now, so the proc rate never changes like it did in Stormblood.

you missed my point there, Reportoire is fixed, but its still random. was i hyperbolic with a 65% procc rate ? yes, if you can get that in a 10 minute fight you should really start playing the lottery, but there will still by trys where you in actuality have a 35% procc rate and fights where 45% of all dots procc, my argument was simply that taking the absolute maximum is bad because what the absolute maximum shows are statistical anomalys, thats the try where a 99% bard suddenly gets 45-50% reportoire proccs and crits 70% of his apex arrows even though his crit rate is 40%

edit:

Then I apologize, but your phrasing made it sound far more like the Repertoire/DoT proc rate was manipulatable, as it was in Stormblood; not that your DoTs were proc-ing 65% of the time in a fight, or that your skills were crit-ing at 60/65/70+% as opposed to a more “normal” rate.

letting my original clarification stay so it doesn't look like i talk to myself, but yea my wording was maybe not ideal, simply wanted to clarify that both "dumb luck" and "manipulation" (so the rest of the points i listed) are reasons why using the absolut max percentile is bad.

[kajv95]

The difficulty of BLM isn't alone that you are less mobile compared to a physical ranged (even with xenoglossy the mobility is nowhere near the same for BLM and ranged physical, DNC even has En Avant) but also the fact that skill weaving is significantly harder on BLM than on physical ranged since you have very few options for weaving.
And the lastly that your big DPS cooldown in Leyline forces you to stand in a small place for 30 seconds, I'm currently not aware of another DPS buff that has such a requirement.
There are certain DPS spells like salted earth though.

You're missing the point a little. The main takeaway is that jobs are designed to be interesting and different in their own right (though they do occasionally miss the mark) and don't really consider the difficulty in that sense, rather more that it's fun to play in it's own right. Aside from that, I can't consider weaving to be much more difficult than atleast BRD and MCH right now, and "we can't weave as well as you guys" is a non-argument when that is more or less exclusive to your job. At that point, you'd have to argue that BLM is the single most difficult job in the game, which no job really is.

And must a player be as good to do it on another Job e.g. is 50% for a DNC equally demanding thant 50% on BLM?
Should this even matter?

I'm not sure if you know how percentiles work. If a 50% player is doing their best on a DNC and a 50% player is doing their best on BLM e.g. they are stagnant and aren't improving due to personal inability, then for those two people it is, in fact, equally demanding.