Summoner is doing too much in 5.10

[Trunks]

not really, chances are if a class does 1000 dps more at 99 it will also do 1000 (or at least 800) more at 75%, or 50% , and in that regard its not only cutting edge progression, like yes, that where its most important, but exactly because not everyone can be the 99% allways top gameplay world first type of player it will allways be relevant , imagine your group is doing a fight that needs 75000 raid dps, your group is doing 74.500-75.500 in an average try if no one dies (doesnt matter if this means your group sucks ass by current standarts or whatever, thats completly irrelevant to the discussion) , basically you get through if no one messes up and you got a good run as a group. now imagine you change your class and suddenly you got a 1000 dps buffer, imagine a second player does the same and goes from one of the weaker to the stronger classes and suddenly you got a buffer of 1,5-2k. that may not sound like much, but in practice this is huge

The nature of BLM is such that it actually performs its relative best in the highest percentiles. It looks worse the further down you go. You can see it in the Titan statistics right now, where in the 99th percentile BLM still sits at #2, but just going down to 95th it drops to #4, and by the 80th it's below DRG at #5. (And before the "but you need more samples!" people come in, it's a similar story in 5.0, where BLM drops from #1 at the top tiers to #4 by the 50th percentile).

Again, that makes this all even more problematic for the less-awesome groups, because that's where you have people that run up against enrage timers. It can create a really toxic atmosphere for someone just trying to "play what they enjoy" if everyone is annoyed that they're not playing the easier-and-better-and-safer Job that would enable a clear.

[Shiroe]

even if Smn does seem strong, especially the 1st logs yesterds with Smn dominating everywhere (showing how "easy" Smn can maintain good dps in new fights / early on)

after more logs, feels as if all the Dps are close togeather, with Sam, Smn, Blm and Mnk as the "top" Dps.., but others not far off..

even if I'd wish Blm (zero utility and mobility difficulty) to remain 1st Top Dps, with Sam very close 2nd (zero utility but easy mobility), followed by 3rd Mnk and Smn (should be close too, slight advantage Mnk)

its hard to 100% balance the classes and fights.. (some classes will always have some advantages in certain fights over other classes)

sofar, as atm, day 2 with logs, the classes feel well balanced

(but frear, Blm with its mobility difficulty, will fall short in real endgame again, a side of top players or till fights are fully mastered)

[Akiudo]

And now imagine that job that is providing that damage buffer also can just raise people if they need to, because why the hell not.

i'm actually with you there, just didn't want to overcomplicate my answer.

The nature of BLM is such that it actually performs its relative best in the highest percentiles. It looks worse the further down you go. You can see it in the Titan statistics right now, where in the 99th percentile BLM still sits at #2, but just going down to 95th it drops to #4, and by the 80th it's below DRG at #5. (And before the "but you need more samples!" people come in, it's a similar story in 5.0, where BLM drops from #1 at the top tiers to #4 by the 50th percentile).

Again, that makes this all even more problematic for the less-awesome groups, because that's where you have people that run up against enrage timers. It can create a really toxic atmosphere for someone just trying to "play what they enjoy" if everyone is annoyed that they're not playing the easier-and-better-and-safer Job that would enable a clear.

to be fair, blackmage really is the outlier in that equation in that it pretty much has the steepest dropoff at all levels and i mostly tried to answer the question provided, mind you the pre patch situation of 4th place (at the 50 percentile) is not really a problem in that we measure raid contribution as a whole anyways, if anything blm at 4th at 50% and 1st at the top would generally mean optimizing blackmages harder to optimize gameplay gets rewarded with higher potential allready, the problem with summoner as it stands seems to be that its basically easier to deal more damage than the competition (blackmage in that case) at basically every skill level while adding more utility in the form of a rezz.


to form a short summaration of my own thoughts on the matter though, less my reply seems like i think summoner is fine, i don't really get why they made it this strong, or if this was even intentional or more of a fuckup with the egi changes, i do think summoner and redmage aswell should be in the general striking range of blackmage, and blms steep dropoff is kinda problematic to balance around, but i also do think that the utility they add (read=the rezz, buffing group dps is not utility if it comes at the cost of personal damage)needs at least some taxation, both these classes definitely were overtaxed before the patch, but there is a middle ground between "9-12% below blackmage but got a rezz" and "basically equal to at least more consistent if not better than blackmage+got a rezz.

[dinnertime]

I can't really judge things just yet since 5.1 is still relatively new and there's not much statistics to really make a solid conclusion yet but I do think SMN is pretty overtuned at the moment. With the incredible amount of mobility, good survivability and utility it has now, it doesn't have much of a weakness anymore save for not being flexible with Trances pre 5.x.

That and...it's looking like BLM needs buffs because it's lagging behind everyone else now.

[Kabooa]

I gotta say though, summoner players are truly noble, have you ever heard of someone calling for nerfs to their own job? I certainly didn't see any black mages sticking up for their fellow casters when summoners and red mages were down. Just a lot of gloating over their guaranteed raid spot. Now that the tables are turned they are back to whining that they might have to play a different job for progression - you know, the thing you do for maybe 2 or 3 weeks out of the entire year.

"Gloating".

Oh look, we're functionally obsolete again. Dang, sure showed us. We Black Mages and our uppity insistence that we not be functionally pointless.

Suppose the only thing we can gloat about now is that at least it only takes another 20 potency on Fire 4 to even things out.

Isn't that exciting.

[ForteNightshade]

I would personally consider the apparent generous tuning of smn to be fair reparations for the absolute butchering of the job's gameplay and skill ceiling from Stormblood. And I say 'apparent' because many 3rd party tools are still recovering from the transition to 5.1.

Can we please dispense with this flawed mentality? A job being broken in one patch or expansion shouldn't then be made overpowered in the next because reparations. It's the same nonsense people were arguing back in Stormblood that Ninja, Dragoon and Bard deserved to suffer since they were meta too long.

The only insistence should be proper balance between all jobs, and to point out when any one job is too weak or too strong.

[OneTrueMiqote]

As of now there seems like enough data to support OP's claims. Thousands of logs for Hades and Eden savage.

[Shiroe]

before 5.1, many casters were going try Blm in Alexander Ultimate.. (unless they absolutely wanted an extra rez ofc)

now see Smn dominating the 1st Ultimate ... again (and probably not just as caster, but as dps in general)

let Smn shine too, every dps deserves, atleast once a patch or so..

and even if the dps seem overall very well balanced (maybe best balancing ever), .. new endgame fights tend to have more and more movement, pushing Blm back again (unless your a 99% player.., but even those will strugle against Smn in new fights,.. and without utility)

=> somehow expect a Blm slight buff, if endraids continue with heavy / long movement, like buff F4 and Despair each with 20 potency...

(and... or... and... or...
and... give Blm "quadruple-cast", since "4x" instant casts seem to be a thing lately xD..,.. ok dont take that last part too serious.., but after playing 5.1 Smn, Blm feels sooo stiff in fights like Hades Ex)

[ChaoticCrimson]

Personally-biased request: Please don't nerf SMN. I like the damage where it is. Buff RDM instead and continue to improving the overall flow and mechanics of SMN, please. What we have now is better than 5.0 SMN, but not as nice as 4.x SMN overall.

[Madoka]

Seems like in most fights on the rDPS SMN and MNK are within 200-400 of BLM and SAM. And if you go by aDPS it's about 500 (but I know buff parsing is still broken apparently so that may not be 100% accurate) with E1S being a big outlier but probably due to padding on the add phase.


But I feel that's where the numbers should be right? 200-500 behind in most fights is acceptable considering MNK and SMN have similar buffs/utility. Unless you believe a selfish dps should be 1k+ dps higher than every other class, or you think raise should be a far larger tax than it is (remove raise) I don't see what the contention is.

MNK has chakra and Brotherhood. Chakra's a huge healing benefit, brotherhood is physical only devotion on a CD half as long.
SMN has Raise and Devotion. Devotion is for everyone but on a 3 minute cooldown so our main utility people argue about is raise. We have the worst party buff and raise.
DRG has Battle litany and Left eye
RDM has raise and embolden. Embolden being quite a large boost for 20 seconds for physical members on a 2 minute CD. Even ignoring raise, this is a much stronger buff than devotion in the usual 2M/1R/1C party, not to mention the tanks benefit. They can also raise far more often for far less MP
Ninja of course has Trick attack.

The rDPS gap between SAM at the top and RDM at the bottom of the 7 melee and caster roles in E4S is only 700 rDPS. And as you go down each class offers a larger buff than the one above it. The numbers then tank when you get to the physical ranged DPS.
So, to me, the melee and casters are pretty well balanced right now when the gap for most fights (ignoring outliers like e1s padding where the gap is 500 ignoring smn) seems to be 500-1000 between the top and bottom of those 7 and balanced within each, with sam > mnk > drg > nin and blm > smn > rdm in rdps. These seem like good numbers to me, unless you think the gap should be 2000+ as it was before 5.0 and most of the community seemed to dislike. The real issue is all 3 physical ranged being so far behind even the lowest of the other 7 DPS classes.

And this is with only ~500 logs from each class. If the numbers keep going this way with a greater number of uploads then it honestly all seems like intended dev balance to me for once.