Summoner is doing too much in 5.10

[lulunami]

4 classes competing for 2 slots (melee)
3 classes competing for 1 slot (caster)
and then 3 classes (physical) competing for the last slot with 3 other classes (caster) again.

a static may very well take a second caster instead of a physical ranged and at worst have minor dps loses in exchange for a rezz, and while generally i would say its a good thing if classes competed freely for slots that would mean all would have to compete, as it stands the only classes with extra competition are the physical ranged, fighting for a single slot whereas everyone else gets a slot save and officially encouraged by square by way of the 1% buff.

Why not pick this comp?
- Black Mage
- Summoner
- Any Ranger
- Any Melee

[Akiudo]

Why not pick this comp?
- Black Mage
- Summoner
- Any Ranger
- Any Melee

because the weakest melee completly smokes the strongest physical in dps ? leaving out e1s because of add padding mch is the only ranged with any shot at being wortwhile, and even than its only very very barely because of the 1% buff, mch is the strongest phys ranged by 200-700 dps compared to bard/dnc depending on fight and you don't even need any "uptime strats" or whatever as the moment you take the first melee you will do that either way.

for numbers sake, right at this very moment, 95% percentile for 1 day (feel free to check tomorrow, the general picture has been the same for every day since patch hit)

e2s=bard 14.072
weakest melee (nin)=15.479
1407 dps buffer from bard to weakest melee

e3s=bard 13.167
weakest melee (drg)=14.708
1541 dps buffer

e4s=bard 13.193
weakest melee (nin)=14.469
1276 dps buffer

now a 95% group which means only 1 out of twenty groups is better, does 85000-93000 dps on these fights if you exclude the limit break meaning the 1% ranged buff gives anywhere from 850-930 dps, thats why you don't exclude the melee, because you could literally take the weakest melee and still be 400 dps ahead compared to taking a bard, dnc on average fairs a bit better, but excluding levi where bard is a bit of an outlier do to his group buff being outranged like 30% of the fight dnc still is only like 50-100 dps ahead of bard or in other words, still 300-400 dps short AFTER the 1% buff is accounted for, the only phys ranged with a chance to break even is mch, and even that is barely.

Also the question of "but what if you instead excluded the melee" still acts as if melees having to compete for a second spot is anywhere close to as bad as physical ranged actually having to compete for any spot at all. saying things like "the physical buffs saved them from exclusion" ignores that literally everyone aside from the strongest 2 of 5.0 got buffed by the same or more dps than the physical ranged

[lulunami]

because the weakest melee completly smokes the strongest physical in dps ? leaving out e1s because of add padding mch is the only ranged with any shot at being wortwhile, and even than its only very very barely because of the 1% buff, mch is the strongest phys ranged by 200-700 dps compared to bard/dnc depending on fight and you don't even need any "uptime strats" or whatever as the moment you take the first melee you will do that either way.

for numbers sake, right at this very moment, 95% percentile for 1 day (feel free to check tomorrow, the general picture has been the same for every day since patch hit)

e2s=bard 14.072
weakest melee (nin)=15.479
1407 dps buffer from bard to weakest melee

e3s=bard 13.167
weakest melee (drg)=14.708
1541 dps buffer

e4s=bard 13.193
weakest melee (nin)=14.469
1276 dps buffer

now a 95% group which means only 1 out of twenty groups is better, does 85000-93000 dps on these fights if you exclude the limit break meaning the 1% ranged buff gives anywhere from 850-930 dps, thats why you don't exclude the melee, because you could literally take the weakest melee and still be 400 dps ahead compared to taking a bard, dnc on average fairs a bit better, but excluding levi where bard is a bit of an outlier do to his group buff being outranged like 30% of the fight dnc still is only like 50-100 dps ahead of bard or in other words, still 300-400 dps short AFTER the 1% buff is accounted for, the only phys ranged with a chance to break even is mch, and even that is barely.

Also the question of "but what if you instead excluded the melee" still acts as if melees having to compete for a second spot is anywhere close to as bad as physical ranged actually having to compete for any spot at all. saying things like "the physical buffs saved them from exclusion" ignores that literally everyone aside from the strongest 2 of 5.0 got buffed by the same or more dps than the physical ranged

Those melee DPS are going to do less damage without a ranger in the party. Maybe for a 99th percentile group on over-geared farm content, dropping the ranger may be feasible. However for progression content like the upcoming Ultimate, the 1% buff also affects survival because of 1% more HP for the entire party.

I do not understand why magical caster DD's always have to do less damage than melee DPS. This is a community meta restriction we place upon ourselves. The game encourages to fill out the party for the 1% buff up to 5%. That means melee DD, magical caster DD, physical ranger DD, and an optional DD of your choice.

[Akiudo]

Those melee DPS are going to do less damage without a ranger in the party. Maybe for a 99th percentile group on over-geared farm content, dropping the ranger may be feasible. However for progression content like the upcoming Ultimate, the 1% buff also affects survival because of 1% more HP for the entire party.

I do not understand why magical caster DD's always have to do less damage than melee DPS. This is a community meta restriction we place upon ourselves. The game encourages to fill out the party for the 1% buff up to 5%. That means melee DD, magical caster DD, physical ranger DD, and an optional DD of your choice.

yes, again thanks for reading my post, as i allready wrote before raid dps without lb in these fights is 85-93k, that is with the buff meaning the 1% given by having the "ranger" in the party, so take of 1% of that and alltogether (the whole group) will do say 930 dps less for voidwalker, 300 or so of that will come from the 2 melees but thats not important because again, it was allready accounted for, you cant substract it once from the group as a whole and than again from the melee, thats not how this works.

the whole "the weakest melee does 1400 dps more than bard" also is allready is accounting for any buff a bard or another class may bring, what this means is that if there was no bard buffing in the group the parser would have said "melee dps1 does 15k dps" now with the bard in the group the parser says "melee dps 1 does 15,3k dps" but once it gets uploaded to fflogs we are once again back to "melee dps1 did 15k dps" thats with or without the "ranger" ,the only thing the numbers listed on their they wont subtract is the 1% buff the group would be lacking, but even than there would still be 400 dps more to be had by a second melee compared to a single ranged which you don't need if you got 2 casters. i'll give you the 1% hp for ultimate, but not only is that content only a miniscule amount of the playerbase does, its also a really really bad reason to take a class.

[Kabooa]

I do not understand why magical caster DD's always have to do less damage than melee DPS. This is a community meta restriction we place upon ourselves. The game encourages to fill out the party for the 1% buff up to 5%. That means melee DD, magical caster DD, physical ranger DD, and an optional DD of your choice.

This is a giant overreaching concept that can't really be summarized in a single post.

The short version is still rather lengthy, so bear with me.

When it comes to balancing classes in a Trinity game, the hard math that comes from theorcrafting and practical application comes down to the right tool for the right job. The 'strongest' jobs aren't necessarily those with the most damage, but those who deal with the most mechanics / reduce the overall strength and difficulty of the encounter.

The reason that FF14 values damage so much is that the player's ability to influence the encounter is generally limited to some hard binaries, with DPS being the only scaling adjustment. ("Skip soar or disband"). The hard binaries are generally tank busters and healing requirements via the raid busters. The hard enrage, while adding a suitable layer of tension, also removes some ability to compensate. Being 'less efficient, more consistent' is generally the motto when it comes to encounter puzzles in other games, and really only applies in FF14 as gear scales the player up, allowing the 'less efficient' to clear the same hurdle.

"DPS is king" because it's the only real agency the player has in influencing the encounter.

So who gets the most DPS?

Generally speaking, it's usually those who bring the least supplemental tools.

One would expect this means Black Mage, Samurai, and Machinist.

As a secondary property, it's also those who have the most constraints. The Samurai must be in melee and must hit positionals to maximize damage. The Black mage must complete a cast in order to deal damage, but does so from any range. The Machinist has none of those constraints.

So your expectation is that these three jobs deal the most damage, but the order of their ranking should be Samurai >= Black Mage > Machinist. The thresh hold and difference between them is generally where the contest is, but the idea is that encounter design varies enough, and player capability matters enough, that the three can leap frog around these on-paper rankings.

Almost done.

But we also run into the problem where each of those jobs also have 2-3 other jobs who fall into the same category, who bring a variety of non-damage oriented tools along with varying effective raid damage increases.

So we have some things we have to consider.
1. The jobs who bring extras cannot deal equal or greater damage. That is immutable, or the jobs who bring nothing else are obsolete. "Extras" are non-damage oriented tools or capabilities.
2. There are four slots for them. At a bare minimum the value of a given role must at least be the equivalent of going from 105% stats to 104%.
3. A job's given strength should be assumed over a variety of encounters, not just ones tailored for it. A tailored encounter should be its chance to excel, not its chance to be passable.

With this in mind, lets start with 1.

The Samurai cannot be outclassed by Monk or Dragoon. The Ninja's supplemental tools have largely been removed, with Trick Attack mostly just being lip service. That said, compared to the other jobs, Ninjutsu affords it more robust capability from out of melee range, so in fights without 100% uptime, the ninja maintains some capability of maintaining meaningful uptime if disengaging from the boss for a few gcds. Mantra has been mostly rendered a moot point, though it still has use. The melee's current design (not tuning) would lead one to assume the following hierarchy.

Ranking

1. Samurai
2. Monk, Dragoon
3. Ninja

With that in mind, Black Mage would slot in at 2x or 3 spot - They have a fair amount of tools to deal with forced movement and mainly suffer in heavily extended periods, but they aren't too dissimilar from Red Mages in that regard. The current patch makes VerScathe less awful but likely still undesirable. Summoners maintain the most on demand mobility, though improper play leverages a tax for each step.

And the problem comes back again to Raise, as without them, Red Mage and Summoner are perfectly fine on the same rung of 2 / 3. The value Raise has fluctuates, but the end result comes back to consideration 1: The jobs who bring extras cannot deal equal or greater damage.

1. Samurai
2. Monk, Dragoon, Ninja
2/3. Ninja, Black Mage
4. Red Mage, Summoner

Ranged plain and simple have to come in last in their current iteration. The gap is what's debatable. This comes into consideration 3: A job's given strength should be assumed over a variety of encounters, not just ones tailored for it. A tailored encounter should be its chance to excel, not its chance to be passable.

What encounter 'tailors' to the Ranged? Effectively any encounter that doesn't tailor to Melee or Casters. Machinist has nothing that the other ranged do not, and therefore it is relatively easy to place this. The Machinist should do less damage than a Black mage, but more damage than any equally mobile jobs who bring extras.

Our final ranking looks like this.

1. Samurai
2. Monk, Dragoon, Ninja
2/3. Black Mage
4. Red Mage, Machinist
5. Summoner, Bard, Dancer

Now that brings consideration 2 into play. Why not just bring 4 melee if you can? While in an ideal world, encounter design would A) Potentially allow this at times but also B) It's still way better to bring a variety of jobs, for the sake of our concerns, it effectively means that the Highest performing of one role and the lowest performing of another role do not differ by more than about .96-1% of a raid's total damage at equal skill levels.

This means if your team clocks in at 90,000, the Samurai is not higher than 900 over a Summoner, or Bard/Dancer. Using some arbitrary numbers...

1. Samurai - 16,000
2. Monk, Dragoon, Ninja
2/3. Ninja, Black Mage
4. Red Mage, Machinist
5. Summoner, Bard, Dancer - 15,100

Ok I lied, we weren't almost done back there.

Now I doubt that's a universally accepted list (I often jest on the ones that do show up), but it's worth noting that this is assuming jobs in their tailored encounters.

The Samurai / melee fluctuate down as melee uptime is denied. The casters fluctuate down as more movement is demanded.

TLDR: "It's a tier list! We aren't sick of these yet!"

[wereotter]

<ranking explained>
TLDR: "It's a tier list! We aren't sick of these yet!"

I don't 100% agree with your final conclusion, but agree with your logic, and appreciate you explaining it for others. I think that jobs that natively need to stay still partially or fully to do their skills should have a higher DPS potential than jobs that have no such restriction. And as such, the DPS potential for RDM and SMN should always be higher than the potential for any of the ranged physical jobs. Like you said that fights that are movement intensive, especially with mechanics that have a point-blank range from the boss that require both melee and casters to disengage should be those fights where ranged physical shine. But those roles should, in a fight with no movement required, have lower DPS potential than both melee and casting roles.

Though in the end, I do think that the differential between these types of jobs, especially when adjusting for raid contribution, should be minimal. Ideally non-existent, but I realize that would be an impossibility, so looking for very minor differences between job choices should be the goal. Every job should be viable for all content, and I would say that's most likely true. In the end, unless a job is just performing well outside that range of balance, the differences people complain about are pretty minor.

[Akiudo]

I don't 100% agree with your final conclusion, but agree with your logic, and appreciate you explaining it for others. I think that jobs that natively need to stay still partially or fully to do their skills should have a higher DPS potential than jobs that have no such restriction. And as such, the DPS potential for RDM and SMN should always be higher than the potential for any of the ranged physical jobs. Like you said that fights that are movement intensive, especially with mechanics that have a point-blank range from the boss that require both melee and casters to disengage should be those fights where ranged physical shine. But those roles should, in a fight with no movement required, have lower DPS potential than both melee and casting roles.

Though in the end, I do think that the differential between these types of jobs, especially when adjusting for raid contribution, should be minimal. Ideally non-existent, but I realize that would be an impossibility, so looking for very minor differences between job choices should be the goal. Every job should be viable for all content, and I would say that's most likely true. In the end, unless a job is just performing well outside that range of balance, the differences people complain about are pretty minor.

to add to this, the problem at least with the physical ranged role as is is that even in those "heavy movement fights" they don't shine, they just look a little less like a turd then everywhere else

[wereotter]

to add to this, the problem at least with the physical ranged role as is is that even in thos "hey movement fights" they don't shine, they just look a little less like a turd then everywhere else

That's fair, and also why I don't think the differential should be massive. Also, though, now bard and dancer both have 100% up time on raid buffs which is another reason that they might be lower, but also I can agree that given players ability to minimize caster movement and work around mechanics, the difference doesn't need to be huge, but it needs to be enough to justify having a caster else raid groups will just say "if we don't' have to plan movement around the caster and can get the same benefit from taking two ranged physical, why shouldn't we just do that?"