Dancer Flourish is badly designed and not actually enjoyable to use

[Akiudo]

No? The whole idea is they don't want the Range to out-dps melee jobs because it would make them inferior for certain fights. If there were zero mobility tax, you'd bring only one melee for the 1% and they'd suffer even more in PF because no one does uptime strats. There always needs to be some tax, just not by a 1,000.

for one, just as you said, it would make melee inferior for certain fights, right now phys ranged are worse for all fights, also 1% right now is around 700-800 dps per fight, melee lb which is the most universally used not included, if you think a 1000 dps tax is overblown than getting 1300-1400 dps 700-800, for the role, 600~ extra for using melee lb instead of caster lb where theres but a single target should make taking a single melee more than ideal, and at the point you take one melee you are doing uptime strats either way, so theres no use attributing "using uptime strats" as a reason to exclude a second melee as perfectly viable, maybe not as "necessary" as it is now, but theres also no real reason 2 melee +1phys/1 ranged should be better than 1 melee/2phys(or caster)/1 of the other

[JanVanding]

Thank you Panda and Akiudo for wording it better/ more eloquently than I was on the whole power budget argument.

You nailed what I was trying to say about how physical rdps are underbudget and why their position is in danger far better than I have.

In an ideal world melee dps and ranged dps would come out with the same overall contribution through the course of a fight, ranged do lower damage but are constantly damaging, melee have moments where they move out and stop dps so they are tuned higher.

Except as you both pointed out, uptime strats which are always in use negate this and the dps tax ranged has as a result is too high and needs redressing.

Thank you both of you for doing a much better job of presenting the argument than I was.

[ForteNightshade]

You completely miss the point, and actually reinforce exactly what I'm saying.

The idea is this, lets say ranged is last for 3/4 fights in a tier. You would then expect one fight in the tier, a super movement fight, where ranged are #1. That would make sense, in that every role and class has strengths and weaknesses, and there should be content that plays to a given role's strengths. And let me reiterate, I'm not saying like, on this fight ranged is 2000 dps above the others. No, I just mean a fight where they are competitive for first. Lets say a fight where MCH beats out BLM by 500 dps.

No, actually. You are.

Your hypothetical now forces a melee to learn and gear an entirely separate role in order to optimize a fight because they're 100% inferior. The Range had this issue in 5.0 but their subsequent buffs have moved them outside any danger of being replaced whatsoever. If Machinist could eclipse Samurai in one or two fights per tier, there would be zero reason to bring a second melee ever. People would also be far less inclined to do uptime strats. Tanks, in many cases, can either mitigate through mechanics unless it's a complete one shot. Or they simply don't lose enough for it to matter. Melee don't have this luxury. O12S is a prime example of this. Hello, World uptime was designed exclusively to benefit the two melee not the tanks. PF never even attempted it because it was harder. This would only further devalue melee because unless you're in a top tier group, people aren't going to want to cater strats around a single person.

Being competitive is one thing, which we both agree on. If Samurai did 16,000 on a non-melee friendly fight and Machinist was within striking distance of that, it's competitive. Doing 500 more... renders Samurai obsolete, especially if people aren't willing to cater strategies entirely around one person.

Imagine you had the choice between two cars, one that's better on roads and one better offroad. But every race you do is 99% on a road and 1% offroad, and the offroad car always loses. Why would you ever pick the offroad car?

This analogy falls apart when for 1-2 tiers out of four, you either need to put your team at a disadvantage or spend $60,000 on a second vehicle.

tl;dr: there is no point for ranged to have a movement advantage if despite the advantage, they are still always last. It's not an advantage unless there is content in which they excel at.

You're ignoring range mobility is still advantageous to the raid. Even if Machinist doesn't surpass Samurai in DPS individually, it's a bigger loss to have any melee disengage for mechanics. Examples of this are Godka, Omega, M/F, Final Omega, Leviathan and Titan. Just to name a few. None of this touches on Ultimate, where bringing the range up to match melee DPS would make the latter role worthless. TEA has so much forced downtime on melee, the 1% may not be enough to keep any of them.

Simply put, mobility may not be utilized as much as it should in encounter designs. But it's still an advantage melee players don't have. Poor boss positioning, certain mechanics and non-uptime strategies are all things Range don't have to consider whatsoever.

snip

... this wasn't even your initial argument. You started off claiming Red Mage was competing with Summoner and Black Mage, which was laughably off base. When HyoMin disproved that, you shifted it to Dancer and Bard being excluded over Machinist, which was again disproven as complete nonsense. You then changed it yet again to the ridiculous notion Astro somehow impacts Bard or Dancer. At this point, you're just piggybacking off an entirely different argument because yours were immensely flawed. And still doesn't work because the Range aren't in any danger of losing their position. You will never drop Bard, Dancer or Machinist for any other role as of 5.1. Now one can certainly argue they should still be buffed more, but that's different than suggesting they're endanger of losing their spot.

In that regard, you're just flat out wrong.

[HyoMinPark]

Only responding to the first half.

Just FYI ranged are brought to ultimate because tactician is necessary, and the 1% raid damage for having a ranged is meaningful. If they were just a bit worse on dps, I'm fairly certain they'd bring another caster or melee. In fact, that is what happened prior to the buffs.

And, if you had read what I had written, you would see that I already acknowledged the state of the physical ranged prior to Patch 5.1 and how triple melee+BLM or double BLM was technically better than a physical ranged and their 1%. But even so, people still brought physical ranged in the majority of the top speedkills. There were only 3/10 of the Top 10 for E2S and E3S that completely dropped a physical ranged in favor of a triple melee+BLM comp. Most others still took them—either BRD or DNC. MCH, unfortunately, didn’t have much prescience in the Top 10.

The AOE mitigation from Tactician/Samba/Troubadour is meaningful in TEA, yes. But have you also been keeping up with how strong BRD in particular is in there? With the ability to double DoT Living Liquid + Living Hand in Phase 1, and the ability to double DoT Cruise Chaser and Brute Justice in Phase 2, the job isn’t anything to scoff at. DNC can AOE during Phase 1 at any point LL and the Hand are together. Same for BRD. MCH is the one that slips behind a little here but it’s still valuable to take.

If you’d paid attention to Jan’s argument in this thread, their entire premise is that DNC is struggling and is in the verge of being excluded. But that is simply untrue, and even though I cite where DNC theorycrafters and mentors disagree with the claim that DNC is borderline unviable, they continue to argue with their feelycraft. And they try to cite a very easy EX primal to back up their claims as the only shred of evidence they can offer. Nothing else they’ve said they have bothered to attempt to prove, and they even tried to say healer compositions affect the types of DPS one takes, which is flat out incorrect.

[Akiudo]

With the ability to double DoT Living Liquid + Living Hand in Phase 1, and the ability to double DoT Cruise Chaser and Brute Justice in Phase 2, the job isn’t anything to scoff at. DNC can AOE during Phase 1 at any point LL and the Hand are together. Same for BRD. MCH is the one that slips behind a little here but it’s still valuable to take.

while this may very well be true its still terrible balancing, bard, the current ultimate notwithstanding got buffed for basically nothing (this is not feelycrafting here, looking at normalized bard scores at 95% for savage shows bard dps actually dropped compared to all other classes) so if bard was in danger of being excluded before the patch it literally has to be in danger of being excluded now, especially with smn being as strong or stronger than blm you wouldn't even need some gimmick 3 melee or double blm setup. Now this problem is bard exclusive for being the weakest in a weak role, but the problem doesn't exist because mch is too strong, its still stemming from the role being too weak.

and if you do look at the current ultimate you still can easily see faults in how it was handled. Bard isn't just strong for multidotting, its also strong because its aoe is usefull for 2 enemies instead of the typical three, whenever you can tank both bosses together bards filler gets switched out from a 260~ potency attack (burst shot/refulgant if proccs) to a 380~ potency attack (quick nock hitting 2 enemies+30% chance for a rain of death reset), bard being literally useless on single target, yet really really strong on 2 is not balance, not when "having 2 enemies, both of them attackable and for an extendet period of time" hasn't happened in over a year, also you could easily buff bard single target while nerfing its 2 enemy aoe capabilitys.


for funs sake, don't pinpoint me on numbers, this is more a general "here, like this you can buff single target while keeping 2 targets as is or even down"

burst shot/refulgant arrow +30 potency each
reset dot nerf, so both dots +10, heck buff them, make it +20 on one of them /maybe give them a falloff rate like aoes, if the server cant handle which was the original dot then just let them fall of together until say 80%, so 1 target dotted+100% damage, 2 targets dotted/both deal 90% damage, 3 and up=80% damage

make it so each dot can only procc repertoire once, as dots are checked by server ticks it cant be too hard to make it so only 1 procc per used dot is possible even if you multidot.
change quick nock, -20 on potency but give it a proper aoe range instead of the shitty cone that misses half the enemies in a big pull, would be a nerf for small groups, but in a typical dungeon run i assure you you miss more enemies then you hit with quick knock
give apex arrow the typical potency fall of most other aoe skills have for hitting multiple targets

+maybe give bard some "bane" like ability so if you got like 6 enemies instead of breaking your fingers to multidot them just press a button, that should help (given a group of say 5 enemies) counteract any aoe nerf the proposed changes imposed on bard while it for sure wouldn't be used on 2 targets, just put it on the global cooldown and let reduce dot damage by 50%. (i said "bane like", not "literally give them bane")

congratulations, you now managed to give bard a much needed single target dps boost while keeping or more likely even nerfing its 2 mob capabilitys.

[HyoMinPark]

snip

I’ve already acknowledged BRD in this thread. And acknowledged that it needs tweaks, since one Ultimate fight is hardly a good fight to balance the job around. I’ve also acknowledged that slight potency increases for physical ranged would not be a bad thing, provided that the buffs did not tip the role into broken territory. If you have been reading my replies in this thread, you would have seen that.

The conversation between myself and Jan was primarily about DNC (since this thread is about DNC), and me contesting their insistence that the job was risking exclusion; as well as correcting various bits of information that they were incorrect about. Bringing up BRD is an entirely different topic than what they and I were primarily discussing.

[Akiudo]

snip

no but it was argued that "the physical ranged role" is "saved" after the patch, i disagree with that, cause yes bard is the extreme of the extremes its still part of that role and the reason why bard is hurting so bad indeed is the position of the role as a whole, not bards particular position in that role cause obviously no role will ever be absolutely perfectly balanced. Mind you i'm not saying you intendet to derail from problems by stating that "x situation is fine" but it is important to see the whole picture, and the whole picture right now is that people in this thread argue if ranged are/are not fine, into that discussion you brought bards performance in ultimate which intentionally or not makes it sound like its actually not too weak (and you can literally swap it out for any caster outside of ultimate for a dps gain/minimal dps loss+gaining chain rezz capabilitys in case of redmage). either way, don't want to derail this thread away from dancer so with that i will let this be, there are enough threads on the role as a whole or also bard in particular.

[HyoMinPark]

no but it was argued that "the physical ranged role" is "saved" after the patch, i disagree with that, cause yes bard is the extreme of the extremes its still part of that role and the reason why bard is hurting so bad indeed is the position of the role as a whole, not bards particular position in that role cause obviously no role will ever be absolutely perfectly balanced. Mind you i'm not saying you intendet to derail from problems by stating that "x situation is fine" but it is important to see the whole picture, and the whole picture right now is that people in this thread argue if ranged are/are not fine, into that discussion you brought bards performance in ultimate which intentionally or not makes it sound like its actually not too weak (and you can literally swap it out for any caster outside of ultimate for a dps gain/minimal dps loss+gaining chain rezz capabilitys in case of redmage). either way, don't want to derail this thread away from dancer so with that i will let this be, there are enough threads on the role as a whole or also bard in particular.

It was argued that the physical ranged are not going to be excluded for a triple melee+caster comp or a double caster comp after 5.1 adjustments were made. Even considering how BRD has fallen—which I have acknowledged in this thread and others—the role is not unviable. I only brought up BRD’s performance in TEA because Jan actually brought up how I was “flawed” in arguing Savage rankings and metrics for DNC’s current performance when we should consider Hades EX instead (which is a poor metric to look at considering EX is a step below Savage) and TEA once we have data for that.

You're still benchmarking on Eden Savage when we have Hades EX with its 2 min 30 sec enrage timers, every phase and obviously we're waiting on the data for Alex Ult but the initial results don't look good for BRD and DNC.

I was merely bringing up BRD and DNC performance in TEA to correct this misconception that the “initial results don’t look good”—BRD is actually kind of overpowered in TEA right now. Bringing them up in this fight had little to do with balance talk, and more to do with correcting misinformation.

I later repeated this to another poster because they seemed to be under the assumption that the physical ranged are only being brought due to Samba/Troubador/Tactician—but that’s also not the case.

You’re free to disagree if you like, but I have already spoken with DNC mentors and theorycrafters: they have all asserted what I have about DNC, and that the job is fine. I know that BRD was hit hard with 5.1, and I never denied that. It could use tweaks—be it potency boosts or return another utility to it (e.g., Foe Requiem) without hitting its personal damage again to bring it back up. But it’s not unviable.

It’s also not a gain to drop the physical ranged role and take two casters, which is what you seem to be implying here. If you don’t believe me, feel free to double check with the physical ranged mentors and theorycrafters.

[Akiudo]

snip

the problem with the kind of balancing where you keep the physical ranged inheritely weaker (as people have argued in this thread you would literally never take a second melee if the physical ranged pulled ahead by even a 100 dps in 2 out of 4 fights while falling behind in the others, which i highly doubt, theres more than enough reason to take 1 melee, the second while not necessarely usefull also is hardly a liability on the group at that point where you allready took the first one.) and why i say brd in fact being weaker than double caster comps (ultimate again notwithstanding, bard may very well even be overpowered there, but thats really on the fight design and could be fixed even while buffing bard single target) is a a role problem, not a bard problem is this:

no role will ever be perfectly balanced, even in itself, if you argue physical ranged need even just a 300 dps tax on the melees that would mean 300 dps on the weakest melee,(again dps buffs are just that, raid dps, so no real reason samurai has to be above say ninja and also no reason why mch should be measured against samurai while bard should measure against nin for example) which would in turn mean 800 on the strongest. also even if the physical ranged where in the range of 200 dps to each other that would still leave the weakest physical 1000 dps short, you literally can't balance them closer than that if you argue for a general ranged tax unless you get everyone even closer together, which obviously would allways be the goal, but at a certain point indeed not realistic anymore, thats why this approach doesn't work, and in fact bends over the role backwards right now, its not just "mch is dealing worse dps than ninja" its "mch is 'missing' 500 dps more on samurai than it is on ninja, and bard is lacking another 400",




you simply cant correctly balance a whole role as "weaker than another role",to do this you would either allready start at 2-3% from the top (what the weakest melee is missing on the strongest) on which you then add another 2-3% (anything less and people that aren't happy now will just cry "margin of error") so it is indeed weaker instead of just "equal to the weaker links in the role" while than having general role imbalances of 3-5% on top of that which basically leaves us where we are now

or

you balance the ranged role from the top (so samurai right now) and take say 3% from that. at this point the weakest class would still be 5-6% short of the top even if the role in itself gets closer together (so a good ~800 dps) which would end up in a situation where (lets just say the relative strength within the group stays as is) bard would be where mch is now, which generally is seen as the "strongest of the most definitely still pretty weak" group, so way better than now, but still not a position a class should be in, whereas mch would allready reach the point where the people that now argue no one would ever take a second melee if theres any chance would cry about mch making ninja obsolete because on one out of 4 fights mch actually deals 20 dps more than nin on the 95% percentile.

if you generally agree they need to be taxed on a level where even on a heavy movement fight they lose out to melees than at least part of that role will allways end up at a level that is in fact very much underpowered, yet this notion was bought forward more than once, and (again, taking the whole picture, i.e. this thread into account) as you not once disagreed with that side but only picked apart any tiniest detail of people saying the role is too weak in general even if you agreed they are too weak as is than this is something which i at least would say is something to argue about, after all the whole idea of a forum aside from collecting and sharing ideas is to actually exchange arguments. So yes, i very much argue that even if its just bard that falls short it indeed is a role issue that makes this happen.

[Rasikko]

. . .I don't know how you all don't go insane from all that stuff.