Everyone's talking about smn buffs. But what about mch

[Akiudo]

You take the summoner because it's more mobile, and brings a raise that's basically comparable in all but the most niche scenarios.

It is the all around better choice.

A 300 dps difference at the numbers we have now, depending on who you set that baseline around, is 2-3%. Which is about the variance you see on good/bad crit strings, or even just getting selected by an unfavorable mechanic.

You know which jobs don't really care if they get targeted by unfavorable mechanics?

Bard, Machinist, Dancer.

And of the remaining jobs, the Summoner is the easiest one to adjust to.

As for why token melee vs token ranged, there is no difference in how 'bad' the scenario is. Ideally all the jobs should be desirable, but the fault here lies that the only thing valued is a chart while ignoring everything else about the job that doesn't contribute to it.

the variance of good/bad crit strings is still that, variance. if for examples sake blm is 300 dps ahead of smn/redmage (do to their factual utility, i.e the rezz) on average than thats that. yes, on a good run the summoner may get 300 dps more , the blm may get 300 dps less, but over 10000 trys, which is what this graphs show it averages out, crit variance is completly irrelevant looking at 95% percentile parses.

and if you think the summoner is better than redmage cause the rez is basically as good aside from some extreme fringe cases than great, put redmages baseline slightly higher than summoners so when redmage loses the equivalent to 200 dps do to movement and smn only loses 100 the average out at the same number and in a low movement fight redmage wins by 50-100, in a high movement fight it loses by 50-100, of course it will never work out that perfectly, but "perfect" balance being impossible doesnt mean it shouldn't be the goal.

also about your comment of only looking at the chart and ignoring what other things a job offer, what else DO mch/brd/dancer offer aside from whats on the chart ? dps buffs obviously are included in the chart allready, uptime strats are accounted for aswell unless you want to run with 0 melee, which would cost you both the melee lb+1% buff (which would end up at an actual 1% buff to the group, not the current "we may end up with 0,2% more group dps if we take a dancer instead of a redmage...maybe...") so again, unless you want to lose out on a literal very real 1% group buff+the lb you will take at least one melee, so what does a third ranged offer the group that a second melee wouldn't ?

[Kabooa]

and if you think the summoner is better than redmage cause the rez is basically as good aside from some extreme fringe cases than great, put redmages baseline slightly higher than summoners so when redmage loses the equivalent to 200 dps do to movement and smn only loses 100 the average out at the same number and in a low movement fight redmage wins by 50-100, in a high movement fight it loses by 50-100, of course it will never work out that perfectly, but "perfect" balance being impossible doesnt mean it shouldn't be the goal.

Now stop and think about this for a moment.

The Summoner is better in every scenario but 2 - Fights that cater to the Red Mage, and in "I need 8 raises right the !@#% now".

Why would you ever bring the Red Mage for a theoretical increase of .3% in fights that line up perfectly for Red Mage instead of just bringing the Summoner? Speedrunning? Woopty do.

The Ranged offer much more consistency in play. They offer a group much more flexibility. They bring the best party defensive buff.

And just so we can get this on record - They do need a damage buff, but if people want something along the lines of "Black Mage -1", they need a reality check.

[Payotz]

I just want Refresh, Palisade and Dismantle back.
I know TP is gone and all, but it feels great popping Tactician and/or Refresh when people drop or if it's a massive healcheck and healers need all the mana during prog.

[Rasikko]

Now stop and think about this for a moment.

The Summoner is better in every scenario but 2 - Fights that cater to the Red Mage, and in "I need 8 raises right the !@#% now".

2900 x 8 = 23,200 mp. (Verraise + Vercure for Dual cast), a little less with lucid running

I wanna meet the single RDM that can do that in 1 mp pool, so I can call hax.

[Karshan]

Oh, look.

More arbitrary numbers.

Put it this way - If there was no difference at all between the job's numbers, you take Bard, Dancer, Summoner, and a token Melee for the limit break.

300 was just to account for variance and give a number, but my idea is closer to 0. There shouldn't be any notable difference so that, well yeah we could take a comp like the one you suggest and not affect efficiency : what's wrong with what ? Why should there be always 2 melees ?

Without a difference, there could be any comp, no one would feel left behind. You're a BRD ? welcome, a SAM ? welcome, a BLM ? welcome !
Our team wanna run MNK SAM SMN MCH : sure ! and my friend, DRG BLM RDM DNC, sure as well ! You're only doing 1% less than the "best meta comps" so there's no issue and welcome !

Also. Not to be picky. But nice strawman, you focused on the 300 and not on any of the arguments I put in there. You develop your idea further in you 2nd answer , but you misread that I adressed that already, for mobility and unfavorable mechanics at least : it is ALREADY in the chart. Sinc it's what happened IN FIGHT, not on a dummy. rDPS is what has been managed in fight, so despite less mobility, BLM still absolutely trumps a BRD (also a reminder, mobility is the best it's ever been for BLM, if you play it right the turret image is a meme by now)

What I didn't adress is indeed raise, that is not taken into account in charts and is a decision factor : and I think it should be gone if all rDPS come close.

What I think, is that you don't like the idea of not garanteeing 2 spots for melees ; this idea that 2 melee is mandatory has to die too.
People won't cast them out "yay we don't have to do melee uptime strats !" > wrong, your tanks thank you for forgetting them already, plus there is a lot of time where melee uptime strat is just smoother so it will be kept even if 4 range are in the fight.

[Kabooa]

Without a difference, there could be any comp, no one would feel left behind.

As you have stated in your reply, if there is no difference, there should be no differences through the job as well.

In other words, if Black Mage and Bard are the same, then the Black Mage should be freely mobile or the Bard should be rooted in the same fashion. Why would anyone play a job that can only be screwed by encounter design opposed to one that by its implementation doesn't care at all what the encounter does?

What I don't care for is the required reworking of non-potency based job adjustments that would have to come to make this fantasy a reality. There are two scenarios.

Every encounter is the same or every job is the same, and both of these scenarios are terrible.

[Akiudo]

In other words, if Black Mage and Bard are the same, then the Black Mage should be freely mobile or the Bard should be rooted in the same fashion. Why would anyone play a job that can only be screwed by encounter design opposed to one that by its implementation doesn't care at all what the encounter does?

the underlined is the important part, because half the people, you including others act like people say "bard and blm should do the same dps on a training dummy" , of course not all fights are the same, which also means certain jobs will have an easier time compared to others depending on the fight, there will be fights like voidwalker where a job like blackmage can shine and fights like titan where mobility issues while in fact cost dps, this however is exactly the point, certain fights.

no one looks at voidwalker and says bard should be up there with blm on that fight, no one says that even if you take the titan parse where every single mechanic magically evaded the blackmage and made him move just one single time during the 12 minute encounter should have the phys ranged equal to the blm, people argue that if you take an average movement fight (however you define that, i would say levi/titan is a fair level for that but feel free to disagree) these classes should at a reasonable high percentile , lets say somewhere in the 90-95 range deal equal dps. This still leaves potential for the blm to be stronger if there is literally zero reason to move aswell as being equal if whats generally assumed will be the level of mechanics involved do in fact effect it.

Yes, This does leave open the chance for the blm in our example getting screwed over by mechanics just going of in a way a lot worse than expected, this however works both ways and may just aswell mean mechanics work out more favorable than is generally expected which would indeed see the blackmage pull ahead. saying "classes dealing equal damage at a high percentile can only mean one class gets screwed over more than the other" completly ignores that "bards and blackmages being equal at 95%" may very well mean perfect play and a little bit of bad rng (something which bard/dancer have quite a bit higher chance of happening on behalf of their procc based gameplay on top of the general crit/dh luck everyone has to deal with) on the bard part compared to 3-4 small dps loses the blackmage had to take do to movement.

putting this into practical numbers, the dps difference for titan between mch and blackmage at 95% is 790 dps~. at the 99 percentile it is 1200 , blm going from 95-99% gained another 400 dps on mch, the reason for that is simple, the 99% parses are those where rng worked out completly in favor of blackmage and maybe the group even went to some extra lengths to make it happen, the 95% parse in turn is more of a "general fight where the blackmage had to cut some slight losses for uptime reasons. now the blackmage most definitely needs to be higher at 99, cause thats the "hey, this fight went like a training dummy" try, but saying "if they would deal equal dps at 95% the less mobile class could only lose out" ignores completly that the 95% is the try where the less mobile class allready had some loses, and while its true there may be trys where these loses are even bigger there may aswell be trys where these loses are smaller

[Kabooa]

the underlined is the important part

300 was just to account for variance and give a number, but my idea is closer to 0..

It is very important, yes.

[Akiudo]

theres'yoursign.jpeg

did this person say 0 dps difference on a max "training dummy" fight ? cause i don't see it, if anything what was originally used for the whole argument before your whole back and forth was "the graph akiudo linked" that was a 95% all eden savage parse. if you can find a person saying a physical ranged at a 100% parse in a fight thats nothing more than a gloryfied training dummy should be equal to a 100% blackmage feel free to tell him off, but what people generally argue even if they don't specify it every single post (and this person very much took the graph i posted at the start of their argument and went from there) is that there is no reason for any inherit dps difference in a general fight, this does in no way mean or even imply that a more restricted class should not come out ahead at the absolute top where its more about simply not having to deal with the given restriction do to the fight simply working out lucky or whatever, "phys ranged being equal to other dps at 95%" and "physical ranged being equal to blackmage at 100% are two entirely different arguments, and no one on here ever flat out stated the latter, if anything the former is at least implied by saying things like "these are real fights, downtimes and all included etc..."

[Kabooa]

did this person say 0 dps difference on a max "training dummy" fight ? cause i don't see it, if anything what was originally used for the whole argument before your whole back and forth was "the graph akiudo linked" that was a 95% all eden savage parse. if you can find a person saying a physical ranged at a 100% parse in a fight thats nothing more than a gloryfied training dummy should be equal to a 100% blackmage feel free to tell him off, but what people generally argue even if they don't specify it every single post (and this person very much took the graph i posted at the start of their argument and went from there) is that their is no reason for any inherit dps difference in a general fight, this does in no way mean or even imply that a more restricted class should not come out ahead at the absolute top where its more about simply not having to deal with the given restriction do to the fight simply working out lucky or whatever, "phys ranged being equal to other dps at 95%" and "physical ranged being equal to blackmage at 100% are two entirely different arguments, and no one on here ever flat out stated the latter, if anything the former is at least implied by saying things like "these are real fights, downtimes and all included etc..."

If people aren't saying what they mean, fine, that's on me.

Variance generally doesn't apply to fight design. It attributes to personal performance, due to bad crits (One can have 20% crit in two fights, but crit different actions), no crits, higher than average damage rolls, etc. Variance rarely applies to the fights themselves - That's encounter design.

So to have a minimal number to account for variance, with the aim to be closer to 0, means that "in real fights" there should be as close to 0 difference over a large data set, and that's bad for the current state of the game.