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

[Akiudo]

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.

of course there is variance in fights, did eden prime jump into your corner or the one farthest away ? do you have to move to do panto puddles or can you just stay on the other side from the group (literally zero skill required to do that) and get lucky/dont get the puddles under your feet?, which phase did titan start with ? which marker did you get on uplift and how much movement do they require ? the difference between a 95% and a 99% try for classes that indeed got movement restrictions is that the 99% try is the one where the small things that can add up to your favor did, the 95% try is the one where they didn't.

and people not saying what they mean ? show me one post where someone literally pulled a 100% max parse and went "see ? bard is not just 1500 but 2500 dps below blackmage, it should say 0!" anyone thats ever used parses to argue in favor of physical ranged (and you are every bit as aware as i am that this is but one of like 10 threads on the issue) took something in the 90-95% range, the only time someone ever pulls 100% parses or even 99% is to show that summoner isn't overpowered because the top 1% of blm parses are still higher. stating things like "the graphic posted (graphic clearly shows 95% percentile over a multitude of fights, aside from me stating as much in my original post containing the graphic)" and "in a real fight, movement allready accounted for" at the very least imply anything but "100% parses where there simply was zero reason for movement due to dumb luck" , if you take statements like these and from that arrive at the conclusion a person that has not flat out stated so is talking about absolute maximum potential a class can ever squeez out than yes, i would say making that assumption is on you

[Kabooa]

i would say making that assumption is on you

Alright.

So what should Bard's 100% be if the 95% should be a difference of nearly 0 'in a real fight'.

Let me add some more here so it just doesn't feel like bait.

The main issue I have is that it's not just "no difference in a 'real fight'" or any other quantifier someone wants to add.

Whatever arbitrary percentile you want to set for where the jobs are, basically, equal in just one area just serves as a cut off point, that at every point before then, the jobs who bring more "other" stuff are just better.

Without some absurd difference in the 95-99 range, you essentially remove any incentive to be any other job before hand. It also ignores that, again, the Ranged DPS are completely uninhibited when it comes to this "Fight variance". The Black Mage's max is absurd - when the fight allows it and the team plays around them and Despair and Xenoglossy are where all the DCrits happen, but if everyone's baseline is more or less the same, why wouldn't the Bard's Max be equally absurd?

The Dancer? The Machinist?

How are you going to set them all more or less the same, across a wide variety of encounters, but magically also allow Samurai or Black Mage to somehow have this absurd max potential that ultimately doesn't matter?

[Akiudo]

Alright.

So what should Bard's 100% be if the 95% should be a difference of nearly 0 'in a real fight'.

should be i would say is way to relative a statement, lets simply take what we got, titan 95%

right now at 95% comparing bard to blackmage we got

bard 13.259
blm 14.764
difference 1505 dps in favor of redmage

at 99% we got
bard 13.462
blackmage 15.252
1790 dps in favor of blackmage

so blackmage gained 285 dps at the top range on bard, if both had started out at the same dps breakpoint at 95% slightly better scaling than we have now would mean blackmage would probably only have gotten like 250 dps on bard.

taking into account that this allready is an "average movement fight" meaning a high movement fight would actually see the bard stronger/at the least closing the gap whereas a low movement fight like voidwalker would see a bigger gap i would say this 250 dps difference at the top (for the "average movement" fight) does the trick, i would throw in another 100 dps for the fact this would actually see bard pull ahead at lower percentiles, on the other hand i would argue having raidbuffs actually needs to result in somewhat higher dps at the absolute top otherwise offering raidbuffs is allways overtaxed but this is a different discussion so with that being said

250-350 dps at the top for an average movement fight depending on if you believe raidbuffs should actually offer at least some value aside from making numbers on the parser look prettier.


with this we would end up with bard at the 99% percentile at 16450-16550 depending on your stance on raidbuffs leaving it around 100 dps lower at 95% compared to a blackmage and probably like 200 higher at the 50% range.

mind you in this case it would be higher than half the melees right now, but we are only discussing design goals here of course, in the same vein as i believe bard should be "equal" in the 90-95% range i do believe the same goes for sam/nin/redmage (rezz tax is another discussion entirely) etc.) so in this theoretical scenario these classes would be closer aswell, nin is 430 below blackmage at 95% and 500 at 99%, in this perfect world obviously their dps would be "equal" at the top aswell

[Kabooa]

should be i would say is way to relative a statement, lets simply take what we got, titan 95%

Keep in mind that Black Mage titan's tend to be padded with Gaol cleaving opportunities. It seems a minor thing, but if Bard is only 200 DPS away from Black Mage on this, that's effectively the bonus they gain from using Foul on Gaol.

I severely doubt Bards have the same opportunity to dump potency into secondary, mandatory targets that don't last the duration of their dots.

[Akiudo]

Keep in mind that Black Mage titan's tend to be padded with Gaol cleaving opportunities. It seems a minor thing, but if Bard is only 200 DPS away from Black Mage on this, that's effectively the bonus they gain from using Foul on Gaol.

I severely doubt Bards have the same opportunity to dump potency into secondary, mandatory targets that don't last the duration of their dots.

than you are severely underestimating the power of bard dots, also apex arrow says hi

[Kabooa]

than you are severely underestimating the power of bard dots, also apex arrow says hi

Hey, maybe you're right.

https://www.fflogs.com/reports/bAMZy...ty=1&source=22

Nope, it was limit break. Are we counting that? I'm mostly fine with that, except if we do, then that means New-Bard would have a DPS of +2700 over the Black Mage.

Edit: Looking at others. One apex Arrow in this one. Half the damage of a foul.

No, I think I'm estimating them pretty well.

[Akiudo]

Hey, maybe you're right.

https://www.fflogs.com/reports/bAMZy...ty=1&source=22

Nope, it was limit break. Are we counting that? I'm mostly fine with that, except if we do, then that means New-Bard would have a DPS of +2700 over the Black Mage.

Edit: Looking at others. One apex Arrow in this one. Half the damage of a foul.

No, I think I'm estimating them pretty well.

see, this is not just completly unnessecary but also not helping cant really tell you why these guys all have this low apex arrows, or why foul for that matter hits for twice as much given a extra 50 potency, (yea, potentially there where some half power apex arrows here or there, but surely not allways especially as you could delay it for a little bit if you know gaols will come up soon. but it still underestimates what the dots actually do for bard, its not just the dot damage, 2 ticks even are a lot of extra potency given the reportoire procc chance and there are a lot where we are talking more like 10 dot ticks total which in wanderers averages out to 450 potency which while not earth shattering very much is a reason to use dots on the gaols, also its not automatically padding just because it raises your numbers, its very well possible for a foul to actually be usefull to the damage in total if you don't just ranged lb them which leads back to "actual fights" the actual fights given what we have in titan end up in these numbers, i could aswell have send you over to voidwalker and went all "see, even 400 dps more on bard than it has right now"

or we can talk leviathan and i tell you that bard on leviathan sucks even harder than on titan because a quarter of the time people outrange the group buff the bard passively offers. what i offered where practical realistically happening numbers, if for god knows what reason 200 dps of what blackmage generally does on titan is padding than so be it, shall we call the fact bard multidots in e1 and actually uses its aoe rotation instead of single target padding aswell ? cause it does actually have a purpose but it still very much artificially inflates numbers, i told you flat out several times that i generally take "all fight" measurements and also that i would say from taking a glance titan is a "fair" fight to those classes given and that i use it simply to give practical numbers instead of a theoretical "well if that and that and...."

you were absolutely free to offer insight on why titan may not be as fair as i would have thought (blm can pad with foul, fair) while still giving off an opinion what you generally think about if my numbers where bad/good even if in that particular fight there may indeed be something missed, which i would still call debateble because even in the 99% range there are at least some parses without foul, like yes you can push blm dps by 200 or so by foul but the range from max to 99% alone is 400 dps

all you would really have needed to do was say "on a general level i dis/agree, but in this fight in particular please keep in mind that...." but no, you had to turn it into this great "gotcha" moment, to top it off with telling me "200 dps is not enough" after i flat out said 350 from a 99% parse would be a good range, potentially 250 depending on your view what raidbuffs should contribute at the top

[Kabooa]

all you would really have needed to do was say "on a general level i dis/agree, but in this fight in particular please keep in mind that...." but no, you had to turn it into this great "gotcha" moment, to top it off with telling me "200 dps is not enough" after i flat out said 350 from a 99% parse would be a good range, potentially 250 depending on your view what raidbuffs should contribute at the top

Well, the thing is, 350DPS is also covered by the Foul advantage.

Let me try this again. I didn't mean to have it come off as a gotcha.

The main contention is "How big the gap should be", and it's almost entirely based on how much value one puts on the advantages and disadvantages of a given job.

So to spare both our post counts - I think anything in the range of 1-2% (which is what 200-350dps works out to) is too small. Much too small. And there will be nothing that changes my mind on this matter unless you're willing to start taking some restrictions on the Job.

Edit: Did more homework. My mistake was going by speedkilling, without checking the patch.

This means even though the tooltip on the site is updated, it was data from 5.0 Bard. Much more comparable. Arrow looks like it's only about 10-20% weaker, so individual max use should be equivalent even though you can't stock uses like Foul. 48k Dcrits, much more respectable. Still well below Fouls, but paints it more favorably.

Edit 2: Also editing since I'm fairly certain I'll be post capped in the next reply.

Padding was probably not the best term. Padding implies the damage is ultimately fluff and doesn't matter, like anything on Hades P2 below 30%. So my mistake there.

[Akiudo]

So to spare both our post counts - I think anything in the range of 1-2% (which is what 200-350dps works out to) is too small. Much too small. And there will be nothing that changes my mind on this matter unless you're willing to start taking some restrictions on the Job.

see, and this is the point people in general argue about, not some "physical ranged at the very top need to do exactly what a perfect blm does" you of course are entitled to your opinion that this is not enough, just as i'm about to a differing opinion on the matter, still, humor me on this one at least, i'll spare you any further inquiry but i would at least like to know how you view this. if you say 2% too small than lets just say 4% (and you make it sound more like 5+ but lets say 4)

just 4%, which by the way you worded it would be the absolute minimum one could think of.

4% at the 99 percentile of titan is a good 600 dps if you go from any of the top 5 jobs, call it cheating but for once lets take blm out of the equation because it has by far the steepest dropoff of any class and if we balance with that in mind than indeed every class would need to fall behind by a good 300 dps, even things like samurai or summoner (which probably should do so, but for actual utility and not "just because"). yes, this is also an opinion one can have, but again a totally different discussion. if we take 600 dps off the top than every single class sans blackmage (which again, is the complete outlier as far as damage range goes, if anything that would need some normalizing) is not just better than the physical ranged at the top or close to it, but also at the very bottom, samurai is 1800 dps above bard at the top, but also still 1300 above it at the 25 percentile. the moment you give the top group "just" 4% on the physical ranged at the top they flat out beat them in dps down to the 20% percentile.

the general argument that gets thrown around is "restrictions make it harder on the group and harder to optimize the class" the second one is a fact even if an overblown one, but i'm pretty sure the group doesn't give a a rats .... if a phys ranged or any caster does black smokers or runs away with a flare marker, just how much dps the class offers after its done, with that being said, if even at the 20% percentile the "harder" class is equal than where is the drawback of being "harder" ? you argue there needs to be some advantage, otherwise no one would take them, but where is the drawback to counteract that advantage? after all for "balance" to happen advantages also need drawbacks. ´ you may argue that the drawback is that they don't have free movement, but if even at the very bottom, the place really everyone can reach by not being dead no matter how sucky s/he plays this drawback does NOT translate into a damage loss than this drawback is only a drawback on paper, again, the group doesn't care who does black smokers, only that they get done and how much dps the class does afterwards, as long as at least 2 ranged classes are a given this will be done, the mechanic will be handled even if you have 2 caster doing it so WHAT, unless you want to run tripple melee is the drawback of being "hard" ?

[Kabooa]

the general argument that gets thrown around is "restrictions make it harder on the group and harder to optimize the class"?

I have a variation to this one personally.

I generally do not favor the argument "It's harder so it should do more". Difficulty is subjective and difficulty is surmountable. I do however think classes that are more flexible need to be less potent, to an extent.

Long form in another thread. Let me also say this is not necessarily the numbers I would pick. I'll get more into that later.

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.

As an after thought, I didn't clarify that the reason Dragoon isn't considered pure damage is because Critical rating isn't only for damage. It also affects healing and shielding, which is why it's not on the same step as Samurai.

When it comes to numbers though, I don't care much for those ones. Those weight all non-damage oriented capabilities the same, in a "You have them or you don't" hierarchy and then assigns them a value total that cannot be more than the 1% stat bonus. You can be certain I value the free mobility of the Ranged Role more than I value Vercure, and I sure as hell value Raise much more than the average individual, but what matters in terms of that hierarchy is that they exist.

But they're satisfactory enough.

Personally, I'd rank the free mobility alone around 5%, but as someone who constantly spends their time rooted, I might just be valuing it too much, but it's also possible others might be valuing it too little.

I also consider the Ranged defense buff better, but that's more of a "I would want them because of this" instead of "I take off 200 dps because of this", primarily because the situations in which it is far superior are not enough to make it universally superior. There's just enough scenarios where it is, on average, the better tool.