SE needs to be more creative when balancing party damage utility classes.

[Aurida]

If you have a 10% damage buff and a 20% mitigation buff on the same timer, you'll get scolded for daring to not use the moar dps button.

What's the problem here? If the 20% mitigation isn't going to make you survive, don't use it because the cost is too steep. If it IS going to make you survive, then leverage your other tools better so you don't have to use the one with the cost that's too steep. This is a purely hypothetical situation with a clear cut solution with respect to the current state of the game we're in

[Akiudo]

this so much, SE could do so much with classes like bards, dancer and machinist ... but honestly its the community that is holding it back. its the WoWification of FFXIV. "if it doesn't add damage its bad ... real bad!"

the problem lies more in the fact people want it reduced to a role, you yourself singled out the physical ranged, so lets take the given example, 10% damage buff vs 20% mitigation buff, you now got 2 choices how to balance this

1. you generally balance the classes offering these choices lower (not talking some ranged tax here, no need to tell me "but they ARE lower, matter of fact is that surely is not for any buffs that they don't even offer) , in that case you get a situation like with redmage where basically no one wants the class outside of progress (if even there)

or

2. you balance these classes at the same level (like so close its more margin of error than anything) , in that case you will get the rightfull complained that they are too strong.

You simply can't have a class be as good as another class in one aspect (dealing damage) while totally eclipsing the class in another (helping mitigation in the given example), yes in the given example helping with mitigation would come at the cost of damage but that is irrelevant as you would only use the mitigation when needed, ask yourself, would you take the class that does 15k dps or the class that does 15k dps or can drop down to 14.5k but save the tank from a tankbuster if needed ? Yes you could balance the second class to do 14,5 OR 14k+save the tank for example, but that again leaves us in the redmage situation

[Lodi]

this so much, SE could do so much with classes like bards, dancer and machinist ... but honestly its the community that is holding it back. its the WoWification of FFXIV. "if it doesn't add damage its bad ... real bad!"

I know that these are very different games, but I often compare FFXIV with Monster Hunter. And what I really like in the latter is that unless you're extremely skilled, you just can't have 100% DPS uptime. You're gonna miss some attacks, you're gonna have to fall back to heal, you're gonna have to stop attacking to dodge an attack, you're gonna take a beating and break your combo, you're gonna have to stop attacking to help or buff your teammates, or use special items to stun the boss.

You just can't DPS 100% of the time, and everyone's okay with that.
You can actually develop your own playstyle, and not just optimise damage at all costs. You can decide to bring some support items with you, to gear towards support skills or aggro generation, all while contributing to the global dps.

I think that's something FFXIV lacks, especially regarding DPS classes.
You're here to deal damage, most buffs are damage buffs, and that's it. Refreshes are gone, group mitigation is nonexistent, and you can't go out of your way to defend your team. If everyone is dying one by one, keep attacking because there's nothing else you can do.


EDIT: To be clear, I know it is entirely due to the game's state. Healing is rather easy, and at no point is support from DPS classes mandatory so of course there's nothing else to do than damage.
However, players had more free options to support their team in the past expansions, which are gone for a solid part.

[Rasikko]

I wont say healing is easy.. manageable and tolerable yes. SE has been padding content by buffing mob HP through the roof to facilitate more healing, and heals, strong as they are, scale poorly in relation to tank HP. This is a different topic though..

this so much, SE could do so much with classes like bards, dancer and machinist ... but honestly its the community that is holding it back. its the WoWification of FFXIV. "if it doesn't add damage its bad ... real bad!"

Yoshida is also guilty of this, being that he likes WoW, has a WoW background and many things in FFXIV is borrowed from WoW. Now I respect his vision, but I just wish 'Final Fantasy' regains a hold on this game.

For the "everything will be damage and that's all", I want to point out the dumbest buff ever that boosts damage by 1%. You can do all the math you like to make that look important but let's be real here, that was just put there for the sake of having another "damage" buff, not necessarily meant to be meaningful in that way or any other way.

So I haven't actually gave any ideas to the topic.... Sure providing combat haste, or strong defense buffs, or HP buffs, MP refreshing, STAT BOOSTS would be nice, but this just isn't going to happen.

[Avenger]

The annoying and persistent balance problem is FFXIV players who refuse to accept “non-optimal” jobs or party compositions even when those “non-optimal” comps are perfectly capable of clearing the hardest content in the game. This has been a problem since ARR/Coil at least.

[Vulcann]

Akiudo you are basically proving my point you can't have interesting, diverse classes in MMORPGs anymore because its all about raid spots and all people care about is DPS numbers.

[Vulcann]

You just can't DPS 100% of the time, and everyone's okay with that.
You can actually develop your own playstyle, and not just optimise damage at all costs. You can decide to bring some support items with you, to gear towards support skills or aggro generation, all while contributing to the global dps.

as a hunting horn main this is what i am talking about.

i kinda wonder if FFXIV would be better with a "alternate advancement system" like Everquest 2 ... where you can customize your class a bit more.

[Akiudo]

Akiudo you are basically proving my point you can't have interesting, diverse classes in MMORPGs anymore because its all about raid spots and all people care about is DPS numbers.

well you have to balance around something, and i can with confidence say i would prefer they balance around the content where balance actually does matter, that would be raid spots, when you wipe a 13 minute fight to enrage at 0,1% than having one class deal just 500 dps more would have got you the kill, its just what it is.

To offer you a potential solution though, no one shall say i'm opposed to things like support and utility, just that i can say where this makes balancing issues come in, why don't we give everyone some support ?

Diversify it, give bard back palisade and some very slight healing while in armys peon (think phoenix levels of healing here), give mch back dismantle and for dancer let shield samba be actual 15% instead of 10 like the others, Shield Samba/tactitian/Troubadour are a role action in anything but name right now and thats totally unnecessary.

the casters can keep the rezz and addle which is actually not that much worse than tactician etc cause it works on most things, for blackmage maybe give them something like a 10% or even just 5% max hp group shield

for the melees turn feint into a 5% all damage reduction, let monk keep mantra, maybe even buff it back to 20%, give the nin something called shadow aura reducing all damage taken from everyone in 30 yalm range by 1-2% passively and/or give him some ability where he can nullify the next 2 auto attacks (3 seconds max duration) someone takes, just so you have some safety net from your tank taking the tankbuster+an auto at the very same moment, give the drg "eyestab" blinding the enemy for 10 seconds giving it a 20% chance to miss every kind of attack, even tankbusters (different from a flat 20% damage reduce cause this could totally save your ass above all else, however you couln't just blindy think it will work and therefore save on cooldowns" for the samurai whatever, i'm out of ideas, not that it really matters, just wanted to illustrate a point, if you would do something "like this" everyone would offer the group something that goes above and beyond pure damage, which in turn would muddle the waters so to speak. (i intentionally didn't mention damage enhancing cooldowns cause these get counted in the raid dps chart either way, you mentioned in another thread that bard could have shorter stronger buffs compared to dancers more passive all the time weaker buff while mch could debuff with flamethrower, things like that i actually find quite a nice idea, however this isn't why i or anyone else ever said utility or "interesting" buffs are a balance problem)

[Dzian]

SE needs to be more creative when balancing party damage utility classes.

Impossible to do. the developers have backed themselves into a corner with this hand holding over emphasis on simplicity and balance that they have absolutely no room to be creative. just look atthe jobs. tanks are all the same healers are the same. everything is the same..

A solution to this is to give these bottom tier classes utility that can not be measured in damage. An example would be like: in-combat movement speed, shields, healing, etc.

Again the developers have backed themselves into a corner that makes this impossible.all you gotta do is look at Stormblood Red Mage... ver cure ver raise, great tools for a progressive party but the job was soon replaced by a blm or smn because the over simplicfication of encounter design means DPS is ultimately the only thing that matters. thus any utility that cannot be measured in damage is worth ZERO.

or look at how skills like stuns and silences, binds, and pacifies were almost never used for there utility and just spammed on cooldown for a few extra dps... or look at how sleep/repose are both zero dps skills but absolutely worthless and not even slotted on most players action bars...

In order to be more creative the devs would need to push themselves out of the corner they've backed themselves into scrap the obsession they have with dumbing everything down and making everything overly simplified and allow for some actual genuine elements of complexity and diversity in its job designs. which would require some pretty major game changes for them to do.

take tanks for example. literally the only skill every tank needs is provoke or something to that effect. not every tank needs a 10% cooldown. not every tank needs a 30% cooldown. not every tank needs a gap closer... the list goes on... but with the corner the developers have backed themselves into there is zero room for creativity and thats why every job within a role is basically the same thing.

with a more creative and complex encouter design you could have tanks that dontrely on defence at all and rely instead on agility.. for one example.however such a thing wouldntwork in the current design because if a tank could dodge that highly scripted tank buster it'd totally break the game....

or you you could actually make crowd control a thing in which case lower dps more supportive classes might actually be able to have none damaging support skills or spells like sleep might actually have some worth... but again in the current design every encounter is just round everyting up and aoe it all down..... no room to be creative there either...

hell even looser party rules could free up some room for creativity... do you really need 2 tanks 2 healers and 4 dps... could 1 tank 2 healers and 5 dps of which one or 2 could be more supportive in some fashion be a good set up... or 4 dps 2 tanks 1 healer and a supportive redmage filling the 8th slot might also work.....

or even 1 strong ass tank 1 super healer, and 6 dpsjust to raw power things....

But again this strict 2 2 4 set up means yet again theres no room to be creative...

[Deceptus]

In most cases utility can't equal pure damage because if it did there would be zero reason to ever bring pure damage.

It's not a hard equation to realize. . .