Red Mage is top tier - [job effectiveness = player skill]

[BloodRubyXII]

No its even worse than what I said.

Because if what Gunther says is true... then this is the only log ever submitted from me. So now I have even MORE reason to believe this happens more than was previously stated.

Out of all the instances I've ever done, the ONLY log from RDM that made it up to FF Logs was my very first fight in Leviathon in Eden where was was unfamiliar with it and died twice during that fight so doesn't even reflect normal DPS.

I have even more reason now to doubt the FF Logs database and what it contains.

What about copied factory? 2 kills in the past week, both grey 9s. Do you have any idea how badly I need to play to show up on someone's live log as grey on an RDM?
https://www.fflogs.com/reports/h4AaZ...pe=damage-done
I died on this fight and I was still 89 percentile. Granted my RDM has much better gear than you, but not enough for there to be that big of a difference to the point you're dealing basically Heavensward damage, if that. Again no-one is out to embarass you, or specifically make you feel like you're a hopeless player, but it's incredibly frustrating trying to discuss balance with someone who at present, clearly has no idea how to play the job in the first place and lacks experience. That's all people have been trying to tell you from the start, but you don't get it and still think you're good when there's no clear evidence you know how to play this class, and that's why people are poking harder. And I don't even care how good someone is at this game when discussing balance, providing they at least put some data behind their argument. You don't provide any, and the best anyone is able to get for you in pretty much the only measurable metrics possible - isn't very good.

[Neela]

It’s getting worse and worser for you Silver... : /

[Silverquick]

It’s getting worse and worser for you Silver... : /

Neela, that doesn't work with me,

You should know better by now.

[Silverquick]

What about copied factory? 2 kills in the past week, both grey 9s. Do you have any idea how badly I need to play to show up on someone's live log as grey on an RDM?
https://www.fflogs.com/reports/h4AaZ...pe=damage-done
I died on this fight and I was still 89 percentile. .

That's great and all... but do you realize they took my first time in Leviathan where I died twice and had never been in the Eden raid before after just unlocking it and had no idea of what to expect... AND in base Weathered RDM armor...

So it was not reflecting anything in real RDM DPS...

They are combining that kind of thing in with your numbers to get an "average". Yours are actual real numbers and likely a fair test with top level gear.

(PS: Did you link the wrong thing? I wasn't seeing what you were getting in your link, you did pretty spectacular there)

[Neela]

Yeah I know... I know that u won’t change, that u always gonna be smarter than everybody else, with more and better insights than a whole community out of thousand theory crafter, dataminer, balance mentors and motivated player, that u alone see the bigger picture, that people trust and wait for your prayers to be thankful for enlightenment and best of all I know...

...you really believe all this things for real. : /

Edit: and now I know u actually have absolute no clue how parses and statistics work. lol

[KalinOrthos]

Yeah but what is your "entire scope" made of?

I am seriously questioning that at this point and I have good reason to.

I just illustrated why.

What is your...are you for real? My "entire scope" is the overall collection of parses made since the beginning of the expansion by every player who has contributed, you moron. You cannot be an actually living, breathing human. You are the living embodiment of bad faith argumentation and I honestly feel dumber for actually trying to argue with you.

[Gruntler]

That's great and all... but do you realize they took my first time in Leviathan

Let's be clear about what I did, in fact do.

I took the only evidence I could for you, because there's literally nothing else there. I took the only data that exists for you, specifically.

I don't have data on FFlogs for myself for gear equivalent to that, because that data was purged, so I cannot provide you data for how I was doing in that gear set; further when that fight came out I had already cleared Titania and Innocence EX and was using that gear; so there never was a point where I was doing E3N in that gear in order to show my performance. However, I did link data from previous expansion, showing that your output was not that much higher than last expansion numbers.

I assure you, however, your performance, even with one death, is not showing your job in a competitive light. I can see play errors in your opener, without doing any sort of comprehensive analysis tool like xivanalysis. No use of Corps-a-Corps or Displacement before Manafication? A 7 second delay between Enchanted Redoublement, and using Embolden on your Verholy? Spending an average between casts that's more than 3 seconds despite having a 2.38ish gcd?

These sorts of errors are punishing on RDM and even more punishing on SMN, and if this is your playstyle, RDM is going to appear to be doing better than SMN. And none of these errors are explained by death, or gear. These are all play errors, opportunities for you to work on.

Now, that aside, I have a serious question; what do you -think- good single target dps performance looks like? What sort of number do you expect? Do you think 7k is good? 8k? 9k? I'd like to know where you think RDM should be.

[Almandaragal]

So first, commentary on the off topic as well as context for my actual post:

While there is definitely a lot of character attacking, and particularly childish and goading posts purely existing to be a dick instead of actual discussion, if you ignore that particular person, there are valid points here.

For context, I also only have one parse on FFlogs. Coincidentally, it's also from eden, just Eden Titan, and it was probably actually the worst run I've ever done of it. I did a stupid and ran into the landslide part that pushed me off, and then ended up dying to normally inconsequential hits later thanks to weakness after being raised. Not that I'm exactly super great at the fight given I think I had done my first run the week before, and have been particularly busy with the holidays so my play time is fractured and I'm tired, but it was still a terrible performance. So, I can totally relate to my literal only parse being a sucky representation of how I normally play. I'm by no means an optimized RDM. However, the key here is that I recognize how I'm not optimized.

So, that being said, there's a logic behind people using parses. First, Silver, you and I may not parse, but there are lots of players that do. There are players all across the skill spectrum that do. I've even considered doing it myself, despite how bad my parses would be, just to be able to evaluate myself and use it to see where I could improve after the fight when I have time to stop and analyze. The key thing to remember here is that of those people that do, there are a large portion that do it consistently. Among the people who parse consistently are a significant portion of the higher-performing players.

This matters because while most people don't play at the "95th percentile", these are the people who have "mastered" the job the most. Worth noting is that they're also running with others who know their jobs and the fight, so their uptime is naturally higher, as opposed to say, the first week runners of The Grand Cosmos who you had to verraise because who cares about mechanics so there isn't any furniture left, etc. This also means, however, that we're seeing optimal play, because while RDM does come with utility tools, RDM is most useful to a fight when they don't have to use them. Ironic, yes, since we get heavy damage penalties because of it, but that's how the game's fight mechanics work right now.

Anyway, this means that the high level parses come from consistent players who also consistently play at a much more efficient level than you or I. What this means is that we can see roughly where the "ideal Red Mage" performance is. Likewise, we can also see "ideal" play from other classes. What we are seeing, overall, is that people playing "equally well" on both RDM and SMN will end up doing more damage, significantly so, as SMN. Given that both classes carry similar utility (and SMN can passively damage while raising/moving via DoTs and such on top of it), we theoretically should see similar DPS when looking at the highest levels of performance.

We don't. And that's basically the point.

Any singular statistic can be an anomaly. Your parse was your first Eden Leviathan fight. My parse was my worst run of Eden Titan, even if most of mine are pretty bad (I totally need to do it more than once a week to get better). However, when you start to look at the entire data pool, especially from consistent parsers as opposed to people like us caught up in a random parse, you get more reliable and normalized data. Particularly, the more efficient players are more reliable, since they take it more seriously and do it more often. It is their data that people point to for top level play and balance issues, and that particular data is the most reliable.

Sure, RDM has a decent performance with a low skill floor, but it can perform much better if your skill level goes up. However, the ceiling is still significantly lower than the comparison class (SMN) once you get to the best of the best. That's the issue people are pointing out.

[Wayfinder3]

I’ll try to keep this brief but Difficulty is a mixed bag when discussing a jobs viability because of consistency.

If RDM should be weaker than its competitors because it’s skill floor is lower. Does this information transfer properly to other roles. Is the easiest melee the worst one, what about healers, and ranged. If they are, then by how much are they and by how much does it matter.

RDM is much weaker than SMN/BLM because it’s easier, but AST is only marginally better than WHM and SCH when it’s unquestionably more difficult. Do you see how inconsistent that is?

Ideally, RDM would only barely be worst than SMN and BLM if we were following a consistent rule for balancing difficulty as WHM and SCH while not the most potent combination is still place comfortably to AST comps. Even the physical ranged are close enough that the easiest one (DNC) has moments where it’s better than BRD and MCH however, RDM at no point is ever truly better than SMN and to a lesser extent BLM. This is why balancing around job difficulty isnt a good idea. Thresholds matter in balance where as saying, RDM is easier than SMN so it should be worse isn’t saying anything about “How much weaker” it should be

99th percentile Eden for all bosses
Astrologian 8,583.23
White Mage 8,298.85
Scholar 8,089.35

The difference from the Highest (and arguably hardest) from the lowest (not even the easiest) is 493.88

Same thing for Casters

Summoner 15,140.33
Black Mage 14,984.43
Red Mage 14,216.49

The difference from the Highest(Debatable the most difficult) from the lowest is 923.84

So yeah, if we're going to balance based off difficulty then we need to be consistent. Either the easiest healer drops by 700 rdps or RDM should probably jump up by 600 rdps
clearly balancing isn't this simple but i felt that if we're going to entertain difficulty as a metric for balancing, we need to be consistent across all roles

[BloodRubyXII]

That's great and all... but do you realize they took my first time in Leviathan where I died twice and had never been in the Eden raid before after just unlocking it and had no idea of what to expect... AND in base Weathered RDM armor...

So it was not reflecting anything in real RDM DPS...

They are combining that kind of thing in with your numbers to get an "average". Yours are actual real numbers and likely a fair test with top level gear.

(PS: Did you link the wrong thing? I wasn't seeing what you were getting in your link, you did pretty spectacular there)

That's the point though - even now; you're still massively undergeared and there is nothing to suggest you have any good experience on this job. The 2nd Eden kill is from yesterday. How can you claim the job is fine when you barely even know what you're doing on it.

And no, it's not top level gear, just regular tome, crafted and yorha gear, something anyone could get pretty easily.

The only difference between my log and yours is individual performance. They're both calculated the exact same way. The link was intentional. It's to show how far you are behind the curve to produce so little.