upcoming rdm changes?

[Gruntler]

I don't get that.

It's very obvious. In a PvE game, the object is to overcome the environment. One vector of balance must therefore be in the capability of overcoming said environment. If it's based purely on dps, but a job has inherent problems overcoming environments, there's a problem in balance that you cannot see looking at one single parse. If a job is supposed to take a hit to dps in exchange for having less problems overcoming environments, but it is not overcoming the environments more, there's a problem in balance that you cannot see looking at a single parse.

If you have balance in multiple vectors, and you don't look, you don't see balance issues. This shouldn't be a hard concept.

Prog is prog, meaning that it's likely that kits are not used at their most optimal potential.

Optimal. Potential. Is. Only. One. Vector. Of. Balance.

So one someone says 'Okay, look at that, but let's look at other things too, because those also matter regarding balance' what's the resistance or difficulty, if not laziness?

Specifically a RDM can see its DPS lowered by raising and MP challenges linked to that. And prog is finite

Prog is also the primary expression of difficulty in a PvE game. Again--when you look at balance in say, Dark Souls, do you look at speed runs, or do you look at how people struggle? There is FAR more data in the struggle than there is in mastery, in PvE.

, it's a matter of a few days / weeks. I agree that it is part of the overall balance and has to be considered, but it's always better to look mainly at optimal play on high end content because it simply trickles down to every use of said job. If a job performs well in Savage, there's no real reason for it to not perform in lower difficulty content. While a job that does well in dungeon does not necesseraly work well in savage (see 4.X WHM for instance)

Strawman. I'm not saying that we look at dungeons and shit, because the jobs, as you say, are not tested there.

What I'm saying is that, when looking at Savage, you look at more than one, single, solitary parse. Which is what you're doing when you look at 95th percentile--that's not a spread of parses, even at mastery level. It's literally just the one parse that happens to fall into some arbitrary mathematical criteria. That's the point: The answer to your concerns is not to eschew data for datum. Datum is useless. Data is useful. And one parse is -Datum.-

[Kabooa]

What I'm saying is that, when looking at Savage, you look at more than one, single, solitary parse. Which is what you're doing when you look at 95th percentile--that's not a spread of parses, even at mastery level.

95th percentile is not a single parse. It's the 95th percentile. It's taking the aggregate of data and saying "Out of a scale of 1 to 100, those in this range did better than 94% of people and worse than 5%".

It's not a singular parse.

We choose 95th-99th for the following reasons.

A) These are people who are playing the game better than 94-98% of the rest of those that publicly provide data, which is already much less than those who play. These are players who may not understand the underlying gearworks and theory but understand its practice.

B) We prefer it to max because Max tends to be examples that aren't easily replicated - like critting 100% of your big potency dumps despite having 20-25% crit rates. The vast majority of 'good' runs will fall in the 90-95th range.

C) The players on the left end of the bell curve are generally making significant mechanical mistakes that would convey across any job, not just the job in question - Which is why we basically exclude just about everything under 75th. A job's relative strength cannot be accurately measured by those who haven't figured out the bare essentials.

[OneTrueMiqote]

It's very obvious. In a PvE game, the object is to overcome the environment. One vector of balance must therefore be in the capability of overcoming said environment.

Gruntler is IMO correct, that how the job is viable for prog is one of most important pieces in balance puzzle for PVE.

It's not correct for a very simple reason. You know what is an equally important if not more important part of prog? Meeting the dps check. Technically this is not a part of prog, but still before overcoming the challenge. And you know how each job's dps can be measured? With dps percentiles.

Again, not denying that prog is unimportant. But here lies the heart of the debate, that the "utility" of these powerful prog-heavy features come with an unjustified dps cost. How RDM has a reputation for being a "prog job" and is often swapped to a higher damaging caster when the damage is needed. Or how in the current Ultimate, death is extremely punishing and unrecoverable (for a good portion of the fight), rendering battle raises to have little value. Or how SMN is also able to provide a raise, albeit not as powerful, but also providing much higher damage output at the same time. There is a balance that can be achieved, but in whichever way, it's clear that putting so much value in prog and claiming it to be standard for balance is a misleading mindset.

[Gruntler]

It's not correct for a very simple reason. You know what is an equally important if not more important part of prog? Meeting the dps check. Technically this is not a part of prog, but still before overcoming the challenge. And you know how each job's dps can be measured? With dps percentiles.

No, this is a part of prog and this is reflected in clear rate data as well. Notice, that I am not saying dps output is not important, but the dps output at 95% doesn't tell you anything about the dps output in prog; it's the wrong data for the wrong story.

Again, not denying that prog is unimportant. But here lies the heart of the debate, that the "utility" of these powerful prog-heavy features come with an unjustified dps cost.

A question which will never be answered looking only at mastery-level parses; you can never answer whether a job is a liability or a benefit in prog through balance when you're not looking at the entirety of data, when you deliberately exclude prog from the data specifically to only look at one vector. That's my point; you pose an important and valuable question, and looking at 95s only will not get you any closer to an answer. Looking at prog data does.

How RDM has a reputation for being a "prog job" and is often swapped to a higher damaging caster when the damage is needed.

Which is actually not what the data is showing. The data is showing that more people are not bothering to prog with RDM at all, and that's the biggest issue facing the job. It's not making it in the door to prog, so there is a problem there. RDM should be stealing clears, it's kit is about stealing clears. If it's not stealing clears, then it's paying too much dps cost for its utility. If it IS stealing clears, then it's actually fine, because it's doing what it's supposed to do.

See? The data has some value in answering these sorts of questions, if we just look!

Or how in the current Ultimate, death is extremely punishing and unrecoverable (for a good portion of the fight), rendering battle raises to have little value. Or how SMN is also able to provide a raise, albeit not as powerful, but also providing much higher damage output at the same time. There is a balance that can be achieved, but in whichever way, it's clear that putting so much value in prog and claiming it to be standard for balance is a misleading mindset.

Untrue. It's a PvE game--the balance is first, and foremost, in the struggle. Mastery tells you nothing about the difficulty in getting there. And I want to be clear: My standpoint is not 'look only at prog' either. It's look at ALL the data. It's ALL important. It's not about deciding 'which data points are more important than others' blah blah blah. It's not about deciding 'which percentile' is best. It's about not restricting your data point and looking at a broader picture; it's about being holistic in examination, and not trying to force compromise data examination where it's unnecessary and detrimental.

[OneTrueMiqote]

.

If you want to be pedantic about this, sure. The argument was about both different aspects, one regarding the prog itself and focused on seeing more mechanics, and one regarding the dps check once all mechs have been seen. What you agreed on was an argument for and the focus on the former. The context you gave was on this focus, and I said such focus is not correct because of the other important aspect.

.

First of all, as many comments before you have pointed out, no one said to only look at a single percentile.

There are basically 2 points you're making. You are saying to look at all data (as more than just percentiles). I've responded to this before, "they did not say you should only balance off percentiles, but rather if you do, you should be balancing off the high end."

You're also saying "dps output at 95% doesn't tell you anything about the dps output in prog". This is false. There is certainly a correlation between dps percentiles (and by extension, top percentiles) and how much one can expect to output in a fight. Specifically I am talking about the part to meet the dps check, as this is where the damage matters. At this point in the fight, most players would aim to optimize for damage and utilize the most out of their job's kit, which is what is shown by seeing a job at its fully realized potential.

And also the plethora of reasons to why top percentiles should be prioritize over other percentiles mentioned by others here.

[Gruntler]

The argument was about both different aspects, one regarding the prog itself and focused on seeing more mechanics, and one regarding the dps check once all mechs have been seen.

Neither of which are 95th percentile barring week 1 stuff.

First of all, as many comments before you have pointed out, no one said to only look at a single percentile.

Then there should be mentions of a range, not a single cutoff point.

There are basically 2 points you're making. You are saying to look at all data (as more than just percentiles). I've responded to this before, "they did not say you should only balance off percentiles, but rather if you do, you should be balancing off the high end."

Which is if one is balancing for speedruns and mastery. Which, if that's the argument, then that'd be an effective technique.

You're also saying "dps output at 95% doesn't tell you anything about the dps output in prog". This is false.

If you present a hypothesis and call it data, I'm going to call shinanegans.

There is certainly a correlation between dps percentiles (and by extension, top percentiles) and how much one can expect to output in a fight.

Shinanegans

Specifically I am talking about the part to meet the dps check, as this is where the damage matters.

Shinanegans

At this point in the fight, most players would aim to optimize for damage and utilize the most out of their job's kit, which is what is shown by seeing a job at its fully realized potential.

Shinanegans.

If your hypothesis were true, then you would see a uniform distribution where job performance at median percentiles would be proportional to 95th percentile. You do not. If your hypothesis were true, you'd see more players acheiving 95th percentile during prog--which is mathematically impossible.

If you want to see what jobs are doing during the 'beat dps checks' phase of prog, you look at people progging, because that's DIRECT OBSERVATION. 'We expect jobs to do x in prog' is a question you can directly answer by looking at prog, and only hypothesize by looking at players that are not progging. Direct Observation > Extrapolation in all cases.

You're trying to make the argument that extrapolation is preferable to direct observation when we have access to direct observation. There is nothing more that needs to be said after that--it's a bad argument on its own merits. Everything else is trying to justify bad practice.

[RylaBee]

It's not correct for a very simple reason. You know what is an equally important if not more important part of prog? Meeting the dps check. Technically this is not a part of prog, but still before overcoming the challenge.

lol

I said, that prog is one of the most important parts of PVE balance.
And you say that I'ts not correct, because dps check is important part of the prog.

Where did I said that dps check is not important part of the prog?

You are saying, that I'm incorrect about something I did not said, do you realize that?