SE, please nerf Dancer if you aren't going to fix bard.

[Risvertasashi]

Or alternatively, just buff bard.

There's a fair few threads active right now, but a mistake many of them make is saying physical ranged overall should be buffed. Physical ranged is used in prog, and obviously shouldn't do as much as jobs like black mage or samurai, which are subject to various restrictions.

However, balance within the physical ranged role is definitely off, and it is very disappointing to see SE ignore this.

Definitions:
Combined DPS, aka RDPS: DPS that includes:
* the total damage directly inflicted by a job
* damage indirectly inflicted via buffing other party members.

The problem:
Dancer has both superior RDPS as well as superior utility. It helps more with prog, thanks to things like Curing Waltz. However, even after prog, it just flat out does more damage than Bard.

Bard, on the other hand, has the 10% mitigation shared with MCH and DNC, but lacks the additional utility Dancer has, while still doing inferior total damage.

Solutions:
Option 1:
Reduce Dancer RDPS by about 800, relative to i470 gear (now that higher ilvl gear is available, this number may need to be proportionally increased). This could be done either by reducing the strength of buffs, or by reducing the potency of direct damage abilities.

This would allow Bard to have about a 400 RDPS lead over Dancer - a fair trade given Dancer has superior mobility, raid healing, and so on.

Option 2:
Increase Bard RDPS by about 800, relative to i470 gear. This is an inversion of the above and likewise could be done either through the strengthening of buffs or increasing potencies. This would give Bard a 400 RDPS lead, in exchange for having considerably less utility.

Option 3:
Give bard similar utility. A dash, a raid heal, etc. I'm not particularly in favor of this because it means more homogenization, but the status quo is rather terrible and it would change that, at least.

---------

Feel free to debate specific numbers. Maybe they should be tweaked a bit. But BRD having inferior DPS and utility within the role is untenable.

[HyoMinPark]

Uh........... If you nerf DNC by 800 rDPS, the job is dead. Like deader than dead.

The 5.1 patch buffs to the physical ranged were enough to make the 1% mathematically superior to doing double melee/double caster and dropping the role completely, but the role itself could stand to be buffed again because they’re still behind the rest of the jobs. If you take away that much rDPS from DNC, the job dies.

The DoT nerf BRD got in 5.1 wasn’t worth the “utility” they added back to it, in my opinion. However, I wasn’t expecting any physical ranged changes in 5.2 because they just buffed them. It needs buffed—don’t get me wrong—but so does the physical ranged role as a whole. The answer is not asking for nerfs to another job that is still at the bottom of the DPS charts compared to the other DPS.

Advocating to kill DNC is not the way to go.

[Risvertasashi]

Uh........... If you nerf DNC by 800 rDPS, the job is dead. Like deader than dead.

The 5.1 patch buffs to the physical ranged were enough to make the 1% mathematically superior to doing double melee/double caster and dropping the role completely, but the role itself could stand to be buffed again because they’re still behind the rest of the jobs. If you take away that much rDPS from DNC, the job dies.

The DoT nerf BRD got in 5.1 wasn’t worth the “utility” they added back to it, in my opinion. However, I wasn’t expecting any physical ranged changes in 5.2 because they just buffed them. It needs buffed—don’t get me wrong—but so does the physical ranged role as a whole. The answer is not asking for nerfs to another job that is still at the bottom of the DPS charts compared to the other DPS.

Advocating to kill DNC is not the way to go.

So, let's tweak the numbers. What about a 600 DPS change, allowing BRD a 200 DPS lead?

[HyoMinPark]

So, let's tweak the numbers. What about a 600 DPS change, allowing BRD a 200 DPS lead?

Looking at Titan at 95th percentile, the difference between BRD and DNC currently is roughly 150 rDPS. Your proposed nerf to DNC would actually knock the job down to ~12,600 rDPS going by the E4S numbers—meaning it’s dead.

There’s no need to nerf any job. Just buff BRD (preferably, revert the DoT nerf); and then buff the physical ranged as a whole by a little bit to decrease the gap between them and the other DPS jobs.


I will be curious to see what the job numbers will look at once people get more gear and start killing Verse more seriously/parsing. But I don’t think the thing to do right now is to ask for job nerfs to a job that really cannot stand to be nerfed.

[Risvertasashi]

Looking at Titan at 95th percentile, the difference between BRD and DNC currently is roughly 150 rDPS. Your proposed nerf to DNC would actually knock the job down to ~12,600 rDPS going by the E4S numbers—meaning it’s dead.

There’s no need to nerf any job. Just buff BRD (preferably, revert the DoT nerf); and then buff the physical ranged as a whole by a little bit to decrease the gap between them and the other DPS jobs.


I will be curious to see what the job numbers will look at once people get more gear and start killing Verse more seriously/parsing. But I don’t think the thing to do right now is to ask for job nerfs to a job that really cannot stand to be nerfed.

In certain fights the gap can be narrower due to various factors, but on the whole the gap tends to be wider than that.

And I didn't only list one option. If option 2 is more acceptable to you, then, well, that is an option. It does introduce its own complications (MCH would probably need to be buffed just a tiny bit to keep its lead as the pure damage dealer).

All that said, I do disagree physical ranged needs a role wide buff. The things the role offers as a whole sees it used at all levels of play - ultimate, savage, etc. The problems are internal to the physical ranged role.

[Rivinhal]

And I didn't only list one option. If option 2 is more acceptable to you, then, well, that is an option.

Advocating for killing one job with nerfs to make another seem viable by comparison isn't a suggestion that should be taken seriously. You'd be trading one issue for another instead of actually solving it. That's hardly a realistic option.

[ForteNightshade]

In certain fights the gap can be narrower due to various factors, but on the whole the gap tends to be wider than that.

And I didn't only list one option. If option 2 is more acceptable to you, then, well, that is an option. It does introduce its own complications (MCH would probably need to be buffed just a tiny bit to keep its lead as the pure damage dealer).

All that said, I do disagree physical ranged needs a role wide buff. The things the role offers as a whole sees it used at all levels of play - ultimate, savage, etc. The problems are internal to the physical ranged role.

Eden Prime - 12,632 (DNC) || 12,379 (BRD)
Voidwalker - 14, 407 (DNC) || 14,264 (BRD)
Leviathan - 13, 938 (DNC) || 13,271 (BRD)
Titan - 13, 449 (DNC) || 13,304 (BRD)
Alexander - 11, 813 (DNC) || 11,252 (BRD)

This is the difference between Dancer and Bard in each fight prior to the current Savage tier. Only Leviathan and Alexander see Dancer significantly ahead, especially E3S where Bard can't optimally maintain their dots because of Maelstorm. Alexander, of course, is an AoE heavy fight, which Dancer excels at. A 600-800 rDPS loss would make the job completely worthless. Citing Curing Waltz as an argument for better utility is like pointing to Vercure. Sure, it's nice. But neither are given more than a fleeting thought even in prog. Consider Dragoon, which has the worst options for melee utility, yet it's far and away the most popular job in the whole game right now.

The physical range absolutely need a buff. They are clinging to the 1% party bonus for relevance. There has even been some debate bringing Red Mage and Summoner is better for prog since not only are they both stronger outright—party bonus notwithstanding—but battle raise has huge value. Regardless, it's more than a little absurd how much higher Melee and Casters are. Thus far, we have yet to see enough movement heavy fights where Melee still don't trounce Range in overall DPS. While I maintain Range need some tax for their free mobility, it shouldn't be nearly as significant as it is.

[SaitoHikari]

All the devs really need to do is revert the DoT nerfs. Advocating for another ranged to get beaten by the nerf stick is laughable, and especially not by a whopping 800 on a class that’s just as RNG heavy.

[Seraphor]

If we go the route of giving BRD more utility to make up for it, then given it's a DoT based job, it should get a Regen skill. So far the only non-healer with Regen utility is GNB.
That could make it more or less interchangeable with DNC.

But they do ideally need a dps buff as well, but... not a massive one.
Phys Ranged benefit from having the least downtime of any job, and least affected by mechanics. In blind prog, this is very useful. When my FC was clearing Eden 1-4 Savage the first time, our MCH was soaring above everyone else in dps.
Sure it balances out once you've learned a fight off by heart and Phys Ranged drop back down to where they are, but if you buff them for the lull, then you buff them at their peak too, and world firsts would be bringing more phys ranged than anything else.

[SaitoHikari]

*coughs in Summoner Phoenix*

Then again Summoner is always the major outlier in every balance discussion.

I’d much rather have Wardens Paean overhauled so that it actually matters in all kinds of content, even more now that the devs are firmly resolved in that they’ll never make such a unique ability actually matter in high end content design ever again. It’s never been useful outside of a few niche situations.

Actually, in my thoughts about how all this came to be, I’ve come to realize that the devs seemingly weigh defensive utility on the same scale and weight as potency changes. In actual practice, it’s anything but. A lot of the game’s balance and difficulty is outright contradictory when put under a microscope.

Take, for instance, the recent homogenization of roles. The devs want all content to be cleared by any party comp, and basically standardized key defensive utility across the board for tanks, healers, and... Physical ranged. But every party always has healers and tanks. Yer the devs know that it’s not mandatory to have a physical ranged, so they deliberately designed AoE damage to hit hard enough to require tank and healer party mitigation. And not enough to require ranged physical mitigation. Not even in savages.

So the devs seem to value defensive utility highly, while not realizing that their difficulty design and tank/healer balance has already severely undervalued ranged mitigation. Slap virus and feint on top of that, and it’s not hard to imagine why physical ranged feel like they don’t really have meaningful support at all anymore. Definitely not enough to justify being so behind on personal damage.