Quote Originally Posted by Vendalwind View Post
Read what I said again. I will not continue this conversation if you try to assume things tangential to my post.
It is not assumed. This is fact. This is what it was like in Stormblood.

The max DPS WAS 1 selfish and 3 support. But people had better overall success with 4 support because it was less skill reliant (Since, co-ordinating is easy, you just push your 60s/90s CD's every 60s/90s. Optimizing the selfish DPS's uptime especially during burst windows was hard and ensuring that said selfish player NEVER made any mistakes in the content because that would mean death and weakness from a raise)

It just so happens that due to the way that the different supports provided support in different ways, it ended up being the jobs that synergized with each others supports that became meta. I.e. Bard was the best rDPS job, so you wanted one of them and DRG had Piercing buff that helped the Bard's pDPS and then NIN was always there because Trick Attack was the most broken skill in the game.

At best you occasionally saw speed clears swap the DRG for a SMN for the extra magical damage debuff to support the BLM

I said 1 selfish 3 support
IE
1(SAM,BLM,MCH) 3 (ANY COMBINATION OF EVERYTHING ELSE of which there are 7) So proportionally. 1 or 2 slots to the selfish dps that make up 30% of the dps is fair with 1 slot being the closest mark.
and to quote myself
But you have to remember that not all "Support" jobs support in equivalent ways.

In no world would you want to run a BLM with MNK, RDM and DNC as your supports for example. Since MNK and RDM only buff PHYSICAL damage while DNC's pDPS relies on using many weaponskills/spells which BLM's slow casts do not fit well with.

Hence, we would go back to a meta of the jobs that synergize best, much like the old DRG + BRD + NIN combo.
I also talked about this ONLY looking at the damage to conclude ONLY one thing. That selfish dps should not in a vacuum contribute the most rDPS
This particular point does not need to look at compositions at all though.

It's common sense that jobs that sacrifice pDPS for rDPS should not thus have to deal less overall rDPS than jobs who's rDPS is equal to their pDPS.

The only time composition would matter for such argument, is when you try and look at what rDPS is being provided by the support jobs depending on the composition.

I.e. If a "Selfish" DPS does 15000 DPS and a "Support" DPS does 13000 DPS and buffs everyone else by 10% with Tanks that deal 10000 DPS and healers that deal 6000 DPS

Then a Selfish DPS's rDPS is simply a flat 15000.

However, a support DPS's rDPS can range from 20700 (With 3x Selfish DPS) to 20100 (With 3x Support) with this range increasing with a larger gap between selfish and support pDPS as well as increases in the boost they provide to other party members.

Though, it is not always the case that jobs lose pDPS for rDPS, as people have noted jobs like RDM have had pDPS penalties for utility such as "Vercure/Verraise" despite their lack of actual worth in most parties.

Why wont it? Prove it then.
Look at every expansion prior to ShB.

That's just entirely incorrect. Viability and Meta are absolutely separate Ideas. Do you know what Meta means?
Viability and Meta are 99.99% of cases the same thing. Outside of some terrible balancing that makes a job literally unable to perform in content (I.e. ARR Warrior before it got buffed).

Viability is being able to complete content.

Meta is the player controlled "Ideal" composition. Which, some players, will hold as a set in stone viability scale. If a job is not meta, it is not considered viable by these people and thus would get excluded from parties (Even if it is still possible to clear the content using said non-meta job)

Maximized DPS is talking about a team of all 100 percentile players.
Maximized DPS is only compositions.

Since, all talk of balance tends to use a situation where players play perfectly. Since that is the only tangible data to use. It is impossible to calculate DPS losses from "Lower skill levels" and apply them to data to get meaningful results.

This is where the divergence of "Max DPS" compositions and "Meta" compositions comes in. In perfect scenarios, there will be some compositions that will push out the highest numbers. However, these don't usually become meta due to the vast majority of people's inability to perform perfectly. Even the highest skill players will often shy away from the Max DPS compositions until they've practiced the encounters hundreds of times, instead favouring the "Meta" compositions that are easier to play and deal good numbers with.

And when i talk about balancing you have to look at the effect skill levels have on the changes of value rDPS focused classes provide.
Skill levels affect the value of pDPS to the same extent or more than rDPS. Selfish classes often do far worse than support classes at lower skill levels, due to selfish classes having to perform all of their DPS themselves. While support classes still get a portion of their rDPS done even if they themselves are not performing well (So long as you can "Co-ordinate" pressing your CD's on CD)

It is why jobs that can do "Max DPS" are often not widely used (Typically, this is seen with BLM which requires intimate knowledge of an encounter to be able to position correctly so as to have good uptime. Without this, a BLM's damage can become absolute garbage)