Some views on DPS balance that everyone cares about

[Kabooa]

My group was there and very nearly made top 10 (which I am pretty happy about, but that's another story). There was nothing to 'figure out', the whole fight had been seen for hours at that point by all the top groups and it was just bashing your head against the enrage. E4S's check was practically quaint in comparison, especially since uptime strats were much easier to figure out, on top of things like being able to caster/ranged lb the healer gaols. By the weekend, most of the 'midcore' groups on my server had Titan down too. Those same groups didn't get their e8s clear till week 2, 3, or even 4 in some cases.

I'm just pointing out it's kind of a flaw to make that assertion, because there's basically no world first that hasn't had Summoner and also usually Bard in it.

World firsts are about who figure out the mechanics quicker and the compositions generally reflect the jobs that are more flexible or bring better utility for blind prog. The DPS check this time around is higher almost certainly because the average expected DPS of the jobs is higher (Just about everyone that wasn't top 5 at the time of Titan has gotten increases), but also "we did normal tuning this time"

Like, you can point out that the world first Tea also had a Black Mage, but it's also Sfia, and I doubt it was his class choice that lead to their huge lead on the world first kill, but I also doubt putting him on any other job would help or hinder them either. Mainly because there's a Summoner for the potential battle raise, and you treat the blam like you do a Sam, Drag, or Ninja.

By contrast, Black Mage is present in the first kill, and the next 24 absent. There is one red mage. There are 25 summoners in the first 25 kills.

Expand this out to 50 and you get 4 black mages, 3 red mages, and 50 summoners.

Compared to E4S, we still see a majority of summoner in its less than desirable state, but you see more Black Mages and Red Mages as well.

Unfortunately they don't seem to be running progress keepers in this tier, maybe because they didn't have time to set up like previous, so it's more arduous to do these checks for Shiva, but it wouldn't surprise me if you saw a similar case of an ultra majority of double caster being Summoner + the other.

TLDR; Get rid of the raise.

If there is a constant to expect in anything regarding summoners, it's me saying that.

[Myon88]

TLDR; Get rid of the raise.

I could be all for this, but I hope you've made peace with the ramifications that will have on intra-caster balance. That is to say, there will no longer be any justification for red mage and summoner to not be doing black mage level dps.

Not the current status quo where rdm is 92% of a blm and smn is 95% of a blm (and only appears to outdps it on a certain site because of adds padding). They will be 100% blms, or conversely blm will be nerfed down to their level, and perhaps the entire caster role will be rebalanced around a lower ceiling like the ranged now. After all, if we had all three casters actually capable of doing black mage level dps, the melees and ranged would be in the doghouse even more than they currently are.

How much do you wanna bet though, that the complaints will simply change tack to some other issue. Maybe now it's black mage has to 'work too hard' for the same level of dps, or summoner can dot too well on a bunch of irrelevant fights (just like people are calling dungeon content irrelevant above me). Let it not be said that I didn't call it. Because like I said, some people don't actually want balance, they're just looking out for themselves.

Whatever the case it will be a loss for the game overall. Raise is a big part of why the casters are the most diverse, well designed, and impactful roles in the game right now. And it isn't actually unbalanced, people are just bad or unwilling to play to their respective niches. Watering things down is how you end up with the milquetoast state of the ranged today, where no one really excels in anything and everyone can do the same thing everyone else can. And all this just to attempt to satisfy the crowd that only sees the game as a raiding numbers game. I play blm in speedruns, or dungeons and hunts where the other two fall short. I play rdm in prog and stuff like palace and eureka. And I guess I'm a pretty good summoner too. Ironic isn't it? Despite having the most raiding experience here I also have the most holistic outlook on the game.

It being the least played job in all content other than TEA shouldn't be a surprise to anyone who's paid attention to it.

Yes, that's what I said didn't I? There are many reasons why people like or dislike jobs, they're not actuaries that just pick the best one from a pure utilitarian standpoint or something.

And I think I know a thing or two about failures of design yes. This is as good a time as any to remind all of you that during the 2019 media tour 2 months before the launch of Shadowbringers, I (and a couple of my peers) was in here warning of the colossal disaster in store for us that was 5.0-5.1 summoner. I appreciate you giving others the run down on monk, and instead of doing the same I will simply link the same thread I started 9 months ago: https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...-for-the-worse

[Kabooa]

I could be all for this, but I hope you've made peace with the ramifications that will have on intra-caster balance. That is to say, there will no longer be any justification for red mage and summoner to not be doing black mage level dps.[/URL]

Yeah, I'm like 100% okay with this. There's nothing more exciting than having a race with someone else, and there's honestly no better teacher than getting crushed outright - Creating scenarios where this doesn't lead to jobs being obsolete would be the best case to me.

I'm also not responsible for other people.

There was a point, maybe during Heavensward where I might have said one job was harder than the other, but after trapping in Sigmascape across a multitude of roles and jobs, and I've settled on 'Every job has their challenges'.

You are tunnel visioned into Savage.

Savage and Ultimate are the only relevant places for discussion, because nothing else stresses the battle system.

[Silverquick]

Savage and Ultimate are the only relevant places for discussion, because nothing else stresses the battle system.

Well then they need to stop designing Savage and Ultimate in a way that caters to the strengths of one single job. Which means they are going to have to stop making them so movement intensive.

Then the other jobs will shine the same way they do in all other forms of content.

That again is a content balance issue, not a class balance issue and has little to do with the SMN. And SMN would stop dominating that one single type of content wouldn't they?

Oh but wait then they wouldn't be any fun would they? So in other words... it is NOT the ONLY thing that stresses out the system... but rather the ONLY type of content which specifically caters to the strengths of the SMN job (ie, a Pet +DoT job). It just happens to be the only thing that is HARD for all OTHER jobs.

[ReiMakoto]

Well then they need to stop designing Savage and Ultimate in a way that caters to the strengths of one single job. Which means they are going to have to stop making them so movement intensive.

Then the other jobs will shine the same way they do in all other forms of content.

That again is a content balance issue, not a class balance issue and has little to do with the SMN. And SMN would stop dominating that one single type of content wouldn't they?

Oh but wait then they wouldn't be any fun would they? So in other words... it is NOT the ONLY thing that stresses out the system... but rather the ONLY type of content which specifically caters to the strengths of the SMN job (ie, a Pet +DoT job). It just happens to be the only thing that is HARD for all OTHER jobs.

I am willing to put money on the fact if people putting up logs for savage were to bother putting up logs for dungeons ect SMN would come out on top in those as well, their cleave is insane as is their general damage, movement isn't why theyre the strongest in savage, in 90%+ range everyone has as close to 100% uptime as possible, its just a matter of the facts its numbers are overtuned. Your sample size for dungeons is actually so small its hardly relevant, there is nothing intrisic to smns pet/ dot design that makes it more powerful in savage, its just its numbers are high.

Edit: For context your're saying the DOT and pet autos are what's making smn so strong, they make up ~20-25% of smns total damage in a fight, which is about the same that Bards Auto's +Dots do in a fight, SMN is just essentially a caster with autoattacks, this is not a case of its class design or archetype only being good for savage, its just a case of number overtune

[Silverquick]

I am willing to put money on the fact if people putting up logs for savage were to bother putting up logs for dungeons ect SMN would come out on top in those as well,

They are already,

Check out the actual top DPS numbers put out by SMNs in End Game dungeons. Those are wayyyy higher than any normal player puts out. So they obviously are being done by some seriously geared up players.

[NaiXizi]

They are already,

Check out the actual top DPS numbers put out by SMNs in End Game dungeons. Those are wayyyy higher than any normal player puts out. So they obviously are being done by some seriously geared up players.

Oh, hello, thank you for viewing my article. My article is somewhat subjective, and some inadequacies please forgive me.
But I'm not sure, please check the following.
https://www.fflogs.com/zone/statisti...gregate=amount
and
https://www.fflogs.com/zone/statisti...amount&boss=69
and
https://www.fflogs.com/zone/statisti...amount&boss=70
and
https://www.fflogs.com/zone/statisti...amount&boss=71
and
https://www.fflogs.com/zone/statisti...amount&boss=72
and
https://www.fflogs.com/zone/statisti...=DPS&boss=1050

You know, SMN has the characteristics of higher resurrection and mobility, why he will compete with BLM and SAM without resurrection and mobility conditions.

[Zerathor]

I could be all for this, but I hope you've made peace with the ramifications that will have on intra-caster balance. That is to say, there will no longer be any justification for red mage and summoner to not be doing black mage level dps.

Not the current status quo where rdm is 92% of a blm and smn is 95% of a blm (and only appears to outdps it on a certain site because of adds padding). They will be 100% blms, or conversely blm will be nerfed down to their level, and perhaps the entire caster role will be rebalanced around a lower ceiling like the ranged now.

Almost would have an actual point there, if a large portion of fights didn't involve adds or multiple targets. I know it must be a radical notion to assume balance should be considering the type of content that is normally produced, but give it a consideration. As it stands on the majority of fights, with players of the same level of skill, smn will out perform blm while still having access to a raise. Raise should be cut, and nothing else changes. That would be balanced enough. Blm can dominate a fight that isn't multi target, smn will dominate the fights that involve multi target and adds (which will likely be at least 2 fights in a tier).

Because like I said, some people don't actually want balance, they're just looking out for themselves.

Could not have described yourself better.

I agree with your previous point that this is a nice golden age of double caster, but that will inevitably change soon enough with some kind of range buff. And you know which of those 2 casters is going to stay relevant? The one that puts out more damage in most scenarios and has a raise. Mary Sue: the job.