Some views on DPS balance that everyone cares about

[NaiXizi]

I would like to emphasise that the OP's friend is likely coming from the Chinese servers where the RDM buffs have yet to happen (look at ver 5.1, the handles and translated text) and is very much in a timestamp where RDM was being looked down on. The balance, now, is far far better than it was before the 5.20 changes.

Thank you for participating in the discussion. The purpose of this post is to trigger discussions, not to attack and scold each other. I am sorry for this situation. I just hope that everyone can express their views. In case, the developers can browse, you can Find out what players think. I mentioned RDM many times because my main occupation is RDM, and I used my own experience to spark everyone's discussion.

At present it looks like the casters are balanced internally (? I'm still a little confused), so let's assume that they are relatively balanced. It is not difficult to see that in order to balance the interior of the casters, nerf SMN buff RDM was selected, because SMN is too powerful, and RDM was buffed to catch up with SMN. All this seems reasonable, but I said that recently, the sound of remote physical DPS has been a lot, and carefully reading their point of view, it is inseparable from SMN. This is because SMN has the characteristics of remote physical DPS. Firepower is much higher than remote physical DPS. (Such as I mentioned earlier, switch all chants from R3 to R2), so I feel that the internal balance of the casters affects the entire DPS, not only the internal balance of the casters, so I thought about this idea for a long time .
And suppose a situation, a team already has long-range physical dps, casters, and melee, leaving a free position, then this position has all DPS to compete, then who will win this position with absolute advantage, no It's hard to see SMN with many professional characteristics. He has high firepower, high mobility, and the characteristics of resurrection, and is a very powerful assistant in Raid. Long-range physical DPS will be eliminated because the firepower is not as high as SMN, and melee will be eliminated because of the raid mechanism processing problem (but the competitiveness is second only to RDM). Other RDMs and BLMs, the resurrection of RDMs and the high firepower characteristics of BLM, SMN has it. Although the upper limit of the firepower of RDM is similar to that of SMN, but because of the skill mechanism, SMN wins. (This is my personal point of view, and discussed with other DPS enthusiasts, such as BLM enthusiasts, SAM enthusiasts, etc., there will be some one-sided shortcomings)

[Nemekh]

So I went into the 24 mans just now by myself to see how things would go for fun - I love me some NieR and hearing Emiko.

Keep in mind, I am almost bis for this tier barring one crafted accessory. I haven't done any of the encounters for months, so some mechanics caught me by surprise meaning some muck ups. I didn't have dnc partner, no pots and I am playing with more ping than any sane person should play with. At best I had BV, TA and some AST buffs when the folks in question were alive (plot twist - I had to raise).



99% for SMN over the last 2 weeks vs mine are as follows:

Serial Jointed: 17,402.02 vs 18,705.8
Hobbes: 17,785.19 vs 18,189.6
Engels: 14,907.33 vs 16,455.8
9s: 13,203.75 vs 13,857.2

With DNC, better alignment and pots the first two fights could easily be pushed to over 20k observed DPS. Engels more around high 17k-18k and 9s at >15k. Otherwise, this would put the results I recorded much closer/higher than what the typical margins for the site is showing for 99% over the last two weeks.

What does this mean, given the gap of the observed vs the 99% threshold? That the 24 man raid is not the content that raiders are competitive in because they don't need to do the content, nor particularly want to parse it. That SMN numbers, in fact, numbers across the board for all jobs could be way higher in general, especially with stronger alignment and buff factors. 24 mans are content aimed at the more casual player and are a means for people to catch up in gear, have fun with some cool content with friends, obtain some glamour items and earn tokens to eventually upgrade their tome gear. Again, they aren't representative of people truly pushing the boundaries of what jobs are capable of. Sure, some of the better-geared players might go in, but the sampling is going to be low given the lack of incentive for raiders to return.

It's useful to look at and acknowledge all data, but do not for one minute draw the wrong conclusions with a lack of context. Why does it not echo and reflect savage and ultimate? Because it's not savage and ultimate. It's aimed at a much different demographic.

[Nemekh]

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Thank you for taking time to express thoughts that I assume have been discussed amongst peers in game and on NGA. I work with Dreamend and others to bring our resources across to Chinese players.

SMN has ~60% of their rotation as instants with RDM having ~65% when playing optimally. What is different is the context wherein said instants occur and whether they are free to use for mobility like the Combo vs R4s in Bahamut not being free mobility.

Neither have physical ranged mobility and while SMN can replace all of their hardcast R3s with R2, this is but one of several dps bleeds that are not advised. It's a meme that needs to die because it screams of ignorance about the job's finer workings. This goes for anyone who keeps perpetuating it, even fellow staff on the Balance that I've had to correct.

Phys Ranged are still taken, but they are in a tough position where people can and will consider comps without them present even if it means going to a 4% party buff. I have never disparaged the problems there, in fact, I specifically emphasised in my thread before 5.10 was released that RDM and Phys Ranged are the most at risk. In 5.20 the potency adjustments (which I covered on my rdm website here) helped address the gap and things are much better for RDM in the global scope of job balance. Ranged are still where they are at and I do wish there was more of a conversation about the matter from SE. Melee are not being eliminated, but we are starting to see comps with double caster. In fact the comp variety is a nice change of pace instead of everyone insisting on double melee, where even the world first e8s with Miyabi and co at Team Sylink having both RDM and SMN together! Things like that help a lot with perception.

Devotion is one of the worst raid buffs around, it's appreciable but it's nothing like the others. It's not "very powerful assistance", it'll get you several hundred extra RDPS in the current tier (when we're starting to push 90-100k+) but that's about it. The reason it's not as powerful, ignoring pet constraints, is because it's on 3 minutes. It would be much stronger if the cd was less, but that is also not necessary. Other buffs are contributing more including Embolden in a physical biased comp.

SMN is up there, but doesn't have BLM's damage nor RDM's raise potential. What they do have as a total package, however, is extremely powerful altogether for a given group. That will never be disparaged either. But given time, the adjustments to both jobs will actually make balance be much better than it's ever been. As such I urge people to wait for most players to at least attain and raid with other players in bis in 5.20, with factors more equal across the board, before casting further judgments.

[Renkei]

Titles mean as much as people give them weight. If this person is a mentor, i feel it gives a negative light to what a 'balance mentor' means and significantly lowers any conceived weight to information they want to convey.

You can defend them all you want, but you have a "mentor" that only knows ad hominem, and refuses to confront any information they disagree with without acting like a child. If you really want to brand them as a representative for the Balance, it's going to do more harm than good for your community unless they change their attitude.

Surprising as it may be to you, there aren't many mentors there that I'd qualify as a "mentor". You gather data and information, you help people, you have discussions with people. YOU are a mentor, or at least the closest thing I'd consider a mentor from said group. Myon? no. Myon is just somebody who can play their job, that you guys granted a status to simply by that factor alone. It has no weight, it has no meaning, the only thing special is their raid performance and nothing more of their character, or ability to 'mentor'. By this logic, anyone who scores about 95 should be a balance mentor, and thats not a metric I'll agree with, because you'll just include every idiot savant at that point.

I'm sorry for being difficult, but I doubt I can respect somebody who stands on a high horse that refuses to look at the world around them, nor could they respect I.

Very well said which is why i refuse to participate in their community, I've followed their posts on the forums on multiple Occasions and there was a whole lot of this, A Title is just that, a Title it mean's nothing if the person cannot and doesn't have the proper character to own up to a title and proves nothing but nepotism, this kind of behavior is counter productive to the community and serves only selfish values and nothing to the English FFXIV Community as a whole, it does everyone here a disservice to be looked down on by a community in such a fashion it seems like a power play at trying to establish a power position in a hierarchy then it is to provide selfless resources to the community.

I applaud your clear view and offer you all i can a "Like"

[Silverquick]

So I went into the 24 mans just now by myself to see how things would go for fun - I love me some NieR and hearing Emiko.

Keep in mind, I am almost bis for this tier barring one crafted accessory. I haven't done any of the encounters for months, so some mechanics caught me by surprise meaning some muck ups. I didn't have dnc partner, no pots and I am playing with more ping than any sane person should play with. At best I had BV, TA and some AST buffs when the folks in question were alive (plot twist - I had to raise).

That is pretty impressive... but doesn't really change anything,

Those numbers i provided were pretty steady back when people like you were running it with Augmented Deepshadow. But we're still at the same question. Why exactly does Summoner when placed next to its peers ONLY dominate in Savage, but lose badly in other types of content like Dungeons and Alliance Raids.

And the disparity of where it places in Savage and Ultimates vs where it places in all other content is too great to attribute only to cooldowns, but rather a whole slew of things from Mobility, to DoTs + Pet unaffected by latency, they way its starts with Trancing out of the gate. NOT its actual DPS output.

What happened here, and the REAL reason some mistakenly see SMN as "uber" and "overpowered" is because they were so tunnel visioned into Savage they never looked at all the stats from the other content to see that it really wasn't.

They made too many assumptions about it because Savage was perceived as "uber" when in reality it was just that content is designed specifically to the strengths of the Summoner. The actual Summoner damage was only about Moderate not High. Maybe high moderate... but still moderate. Which is what it actually shows in non Savage Content.

[NaiXizi]

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I'm still confused about some questions and don't know how to speak.
I can explain why I said that SMN has the output capability of BLM. I have tried to play three casters. SMN gives me the feeling that the resource CD is used as soon as it is completed. In short, I use whatever resources are available. Although I didn't play well, my firepower looked good. I think this profession is very simple and laid back, so it is very popular in raid.
But playing BLM and RDM is not the same. I admit that I am not suitable for playing BLM. This is too difficult for me. I need to spend a lot of energy to play this profession in order to get high output. And can arrange skills to deal with the mechanism of continuous running. So I think BLM is worth it with high firepower.
RDM, I also need to spend a lot of energy to play this profession. For example, I need to consider the mechanism of raid, suitable for melee skills, and arrange the position of jumping back according to the size of the platform, and waste a lot of firepower in the continuous running mechanism. . I need to spend a lot of energy in exchange for not too high firepower, I think it is not worth it, and because of this difficulty, it is not very popular in raid.
And, on the death list, RDM is terrible.
BLM high investment high return, SMN low investment high return, RDM high investment medium return
This shows that the minimum firepower of SMN is very high, and the maximum firepower is also good. The minimum firepower of BLM and RDM is very low, but the maximum firepower of BLM is high, and the maximum firepower of RDM is close to SMN (100% perfect condition).
***But everyone knows that no one can be perfect, and most ordinary players are between 60-90% at most. So I checked the logs of E8s and E6S and found that SMN has higher firepower than other professions.
Very small difference between E5s and BLM
High firepower in E7s (maybe because of multi-target problem)
Perhaps this is also a problem, BLM and SAM need to be in their specific circumstances in order to reach their maximum firepower.
However, SMN can not be limited by most of the copies, and maintains his due firepower.
And in the raid, the continuous resurrection advantage of RDM is difficult to show. Often if many teammates die, they have basically died. The resurrection of SMN is almost the same as the resurrection advantage of RDM in raid.

[Nemekh]

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Jack's still very much a part of the server even if he doesn't interact these days.

You may have biases with Myon from past altercations, but that's hardly a reason to cry foul with nepotism and his not helping out. Said I disagreed with his delivery and heat, but I don't disagree with his notion that people ought to stick to facts actual experiences. Anyone that knows me knows my stance against feelycraft.

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I'm not sure how many times I have to explain that the other content isn't even using the same metrics as savage and ultimate. DPS in those is the end resultant from all buffs involved. In Savage ADPS is only including party wide buffs but stripping away single target buffs, RDPS is reallocating DPS to the people who provided buffs in the first place. As they are, it's a different set of metrics altogether and is comparing apples to oranges.

What you're having to realise is that the upper end of the other content heavily favours padding, especially when the more selfish jobs have stronger damage bases to begin with which is why jobs that provide and rely on synergy end up in the middle, selfish jobs top and phys ranged, unfortunately, remain at the bottom even more so.

IF kihra were to apply the ADPS and RDPS treatment to all the other content, we would see a much different story more akin to savage and ultimate. But not quite 1:1 given the earlier reasoning in that it's not content that's competitive to raiders in general.

Of course, there are many factors, I said a big reason, not the only reason was on cooldowns. However, in the context of why SMN can dominate certain fights, it's not mobility as you've tried to emphasise over and over. If you would do the content you would know why it's a small factor in the grand scheme of things. It helps, especially early on in prog when DPS checks are tighter, but at the end of it all as a caster you're looking to stand as stationary as possible except when necessary for healing and uptime. In fact there are parts of normals that have more movement than savage.

Folks at that level is already achieving their 98-99%+ uptime on their GCDs, DoTs and other actions among all the jobs. At best melees/tanks can have a gripe with certain mechanics vs Shiva. Ramuh is mostly full uptime. 6s has annoying jumps but has ways to make it more melee friendly. The only trickier uptime in 7s is the add phase the rest isn't remotely an issue and at the gear point we're facing at the percentiles in question people are killing early into the final tornado phase.

SMN damage is on the high end, but not at the selfish job level as some seem to assume. It's way past moderate. But as it is, the devs felt that a ~1.5% single target reduction was appropriate vs what it was before 5.20. If they felt things were out of line they would have brought DoTs back down to 40 and done a whole slew of other potency reductions.

[Nemekh]

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The thing is these are anecdotal based on what you think and your experiences which is fair and all but what they are remains opinions. Different people find other jobs more or less taxing. Some BLM mains I know find SMN overwhelming and too much to think about just as some RDM mains do too, meanwhile I know plenty of omnicasters that love them all in different ways with a leaning to one over the others.

I'm not sure I agree that the job has a low investment for a high return given the dispersion of results for every fight. If it were low the interquartile and general range for SMN would be much tighter than it is. There is a strong floor from the post-change pet damage and the nature of the DoTs, but those are not the majority of total damage - there remains everything else to resolve in order to reach those heights. Similarly, the xivanalysis module requirements for SMN is pretty extensive vs some of the other jobs which reflects its complexities when achieving the higher returns. There's a lot to think about with many smaller points of failure that cumulatively add up instead of it being mostly contained to fewer facets. BLM has the most eggs in the gcd basket, RDM more in the middle, but SMN has eggs spread in many smaller baskets.

Minimum firepower is incredibly vague and for BLM could range from scathe spam or mono ice mage, to unenchanted melee combos on RDM. The baseline needs to be defined instead of being handwavey. Even more reasonable baselines for all the jobs without a thorough understanding of the nuances is respectable for all 3.

It's still early days for this raid tier which is why I suggest seeing how things shake up by the end. We generally find parses hold a lot more weight by week8+. As it is the people who are mostly or actually BiS in groups are week1-3 clearers.

[NaiXizi]

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I understand, maybe the statistics of RDPS and ADPS on the website are not enough to indicate the strength of a profession. However, players will use these data to reflect the relative strength of certain occupations. On this statistical website, SMN is a particularly strong occupation. Mass players will use this statistical table to discriminate against occupations. But I retain my point of view, because I do feel that SMN is really strong, just like the ones I described before. After a while, wait for my version to reach 5.2, and then see if my point is correct.

[Nemekh]

I will emphasise that it's one thing to rely on observed fflogs metrics (which has its own faults/inaccuracies that players should be aware of). It's another thing to do the homework for how jobs stand. We've resolved the damage calculations for the game and know how to model jobs. Sims and models are very faithful to reality, which is how we know given specific constraints how things are meant to compare all else equal. A lot of work, testing and research went into it all.

When 5.20 comes to you, know that with the changes we know that the hierarchy is BLM > SMN > RDM for single target damage potential, only jobs will all be closer to one another, with SMN losing some traction vs BLM with the DoT nerf. Caster balance is much healthier and it prompted me to make http://rdm.akhmorning.com/ so that players who wanted to come back to RDM, or learn it anew would have a resource to go to. BLM is next because as far as I'm concerned all casters are important.

Tell your peers to look to what we're living right now because that's what will come to China in good time.