Group-DPS buffs aren't real "Utility" or "Support"

[LeonKeyh]

From experience the community doesn't do this often, the attitude even in Savage being "play the class you enjoy, you'll perform better than trying to bring the top meta class". RDM as an example is perfectly fine, having Raise, Vercure and decent dps yet BLM having 0 utility still sees a lot of play too. As does WHM despite no shields or raid buffs. The community does get stuck into weird notions like "2 melee 2 ranged", "Always Noct AST with WHM" or "no doubles" even when they don't need lb3, but they're generally fine on class choice.

The fear of the community mindset shouldn't hinder class design. Players really aren't that bad. Sure some people exclude classes, but it's only a tiny handful really.

Admittedly, I haven't done any high end content, but the "weird notion" of 2 melee 2 ranged seems to be a biproduct of both strategies being designed for that for balance, combined with the fact that you get main stat buffs by having Tank, Healer, Melee, Ranged Physical, and Ranged Magical in the group. That covers the 2 ranged for the bonus (1 physical, 1 magical) then you have an extra spot which just defaults to melee because of symmetry it seems.

As for the healers, typical they want 1 shield and 1 regen healer which, again, is not "weird." It's because both are good in certain situations and having 1 of each creates a powerful team (2 regen isn't as bad as 2 shield, but it still isn't as powerful as 1 of each, that's why there's "no doubles"). Fact of the matter is the game pushes people toward this "weird" notions by how it's designed, sometimes it does it explicitly (e.g. the main stat bonus for one of each job type) and sometimes implicitly (e.g. not allowing shields to stack, regens and shields being better in different situations, giving classes different kinds of group wide damage buffs), but it's the game that causes this, it's not some weird superficial rule that the community has come up with.

Also, the community doesn't do this _now_ because of how things are set up. Though I'd be surprised if people during progression or people competing for top kill times don't grab specific classes if all other things are equal (e.g. player skill). RDM/SMN for prog groups because of the extra rezzes for example. BLM/SAM with some good group buffs if they're looking for fast kill time, etc.

[ItMe]

From experience the community doesn't do this often, the attitude even in Savage being "play the class you enjoy, you'll perform better than trying to bring the top meta class". RDM as an example is perfectly fine, having Raise, Vercure and decent dps yet BLM having 0 utility still sees a lot of play too.

IDK man.
I only started at the tail end of Stormblood, but even then I ran afoul of parties "needing" a bard or a ninja all too often.
And in this expac we saw it taper off with the homogenization, but it still happens. The most prominent example being that for day 1 prog on TEA most groups were passing up RDMs. SMN was overturned and BLM is super lovely right now too, so if you were gonna bring a caster people were told to swap from RDM or GTFO.

[SpeckledBurd]

From experience the community doesn't do this often, the attitude even in Savage being "play the class you enjoy, you'll perform better than trying to bring the top meta class". RDM as an example is perfectly fine, having Raise, Vercure and decent dps yet BLM having 0 utility still sees a lot of play too. As does WHM despite no shields or raid buffs. The community does get stuck into weird notions like "2 melee 2 ranged", "Always Noct AST with WHM" or "no doubles" even when they don't need lb3, but they're generally fine on class choice.

The fear of the community mindset shouldn't hinder class design. Players really aren't that bad. Sure some people exclude classes, but it's only a tiny handful really.

That's because job balance this expansion has actually been fairly on point. The difference between the top performing jobs and the lowest performing jobs in a role has been pretty minimal, but in the past expansions that definitely hasn't been the case. In Heavensward Dragoon and Ninja were both significantly more powerful than Monk due to their raid contributions and by the middle of the expansion people were locking Monk out of PF groups. The same thing happened in Stormblood to Monk and Samurai though it was on a smaller scale.

For a non-dps example, in Heavensward when Zurvan Extreme was current and the skip soar or disband meme was reality, people started locking Warrior's out of PFs because Holmgang's duration was too short to allow it to cheese a certain mechanic that Hallowed Ground or Living Dead could. If there ends up being a big enough incentive to take one job within a given role over another people absolutely will block the other jobs out.

[Raikai]

Yeah, I think the problem also lies with the encounter design itself... Normal modes are way too easy. The filter there is just knowing the telegraphs or stack markers, so you can avoid dying. Abilities like Mantra and Tactician are barely useful because there's so much overhealing on Normal modes... Anti-tankbusters like Addle or Feint also make little to no impact. Outside of the dps boosting utilities like TA or Embolden, there's anything meaningful unless you're doing Savage and beyond.

The answer also isn't just buffing those utilities... The whole encounter design got to be tuned around it, or what would happen is that Savages would become more difficult and Normals easier.

A few of "personal" niche utilities that are interesting in theory, but slightly useless either due to its design or the encounter design:
- It feels good as a BRD to have a "better Esuna", but... when I can really use that?
- Mug has unique effect loot drops, but it rarely works, let along for dungeon content.
- SMN's Physick is a niche, defensive utility but useless since it still doesn't scale with INT.

[Payadopa]

The thing is, this is really the only place where such abilities would make a difference, and they can't give us abilities that would make a difference in Savage because then the community mindset would be to prioritize the job that has the difference-making ability to the exclusion of others when given a choice.

I get why that's a thing so don't get me wrong, but that is exactly why I can't stand the vocal minority and their obsession with DPSing above all else. The X% DPS increase is just plain boring. And gameplay feel will always be more meaningful to me than raw numbers, I'm sorry to say, no matter what equadions people come up with.

Here is hoping for 6.0 .

[Rilifane]

Admittedly, I haven't done any high end content, but the "weird notion" of 2 melee 2 ranged seems to be a biproduct of both strategies being designed for that for balance, combined with the fact that you get main stat buffs by having Tank, Healer, Melee, Ranged Physical, and Ranged Magical in the group. That covers the 2 ranged for the bonus (1 physical, 1 magical) then you have an extra spot which just defaults to melee because of symmetry it seems.

As for the healers, typical they want 1 shield and 1 regen healer which, again, is not "weird." It's because both are good in certain situations and having 1 of each creates a powerful team (2 regen isn't as bad as 2 shield, but it still isn't as powerful as 1 of each, that's why there's "no doubles"). Fact of the matter is the game pushes people toward this "weird" notions by how it's designed, sometimes it does it explicitly (e.g. the main stat bonus for one of each job type) and sometimes implicitly (e.g. not allowing shields to stack, regens and shields being better in different situations, giving classes different kinds of group wide damage buffs), but it's the game that causes this, it's not some weird superficial rule that the community has come up with.

Also, the community doesn't do this _now_ because of how things are set up. Though I'd be surprised if people during progression or people competing for top kill times don't grab specific classes if all other things are equal (e.g. player skill). RDM/SMN for prog groups because of the extra rezzes for example. BLM/SAM with some good group buffs if they're looking for fast kill time, etc.

As you said yourself, you haven't done any high end content so it's not surprising that your idea of how things should/ could work differs from reality. A lot of people think similiar until really getting into endgame content and notice that a lot of what gets thrown around in general is a lie. NN, party chats in DF content, reddit etc. is full of superficial knowledge or even outright false claims.

But a few things:
- as you said, one physical ranged, one caster and one melee is enough for the 5% buff. Locking slots to double melee because of "symmetry" makes no sense, it's completely arbitary and is the reason why it's a weird notion. There is no downside from a mechanical standpoint to having dbl caster or dbl physical over dbl melee. If the party has a RDM or an AST (or even both) then dbl melee nets those two a bit more rDPS/ less hassle with RNG but this is rarely the reason to go dbl melee, let alone in PF. The community is simply of the mindset that you have to go dbl melee because... reasons?
- dbl regen is in fact stronger than regen/ shield which is why it makes no sense to go Noct with a WHM co heal outside early prog. And I mean EARLY prog when everyone is standing there in crafted gear and there is a real danger of getting one shot through mitigation. Noct/ WHM is a really weak comp in almost every setting because it has a far lower free heal potency than Diurnal/ WHM, thus forcing both healers to heal more and drop dps. It absolutely 100% IS a rule made up by the community that makes no sense because they enforce something that is making the healers lives harder for "safety" reasons... which is completely backwards.

Speedrun/ rank log run parties will prefer certain combinations over others, like no RDM would ever join a single melee comp when going for ranked logs but those are outliers and there will always be a mathematically best choice. But this mathematically choice doesn't matter even the tiniest bit until the party as a whole took care of more pressing matters, e.g. keeping proper uptime, reducing rotational mistakes to a minimum, adjusting to more uptime friendly strats etc.
Right now, the comp matters relatively little beyond filling all 3 dps roles for the 5% buff and perhaps avoiding doubles whose buffs don't stack.

[IsshinAshina]

It is true that "Raid buffs are offsets to a job's dps". Dancer is centred around this concept. Take one step further. To my best ability to summarize the perspective in this thread is: Current "raid buffs" don't have a sense of impact & a sense of control & personal gain. I think they should be separated when discussing this topic.

Sense of impact: Look at AST at the end of stormblood. A 10% raid-wide dps buff but with RNG. It felt significant (felt great!). But the issue with balance led us to what we have now - divination. Now ppl don't feel that impact whenever they cast a raid buff. You won't get noticed when you have three different seals, etc...

Sense of Control: Look at BRD at the end of stormblood. Foe's requiem took one gcd and allowed you to trade mp for raid-wide buff duration. And bards could turn on and off whenever they like. But it brought the bard's ceiling very high since they can buff any team comps to their best interests (although I agree brd is kinda braindead now). Now almost every raid damage buffs are engraved into each job's personal rotation, it's like "just happen to buff the party as well". GavynG mentions Mantra. Compare Mantra with Brotherhood it's not hard to tell the difference. You choose to use Mantra, but you do not choose to use Brotherhood, given they are all "one-tap" utility.

All this gibberish comes to the homogenization that ppl already talked about in this thread. We need homogenization and this expansion does a great job of not letting any class get cast out in raids. But the jobs feel somewhat boring or "same feeling" when playing. SE must fix this. But I don't believe simply buff or remove a utility would help. They, need to understand what sense or impact and control mean to players. Let's look at some examples.
Trick-attack is one of the most impactful and satisfying skills in utility. It has 3 factors: 1. it requires sui-ton to cast - resource management. 2. it's 60s cd which aligns with every job's burst - impactful 3. it is one of the hardest-hitting skills for NIN - personal gain.
Since GavynG brought up vercure: 1. vercure requires a gcd which trades RDM's dps - resource management. 2. vercure can do 3 things, heal pty, follow with a rez, proc dual-cast in downtime for dps gain - impactful. 3. vercure can heal RDM which makes RDM be one of solo champs - personal gain.
Next, the memes, Bard's songs: 1. Battle voice requires a song that is not hard management but annoying in dungeons. Other songs do not require bard to do anything particular. 2. battle voice is a "soft buff" that buffs RNG, other buffs are negligible. 3. BRD can't hear their songs.
Last but not the least, all the "tap-to-win raid buffs" here: litany, brotherhood, devilment, battle voice, chain.

[IsshinAshina]

In conclusion, if a utility is impactful, reward for gameplay, and personally rewarding, then it is a good one. The issue is: we know what's good, but SE doesn't. SE's current balance approach is: remove one factor from the three so a utility is balanced and diverse. To me, it really is taking a shortcut to the problem (unless they are bigbrain leaving space for 6.0 upgrade). Now all the bad/boring utility can be categorized into not impactful, or one-tap, or decoupled from the job. Like many ppl points out, I really enjoyed the old days of utility meta where sometime a job could center around a particular skill or a pty utility in rotation. I wish SE could notice the issue at hand and take time for upgrading these utilities. Learning which GCD to tap a raid buff is not hard and not fun anymore.

[SweetPete]

The point of all this is did square accomplish what they sat out to do? Kill the meta so all jobs are viable for high end raiding? Yes they surely did. But they also destroyed and I mean destroyed certain jobs to do that. Astrologian, Bard and Scholar are the main 3. And for what? The high end raiders didn't even complain. Honestly, I don't even see a huge difference in people trying the high end raiding. It's the same small percent community it's always been. Square made a horrible decision when they decided to butcher these jobs. There is nothing wrong with meta jobs. Most moms have them. Square makes it seem like if every job is not viable there is a problem and there isn't. Everyone wasn't playing Astros, Brds and Schs. All jobs were played.

Now you see allot of forum post about fix astro cards and give back their time magic, fix bard and fix scholar. This is not what the player base wanted. Square took it upon themselves to pull this mess when it wasn't even needed. Those jobs weren't broken and you know the old saying. If it ain't broke don't fix it. We pay for this game to have fun with our favourite jobs. Then seeing them destroyed like that just broke my heart. Some jobs were damn near unplayable when 5.0 dropped. Looking at you Astro. Square needs to get it together and stop destroying jobs just because of their own delusions of what they think the player base wants or needs. I truly hope they been reading these forums because there have been some great ideas on how to break this unnecessary homogenization and give jobs back their true identities.

[Dzian]

In conclusion, if a utility is impactful, reward for gameplay, and personally rewarding, then it is a good one. The issue is: we know what's good, but SE doesn't. SE's current balance approach is: remove one factor from the three so a utility is balanced and diverse. To me, it really is taking a shortcut to the problem (unless they are bigbrain leaving space for 6.0 upgrade). Now all the bad/boring utility can be categorized into not impactful, or one-tap, or decoupled from the job. Like many ppl points out, I really enjoyed the old days of utility meta where sometime a job could center around a particular skill or a pty utility in rotation. I wish SE could notice the issue at hand and take time for upgrading these utilities. Learning which GCD to tap a raid buff is not hard and not fun anymore.

The issue is that utility is largely worthless. In the grand scheme of things the only thing that matters is dps, dps and more dps,, and if for any reason you fail. the answer is, yes you guessed it more dps...

The devs have backed themselves into a corner they have no way to get out from and you can see this because every time they try to push out they get pushed right back in by the players..

Recently they said ok guys we've tuned encounters to need more healing and make healing more important... Lasted a whole 10 minutes before healers were right back in the dps, dps, morrrreeee dps mode..

Before that it was making things hit harder so "be sure to meld some vitallity or tenacity" LOLS. tanks be like f that im using slaying gear on the right side cos dps dps dps

Even mechanics often get ignored because dps is king so screw that nechanic take the hit. more uptime more dps.. and its not like its ever going to strain the healers. one ogcd heal and carry on....

Resources are near infinite now as well so all that utility is shot to hell. and this pushes the developers even further into this corner they cant get out from.. The homogenization of the jobs has basically pinned them to the walls.

Everything they try to do to push out of that corner doesnt work becasue of there obsession with balance... they need to bring back some real diversity and uniqueness to jobs if they want to shift this dps mentality.