Summoner Needs to be buffed

[dinnertime]

The "Ranged Tax" is a myth that needs to die because melees are capable of getting almost, if not a 100% uptime in fights and they have plenty of mobility tools to play with now.

Job difficulty shouldn't be a factor either.

[Shurrikhan]

The "Ranged Tax" is a myth that needs to die because melees are capable of getting almost, if not a 100% uptime in fights and they have plenty of mobility tools to play with now.

Job difficulty shouldn't be a factor either.

Let's say two jobs have equal skill ceilings and output ceilings. If one nonetheless can get to where they do 95% of the theoretical maximum of their job with a quarter of the effort required to do so one most others, all you've done is made the job OP for all must the very highest end of players.

To say that job difficulty shouldn't be a factor whatsoever is just to, in practice, make the easiest jobs obligatory. If SMN puts out as much rDPS as a BLM and RDM, then you'd simply find BLMs increasingly barred from the caster slot for the sake of reliability and RDMs still discouraged unless the party expects their less calculable utilities (Magic Barrier and more than one instant rez per minute) will be of use.

There is no case by which "all jobs are equally competitive" at every skill level. You balance their maximum DPS (aka, balance for 'Max', as opposed to the 95th, 90th, or 80th percentiles), sure, but for jobs with greater ease of average play, that last step towards mastery should also be that much more demanding and consequential.


"Mobility tax", on the other hand, is not worth thinking about unless an entire expansion's worth of encounters designs mechanics as to be necessarily rDPS-taxing to all but the most mobile jobs at the time (and even that would only either make them overpowered up to the point they are contextually useful, as to highly encourage their being taken for X slots, and highly discourage their being taken on fights without such contexts or in excess of that number).

Outside of that, having unfettered mobility is simply to have one fewer possible area of difficulty/complexity and ought follow the same rules in balancing for a given likely percentile.

[CKNovel]

Let's say two jobs have equal skill ceilings and output ceilings. If one nonetheless can get to where they do 95% of the theoretical maximum of their job with a quarter of the effort required to do so one most others, all you've done is made the job OP for all must the very highest end of players.

Reverse it, you're forcing a ceiling on others because it's harder for a group.
That logic is the same a putting a blindfold on everyone because there is someone blind in the group.
In time, the naturally blind will find its mark while the artificially blind will struggle far more.
Plus, the group will always find a way to accomodate everyone (Melee uptime strats that always exists).

Think about it, running is easy, everyone can do it. Put one foot in front of the other but very fast.
Racing is more complex, you need to care about wether and take care of your car.

Does that mean you replace Usain Bolts medal with silver and that you cannot win Gold medals in "easy categories", using the argument that everyone can run? No, because he excels at running, he remains a world top athlete.
Complexity has nothing to do with the reward, if you excel at your job you should be correctly rewarded.

Yes, ranged should be right behind melees. But even during prog, it's quite rare they are in front of melees. And when it's the case, the problems most often comes from the melee in question.
Also see the E5S-E8S argument where mobility tax was debunked, I've yet to see a counter argument to that.

[Shurrikhan]

Reverse it, you're forcing a ceiling on others because it's harder for a group.

If a job is tuned to be perfectly equal at the 95th percentile despite giving more for the same effort until that point, then unless you group is expecting you are a top 5%er, you will appear to be holding your group back by taking a harder job, since there is, until the very best of the best, no reward for doing so -- only penalty.

[CKNovel]

If a job is tuned to be perfectly equal at the 95th percentile despite giving more for the same effort until that point, then unless you group is expecting you are a top 5%er, you will appear to be holding your group back by taking a harder job, since there is, until the very best of the best, no reward for doing so -- only penalty.

Sorry if I misunderstood you but your argument is that if you're not doing a great performance because you pick a harder job, you will be seen as a handicap for the team?
If so, I'm sorry but we already have Black mage. Harder, plays no part in party survival (no res, no healing) and they are never blacklisted from groups.

DPS is never the first thing to look at, what you bring to the party is. Yet BLM is the exception that confirms the rule.
BLM is technically harder and a handicap for your team, therefore should be seen as a penalty to the group. Which is your argument if I understand correctly?

[Shurrikhan]

...

Such assumes that the balance state of a x.0 or x.01 patch is more aligned with developer intent that any patch late in an expansion cycle.

Even then, however, we see BLM pulling ahead of what is likely the simplest Ranged (Physical or Magical), Machinist, at the 60th percentile and remain neck-and-neck with Samurai thereafter.

Is it so unbelievable that maybe, just maybe, the shiny new DPS job, Reaper, was overtuned and the SAM/BLM lead of the end (and majority, in their case) of Shadowbringers better indicates dev intent?

The largest outlier is Reaper. Monk may be faintly, faintly overtuned, and BLM undertuned, while the gap there-below likely needs shrinking, especially among those whose ranks increase as percentile increases and/or offer the least utility.

_________________________________

And again, the point is that there is no means of tuning jobs that will generate an unchanged balance or ranking across all percentiles so long as different jobs have different learning curves and/or degrees of effort required to optimize them. As such, developers will inevitably have to choose, even if just roughly, a point around which to balance them and then tighten what they may (reducing unenjoyable convolution in the kit itself that may diminish performance across a certain range or shifting potencies to deemphasize or more tightly emphasize more skill-dependent portions of a given kit, etc.)

If you think a job could be discouraged for having a lower ceiling for the very best of players (the top 5%), it is equally arguable that it could be encouraged for having a higher likely throughput for all but those best players (the 95%). If you want to completely remove any disadvantage for playing a job with the least complexity, then you will therein discourage the use of other jobs among players for whom the difference in complexity would be at all noticeable, removing any reason to step outside that comfort zone to even test for what complexity clicks or doesn't click since zero complexity will always pose a lesser challenge even then whatever complexity affects you less than most players (i.e., jibes well with you) and there's no advantage for taking on that added complexity.

While I'd argue the difference should be small on average, to have no differences whatsoever in throughput despite having significant differences in complexity would be poor design.