Summoner Needs to be buffed

[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.

[Duskane]

all 3 casters are mobile so its hardly anything to factor in for any of them,
SMN should be around RDM maybe SMN should be a little higher since RDM is basically almost a must for prog with magic barrier,full power embolden and reliable quick raises
while SMN has a 30 second 3% damage buff and a raise that needs swift cast that SMNs probably wont want to use because of Ifrit and slipstream cast time,
I don't think SMN should be hitting MNK/BLM levels like it did in SB/ShB but it shouldn't be this low.

If we're going to use this logic then Reaper should be the weakest melee. Not only does it boast the best utility among melee in Arcane Crest, it's incredibly easy to pick up and play even at a fairly decent level. Additionally, it has no odd optimization quirks like Samurai or suffer from animation lock like Dragoon.

And yet it's not only the best Melee but the best overall DPS job in the entire game. So the difficult logic simply doesn't work.

I would hardly call Arcane crest the best its good but i wouldn't put it over brotherhood or trick

[Shurrikhan]

If we're going to use this logic then Reaper should be the weakest melee. Not only does it boast the best utility among melee in Arcane Crest, it's incredibly easy to pick up and play even at a fairly decent level. Additionally, it has no odd optimization quirks like Samurai or suffer from animation lock like Dragoon.

And yet it's not only the best Melee but the best overall DPS job in the entire game. So the difficult logic simply doesn't work.

By your logic, that whatever's the best must deserve to be the best, then Summoner surely deserves to be where it is, too?

Otherwise, why would you say that SMN should be buffed, which would indicate that the devs are not infallible in their job tuning, even as you indicate that Reaper's place, equally subject to fallibility, proves that difficulty must be a non-factor?

Summoner deserves to be a bit higher on the basis of having little utility. Reaper deserves to be lower than, say, SAM or BLM, however.

Note that damage buffs are already accounted for in rDPS; if Monk were to deservedly fall behind SAM, it'd have to be because Mantra and in-expansion applications of Riddle of Earth in serious content amount to more utility than any difference in optimization complexity between them (if any exists in Monk's favor at all) is considered by the devs to be worth.

If Monk instead happened to be noticeably more complex to optimize than SAM, then it wouldn't be an issue for their contextual dps to be neck-and-neck despite Monk's having Mantra and a slightly stronger defensive (assuming the raid damage isn't frequent enough for Third Eye to push SAM ahead and is high enough for a 20% mitigation skill to actually somehow save a healer GCD despite that GCD almost certainly being AoE, if used at all).

[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.

[Sunako]

RDM is overpowered now. RDM needs either nerfed to SMN level or BLM and SMN both need to be buffed. Because BLM does 2% more than RDM, nobody is gonna use that zero utility caster.

[ForteNightshade]

I would hardly call Arcane crest the best its good but i wouldn't put it over brotherhood or trick

That's Arcane Circle. Arcane Crest is their mitigation. which gives them a 10% shield and 100 potency raid wide heal upon breaking. All on a 30s CD. No other Melee comes close to this sort of utility. Shadeshift is the closest comparison, which sits on a 120s CD. Dragoon has absolutely nothing while Mantra only works on GCDs healers don't want to cast but doesn't have a shield component. In a vacuum, this is fine... but when Reaper also brings damage utility and boasts the highest DPS by a mile.

By your logic, that whatever's the best must deserve to be the best, then Summoner surely deserves to be where it is, too?

... you might want to reread what I said because that wasn't my logic in the slightest. The whole crux was to illustrate why the difficulty argument is flawed. You cannot, in good conscious, say Summoner deserves to be incredibly weak due to its ease of play yet ignore that Reaper is both the best Melee DPS and arguably the best DPS overall in the entire game while also being among the easiest. If we're going to hold that over Summoner, then Reaper needs to be pulling less than Ninja. Once again, this is why balance around difficulty doesn't work and isn't something the dev team ever consistently follows.

[rewd]

That's Arcane Circle. Arcane Crest is their mitigation. which gives them a 10% shield and 100 potency raid wide heal upon breaking. All on a 30s CD. No other Melee comes close to this sort of utility. Shadeshift is the closest comparison, which sits on a 120s CD. Dragoon has absolutely nothing while Mantra only works on GCDs healers don't want to cast but doesn't have a shield component. In a vacuum, this is fine... but when Reaper also brings damage utility and boasts the highest DPS by a mile.

Mantra works on healing actions, which include oGCDs. I would still rate it worse than AC, but I wanted to clarify this.

[ForteNightshade]

Mantra works on healing actions, which include oGCDs. I would still rate it worse than AC, but I wanted to clarify this.

My mistake then. At least that puts it closer to Arcane Crest but still not better. Frankly, Crest needs to either lose the Cure potency or have its CD doubled. It's a bit silly how they essentially made it a better version of Shadeshift but on a fourth of the CD.

[rewd]

My mistake then. At least that puts it closer to Arcane Crest but still not better. Frankly, Crest needs to either lose the Cure potency or have its CD doubled. It's a bit silly how they essentially made it a better version of Shadeshift but on a fourth of the CD.

I hope they don't remove the regen or nerf it because it makes the skill very fun and rewarding to use. The CD needs to be increased, but a 60s CD would still be too strong imo.

A 90-120s range would be more appropriate, I think. Maybe increase the duration of the shield, so it's not too punishing.