The current State of Casters 6.05 edition - balancing discussion

[Grimoire-M]

If there’s any job that should be taxed for mobility and utility more it’s Summoner. Red Mage and Black Mage need buffs but Summoner arguably needs nerfs or to be left alone. I don’t see an argument that applies to them that doesn’t apply to the ranged who ARE in a bad spot right now. Machinist needs significant buffs due to its supposed selfish role too (I’d rather Dismantle back but I get that Reprisal’s already good).

To be clear, it’s to such a degree that I think Summoner should be fighting for the bottom, caster spot be damned. That’s how much the raise, Phoenix taxes, mobility differences, Searing Light, and their brain dead rotation are collectively worth.

You want damage buffs on Summoner? Make it a caster DPS again.

[Aikaal]

If there’s any job that should be raced for mobility and utility more it’s Summoner. Red Mage and Black Mage need buffs but Summoner arguably needs nerfs or to be left alone. I don’t see an argument that applies to them that doesn’t apply to the ranged who ARE in a bad spot right now. Machinist needs significant buffs due to its supposed selfish role too (I’d rather Dismantle back but I get that Reprisal’s already good).

To be clear, it’s to such a degree that I think Summoner should be fighting for the bottom, caster spot be damned. That’s how much the raise, Phoenix taxes, mobility differences, Searing Light, and their brain dead rotation are collectively worth.

You want damage buffs on Summoner? Make it a caster DPS again.

Well, sorry to say, Summoner is a caster. I don't see them in the ranged physical category and overall physical ranged needs an overhaul. I'm not sure I follow you on the Phoenix tax. It gives a cheap single target heal that may give an extra regen + a cheap AoE heal that you can't use when you want. The AoE heal is automatic and you have a time frame of 15 seconds. Their raise tax is a complete joke because Summoner use swiftcast for DPS like RDM. This effectively removes the entire support of raise. Not only that, but if you were to hold it, you woul raise once per minute when there's just better. Searing Light is decent but it's niche. Weaker than Embolden, the duration is good but most jobs are done with their burst within 20 seconds. It's niche for Summoner. Pretty much any job has a party damage buff so it shouldn't be taxed more than any other job.

Mobility is a petty reason for people to say SMN is balanced right now. People see it as it makes them easier to play, yeah to a certain degree but they never needed that mobility. Here's a list of the changes that simplified jobs;
- Blood of the Dragoon is a trait
- Enochian is a trait now

I don't see them taxing those changes and I don't want them to be taxed.

Mobility was greatly improved for all SMN, BLM and RDM.
- BLM has a quickcast Paradox on their Ice Rotation. 2 Triple Casts, 2 Sharpcasts for quickcast Fire III and/or Thunder III. BLM has absurd mobility in their toolkit, they simply optimize when they have to move during a fight.
- RDM has a quick cast every 2 GCD. They have more melee combos now. Accelerate is now a quickcast and has 2 charges, they can effectively just swiftcast for mobility since they don't need to hold swiftcast for raise. They, too, can optimize around an entire fight.
- SMN hard cast 7 times per 2 minutes which 2 of those hardcast are 2.8 seconds and 1 is 3 second. Ifrit Rite spell can be improved with swiftcast for a damage gain.

I doubt any summoner would have issue to be forced to cast more, we don't need this much mobility. When you take a look, RDM has a quick cast every 2 GCD. This is such an amazing mobility tool. Not only that, but once they go in melee combo, they spend 15 seconds with no mobility issue because everything is instant. You're going to tell any main SMN that knows and plays all casters this is why they should be doing no caster DPS? I'm sorry to say but nope, you can't taxe one job in a category without taxing the remaining jobs of that same role. I doubt they will do nerf also. Yoshida seems to think that Reaper isn't overtuned so its better to say all other jobs are undertuned.

To reiterate the goal of this post is to provide solutions and suggestions for caster balancement issue. Not pointless comments like you just did. There's plenty of posts on why mobility isn't a valid argument and same argument is probably being told for physical ranged discussion. This is also not a post about physical ranged but caster DPS.

[Grimoire-M]

-snip-

Not to bypass your entire post as it has merit, but if Summoner is a caster then Samurai is a caster. That's the degree of impact their 'casting' has on their actual rotation. I'll be the first one to say that is one of many mechanical incongruities with the job, but I'm not about to introduce another overtuning era for the third expansion in a row to justify a 'role slot issue'. That hasn't mattered since Stormblood where Piercing/Slashing maintenance rightfully died and Brotherhood and Embolden both got their necessary fixes since then. (On that note: Refresh your job guide pages. Red Mage Embolden is 5% for 20s per 2m, Searing Light is strictly better purely due to its duration. Searing Light also happens to be the second or third best group raid buff right now, depending on how you look at Bardsongs).

If you need proof of that role slot issue, consider that there are top 10 parses with both Bard and Summoner in the group right now in Week 2 where the overtuned grey parsing Reaper is the one holding them back. Player skill, item level, and fight/class familiarity still matter way more than which class has the most DPS. But if we're talking about balance for the purposes of having their tuning reflect the value and the difficulty and friction inside their toolkit (which frankly speaking applies to all DPS comparisons, not just caster to caster)? I'm absolutely okay with Summoner being in the bottom two with Dancer for the exact same reasons I think BLM and SAM should be top two, and yet it's also why I think Machinist and Red Mage should be similar in rDPS contribution. I felt Summoner was overtuned the last two expansions and it was the faulty argument being made in this thread that got them there every time. At least they had some reason for it. Many of them are present in the points you've gone over, and many are not. For example Raid DPS is easier than ever to line up properly across a group which naturally increases its value. Every Job has natural 1m/2m spikes for it and we have two healers with their own buff, and a healthy heaping of extra filler potency on the two that don't to keep them in line relative to their contributions.

For a point of average comparison that highlights the role differences, let's look at Ninja compared to Machinist and Red Mage. Ninja goes above them primarily but not only because Ninja is a melee job. It is a utility/burst focused job with a lot of positional ease for correcting mistakes and maintaining uptime relative to the other melee thanks to Shukuchi and Raijus, but it's still a melee uptime job. The dealbreaker quite literally is NIN still being a relatively tough melee job to execute well despite all of its inherent flexibility as despite its relatively straightforward burst phase all the little parts make it very prone to getting out of sync. Additionally, Ninja doesn't have Raise utility like Red Mage does, but it does have a highly consequential channel that is actively used in its single target and AoE rotation alike, nevermind it's distinctly weaker defensive utility over both. What could edge Red Mage out over it depends purely on how you evaluate their Raise utility relative to their inflexible cast rotation and occasional melee requirements. I happen to evaluate it quite highly because I've turned hard-cast Resses on Summoner into clears that shouldn't have happened on Summoner in the past and have no problem seeing how Red Mage would enable that with less overall cast time cost, even when its MP was worse than it is now.

For an in-role contrast, Red Mage has nearly every advantage Summoner does, but has an actual rotation with things to think about, and trades a faster raise and extra mitigation for a distinct lack of AoE healing. Unfortunately it is AoE healing from DPS roles that precisely let Shadowbringers Summoner break E4S and Reaper break the Elder Primal Extremes (on top of their ridiculous damage tuning in both cases). I don't think those situations or solo-heal ultimates should happen at all. And that's not because those aren't cool as hell. They are. But they are proof something went wrong with the healer jobs and encounter design somewhere that allowed that to happen. And if SE isn't fixing healers (lol) or encounter design (signs point to no), then DPS taxes or outright gutting and/or removal of those AoE healing mechanics on DPS is in order. Personally, I want the defensive utility on all DPS to have its place, so Summoner gets its tax for that weighted higher along with Reaper. And I consider that fair with the context of preventing that specific situation. But it's not the tax causing the problem. It's a bandaid over it.

But let's look back at the extremes of the DPS role as a whole for a moment. When compared to Summoner Samurai gets to be better than it due to a combination of melee uptime, cast bars in melee range, and having to adjust their sen alignment without any of the explicit affordances a Summoner gets to guide them through an otherwise similarly lockstepped rotation. And we haven't even gotten to Summoner's utility or healing at all. I consider Samurai an easier melee job to pick up for casual freestyling but I don't consider melee uptime or its fight-specific optimizations easy to figure out. You have to play Samurai a fair bit to really understand why the guides say what they do about how it lines up and more importantly how to break that without losing damage somewhere when you need to. That's ultimately what it consistently has over other jobs that justifies its spot near the top. And the jobs that don't? Raid DPS. Utility. Range. And immediately understandable complexity. Summoner ticks all those boxes.

Think about it. No, really. I bet if you went and picked apart then compared every DPS job pair in the game right now and evaluated it on an individual case by case basis with every factor considered and ranked them you'd put Summoner somewhere in the bottom two because every other job has a good reason to be ahead of it. Many have multiple. It's purely this false assumption that every job within a subcategory of DPS needs to be balanced relative to the others within that role that's making you evaluate it incorrectly. SE is designing around the bare minimum where it matters while trying to eliminate gear problems, so limiting your discussion to casters only without the context of every other DPS job -is- a problem. Reaper and Monk are overtuned relative to Black Mage and Samurai which must go up a bit. Dragoon's fine if the latter happens. Ninja's fine. Red Mage could use a small tune up to help the ranged gap a bit but should remain below Ninja. Summoner is more than fine. It would be overtuned if Ranged DPS weren't in such a bad spot to begin with that it literally comes down to "Bardsong and stats or Raises" for their presence in the flex slot. And I sure as hell don't think that comparison favors Bard over Summoner.

Degrees of gaps between DPS can be a problem, sure, I'll allow that, but preserving overall ranking is also important, and the degree problems with Summoner are entirely due to Reaper and Monk being wildly out of rank. No one else is in a good spot relative to them right now. And if you want SE to close those gaps, go for it. If SE wanted to they could just nerf those two and Dragoon below Black Mage. And I think that would make the tier better overall if they did. It actually would be easier for them to implement too, but player reception to nerfs is bad on average, so EVERYONE GOES UP instead. I'm expecting the degree issue to be solved in 6.08. What I don't want to see SE take threads like this out of context of 6.0 or 6.05 and use them to justify further buffs to Summoner and Red mage that put it above the ranged DPS and/or into the melee tier in order to 'keep up' with BLM or 'justify a caster slot'. It has what it needs to compete on that front for the times it actually matters. And it frankly doesn't make sense until 7.0 to re-insert casts back into Summoner if you've paid any attention to how long it has taken pet AI to get to precisely where it is right now, why it prior iteration was kneejerk abandoned for Resummons, which is the root cause for every single issue brought on by the rework. They forced the kit to always be about doing the same baseline DPS so the only impact of your choices was on how those micro phases functioned in an encounter environment. That way you wouldn't deviate from spamming Demi-Summons as soon as possible when fights screw you with downtime.

Reaper Carby is the future of the job because it allows SE to fix those issues with Summoner by re-implement good pet gameplay AND better Summons that can actually be hardcast Summoned. Despite the clear failure in its design and my desire for another rework asap, Summoner nevertheless is in fact, very pretty looking, takes a long time to alter or rework compared to other jobs and is completely fine in its current state tuning wise. Their rDPS is more than enough to handily get the clear with a Bard and a bad Reaper/BLM combo. And while Red Mage may have gotten World First, it was ultimately due to Raise that it happened to be there in the first place. If you want the degree of differences between DPS to be squished further, I'd start mentally pairing and/or grouping up jobs that you think should be roughly equal and demanding fights that actually take advantage of their different nuances. For example, I'm totally okay with melee punishment and casters not being able to cast. Summoner just doesn't do that right now, so it's DPS should be lower than other classes, pound for pound. And that's fair.

[Aikaal]

-snip-

I would say melees shouldn,t be discuss there. Even if they cast one weapon skill that doesn't make them casters because they are in the melee role, not caster role.

Embolden > Searing Light. On the current top logs on fflogs for P1S. Summoner taxes 504 DPS with Searing Light, RDM taxes 576 with Embolden. Why you ask? 30s buff is pretty niche and every job is done within 20s on their burst. Searing Light is niche on Summoner so you can still have the buff past Bahamut but it is niche specifically on SMN. Fun little fact, the current best log on P1S has SMN at 8339 while RDM is at 8312. More interesting enough, the SMN has a bit less gear. However, the clear times are 7:20 and 7:23 on both groups. Summoner greatly benefit from clear times that finish at around 7:15 to 7:20 because its the end of a Phoenix burst. So you could say that Summoner is doing just fine if they do more damage with less gear but Summoner DPS is a rollercoaster. They get really high burst during Bahamut and Phoenix then you drops hard during I/G/T. Red Mages have a lot more consistent DPS.

Again, as you add further points on other roles, I will not read them. This would be derailing this post which focus on the caster role.

As for utility, Summoner is gated if when they use Phoenix and the AoE heal actually matter. In P2S, it works. In P1S... ehhhhhhh, I would favor RDM. In a sense, RDM utility will always be good no matter the situation as per Summoner's phoenix healing is gated by convenience and niche. Meaning it is unreliable. If the AoE heal and the single target heal wasn't restricted to Phoenix than yeah, the only thing RDM would have more is better raises. If they'd put a long cooldown on the caster raise and make the phoenix support change with Searing Light being niche, it would put both casters to similar support.

As for the elephant in the room. RDM DPS is always higher right now than SMN. SMN may have times where it could do more depending on the end time. P1S fastest clear is 7:20s. Not everyone is BiS. Once you have everyone BiS and you drop the time to about 7:00 or lower, suddenly SMN will flat out lose to RDM and getting a pink log could require you to be in a party with people doing less DPS for you to gain more. That's also why top logs are pretty bad examples lol. What's the big issue is SMN rotation isn't engaging. It's a line that you follow and can't get off. Yeah you can say you can summon Ifrit first or Garuda/Titan. Who are we kidding? Titan is always first then you base Ifrit and Garuda on the incoming mechanics. If no mechanic inders you, Garuda is second if you have your pot up. Otherwise you send Ifrit second with a swiftcast.

I would say the new summoner has potential but I'll also say that SE got unprecedent popularity and server stability took a huge priority for SE so they likely didn't get the change to check balancement of jobs properly. The way Yoshida speaks about the feedback on forums suggest he was well aware people would be unhappy about job balancing.

[Dyvid]

Well, sorry to say, Summoner is a caster.

I just want to point out SE's definition here for a second: Magical ranged DPS attack foes using a variety of arcane arts. Movement is restricted by casting times, but they excel at inflicting high burst damage.

Now maybe it's time for SE to sit down and reevaluate what each role is really suppose to be but another discussion. Based on this definition however Summoner only really cast 1 maybe 2 spells total. Mobility may have improved but if the mage can't cast because of movement, that is a dps lose. It's a fact that can not be disputed. On the other hand spells damage potency should be adjusted to make up for the difference due to that dps lose, which is basically what the mobility tax is. I would love to see SE's data chart on how much time each job spends actually casting but of course we aren't privy to such things. I would say as a very rough estimate SMN spends maybe 10% to 15% of time casting, RDM around 30% to 50%, and BLM 60% to 75%.

Raise is another key issue that must be fixed with in the role. I'm sorry but it's time to remove it from jobs and place it as a role action ability (not spell).

Now we my not like to think of Phoenix's gifts as anything other than a novelty, but it is there regardless if it's a poor design and must be taking into account when discussing balance. This is the problem when you start giving DPS jobs none DPS raid buffs, it makes it harder to balance out because we are trying to put a value of healing tools then nerf a jobs DPS accordingly.

[ghm12]

Well, sorry to say, Summoner is a caster.

With four casts (Ifrit twice, Slipstream, Ruin III filler) in a 60s rotation window? a caster that barely casts, really?

Mobility is a petty reason for people to say SMN is balanced right now. People see it as it makes them easier to play, yeah to a certain degree but they never needed that mobility. Here's a list of the changes that simplified jobs;
- Blood of the Dragoon is a trait
- Enochian is a trait now

I don't see them taxing those changes and I don't want them to be taxed.

I fail to understand how Enochian being a trait changes BLM gameplay in any way. The *only* change you could argue is that you don't lose *too much* if you mess up badly and somehow drop enochian twice within a 30s window. You still lose your polyglot progress just like before. It's just one less button you do in the opener if you play properly. Only that. Those changes shouldn't be taxed because they barely do anything.

Mobility was greatly improved for all SMN, BLM and RDM.
- BLM has a quickcast Paradox on their Ice Rotation. 2 Triple Casts, 2 Sharpcasts for quickcast Fire III and/or Thunder III. BLM has absurd mobility in their toolkit, they simply optimize when they have to move during a fight.
- RDM has a quick cast every 2 GCD. They have more melee combos now. Accelerate is now a quickcast and has 2 charges, they can effectively just swiftcast for mobility since they don't need to hold swiftcast for raise. They, too, can optimize around an entire fight.
- SMN hard cast 7 times per 2 minutes which 2 of those hardcast are 2.8 seconds and 1 is 3 second. Ifrit Rite spell can be improved with swiftcast for a damage gain.

But SMN is still the most mobile, thus it deals the least damage. RDM is mobile I agree, but not as much. BLM still has to deal with leyline positioning, especially since most fights of this tier has major mechanics happening during burst windows.

The whole point of casters doing more damage than phys ranged is because they have to stand still to cast, yet they do less damage than the melees overall because they don't have to be in melee range. If you take away casting like SMN did, how are they different from phys ranged other than role actions (addle) or mana management? (which is only an issue if you raise a lot or run high sps builds)

I joined this post to see if people were bothered by BLM leylines timing but I've read 10+ pages about RDM vs SMN. Mobility tax is real, it's one of the reason why BLM is the "turret caster" that deals most damage even though the rotation is "braindead" or "not busy". It's also why it's the most variant DPS comparing bad and good performance. In the current way of kits, SMN should be the one doing less damage by having less complexibility.

Does SMN deserves buffs? Yeah!
To the point of being equal to RDM? If they keep SMN as it is now, not really, no.

[MrJPtheAssassin]

With four casts (Ifrit twice, Slipstream, Ruin III filler) in a 60s rotation window? a caster that barely casts, really?



I fail to understand how Enochian being a trait changes BLM gameplay in any way. The *only* change you could argue is that you don't lose *too much* if you mess up badly and somehow drop enochian twice within a 30s window. You still lose your polyglot progress just like before. It's just one less button you do in the opener if you play properly. Only that. Those changes shouldn't be taxed because they barely do anything.


But SMN is still the most mobile, thus it deals the least damage. RDM is mobile I agree, but not as much. BLM still has to deal with leyline positioning, especially since most fights of this tier has major mechanics happening during burst windows.

The whole point of casters doing more damage than phys ranged is because they have to stand still to cast, yet they do less damage than the melees overall because they don't have to be in melee range. If you take away casting like SMN did, how are they different from phys ranged other than role actions (addle) or mana management? (which is only an issue if you raise a lot or run high sps builds)

I joined this post to see if people were bothered by BLM leylines timing but I've read 10+ pages about RDM vs SMN. Mobility tax is real, it's one of the reason why BLM is the "turret caster" that deals most damage even though the rotation is "braindead" or "not busy". It's also why it's the most variant DPS comparing bad and good performance. In the current way of kits, SMN should be the one doing less damage by having less complexibility.

Does SMN deserves buffs? Yeah!
To the point of being equal to RDM? If they keep SMN as it is now, not really, no.

Here is the problem with treating smn as phy range in a party tho. Smn doesn't give the party the buff for having one of each role type if there is already a caster in the party. The game isn't going to say "hi smn is basically a phy range now so let give the party that buff" it's still in the caster role. If a party only has one spot open and they need a caster. Who do you think they will take between an smn or an rdm? An RDM at can rez muit. time, has on-demand utility, and has great dps or an smn who can rez once per minute, has close to the same utility as rdm but isn't on-demand and on fixed timings and does less dam than the rdm, but has very high mobility. Yall keep forgetting why this thread was created. It not for you to try to tell us why smn should doing the dps it's doing now. It's for the devs to see we want our casts back, we want to trade in something for more power, we want to be picked for savage and not be completely out in the cold. That said we don't want rdm be in that place either, most of us want both smn and rdm to be picked just as much as any other class, we want a balance. That is all.

[Aikaal]

-snip-

Let's talk about mobility comparison because everybody claims that's the sole reason SMN needs to do lower damage.

SMN - 9 casts per 2 minutes (7 if using swiftcast) That's about 21% of your time casting or 17% with swiftcast. So about 1 spell out of 5 or 6.

RDM - half their casts are quickcasts. They have 55s CD on acceleration and swiftcast. They do, at worst, 3 melee combos per 2 minutes (could be wrong there but I'm pointing the worst case scenario) So 2 to 3 accelerations, 2 swiftcasts, 18 actions in melee combos. They do 28 casts per 2 minutes at 2.5 GCD. that's 22 to 23 casts from melee combos and acceleration/swiftcast. 26 to 25 casts (26 for simplicity) They cast 13 spells at 2.5GCDs. That's 25% of their time casting. They are doing 1 spell out of 4 as a hard cast. That looks... pretty mobile enough if you ask me.

Not only that but in those SMN spells, some are 2.8s casts or 3.s casts. I've always found amusing people pull the mobility card on SMN when they fail to provide a current fight which mobility issues makes BLM or RDM lose DPS compared to SMN. I think we all know why, it doesn't exist. It makes the job easier? Every job is braindead and easy once you're a Master at it.

Here are the facts however, SMN support kit is heavily restricted around time gates. Phoenix support kit requires Phoenix, that's 1/8 of your time by the way. Searing Light is a glorified Devotion. Raise requires you to swiftcast and swiftcast is a damage gain. RDm has raise on demand, magick barrier which they can press the button whenever they want. You know what's great? When I use Rekindle on my Warrior whose taking a buster and he's also getting TBN, Bloodwhetting and some Sage mitigation. Because it effectively do not proc Rekindle and I have no better usage on it than that tank buster because my usage is gated behind Summon Phoenix. Same goes for Everlasting Flight. Those fall short on Magick Barrier and just the better raise options. You know, it would have been safer in my group when both tank died that I double raise on RDM on having a healer raise with me while the second healer solo healed the RPR who was the MT. RDM utility is just... more reliable. SMN utility isn't bad but it's flawed. When you see to reason, you understand that mobility doesn't provide any damage gain and with a weaker / more unreliable mobility, your argument that SMN deserve weak DPS just doesn't work out.

The only fair arugment that I agree with is that RDM has always done less DPS than SMN. They have the raise/prog mage stigma and main RDMs are tired with it. Those RDMs wouldn't mind losing utility (CD on raise) for example if they can keep a competitive DPS. Right now, SMN is outshined in every aspect of the game, RDM in ShB still had a lot of exposure even if they had a bit less damage.

In Eden's Promise on E12S II - SMN had 43% exposure, RDM 38%
In P4S - SMN has 28% and RDM *drum rolls* 57%

5% difference < 29% difference.