The current State of Casters 6.05 edition - balancing discussion

[Izyla]

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


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".

Yeah I'm a little surprised too, there's people calling for SMN buffs who in the same breath say jobs like MCH are fine because mobility tax. I'm not saying SMN doesn't need changes, but does mobility tax not apply to jobs that aren't phys ranged? Maybe I'm missing something.

[Myon88]

What you're missing is that summoners have to be balanced in tandem with the other two casters, because alongside black mage and red mage, they're the ones providing the caster role bonus to the party.

I assume you're aware of how role bonuses work in full parties. You get +1% mainstat for each T/H/melee/caster/ranged job that is represented, up to +5%. You have 4 dps slots in a full party, which leaves 1 flex slot after the 3 different dps roles are present. This is why even with their underwhelming numbers, you always see at least one phys ranged in full parties. You're forced to bring one, because losing that 1% mainstat is a greater loss than the amount their dps trails the stronger jobs by.

If summoner were not at least on par with red mage, you would simply never see them in parties at all, they would be even worse off than the worst phys ranged. It would be a given that your first choice for a caster would be black mage or red mage, and there would be no reason to put them in the 'flex' slot over the highest dps option you haven't picked yet (melee/BLM).

You can critique mobility when comparing different roles, but at the same time mobility is not real utility. If that were the case, where are the parties with 2 ranged because mobility is so, so great? When comparing within the same role you have to look at what they actually bring to the table, and summoner does not offer enough dps or support compared to black mage and red mage.

[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.

[Izyla]

What you're missing is that summoners have to be balanced in tandem with the other two casters, because alongside black mage and red mage, they're the ones providing the caster role bonus to the party.

I assume you're aware of how role bonuses work in full parties. You get +1% mainstat for each T/H/melee/caster/ranged job that is represented, up to +5%. You have 4 dps slots in a full party, which leaves 1 flex slot after the 3 different dps roles are present. This is why even with their underwhelming numbers, you always see at least one phys ranged in full parties. You're forced to bring one, because losing that 1% mainstat is a greater loss than the amount their dps trails the stronger jobs by.

If summoner were not at least on par with red mage, you would simply never see them in parties at all, they would be even worse off than the worst phys ranged. It would be a given that your first choice for a caster would be black mage or red mage, and there would be no reason to put them in the 'flex' slot over the highest dps option you haven't picked yet (melee/BLM).

You can critique mobility when comparing different roles, but at the same time mobility is not real utility. If that were the case, where are the parties with 2 ranged because mobility is so, so great? When comparing within the same role you have to look at what they actually bring to the table, and summoner does not offer enough dps or support compared to black mage and red mage.

That makes sense, thank you for elaborating. I personally think people overvalue mobility in general to justify a dps tax, especially for mch.

[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.

[Myon88]

That makes sense, thank you for elaborating. I personally think people overvalue mobility in general to justify a dps tax, especially for mch.

For what it's worth I think mobility is a horrible thing to 'tax' anyway, and the phys ranged are being hard done by it. Either fights need to become difficult enough to utilize that mobility properly, or the ranged need some way to divest themselves of their mobility when it's not needed.

Raise is just about the only utility in the game that people are willing to sacrifice damage for. I fear for the day it ever gets removed and the casters get homogenized, because if that happens the raiding metagame will revolve even more rigidly around dps than it already does. It certainly hasn't stopped bard, or monk/reaper from currently dominating their respective roles, so it's not even a guarantee of good balance.

[SaberMaxwell]

Melee combo is 12.7 seconds, not "6 casts at 2.5 seconds." Of those 12.7 seconds, 3-5.2 seconds are mandated to be in melee. If a mechanic forces you off the boss, that mobility is strictly locked off from you.

Swift and accel exist and are great sources of mobility but not to be used carelessly since each instant cast changes the rhythm of your casting. Yes even melee combo which is why you *have to* end off every melee combo with accel/swift or you'll end up misaligning your ogcds.

You can bank melee combos but you don't necessarily get more of them than you did before. Costs were halved but so was generation, with manafication being the only exception granting you a significant increase in mana generation. Even then, you also want to be careful about spending that melee combo carelessly because you want to end up at specific mana points to do triple combos under buffs and pot, something you don't really get to do if you're panic-meleeing just for the movement.

Even then, Red Mage needs to guarantee for those massive bursts that it will have 38.1 seconds of access to melee because it will be doing back to back to back melee combos.

The theme here is Red Mage's useful mobility has costs that have to be weighed. Is fleche far enough away that I can restore my rhythm and not drift it? Is contre? If I melee here will I have enough for burst later? Should I start the melee early since I'll need some mobility and I know I'll be forced out of melee?

It's not so cut and dry as "RDM only casts 25% of the time" as presented.

So let's say Red Mage can get 4 melee combos every two minutes. That's 50.2 seconds where instead of casting it needs melee access. Swiftcast and two accels adds that up to 57.7s. Assuming a gcd of 2.5, that leaves 24 casts, 12 of which will be dualcasted...with the issue of dualcast being that it's not bankable, so a lot of the time it will be wasted mobility. If we play the "don't use Swiftcast game" because even Red Mage prefers to swift raise over dualcast raise for a lot of reasons, that goes up to 14. That sounds pretty close to summoner anyway.

But 38.1s of the melee burst will all be in one go due to damage optimization, leaving 12.7 of that as free mobility, and again melee access is mandated to use this. Dualcast is useful when it's useful but it's very limited because so much of its mobility gets wasted by design.

Versus SMN who needs to make sure they're not trying to slipstream or ifrit cast at the wrong time. I agree with the argument that mobility tax is dumb, by the way, and believe that both smn and phys ranged should be brought up and ignore it. It's not like they're fighting any other role for a spot.

[rewd]

It's not so cut and dry as "RDM only casts 25% of the time" as presented.

This applies to SMN too, which was the overall point. It's not all about casts anyway, as SMN is forced in melee range too due to Ifrit combo (and without any way to quickly get out). The "hurr durr SMN is not casting 90% of the time so it's a phys ranged" has always been a dumb argument.

[SaberMaxwell]

This applies to SMN too, which was the overall point. It's not all about casts anyway, as SMN is forced in melee range too due to Ifrit combo (and without any way to quickly get out). The "hurr durr SMN is not casting 90% of the time so it's a phys ranged" has always been a dumb argument.

For two gcds per minute, and displacement is not "a quick way out" in the way one might wish it to be. Compare also to the above figures of 38.1 seconds of mandated melee uptime for its fullest burst and who's out of melee faster?

It's not a dumb argument if one accepts that conceit that casters do more damage because they aren't as mobile. If one rejects that premise, then the other side of the argument becomes again "raise both smn and the phys ranged up in damage."

[Aikaal]

-snip-

I ain't a RDM expert so thanks for clarifying. Still, I must remain with my base ground info. How does those impact you in any fight? I get SMN has more mobility but in order to taxe such mobility, I must see a reason to believe I'm gaining DPS from it and I just don't see that. If anything, you have to optimize more your melee combos and mobility than SMN. Great. I'll trade that any day for multiple raises on SMN.

Funny enough, SMN is terrible to optimize because there is no optimization. Just a monkas line to follow. It was only a matter of time until a fight like P2S make you sync Bahamut out of buff windows and point this glaring weakness. RDM isn't dealing with such issue during the downtime, they can just vercure to get a free quickcast.

Legitimately I'm trying to understand this big tax because Ranged Physical is a giant wildfire and only Bard is currently doing fine. I don't see Machinist being good unless they get some massive firepower boost.

To begin with, SMN new rotation looked nice and all on paper but it has massive issues and not to mention that now everyone that hates on SMN just says mobility is the reason and deal with it. It gives the job a giant identity crisis. Before potency buffs, I would rather have them have another look at the job because its just not working.