Current top 100th percentile on P1S since 6.08 buffs

[tearagion]

I still think raise shouldn't be taken in account of balance.
They're a nice comfort, but why should RDM and SMN suffer a DPS loss because someone else made a mistake? You already pay the res with the res debuff.
BLM would still need to be above the 2 other casters, but if they are that low because of the res, the tax is too high.

It's just why there's a disparity at all, not a justification for the current numerical difference. If BLM had the same rDPS as SMN and RDM it would be a new problem. I would rather Raise wasn't the ONLY reason as well, which it isn't now: Phoenix heals, though restrictive, are very potent, and Magick Barrier is a great mitigation tool.

[Aikaal]

What's up these days with these wrong takes...


2. No, MNK is in the average APM.
It's below SAM, DRG and GNB due to its very low number of oGCD.

I will say to this that MNK APM is average yes, but they are dealing with a GCD of 1.92 from the beginning to the end. So it is fast pace.

The issue with MNK and the cursed knowledge is the opener requires double weaving. How do you double weave that stuff on PS5 or with 160 ping~

But that does sums up why I feel MNK is pretty easy to play (for me at least). Top performance is absolute cancer. BLM was the same in ShB, you needed cursed knowledge for peak performance.

What's up these days with these wrong takes...


It's not the MCH fault if you die or fail to maintain your uptime
But in UCOB, UWU, TEA, O11S it was their responsibility to deal with mechanics so you could have your uptime.

This needs more exposure because I'd like to see your MNK bait Liquid Hell if you have no ranged phys that does it in UCoB. If anything, MNK are really happy to have a phys ranged that keeps their damage up.

[Kaedys]

People keep saying "but they don't bring a party buff" in relation to "pure" DPS, but literally every comparison being done is based on rDPS, not aDPS or nDPS. The raid buffs are already accounted for. rDPS is literally how much total party-wide damage the party would lose if you /playdead in the corner instead of contributing.

Realistically, any job that brings a raid buff should be higher on rDPS than the "pure" DPS, purely to justify their presence. Their personal DPS output should obviously be lower, in proportion to the strength of their buffs, but their total party damage contribution needs to be at least equal, ideally a bit higher, than pure DPS. This is purely a math question. If two pure DPS (say, Monk and Black Mage) contribute more total party-wide damage than either one of those pure DPS plus any of the "buff" jobs, why bring buff jobs? Their personal DPS is taxed more than the contribution they bring to everyone else's damage. Bringing a "buff job" at that point becomes a direct nerf to the group.

Basically, you can't look at statistics that already take into account group buffs and still try to insist that pure DPS need to be on top because "buff tax".

The only other factors proposed have been complexity (ie. the difficulty in "doing it right" on a job, which does in fact vary), mobility, and melee vs. ranged. The latter two, as many have pointed out, are largely not a factor due to strategies. In addition, these statistics are actual fight statistics. Any tax for mobility or range should equal out with the losses from such within the fight. That's the point of that type of tax, to compensate for losses due to such restrictions. If melee are still ending up substantially ahead of ranged, and "immobile" substantially ahead of mobile (not that BLM is that immobile anymore), then the tax is too large, period.

"Complexity tax" I think is reasonably justified (though Yoshi-P has said they don't balance around how difficult a job is). But that's why I tend to look at the 75th percentile point instead of the 90th or 95th or absolute top parse (statistics by outlier, that). 75th percentile reflects those with a strong working knowledge of their job but that aren't playing perfectly. They make mistakes, they just don't make a lot of them. If balance at the 75th percentile point is reasonably good, I'm fine seeing more difficult jobs ahead at the very high percentile bands.

Problem is, that's not what's happening! Even looking at 75th percentile over the last day, the "pure DPS" jobs, excluding a couple, are massively ahead on rDPS]. Despite being the strongest buff job in the game, Dancer and Bard total party damage contribution is massively behind. When kill speed increases by replacing your buff jobs with pure DPS, balance is severely out of whack.

[Absimiliard]

They should just ditch all this utility job nonsense and balance jobs around personal raw numbers. Make them all selfish. Would avoid a lot of the balance issues we've seen over the years.

[Oxidized]

As a RDM Main, I am pretty content. RDM and DNC deserve to be married in that spot, as they basically have the same niche as the Support Buffer.

No, a phys ranged that may very well be the top of its role does not deserve to be equated to a caster that is 8-9% behind BLM in savage.

It's just why there's a disparity at all, not a justification for the current numerical difference. If BLM had the same rDPS as SMN and RDM it would be a new problem. I would rather Raise wasn't the ONLY reason as well, which it isn't now: Phoenix heals, though restrictive, are very potent, and Magick Barrier is a great mitigation tool.

The rez was worth about 3% in 5.4 and 5.5, and we saw a period great balance where BLM was still comfortably atop the caster role in damage. The current 8-9% leaves both SMN and RDM in a spot that was worse than RDM's spot in 5.1.

[Kazimere]

snip.[/B]

I agree with most of what you’re saying, but MCH is already the top DPS for pRanged. It’s substantially higher than Bard or Dancer, actually.

The issue, is that BLM is WAY to high above RDM/SMN. It should be stronger, but not 1k aDPS. Rez is good, but it’s only useful if people are dying. Optimized groups aren’t dying.

No job should be 8-10% behind the top job in their role. ATM, that would be Ninja, Dancer, Bard, RDM, and SMN. People pay way too much attention to rDPS. aDPS is going to show you the viability of every job.

[Oxidized]

No job should be 8-10% behind the top job in their role.

Indeed, when the difference was 3% in Promise and casters had more parity with melees, it was a great, balanced environment. RDM/SMN were viable everywhere, but BLM was still the undisputed king of caster DPS.

However, I think you are selling the power of BRD/DNC short, especially in optimized runs.

[Karen_Cerfrumos]

So the big problem in this game right now is that over the years most of support abilities have been either consistently stripped out, or standardized across the role in an effort to make every job feel equivalent and not left out. What this resulted in is that the only thing that matters at the end is the damage number, and this is also reflected in high-end fight design where the only challenge is basically to put out X damage over Y time while doing some sort of mechanical dance. All team support boils down to quantifiable damage buffs, mitigation, or healing. There isn't really a job that can bring unique functionality compared to this, allowing it to do something other jobs can't, which means balance considerations have become incredibly narrow.

This lead to physical ranged role as a whole feeling somewhat orphaned and bereft of purpose. They used to have the ability to recover party resources, which was valuable, but this is now gone. They have crowd control abilities such as heavy, bind, interrupt, but this is virtually never utilized in high-end content, or content as a whole (not even Ultimate) making you wonder why these abilities are in the game at all (last time you had to bind anything in a raid was mid-ARR). You never want to LB as physical ranged because it's strictly worse and in a less convenient shape than that of a caster. The only reason physical ranged are even brought to the party is for the forced 1% buff to VIT and main stat. I can't imagine this feels very good for physical ranged players.

A lot of arguments have been drawn about how X job or role is easier or more free or more mobile than Y job or role and for that reason should do lower damage because if for example MCH did MNK amounts of damage contribution you would just bring MCHs every time, and while this is certainly a consideration I do not think it should be as heavy of a discrepancy as it is today. Caster role has been given unprecedented mobility, yes, even BLM, keeping uptime in fights has never been easier. Melee don't get to suffer from uptime issues much either, bosses often have huge hitboxes, or mechanics are designed in such a way to easily allow four-five melee players to stick around the boss. In fact, the damage statistics we have come from real, practical content which show that melee absolutely have no issues keeping uptime.


Difficulty of casters in particular is often brought up in an argument, and we're just expected to always take it as a gospel that BLM is this megabrain super difficult job that just deserves to be on top because... it just does, okay? Don't question it. In reality after 6.08 we can already see that even less than average BLM will outdamage really good RDMs or SMNs. The discrepancy has become this bad. You do not even have to be very skilled at BLM to contribute more damage to the party than the other two casters. Putting an issue of raise ability aside for now, it is insane that the gap should be this wide for any reason. The difficulty of BLM is overstated, the difficulty of RDM is understated and SMN is straight up not designed according to the role it occupies.

But let's for a moment consider if the difficulty argument even holds any weight. Because if a job was easy and did as much damage as a difficult job you'd just play the easy job, right? Well, no. It is extremely hypocritical when there are arguments about how you should be able to enjoy, for example, dancer, for what it is, just because you like it and then it's fine it doesn't contribute as much to the party as a melee, but then on the other hand MNK/BLM just have to be top dog because nobody would play them if they weren't? So which is it? Are people going to play jobs because they enjoy their aesthetics and playfeel or is it all about the difficulty?

If non-damage utility is so valuable it deserves to incur a tax for the job, why does MNK, the melee with possibly the most useful healing utility in form of mantra, get to be the top melee DPS? NIN doesn't have anything like that. DRG doesn't have anything like that. And then we come to the biggest elephant in the room that is verraise. Honestly if this tickles people's nerves so much, I would rather see verraise slapped with a massive cooldown than have RDM so behind on damage. I would rather see BLM offered some kind of non-damage utility as a counterbalance to this issue.

1. The discrepancy between melee+BLM and the rest of the ranged is currently inexcusably large. BLM should be ahead of the other casters, yes. But not by this much. Physical ranged shouldn't be this massively behind either (although curiously BRD is pining to even beat RDM/SMN).
2. The devs are not doing a good enough job with non-damage support skills across the board, both when it comes to handing them out to jobs, and with regards of how content expects you to use them (or rather how it does not).
3. MCH as a job is lacking purpose. If MCH cannot output damage deserving of its pure DPS design because of its ease of use and freedom of movement, it should be given some form of party support play just like the other physical ranged so that the job has a reason to exist at all. Right now it brings no unique support, no unique buffs, and really bad damage.
4. Jobs are still balanced around uptime and freedom taxes in mind, despite multiple strides in both job design and content design to largely negate these concerns in the first place.

[Aikaal]

-snip-

I agree will all of those points, if I may add up.

1. I think BRD is currently beating SMN but not RDM. SMN is a whole different case of a mess where you can see a rework being nailed in MNK and a rework that fixed 1 desire but created a ton of issues. BLM should always be stronger, yes, but it's always been by like 3%. Now it's about 8% and it's inexcusable.
2. I think that refers to mobility there. That's true, how useful is mobility right now? I'll tell you; the common strat in P3S has the ranged physical disengage and bait a tornado. It's beena common strat. I mean, any DPS can do it but the reason you keep both melees and caster on the boss is... for obvious melee uptime and BLM purposes. I mentioned it a few times but Liquid Hell in UCoB baits are not done by a DRG or a BLM. It's that MCH that many people are quick to say it's a brain dead mobile job that deserves to be taxed for its mobility. So wait; because you're telling me I can do these mechanics, it warrants a difference of 1k DPS? If anything, the ranged phys DPS mobility is being used to keep that sweet melee uptime and casts. Mobility isn't a DPS gain for the Ranged Phys but it's a DPS gain for other party members.
a. That is messed up to punish an entire role for this.
b. Add mechanics that disengage and make casters and melee lose casts / melee uptime to "validate" this mobility as a DPS savior if you want the community to feel it has any worth (You will get a lot more complain and anger doing it this way)
c. You could try to tax it on FFlogs. Good luck with that
3. MCH serves no purpose indeed. It exists but its being outperform in every single way in by any other jobs. This is how SMN is for casters right now also. I get it, 11 DPS to balance when there's only 4 slots sounds like a nightmare. But why are melees more balanced and there's 5 of them?
4. People also claim that MNK is more complex than any braindead ranged physical job / SMN. MNK, to begin with has less cast per minute (button press) than MCH. Both MCH and MNK suffers from latency. MNK is only difficult because you have tyo double weave a few times on 1.92 GCD or something. People literally use programs to let them double weave properly to gain that extra edge so though luck if you're a competitive MNK playing on PS5. IMHO, MNK suffers different issues. Similar issues that ShB BLM required a plugin to see your MP tick for a very specific and yet better rotation. In my humble and honest opinion, any job that gets a DPS boost from having third party programs count as a design flaw simply because this isn't accessible for everyone. But let's face it, even a good PS5 MNK will do a lot better.

I do want to end this by saying; for those that truly believe that the game is "balanced" saying ranged phys and SMN deserve to be on the bottom of the barrel. Why? Do you have a proper argument order than this ridicule concept of mobility that makes you move whenever you want? Because I do believe if you can't provide a good argument then you can't say any of that. Nobody is asking phys ranged and SMN to be doing the top DPS. People are asking the jobs to be properly balanced. There's a significant difference between having your job 2% below a role type and 8%. The only thing I've found out why a BLM main or a melee main would claim that it's fine would be that, "I want my job to remain better than yours." That'd be incredible petty of an excuse. Because as a main caster, I'm fine doing less damage than melees. By 8%? That's not ok. Am I fine that I'm 8% behind BLM? No it's not. Raise tax shouldn't be 8%.

[Sequora]

I’ve said this many times. I think it’s ridiculous that the caster role is the only role that has jobs that are considered “progression jobs” and jobs that are for after progression.

The healers are all balanced around each other. The melee DPS are balanced around personal damage and raid damage utility. The tanks are balanced around each other. The physical DPS are balanced around personal DPS and raid utility.

Casters are balanced around summoner and red mage are the jobs you take when you’re learning a fight, and then once you’ve learned it, black mage is superior, no questions asked.