Current top 100th percentile on P1S since 6.08 buffs

[Leiron]

Because you're laboring under the misconception that any job brings anything significant but damage, whether it comes from your copy paste raid buff that 12 out of 15 DPS jobs have out of sheer lazy design, or yourself, it's all the same. If SAM or BLM contribute far more DPS than a crappy ~200 raid dps buff like arcane circle provides then there is simply no reason to bring a reaper, especially when every other job with a buff is going to want to bring the jobs that give them much more DPS under them. So what you're implying is it's fair for some jobs to be excluded rather than others because right now SAM and BLM have been definitive kings of the meta for years already. Should just give everyone a raid buff at this point since almost every job has one already then no one can use this faulty argument anymore.

People still think this is 4.0 for some reason, we now have several dps metrics to put jobs under a magnifying glass so we know which jobs are contributing the most overall DPS and which ones are lacking, and the lacking jobs aren't SAM or BLM that's for sure. As the only reason the 4.0 and prior meta existed was for pad log comparison because it never counted anything else except just straight DPS(all forms of pad included), now SAM and BLM ARE the pad and probably always have been in reality.

That is because you're operating under the belief that balanced = Fair. This is not the case, and never should be the case within game design.

Utility does tax your personal damage because the utility you provide through your aDPS is significant in the context of the raid.
Does SAM/BLM provide it? No. Therefore they need to provide more damage. If the other jobs were to be competitive with them damage wise, that would not be balanced.
As it stands, BLM at the very peak seemingly outperforms SMN by 8%, and RDM by 6%.
That is fine.

If anything, SAM should get a buff since its currently competitive with RPR, which may provide a "crappy" raidwide damage buff and a "crappy" shield heal, but those are things it provides which provide flexibility to the class.

Otherwise, again, for what reason would I bring either of those two jobs when the one right below it is performing within 2 or 3% on personal damage, AND provides utility that neither of those jobs provide with less difficulty in obtaining said damage?
Not all classes need to be within the perfect 2% to 5% margin of the other.
If we provide EVERY class with some form of raid utility, then we just move further and further to class homogenization. The game really doesn't need that simply because people get obsessed with the numbers not being similar enough.

You'd bring a Samurai only if you'd have a Dancer in the party. Here's the difference however.

All melee are having competitive performances. However, for casters, in term of performances, Black Mage is simply dusting both SMN/RDM. You ideally only want to bring 1 selfish DPS. That means your ideal comp is something along the line of RPR/MNK/(BRD/DNC)/BLM. You'd partner the BLM on DNC. There isn't really a spot for SAM unless you do something like MNK/SAM/(RDM/SMN)/(DNC/BRD). I'm telling you, in term of raw performances, BLM > all casters in term of DPS. Black Mage is either too powerful or SMN/RDM are undertuned. Whichever SE decides to pick.

Or maybe SAM is undertuned if BLM is that much better of a choice than it.
I could see SMN getting a buff but I can't see RDM getting a buff.
I've no idea how to properly multi-quote.
Ah, wait, there it is, I think.

[Zacheris]

The argumentation that jobs with buffs shouldn't be able to catch up with their buffs because of the fact they have a buff leads me to believe that jobs within a role should either all have buffs or none have buffs. Having people believe a different playstyle should be worse off than them is a detriment to the game.

[Leiron]

The argumentation that jobs with buffs shouldn't be able to catch up with their buffs because of the fact they have a buff leads me to believe that jobs within a role should either all have buffs or none have buffs. Having people believe a different playstyle should be worse off than them is a detriment to the game.

That is incredibly untrue.
Class A does personal damage of 600, but gives everyone a 200 DPS buff.
Class B does personal damage of 800, but gives no one a buff.
That is balanced, because even though Class B sits at 1000 when buffed, class A has increased everyone's damage to a total of 1600.

Class B literally cannot exist if you buffed Class A within the 2 to 3% range of it. Simply because that 2 to 3% difference is negligible through the raid wide contribution.
So for what purpose would you ever put Class B in the game, when Class A can perform almost as perfectly, but has the additional benefit of a raid wide buff?
That is completely detrimental to the game and reduces the variety of what the players can use.
If you want to be support, then it makes sense your personal damage isn't as high.

Don't misunderstand, if there was a HUGE gap, well over 10%, I would agree with changes needing to be made, but based off that percentile, BLM is above RDM/SMN by single digits.

[Zacheris]

That is incredibly untrue.
Class A does personal damage of 600, but gives everyone a 200 DPS buff.
Class B does personal damage of 800, but gives no one a buff.
That is balanced, because even though Class B sits at 1000 when buffed, class A has increased everyone's damage to a total of 1600.

Class B literally cannot exist if you buffed Class A within the 2 to 3% range of it. Simply because that 2 to 3% difference is negligible through the raid wide contribution.
So for what purpose would you ever put Class B in the game, when Class A can perform almost as perfectly, but has the additional benefit of a raid wide buff?
That is completely detrimental to the game and reduces the variety of what the players can use.
If you want to be support, then it makes sense your personal damage isn't as high.

In your example, Class B would be doing ~825 after raid buffs are applied to them. Why bring another buff job that can't utilize its party's buffs as well? Why bring along that buff job when its personal damage is so much less? Do you understand how demoralizing it is to see players of selfish job argue for everybody else to be worse off? I see it all the time and I really don't think it's a healthy mindset for the game's community to have, no matter which way it swings. The game has been on the path of homogenization precisely because the game's community has acted this way towards discrepensies between jobs, and it'll continue as long as these sorts of arguments continue. Samurai and black mages already have buttons they press every 2 minutes, one of them applying a buff to the party is such a minor detail I don't see why not.

[Leiron]

In your example, Class B would be doing ~825 after raid buffs are applied to them.

While contributing well over 1k in damage to everyone else. That isn't something that should be ignored. That's really good, above what Class B is providing on its own.

Why bring another buff job that can't utilize its party's buffs as well? Why bring along that buff job when its personal damage is so much less? Do you understand how demoralizing it is to see players of selfish job argue for everybody else to be worse off? I see it all the time and I really don't think it's a healthy mindset for the game's community to have, no matter which way it swings. The game has been on the path of homogenization precisely because the game's community has acted this way towards discrepensies between jobs, and it'll continue as long as these sorts arguments continue. Samurai and black mages already have buttons they press every 2 minutes, one of them applying a buff to the party is such a minor detail I don't see why not.

Simple, because jobs that provide support abilities should not also get the ability to do top damage.
This means that "selfish" jobs have no purpose in existing within the game's design. Ergo, no purpose in being played, ergo, might as well not exist.
This was the literal state of the game prior to the 6.08 patch.
RPR was outperforming every DPS class except for Monk within raids.

By your reasoning, this was perfectly acceptable. It was making use of its own buffs just as effectively as the selfish classes who had no buffing capability.
That isn't balanced, and its pretty harmful. It means SAM/BLM had no place whatsoever in any composition, because you would just put more RPR in.
There was absolutely no benefit to having a SAM/BLM in the comp, and if anything, players who enjoyed those jobs had no return for their playstyle.

A game that is balanced does not always mean fair.
Not everyone gets the same size of cake, but that's okay because not everyone's cake slice has the same toppings.

Mind you, I am not saying you are wrong. I am simply saying that I disagree with your design philosophy for the game. You're just as right as I am, and I am just as wrong.

[Zacheris]

While contributing well over 1k in damage to everyone else. That isn't something that should be ignored. That's really good, above what Class B is providing on its own.


Simple, because jobs that provide support abilities should not also get the ability to do top damage.
This means that "selfish" jobs have no purpose in existing within the game's design. Ergo, no purpose in being played, ergo, might as well not exist.
This was the literal state of the game prior to the 6.08 patch.
RPR was outperforming every DPS class except for Monk within raids.

By your reasoning, this was perfectly acceptable. It was making use of its own buffs just as effectively as the selfish classes who had no buffing capability.
That isn't balanced, and its pretty harmful. It means SAM/BLM had no place whatsoever in any composition, because you would just put more RPR in.
There was absolutely no benefit to having a SAM/BLM in the comp, and if anything, players who enjoyed those jobs had no return for their playstyle.

A game that is balanced does not always mean fair.
Not everyone gets the same size of cake, but that's okay because not everyone's cake slice has the same toppings.

If you want to use real data then, consider that I play dancer, and it's common knowledge that Samurai contribute more than 300 through partner buffs than Reaper. They already had the highest personal damage before 6.08 and were best partner and filled the role they were meant to. That 300 dps isn't reflected on a certain website due to their metric removing single target buffs, but the fact that they have that 300+ damage edge over the next highest remains. Now they are doing more than Reaper not even counting those single target buffs and I see Samurai wanting other jobs to be even worse off. Not to mention the endless cries for nerfs which go completely against the design philosphy of the game. These misunderstandings lead this game's community to behave badly towards other jobs which also goes against the design philosphy of the game. I don't see it stopping any time soon unless certain jobs are also given the utility they feel works against them.

[Leiron]

If you want to use real data then, consider that I play dancer, and it's common knowledge that Samurai contribute more than 300 through partner buffs than Reaper. They already had the highest personal damage before 6.08 and were best partner and filled the role they were meant to. That 300 dps isn't reflected on a certain website due to their metric removing single target buffs, but the fact that they have that 300+ damage edge over the next highest remains. Now they are doing more than Reaper not even counting those single target buffs and I see Samurai wanting other jobs to be even worse off. Not to mention the endless cries for nerfs which go completely against the design philosphy of the game. These misunderstandings lead this game's community to behave badly towards other jobs which also goes against the design philosphy of the game. I don't see it stopping any time soon unless certain jobs are also given the utility they feel works against them.

To be fair, the next highest provides utility, which they do not, and it is within less than 1% of each other.
BLM is the only "selfish" DPS class that is performing above the others significantly, and those two provide raid wide buffs.
IMO, like I said SAM should get a buff.
,
I don't believe any of the other classes should get a nerf outside maybe Monk because its above everyone else by a rather large amount while providing its own raid wide buff.
I can see SMN, DNC, and MCH getting buffs.
I just don't think they should be very competitive with the selfish DPS.

[Kazimere]

Yes, and with raid buff jobs their damage goes up exponentially with a SAM and BLM which contribute by far the most damage to their raid buffs making BLM and SAM the definitive 'meta' jobs, this is mirrored in total party DPS which they have an enormous advantage in. This isn't rocket science, SAM right now gives 300+ more rdps to DNC vs everything not BLM, just because the SAM gets taxed for it it doesn't mean the DPS just disappears. BLM and SAM are overpowered right now and while their personal DPS _should_ be higher, it shouldn't be so much higher that they're competing and even beating jobs in raid DPS despite not even having one. In 6.05 they were balanced, right now they are not and did not need to receive any buffs at all. MCH as a job is mostly suffering because BRD and DNC have the strongest raid buffs in the game which they use to pad the strongest jobs in the game leaving MCH as a bad pick. The balance between MCH/DNC/BRD would not be so bad were it not for how overpowered SAM and BLM are, as MCH is fulfilling its role as doing way more personal damage than either.

Meh, Samurai did need the slight bump. It was less than 1% above reaper/monk in 6.05 for aDPS. It’s a solid 3% above them now, and its standing isn’t crushing the other melee. I’d argue that melee DPS are pretty balanced right now, with ninja potentially needing another small bump. We can’t know that right now though, because with better gear we are going to see Ninja and Dragoon jump up far more than Reaper and Monk.

Caster are another issue entirely. BLM is way too powerful in comparison to SMN/RDM. It’s SHB all over again, and the buffs that RDM and SMN bring aren’t going to close that gap. Their aDPS is just too much behind BLM.

[Theihe]

To add to this, to get the most out of a raidbuff it requires some level of optimization.
For any rDPS heavy job to actually contribrute it requires other people to actually press their buttons, not die, not eat dmg downs and not drift their burst out of buff windows. And that's 8 people.
"Selfish" DPS should have more personal DPS output, yes, but they should under no conditions outperform jobs that depend on group co-ordination.

Current standings in rDPS:

Current standings in rDPS sorted by DPS:

Current standings in rDPS sorted by MAX:



Current standings in aDPS:

Current standings in aDPS sorted by DPS:

Current standings in aDPS sorted by MAX:


The reason why these numbers are over the range of two weeks is due to the fact that no jobs got nerfed last patch, meaning that top parses from the week before the patch are still viable- and only the MAX will have changed.
EDIT: Not true, the DPS will be shifted down for the jobs that got buffed, as players who only parsed once before buffs are counted towards the statistics, continue reading under the impression that I didn't keep this in mind.
The reason why the MAX is important is due to the fact that no player can have two parses count towards the statistics. The reasoning behind this is that the graphs are based on rankings, where each person will only have their best parse ever count. So the best RPR in the world can have 40 pulls, all counted as 99 due to falling within the threshold of Ranks 2-24, but none of these actually get applied to the statistics. Thus, the "DPS" average isn't actually an accurate estimate of the average. Nor is it a good estimate of how well a job can actually perform when pushed to it's fullest potential.
Good players should skew the statistics, but they don't, because they can't.
There is also a substantial difference between "DPS" and "MAX", most of which are in the ballpark of 1-1.5k.

The graphic is also not as informative as one might believe at first glance, as the "dot" on the graph isn't actually "the best", it is a 99th percentile limited to 24 different players (the 100th percentile isn't shown outside of the table). When more people parse on any job, the distinction of this becomes less important, and the less people parse the more important this becomes.
It also makes the actual numbers less and less reliably the lower you go. 95th percentile isn't 95 percentile of all parses, it's limited to a set number of people- no matter if you have 1000 parses higher than the 95th.

"But isn't the MAX entierly reliant on RNG? Good crit for the player themselves- their teammembers, and even what jobs they bring?"
Yes. And such RNG and uncertainty applies to all of the jobs- but least of all the "selfish" DPS as they have one factor (themselves)- as opposed to rDPS jobs' 8. The fact that it is RNG reliant isn't inherently fantastic though, I will admit.

"So how would we find an accurate estimate of each job?"
With the way FFLOGS currently work- we can't. However there would be good reason to atleast aknowledge the 100th percentile parses, especially when the rankings of the jobs ends up changing. So for these current statistics:

rDPS DPS:
MNK->RPR->BLM->SAM->DRG->NIN->RDM->SMN->BRD->DNC->MCH

rDPS MAX:
MNK->BLM->DRG->SAM->RPR->NIN->DNC->BRD->RDM->SMN->MCH

aDPS DPS:
SAM ->BLM ->MNK ->RPR ->DRG ->NIN ->MCH ->RDM ->SMN ->BRD ->DNC

aDPS MAX:
SAM ->BLM ->MNK ->RPR ->DRG ->NIN ->SMN ->RDM ->MCH ->BRD ->DNC

The (1 week) difference in rDPS DPS between MNK and NIN is 231.
The (1 week) difference in rDPS MAX between MNK and NIN is 267.
The (1 week) difference in aDPS DPS between MNK and NIN is 497.
The (1 week) difference in aDPS MAX between MNK and NIN is 516.

The (1 week) difference in rDPS DPS between BLM and SMN is 590.
The (1 week) difference in rDPS MAX between BLM and SMN is 637.
The (1 week) difference in aDPS DPS between BLM and SMN is 969.
The (1 week) difference in aDPS MAX between BLM and SMN is 1025.

The (1 week) difference in rDPS DPS between MCH and DNC is 94.
The (1 week) difference in rDPS MAX between MCH and DNC is 580.
The (1 week) difference in aDPS DPS between MCH and DNC is 1079.
The (1 week) difference in aDPS MAX between MCH and DNC is 869.



I am of the opinion that any job being able to pull consistently high nDPS/aDPS numbers should be lower on the actual rDPS rankings, but my opinion might be based on an incorrect understanding of the statistics at hand.
Handing out raidbuffs to every single job has made the game an absolute nightmare to balance, and makes the data extremely hard to read.
SAM, BLM and MCH do not actually bring the numbers seen on the rDPS meter, as any damage they artifically create via squeezing shit into raidbuffs isn't allocated to them- but rather taken away from them and given to the rDPS DPS in the group, despite the fact that the overall group DPS wouldn't be as high were they replaced with another job at the same rDPS level as the selfish job. If you have a SAM and replace them with a DRG- well now all of the raidbuffs are scaling off of a lower base value. Selfish DPS do however get their "additional DPS created" allocated to their aDPS. (aDPS-nDPS = How much a "selfish" job created by just existing, which is then taken from them (in rDPS) and allocated to other jobs in the group).
Jobs like NIN being able to bring 8.5k rDPS is entierly dependent on buffing jobs with high aDPS to even compete with their "selfish" DPS counterparts, but SAM doesn't care about raidbuffs. They bring 8.5k as their baseline.
If NIN's "roof" is 8.6k (95th rDPS) with optimization from every single member of the group, but SAM's "floor" (95th nDPS) is 8.6k then one of these will quite obviously end up being a more valuable and safer bet, while they're both competing for the same slot in the raidgroup. The second option will also help all other buffs scale harder.
This is bad design, and counter-intuitive to how the data reads at first glance.
Now I'm not sure how viable of a comparasion this is, but for what it's worth:

NIN's MAX rDPS is 9180 and SAM's MAX aDPS is a flat 10k.
DNC's MAX rDPS is 8849 and MCH's MAX aDPS is 8576.


I would wipe every single raidbuff from every single role outside of Phys Ranged. It should be their neiche and would make for a waaaay healthier balancing. Not to mention that it would stop babies from crying about data they do not understand me included. This entire rant is a guesstimate based on the information I have access to and my limited understanding of it.
But this mentality of "we need to buff SAM/BLM/MCH" needs to stop. SAM and BLM in their current states are broken- that much I can say with certainty. And although I am open to being proven wrong; I believe MCH in it's current state is pretty balanced. The issue is that it's position on the graph feels bad. Slap a raidbuff on it and call it a day.

Melees and Casters would lose nothing if their potencies got buffed and had their raidbuffs turned into a personal buffs, akin to Death's Design. If anything, it would finally allow players to say "which job do I actually enjoy playing?" as opposed to "man I fuckin wish I played SAM instead of NIN this expansion cause I feel like I'm actively griefing my team".
Not to mention that this would also give the devs a more streamlined approach.

The game would be better if the devs had fewer variables, because trying to balance 8 different raidbuffs scaling multiplicatively off of one another is an absolute nightmare, and as a player it feels absolutely garbage to play a low aDPS job, arbitrarily "taxed" because 5% of your DPS has been stripped away from you and thrown to the mercy of your; completely random and often incompetent; team.
Forget this stupid "mobility tax" here "difficulty tax" there, the only thing this thread has been taxing is my patience.
This game isn't hard.
No jobs are hard.
Your job shouldn't do more dmg because it's "hard".
Your job should do more damage because doing damage is fun.
Feeling like you're always capable of beating any other job in the game if you become good enough; is fun.
What isn't fun is rolling SMN only to get your ass wooped by every single BLM in the game because the devs slapped a useless 3% buff onto your job and called it a day. You enjoy cool summons over cool explosions? Fuck you I guess.

And let's not pretend all jobs haven't gradually gotten more and more tools which negates the "negative aspects" of their roles. BLM has instantcasts for days, SMN doesn't even cast, Melees have True North most of the time when they need it, and greeding uptime is really only the question of "do I go out after X ability or Y ability", then you do that for the rest of the tier.

[LilyPendragon]

BLM not mobile? They have 2 triple cast,

No. They. Don't.

I see this repeated everywhere and it's not true. They have two initial stacks of triplecast. Both of which get used in the opener. What does that mean? It means you get a single extra triplecast per fight if you're using it on cooldown (or close to), as you should be. Anyone who is consistently getting back up to 2 stacks of triplecast is just bad at the job.

Even with the tools BLM has, it is still by far the least mobile DPS job in the game.