Why are Ranged DPS so unfun to play?

[Shurrikhan]

So... Refresh is not utility, because you're not taxed in actually executing it?

I never said it wasn't utility. I said it had no gameplay beyond being hit on CD. It's Lucid Dreaming. Nothing more.

Such was not true of old Mage's Ballad, which you wanted to pace around the lulls in your damage, giving you far more room for optimization and thus giving it some actual gameplay impact.

Old Mage's Ballad did tax the job itself, because you would lower your own damage during the song by 20%.

No, old Mage's Ballad taxed old Mage's Ballad. Not the kit.

Bard's rDPS wasn't reduced just to support it, meaning that if all went well and Ballad wasn't needed, Bard still held higher highs than if that utility were instead free (and its costs therefore applied to all situations, rather than just those in which Mage's Ballade was needed.)


Let's put it this way: You have a balanced job. You now give said job a new tool. Said tool has X value.

If it has zero opportunity cost, then your job's value over time has now increased by that amount. While that value may be situational, the devs will pick a situation around which to balance it, and that is the amount to which, time X value, your job's value over time will have increased. Thus, given that you were balanced before getting yet more stuff, of value, for free, that new tool's inclusion makes you overpowered. Something now has to be taken in compensation.

Alternatively, if it has opportunity cost, then balancing that tool can be done more finely. Rather than balancing it also around its free value over time, one need merely balance it around the more extreme situations by which you'd really want to use it -- those situations that actually called for notable utility. With that, what needs be given in compensation for access to the tool, now that it's not outright free, is far less. There is then little to no tax.

In that job/role design the utility itself is the tax which I will never agree is good design.

There are only three choices here for a developer:

1. You purposely overpower the job who was already balanced without the additional, free utility.
2. You tax the job for the practical value of the free utility, around whatever situational range you see fair.
3. You tax the utility itself, making it more situational but allowing it higher highs and far lower tax on the rest of the kit.

Unless you purposely overpower a job, you will never get something for nothing. As such, I prefer the higher highs and lower tax on merely possessing utility (preferring instead to be taxed on using it, which typically has a lower net effect and punishes the given job less in situations in which that utility has less advantage, which in turn allows the utility to be more unique, since it needn't be so wholly applicable to every fight).

And --per the same coin, opposite side-- there is no point at which you are not punished for having utility. The question is simply whether you want it to be predominantly flat punishment (a "tax"), based around what you could do with it and affecting your rDPS in all situations on the hope that enough situations make use of the given form of utility, or predominantly dynamic, based around what you do actually use it for, in which case your performance is less fight-specific despite the utility itself being potentially more impactful.

So by that definition.. Shield Bash, Clemency, Swiftcast+Raise, and Hardcast Raise is the only valid utility in the game?

What now? I simply said that basic damage raidbuffs have no business being called utility because they do nothing more than move numbers around to then be moved right back again (job value -> ACT raw DPS numbers -> FFLogs rDPS numbers).

Yes, that includes Trick Attack/NewMug, Arcane Circle, Battle Voice, Battle Litany, Standard Step, Technical Step, shared Devilment, Bard's raidwide buff portion of its Songs, etc., most of the effect of Brotherhood, Chain Strategem, etc. It does not include the likes of Arm Graze, let alone Intervention or Divine Benison.