ZephZaeora discusses job balance and how it's gone downhill in Endwalker. Thoughts?

[Deceptus]

Source

TL : DR - Job balance is being hurt by 2 minute burst windows and leaves little room for optimization.

Alright, here's my take: Standardising all jobs to 2 minutes is the reason we have broken combat balance right now. It's not the only reason, but it's the straw that has broken the camel's back.

In previous expansions, we had job burst on 60s, 90s, 120s and 180s. When used on cooldown, these naturally aligned on opener, and again at 6 minutes.

However, depending on an expected killtime, you could hold the 2 minute buffs at 8 minutes into the pull and get a full buff alignment again at 9 minutes. This wasn't something pugs were expected to do, and casual statics typically didn't, either.

This creates a situation where the devs can balance for the expected gameplay of the average player (everyone uses everything on cooldown), but leaves the ceiling high enough for coordinated groups to squeeze in a little extra damage.

That means if an enrage is tough, there is room for a group to improve in order to meet the DPS check. When everyone's burst is aligned to 2 minutes, and fights are purposefully designed around 2 minute burst, the skill ceiling is lowered and players have nothing to improve.

This problem is compounded by said burst also being extremely high potency relative to past expansions. Every expansion we get higher and higher potency single-use abilities where if you don't crit, you lose a huge chunk of DPS.

A single job can have a DPS swing of close to +-5% from one pull to the next. If the entire party has a bad crit RNG run, you hit enrage. After doing all the mechanics perfectly and executing your rotation perfectly, beating enrage is down to a dice roll.

The irony is that in an attempt to make balancing easier by standardising all jobs (if that was the intent) they have made it impossible to reasonably balance.

You either set the DPS check to the low end of expected crit RNG (of a party consisting of the weakest jobs), making the DPS check a joke for any competent group, or reintroduce a skill ceiling in which the players have the ability to find extra damage where it's not expected.

Speaking of which, GIANT HITBOXES are another part of the same problem. During prog, melees have to play safe. You can balance around expected lost GCDs. As they optimise, they can find extra damage to make the DPS check easier.

Movable bosses also allows for strat creation to cater to melees enabling a party to get even more damage by being creative with how they solve a mechanic.

When melees are doing more damage than ranged, and they're not punished for being a melee (because they get full uptime for absolute free), there's no point to bringing triple ranged, and no room to optimise uptime.

P8S part 2 is especially egregious due to there being a single 2 minute buff window with DOUBLE DAMAGE. If you don't get lucky crits during this window, it can completely negate all optimisation effort you did in the first 60% of the fight.

P8 doorboss is a fun fight but the overall design of combat this expansion is a complete disaster and needs a major rework.

[Syln]

Any job balance that doesn't put reaper above other melee is an heresy period.

But yes dps difference is exacerbated by burst window so maybe they should try to solve that either by being more pro active with balancing job or scrap the idea of the burst window every 2 mins.

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

Any job balance that doesn't put reaper above other melee is an heresy period.

But yes dps difference is exacerbated by burst window so maybe they should try to solve that either by being more pro active with balancing job or scrap the idea of the burst window every 2 mins.

To do that they'd have to scrap utility via raid buffs.

[DarkCobalt]

Source

TL : DR - Job balance is being hurt by 2 minute burst windows and leaves little room for optimization.

This is especially true if you take a look at the tanks. GNB and DRK were higher last tier but this tier they are through the freaking roof... despite PLD and WAR being the ones that got buffs...? It makes sense that with the 2 min standardization, DRK and GNB's 2 min burst windows get multiplied more aggressively, more times per fight, making them skyrocket in DPS compared to PLD and WAR. DRK was already notorious for having an opener that could match most DPS jobs, but it also has that same "opener" every 2 minutes now if played properly.

On that note at this point PLD needs an entire overhaul and rework to its kit. A summoner-level rework. It's pure clunk, missing a mitigation, can't "recharge" its mitigation unless the boss is targetable, and sucks to play right now as it has no burst window even though it's a very strict rotation... I dropped the class this tier in favor of DRK.

[Petite]

The only downside I see with homogenized burst windows is that it also homogenizes how jobs feel to play. But, diverse burst window timings also came with its own caveats.

Better potency distribution among skills would help mitigate how strong burst windows are by taking some off OGCDs and redistributing it among Weaponskills/Spells. Basically, I feel the problem they speak of can easily be remedied.

I'm still confused at how they have left MCH's rDPS so much lower than the rest of the DPS jobs though. How does that happen? Because of that, I'm not holding my breath.

[ReynTime]

That bald bushy bearded guy who skips MSQ and acts like an edgy 10 year old kid also bashed the job design in Endwalker, so this dude isn't the only pseudo celeb who thinks this way.

[Iyrnthota]

That bald bushy bearded guy who skips MSQ and acts like an edgy 10 year old kid also bashed the job design in Endwalker, so this dude isn't the only pseudo celeb who thinks this way.

Thus far I haven't seen one that disagreed tbf. Most if not all of em seem to be on roughly the same page.

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

That bald bushy bearded guy who skips MSQ and acts like an edgy 10 year old kid also bashed the job design in Endwalker, so this dude isn't the only pseudo celeb who thinks this way.

He also got beat out by a war and a PLD in dps on his p8s clear.

He just talks big.

Angry, egotistical people seem to gather large followings for some reason. I don't think he's very entertaining. Haven't watched any of his guides or anything since he had his man-baby rant in hw about how war wasn't top tank dps anymore.

[Absurdity]

That bald bushy bearded guy who skips MSQ and acts like an edgy 10 year old kid also bashed the job design in Endwalker, so this dude isn't the only pseudo celeb who thinks this way.

He also got beat out by a war and a PLD in dps on his p8s clear.

He just talks big.

Angry, egotistical people seem to gather large followings for some reason. I don't think he's very entertaining. Haven't watched any of his guides or anything since he had his man-baby rant in hw about how war wasn't top tank dps anymore.

Yes yes, bald man bad. Now do you have anything to actually refute those arguments and prove that 2 minute burst windows for everyone are great and the way forward? Maybe objective proof that job balance in the current savage tier is completely fine? Or do you just like to hear yourselves talk?

I often think that Xeno's takes on things, like the design of Continuation for example, are nonsense. Doesn't mean he's wrong on everything just because it's him. We've heard the exact same sentiment from Zheph Zaeora and Momo.

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

Yes yes, bald man bad. Now do you have anything to actually refute those arguments and prove that 2 minute burst windows for everyone are great and the way forward? Maybe objective proof that job balance in the current savage tier is completely fine? Or do you just like to hear yourselves talk?

I often think that Xeno's takes on things, like the design of Continuation for example, are nonsense. Doesn't mean he's wrong on everything just because it's him. We've heard the exact same sentiment from Zheph Zaeora and Momo.

Because the solution to 2 minute buff windows is what we had before, where people complained job burst windows didn't line up with each other for maximum buff potential.

Or the solution is no buff synergy, which people would then complain about homogenization of jobs.