Comprehensive breakdown over Endwalker job balance

[TabrisOmbrelame]

snip

I think it depend on the type of mistakes. Is it a rotation mistake ? Is it a mecanics mistake (Inducing Damage down for 30 sec or a death penalty for almost 90 sec ) ?

Making a mistake into a rotation isn't as bad as a mecanics mistake that would cost much more DPS and damage.

But balancing savage fight is made by taking into account that player want a challenge. Extreme is a end-game difficulty for people who are not interested at all into the savage. Savage (and Ultimate) are High-end difficulty content were mistakes may cost you a run.

Not easy to balance for some average play, and even then, what is an average play ? This definition will be different for every person. It's too abstract

[LittleImp]

What distinguishes average play from making mistakes in rotations? I would think average play is equivalent to making mistakes.

For my own job, I would define 'Average play' as playing the bog standard loop regardless of the encounter, and not really making super serious attempts to optimize the jobs kit around the fight. A more concrete example would be something like missing an entire usage of Requiescat because a player chooses to play 'standard' instead of using an opener like -18s or -4s fof that gives them more value in a phase.

On the other hand, an optimized player making a rotational mistake is something like accidently drifting your damage buff by a GCD, or clipping something in a way that denies you an extra GCD before the boss jumps away.

[CaptainLagbeard]

On the topic of Paladin...

PLD in EW feels like it's in an extremely weird position... As Holy Spirit and the Confetior combo are spells and completely unaffected by Skill Speed, using 4 Holy Spirits and the combo they always take up 20 seconds of your 25 second Fight or Flight so it essentially becomes your entire burst window. Maybe fitting in 2 of your 3 Atonements at the start, as using the 3rd one would make Fight or Flight end before Blade of Valor...

Also, with how Fight or Flight shares the same 60s CD with Requiescat, and as there's no reason to not use both at the same time, they might as well just become one skill...


And if they want Sustained DPS to be good, make fights with that in mind. If a class is "bad" because their specialty is dealing sustained DPS rather than bursting, that's a problem with encounter design rather than class balancing.

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

[...]Also, with how Fight or Flight shares the same 60s CD with Requiescat, and as there's no reason to not use both at the same time, they might as well just become one skill...

Why would you want to use both at the same time? FoF only buffs PLD's physical attacks. Holy Spirit/Circle, Confiteor, and all Spellblades aren't affected.

[CaptainLagbeard]

Why would you want to use both at the same time? FoF only buffs PLD's physical attacks. Holy Spirit/Circle, Confiteor, and all Spellblades aren't affected.

Does it not affect them? I haven't done any deep testing so I am not certain, and if it doesn't I guess I am in the wrong on that one.

[Absurdity]

Does it not affect them? I haven't done any deep testing so I am not certain, and if it doesn't I guess I am in the wrong on that one.

FoF only works on physical damage, Holy Spirit, Confiteor and your entire Blade combo are all magic damage so Fight or Flight does literally nothing for them.


The way paladin is set up is that you alternate between your buffed physical dps phase and your buffed magic dps phase, with 1 unbuffed physical combo afterwards before it repeats.
It doesn't really have a burst phase and is one of the very few remaining sustain dps jobs, although their magic phase deals quite a bit more damage than their physical phase.

[localareanetwork]

On the topic of Paladin...

PLD in EW feels like it's in an extremely weird position... As Holy Spirit and the Confetior combo are spells and completely unaffected by Skill Speed, using 4 Holy Spirits and the combo they always take up 20 seconds of your 25 second Fight or Flight so it essentially becomes your entire burst window. Maybe fitting in 2 of your 3 Atonements at the start, as using the 3rd one would make Fight or Flight end before Blade of Valor...

Also, with how Fight or Flight shares the same 60s CD with Requiescat, and as there's no reason to not use both at the same time, they might as well just become one skill...


And if they want Sustained DPS to be good, make fights with that in mind. If a class is "bad" because their specialty is dealing sustained DPS rather than bursting, that's a problem with encounter design rather than class balancing.

even though it's "weird", it's pretty disheartening to know that they're intent on reworking Paladin to be cookie cutter and less unique

[ForteNightshade]

I'll be honest, I still dont get the technical details even after reading this document. Which is due to me being super casually oblivious to the meta of this game as all I care about is if the job feels "fun" to play rather than numbers.

But from what I understand is that every job is being homogenized with 2 minute burst damage windows which is bad/less fun? or something like that so the balance is kinda wack.

Anyway Im interested to see how SE responds to this since Im also seeing these complaints beyond the usual forum whining so thats GOT to warrant some actual issue being at play here.

To try and summarize it succinctly: Because every job now aligns buffs at two minute intervals, these windows cause monumental swings in damage. This is compounded by the devs' new obsession for Direct Hit, Crits which also occur in that window. If RNG isn't kind to you during during these windows, you can deal noticeably less damage than another player of the exact same skill, performing in the exact same way. We essentially have no control over our damage output.

While damage variance and RNG have always existed. The impact was balanced by having raid buffs spaced out across different timed intervals. Crit variance was also nowhere near this massive, partly because Direct Hit didn't exist nor was either guaranteed. In an effort to homogenize everything for ease of balance and accessibility, they've actually made balancing the worst it has ever been in the last six years. Even from an accessibility perspective, it doesn't work because players misaligning buffs will have a much bigger loss than they would have in say, Stormblood.

[Rilifane]

And if they want Sustained DPS to be good, make fights with that in mind. If a class is "bad" because their specialty is dealing sustained DPS rather than bursting, that's a problem with encounter design rather than class balancing.

No, it's a problem with class balancing and how buffs work.
Encounter design doesn't punish sustained dps more than burst dps; SE would need to design encounters so that they frequently force you to lose uptime outside of burst windows while having easy uptime during burst windows but they don't. Sustained damage being less attractive than burst damage stems from class design and how buffs work, not from encounter design.

Let's say two players deal exactly 1.000 damage over 2min.
One does it by sustained damage output which stays fairly even over the 2min.
One does it by dealing 500 damage outside burst and then the remaining 500 during a 15s burst window.
Raid buffs can easily turn this 500 damage into 665 damage with 3 generic "increases damage by 10%" buffs while the one with sustained damage may only get 50 additional damage.
Now what's more attractive: 1265 damage or 1050 damage?

It was far easier to balance burst dps vs sustained dps when we had raid buffs on different timers because people with sustained dps could strew in a strong skill here and there under every buff while burst dps classes might have missed a 60s or 90s window with their strong skills but had more for 2min buffs. Now with burst dps getting exponentially stronger with the streamlined 2min buffs, sustained base dps has to be inherently higher than burst base dps because nobody with buffs profits from it.
Case in point: PLD.
A DRK has an opener burst that is so strong, it has highest melee card priority. Even above NIN which is known for having some insanely high burst. And since it's impossible to run a 0 buff comp unless you're taking either dbl SAM, dbl BLM or dbl MCH, you will have buffs. Several of them even.

[Deceptus]

So what is my proposed solution? Honestly, just go back. Revert buffs to their original unique timers. Leave the ones at 2 minutes that it makes sense for, but don’t do it to everything. Reduce the size of hitboxes to give some room for melees to improve above what is expected, and squash the potencies of abilities! An ability doesn’t have to be 1000+ potency for people to get a dopamine rush from critting it.

Even simpler fix. Adjust the scaling on weapon damage so you don't have to have these 1000 potency attacks.

FoF only works on physical damage, Holy Spirit, Confiteor and your entire Blade combo are all magic damage so Fight or Flight does literally nothing for them.

Which could be easily fixed by changing the modification value from :MagicDamage to :AllDamage (not the exact coding but you get the point)