Damage "taxes" deserve serious reconsideration

[Semirhage]

In more danger of being hit? By what? The plethora of point blank AOEs that barely exist and have huge telegraph windows? The ones that don't matter anymore because the new Costco-sized hitboxes and the bargepole-length distance melee can hit from trivialize them? Who's actually in more danger of dying? The melee who barely have to move anywhere? For whom all group strategies are based around maintaining their uptime at the cost of the casters running all around the place and -actually- losing uptime? The melee who have higher base HP and defense for their "greater risk", but the casters actually die more often in early progression because their squishier HP and lower defense gets them one-shot more often by unavoidable room-wide AOEs, which unlike these mythical melee-risking dodgeable AOEs, actually happen every 30-60 seconds in difficult content?

All of the "disadvantages" melees have are fake weaknesses that the game never actually punishes them for having. Meanwhile casters actually lose uptime because running all the way across an arena and back again is a reasonably common mechanic, and since hitboxes are the size of a galaxy melee lose absolutely nothing for it.

[TakumiHarada]

Sorry, are those people who keep saying "oh melee has more risks" from 2.0 or something?
What point-blank AoE? What downtime? What melee risks?
This game always one-shots everyone regardless of your distance. Most people die from raid-wide damage or targeted mechanics, which apply to everyone.
Plus ranged jobs can't stay all the way out anyway. Everyone basically stays close together behind the boss when there're no mechanics, if you have any proper raiding experience.

"Oh but I'm close to the enemy so I should be rewarded," says a melee hitting a boss with an unmissable gigantic hitbox that spans more than half of the arena.

[Dogempire]

Snip.

Well melee needs to be balanced around current savage and ultimate raid content, not old content.

As things are right now melee players are being coddled by lack of forced downtime because of melee friendly mechanics, lack of needed positionals (If you think doing 2 positionals is hard, I don't even know what to say) and huge boss hitboxes making this tier the most melee-friendly raid tier I've ever seen.

Their damage is supposed to be high not because of the role choice, but because of the inherent risk of both forced downtime (For melee jobs only) and mechanics that endanger only people who are close to the boss. Neither seems to be present this tier

[SaberMaxwell]

I also find it "lolsy" when people use rDPS as the only metric of performance. I think we need to look at both rDPS and aDPS to get a better idea of a job

It is weird to use a job's total raid contribution as one of the primary methods to judge how its doing compared to other jobs, huh.

Aikaal posted the explanation too; aDPS only filters out single target padding, it doesn't filter other jobs' damage buffs. My embolden is counted into the Samurai's aDPS, so it's not really the Samurai's DPS. Hence rDPS, which filters all other damage buffs out and counts the damage you gave others in; even "aDPS jobs" whatever that means, have a more accurate description of the damage THEY bring to raid from their rDPS.

rDPS is not necessarily a good metric to view your OWN performance on, that's where aDPS and nDPS come in. But when talking about general job balance? I think rDPS outweighs the other metrics completely.

[CKNovel]

rDPS is not necessarily a good metric to view your OWN performance on, that's where aDPS and nDPS come in. But when talking about general job balance? I think rDPS outweighs the other metrics completely.

I believe this is correct. This is a teamgame, rDPS measures your job contribution to the whole group.
Yes, your rDPS can be quite different between what is shown on the graph and what you achieve, party composition and skill level of the group can vary.

It's simply great to understand your job possible value.
FFLogs using it as a ranking is what induces many players in errors.

[Aco505]

rDPS is not necessarily a good metric to view your OWN performance on, that's where aDPS and nDPS come in. But when talking about general job balance? I think rDPS outweighs the other metrics completely.

The three of them have to be used as a tool of analysis.

Balacing only around rDPS means that if the top jobs are the "selfish" ones such as SAM or BLM, then they are good for every piece of content in any comp.

For these jobs, rDPS = nDPS. Their rDPS will be the exact same (ignoring variance) whether their group has no buffs or optimized buffs. They're also not punished in this metric if they don't align their cooldowns within buffs as only aDPS tracks that although partially (single target buffs have to be manually checked through rDPS).

Therefore, if only rDPS is considered for balance, then these jobs are the best in every single scenario on top of getting the highest benefits out of buffs.

aDPS also depends on composition, so while it is a relevant metric to look at, it can vary a lot in a similar way that rDPS does for buffing jobs.

The metric that will tell you the individual performance of a person without taking other people from the party into account is nDPS.

Jobs that are strong in the nDPS/aDPS department should be lower in the rDPS department and vice versa, because the higher the percentile, the more damage players will squeeze out of buffs and so the more they will feed into others' rDPS. For example, since SAM is the job that benefits the most from buffs, it should be higher in aDPS than BLM, but lower in nDPS since the latter does not benefit as much from them (though it still does).

Balance seems to be made around the average player, not the very top (95+ or more).

You can see this when checking more accessible fights (i. e. those cleared by many people of different skill) such as P5S. MCH is the top ranged/caster job in the rDPS charts in the overall percentile and until the 80th because it doesn't rely on others for its damage and actually overtakes some melee jobs (NIN and DRG, so the ones with the lowest personal damage) in both aDPS and nDPS until higher percentiles. In fact, MCH's nDPS is still higher than DRG's in the 90th percentile.

[Keichi]

They must be balanced for all content. Not only the high end, hard content. So, my points are arcurrate.
People are doing normal stuff to. And has hard times in it to. Balancing mean, that the class need to be usefull in most content. Not necressary in everyone (heared, that blm was bad in 6.1, because of many movement in the content)

[Semirhage]

They must be balanced for all content. Not only the high end, hard content. So, my points are arcurrate.
People are doing normal stuff to. And has hard times in it to. Balancing mean, that the class need to be usefull in most content. Not necressary in everyone (heared, that blm was bad in 6.1, because of many movement in the content)

Melee are even easier to play in normal mode content than they are in high end hard content. Melee currently has a huge damage advantage for no reason. The combat system has received numerous changes to cancel out their so-called "weaknesses" while maintaining their strengths. Meanwhile, fights are just as movement-heavy as ever. Casters and Ranged, except for Black Mage, are currently taxed for no reason. Melee are just as easy if not easier to play than ranged classes, and they get a damage advantage because....sometimes maybe an AOE might go off and they might need to disengage except oho not really; they can now swing their weapons 10 yalms from an enemy's hitbox and still hit them. By this point you might as well give melee a bunch of anime laser blast animations for their weaponskills and consider them ranged DPS.

What exactly is *harder* about playing a melee? Having zero cast times? Being able to move freely? Having incredibly forgiving mechanics that basically never require you to disengage from the enemy? Being able to continuously swing while on the move, just like a ranged DPS? In a game where mechanics require you to move? Always having a safe spot designated just for you right next to every single boss, for every mechanic? Melee IS useful in every bit of content. Because they do hilariously more damage than everyone else, have more health, have more defense, because they're "harder to play" in a fantasy combat system that isn't FF14's.

[Supersnow845]

Melee are even easier to play in normal mode content than they are in high end hard content. Melee currently has a huge damage advantage for no reason. The combat system has received numerous changes to cancel out their so-called "weaknesses" while maintaining their strengths. Meanwhile, fights are just as movement-heavy as ever. Casters and Ranged, except for Black Mage, are currently taxed for no reason. Melee are just as easy if not easier to play than ranged classes, and they get a damage advantage because....sometimes maybe an AOE might go off and they might need to disengage except oho not really; they can now swing their weapons 10 yalms from an enemy's hitbox and still hit them. By this point you might as well give melee a bunch of anime laser blast animations for their weaponskills and consider them ranged DPS.

What exactly is *harder* about playing a melee? Having zero cast times? Being able to move freely? Having incredibly forgiving mechanics that basically never require you to disengage from the enemy? Being able to continuously swing while on the move, just like a ranged DPS? In a game where mechanics require you to move? Always having a safe spot designated just for you right next to every single boss, for every mechanic? Melee IS useful in every bit of content. Because they do hilariously more damage than everyone else, have more health, have more defense, because they're "harder to play" in a fantasy combat system that isn't FF14's.

Don’t even bother they will just reply with some inane statement about how melee have to be close so therefore they are harder

[CKNovel]

"Oh but I'm close to the enemy so I should be rewarded," says a melee hitting a boss with an unmissable gigantic hitbox that spans more than half of the arena.

Fun fact getting far from the boss is not a reward.
It will results in healers getting conniptions.

They must be balanced for all content. Not only the high end, hard content. So, my points are arcurrate.
People are doing normal stuff to. And has hard times in it to. Balancing mean, that the class need to be usefull in most content. Not necressary in everyone (heared, that blm was bad in 6.1, because of many movement in the content)

Man.
Are you even aware about how SMN just breaks the game balance at lv70?
Are you aware that GNB in Deep dungeon is basically a DPS with extra HP and survivability?

There's no point balancing for casual content as you could complete it with auto attack only or with 24 healers or 24 warriors.
Casual content is not meant to be balanced as players don't give a crap about gear or optimization.

Again you talk about the world when you only know your city.
No one acknowledges your argument, everyone is against it. You can't claim it stands because you feel like it.