Wondering what to do, honestly...

[Satarn]

That being said, while FF14 isn't at its best right now, it's still miles above every other MMO with job balance currently.

Is it really though? This line keeps being said for years now, but are the people saying it talking based on legitimate comparisons or are they merely repeating a common sentiment they have heard from other players?

It would be literally impossible to play "every" other MMO in depth enough to speak of their balance with authority, especially since it is something that keeps changing (in this game alone, looking at just tank dps balance for example, the difference between HW and SHB would be huge). Even setting a bit more reasonable expectation, it would still be pretty damn hard to keep actively playing enough games to at least have a general idea of how balance looks within the genre as a whole.

I honestly wouldn't be at all surprised if the "every other MMO" in most of these statements, was "actually just WoW" and people just assumed that since things were worse there, then they must be the same everywhere.

Now don't get me wrong - I am not saying that the statement is for sure wrong, I neither have evidence to disprove it nor have I played enough MMOs at length and in depth enough to feel comfortable making comparisons.
I am questioning whether or not others actually have said evidence/experience to back the statement up though. If not, then perhaps it would be best we stop repeating such claims without a thought, as I suspect many do.

[T-Owl]

Is it really though? This line keeps being said for years now, but are the people saying it talking based on legitimate comparisons or are they merely repeating a common sentiment they have heard from other players?

It would be literally impossible to play "every" other MMO in depth enough to speak of their balance with authority, especially since it is something that keeps changing (in this game alone, looking at just tank dps balance for example, the difference between HW and SHB would be huge). Even setting a bit more reasonable expectation, it would still be pretty damn hard to keep actively playing enough games to at least have a general idea of how balance looks within the genre as a whole.

I honestly wouldn't be at all surprised if the "every other MMO" in most of these statements, was "actually just WoW" and people just assumed that since things were worse there, then they must be the same everywhere.

Now don't get me wrong - I am not saying that the statement is for sure wrong, I neither have evidence to disprove it nor have I played enough MMOs at length and in depth enough to feel comfortable making comparisons.
I am questioning whether or not others actually have said evidence/experience to back the statement up though. If not, then perhaps it would be best we stop repeating such claims without a thought, as I suspect many do.

The issue with WoW is also, that the game is objectively harder to balance due to it actually having the ability to customize you class you're playind and its playstyle through various system, the most important ones which will stay being specs, t-set bonuses and talent trees, with the added customization of more gear with different stats on each itemlevel and the existence of trinkets and sometimes weapons with unique effects which scale differently well with each class. Not to forget how differently many of the classes play, with there being pet focussed classes, dot focussed one, ones that actually load their entire dps in 2 minute burst cds and many more. This alone makes it more difficult to balance, plus the higher levels of variation in Blizzards encounter design, where performance differences in not only single target but also cleave and aoe actually matter and especially in m+ also the higher value of support skills individual classes bring, like Rogues ability to shroud party members or Warlock being capable of skipping trash packs through portals. With all these factors, praising SE for its great job balance is like praising somebody for beating a game smoothly on easy mode in comparison to someone playing on nightmare dificulty. Yeah, the company who allows no job customization and playstyle expression outside of which of the two high itemlevel itemsets to use and how to perform your opener will naturally be better at balancing its job than the one which allows high levels of variance in customization and class design.

[Liam_Harper]

Balance is mostly impactful for party finder and week 1.
If you don't prog the raid in hardcore manner and don't care about clearing fast with few loot, you won't be impacted by balance.

Everyone is impacted by job balance in Savage. Even week 10 teams have 1% enrage wipes on messy prog. Casual teams with a meta comp will simply clear, even with 8 deaths. Casual teams without a meta comp will need to play better and will have slower prog.

Both will probably get there in the end but they are affected by it, even if they might not realize.

[Satarn]

The issue with WoW is also, that the game is objectively harder to balance due to it actually having the ability to customize you class you're playind and its playstyle through various system

That's a good point - FFXIV features virtually no customization within its jobs, while many other MMOs have things like skill trees, ability slots or different weapon choices, which definitely make things more complicated to balance. Looking from this angle, one could even argue that rather than being praise-worthy, it is remarkable that the game has managed to still mess its balance up quite badly on multiple occasions, despite how limited are the options it provides.

I'd also like to point out, that while its often brought up how FFXIV community doesn't lock jobs out of content all that often (but it still happens btw), the game has multiple systems which work against job exclusion in artificial ways. Among them the limit break penalty for job stacking, mechanics targeting specific roles and the most obvious - sub-role main-stat buffs.

Good luck finding groups as a physical ranged if that last one was removed - and that would have been a continuous issue all the way back to 5.0 (heck, it actually kinda was at SHB launch, when their DPS was a bit worse).

[Petite]

With the current job balance being the way it is, I'm at a lost on what to actually [play] right now.

WTH is this? Unless you're world-progging week 1, you play what you like to play, end of the line!

"I don't want to be seen as weak because my job does less than the others." Who cares!? Just be the best MCH / RDM / SMN / PLD you can be. Yes there are inequalities, but stop making it seem like FF14's job balance is as bad as Vanilla WoW's just to protect your fragile egos.

[Satarn]

WTH is this? Unless you're world-progging week 1, you play what you like to play, end of the line!

"I don't want to be seen as weak because my job does less than the others." Who cares!? Just be the best MCH / RDM / SMN / PLD you can be. Yes there are inequalities, but stop making it seem like FF14's job balance is as bad as Vanilla WoW's just to protect your fragile egos.

You are going off at a newbie and insulting their supposedly "fragile ego" because they *checks notes* "politely asked some questions about the severity of an issue that is currently a hot topic among the community".

GCBTW

Speaking of basing all comparisons on just WoW though...

[MagiusNecros]

WTH is this? Unless you're world-progging week 1, you play what you like to play, end of the line!

"I don't want to be seen as weak because my job does less than the others." Who cares!? Just be the best MCH / RDM / SMN / PLD you can be. Yes there are inequalities, but stop making it seem like FF14's job balance is as bad as Vanilla WoW's just to protect your fragile egos.

Vanilla WoW probably has better job balance right now lol

Then again Vanilla WoW classes actually have identity going for them.

[Petite]

asked some questions about the severity of an issue that is currently a hot topic among the community".[/SIZE]

Yeah, great job to our amazing community for making such a big deal of a non-issue for 99% of players, so much so that even newbie players come to second-guess themselves on how to have fun. This community is made of 1% hardcore raiders and 50% NPCs who parrot anything the 1% say even when it doesn't apply to them. The rest mind their own business.

I was adressing the community at large in my previous post if you hadn't noticed. I wasn't "going off" at OP. Thought that was clear enough in my wording.

Vanilla WoW probably has better job balance right now lol

Get real.. Even in the Classic 2019 Molten Core days, a raid that could be beat in green gear, Ret, Feral, Elemental, Arms and many more were widely shunned and outright banned from even joining rando pugs because they were so far behind optimal classes.

Sure FF14's balance needs some work, but we're so privileged compared to other mmos in terms of balance, we make drama up over peanuts just for a good thumbnail / clicks / likes.

[MagiusNecros]

Get F-ing real.

Each class had multiple specs and were used for a specific role. WoW started to go downhill once the devs decided what you could spec into and controlled how you played. Vanilla WoW's pure joy was playing out like an RPG where your progression and gear matters. If specs were shunned that's a toxic community problem. Just because some people cleared content faster with meta comps doesn't mean other comps weren't possible. But I suppose a better example is Guild Wars 2 where you have distinct build variety for different modes.

All I'm really seeing in FFXIV right now is a rushed PvE xpac because a lot of time and creativity went into PvP. And as a result a lot of classes in Meleewalker are all over the place. The game is probably gonna fix itself to where it should be in 7.0.

A big takeaway that balance was gonna be screwed over was the very first time they said to "not worry about potencies" way back before 6.0 launch. And here we are.

And it's good the raiders are exposing the balancing issues as they are because the 99% are just going to take a break and wait until a patch fixes the problem. But if no one criticizes these things they won't change.

When Yoshi P says he wants to be like WoW I believe him. Because like current WoW class balance is something they don't know how to do.

Which is surprising since ShB was the best balance we had across the board.

[Kabooa]

If specs were shunned that's a toxic community problem.

Fire mages are quite literally useless in Molten Core.

Edit: Well, at least they were. I don't know if they did any reworking for the Classic version, but if they did, then it wouldn't be faithful recreation.

Suffice to say - There were actively bad specs in WoW vanilla. In fact, there were actively bad specs in every version of the game I Played until around 2012, when I stopped.

"Toxic community", sure. Not going to say it wasn't there.

But bringing a Fire based spec when things in the instance are fire immune is bad manners.