Let's redefine "damage taxes"

[SaberMaxwell]

My God we're really talking about vercure... okay, I'm out. FireMage is dumb and I disagree entirely with any notion one should balance around difficulty, but honestly it's a hard reach to be claiming RDM's damage should suffer any because of vercure. Or saying vercure is somehow valuable for verraise, or that dungeons are worth balancing around. Might as well run about saying SMN should be taxed for Phoenix Regen and Rekindle, despite there being just as few valuable use cases as with RDM's vercure.

So sure. Leave RDM in the dumpster, whatever. For vercure.

[Rithy255]

My God we're really talking about vercure... okay, I'm out. FireMage is dumb and I disagree entirely with any notion one should balance around difficulty, but honestly it's a hard reach to be claiming RDM's damage should suffer any because of vercure. Or saying vercure is somehow valuable for verraise, or that dungeons are worth balancing around. Might as well run about saying SMN should be taxed for Phoenix Regen and Rekindle, despite there being just as few valuable use cases as with RDM's vercure.

So sure. Leave RDM in the dumpster, whatever. For vercure.

I compare vercure to something like BLM's self barrier, I guess like I said BLM self barrier has more use, cuz it's not a gcd lol.

But I agree vercure shouldn't be taxed at all, I think it was only brought up with other utilities (which have way more use).

[SaberMaxwell]

I compare vercure to something like BLM's self barrier, I guess like I said BLM self barrier has more use, cuz it's not a gcd lol.

But I agree vercure shouldn't be taxed at all, I think it was only brought up with other utilities (which have way more use).

My exasperation is really just at the fact we had an entire page dedicated to discussing the use cases of vercure, but yeah it does have other utilities which are generally just...actually worth mentioning, when talking about support a job brings.

Bleh, whatever, I'm not gonna think on this anymore. As ever I'll just continue waiting for the day that SE makes my nightmare come true, and deciding whether I'm willing to play this game if they do.

[CKNovel]

My God we're really talking about vercure... okay, I'm out. FireMage is dumb and I disagree entirely with any notion one should balance around difficulty, but honestly it's a hard reach to be claiming RDM's damage should suffer any because of vercure. Or saying vercure is somehow valuable for verraise, or that dungeons are worth balancing around. Might as well run about saying SMN should be taxed for Phoenix Regen and Rekindle, despite there being just as few valuable use cases as with RDM's vercure.

So sure. Leave RDM in the dumpster, whatever. For vercure.

Obviously we're not saying to tax for VerCure.
VerCure has no place in a DPS rotation, it's a niche use just like VerRaise.

I believe understanding VerCure use case might help understand that it remains valuable but not enough to tax RDM for it.
A good example would be: GNB can heal allies during downtime with Corundum, WAR cannot due to the lack of target. Should we tax GNB for it?

[SaberMaxwell]

I love how I'm "wrong", yet I'm the only one making an iota of sense

Even assuming you were making sense, you consistently fail to communicate your arguments. It's not enough to say something is, a claim (especially one of fact) needs to be backed up. Given that difficulty is subjective, however, one cannot make a claim of fact to whether one job is more difficult than another.

If you'd like to argue that difficulty is not subjective, you'd need to provide an objective measure of difficulty. By every measure of difficulty SE can be shown to use, merely being able to attack from range is seen as the opposite of difficulty. Rotational difficulty certainly isn't considered, though APM possibly is, but even APM can be argued since AST does less damage than WHM.

The real irony here though, is I've been having this "Difficulty should not equal damage" argument for close to six years now, and most of that was in defense of RDM. Historically, saying "My job should do more because it's more difficult" has gotten the job in question gutted beyond recognition. See also: SMN, MNK, and yes, MCH. After the ShB destruction of MCH, I'll never trust them to rework a job again.

Obviously we're not saying to tax for VerCure.
VerCure has no place in a DPS rotation, it's a niche use just like VerRaise.

I believe understanding VerCure use case might help understand that it remains valuable but not enough to tax RDM for it.
A good example would be: GNB can heal allies during downtime with Corundum, WAR cannot due to the lack of target. Should we tax GNB for it?

There are a few ways I could go about answering this, but I'll state first that I don't think vercure worth much more than a passive mention when talking about utility. Certainly not as much length as has been gone in in this thread which is solely about how DPS should be taxed for their utility; in this case, the context of where the discussion is happening makes the "obviousness" of the statement not as tangible as perhaps perceived. I think my opinion is best stated as "Vercure is useful but in the course of this discussion we've hyperbolized how good it really is."

More often than not, even in a downtime situation, you're most likely to either step on your healers' toes or not contribute to the HPS in a meaningful way. In most DSR downtime you're sitting close enough that the healers, also freed up to use GCDs, handle it all well enough anyway that vercure is redundant at best. At worst, your vercure topped up the DRG that your WHM was gonna farm a lily off of, or your SGE was gonna do their thing to for Toxicon, and you ruined or inconvenienced their plan to have Misery/Toxicon ready to go when Thordan is back.

The only time in my six years of playing this job that I've not found it to be the case that my cures were redundant were in P8Sp2, specifically bombing people with Ifrit, and even then that was only super feasible to do when I was one of the Ifrits. I'm not saying that just because I haven't found a situation it doesn't exist, just that every time I've tried to force something to be more helpful to my healers (because at the moment there's no other reason for me to play this job), it's either been redundant or harmful in the long run.

[CKNovel]

More often than not, even in a downtime situation, you're most likely to either step on your healers' toes or not contribute to the HPS in a meaningful way. In most DSR downtime you're sitting close enough that the healers, also freed up to use GCDs, handle it all well enough anyway that vercure is redundant at best. At worst, your vercure topped up the DRG that your WHM was gonna farm a lily off of, or your SGE was gonna do their thing to for Toxicon, and you ruined or inconvenienced their plan to have Misery/Toxicon ready to go when Thordan is back.

That argument can be said the same about... Everything.
During the Natural alignment, 2 party member are targeted by a beefy dot. As tanks we assist the healers, my co-tank DRK uses TBN and I Corundum+Aurora. Yet it happens that I throw Aurora and the next second that party member is topped with a TBN as a shield. Regardless of jobs, you will inevitably screw someone.
The same can be said with DNC healing.

That's how you must see those healing tools, as a neat bonus.
And I believe that's how the raise should also be seen, a neat bonus.

[SaberMaxwell]

That's how you must see those healing tools, as a neat bonus.
And I believe that's how the raise should also be seen, a neat bonus.

Reminder that the source post for this particular discussion was:

No, MCH should be ahead of RDM by a significant margin, simply due to kit design and gameplay.


RDM brings Embolden, Magick Barrier, Verraise and Vercure to a group, what does MCH bring? Tactician.... which is just a renamed Troubador / Shield Samba.


In my opinion, Red Mage isn't taxed enough for all the tools it provides.

This thread's whole topic is whether or not those tools should be taxed or should be seen only as a unique healing bonus. I don't disagree with you that they should only be seen as a unique bonus but that said blowing their usefulness out of proportion or analogizing the niche times that vercure is useful and how that use can screw some healers during downtime to using tank cooldowns on people during the highest uptime mechanic in 8sp2 (and probably the most damage intensive part of it) isn't helping the argument that they should be seen as "neat bonuses."

[Kabooa]

This thread's whole topic is whether or not those tools should be taxed or should be seen only as a unique healing bonus. I don't disagree with you that they should only be seen as a unique bonus but that said blowing their usefulness out of proportion or analogizing the niche times that vercure is useful and how that use can screw some healers during downtime to using tank cooldowns on people during the highest uptime mechanic in 8sp2 (and probably the most damage intensive part of it) isn't helping the argument that they should be seen as "neat bonuses."

This is ultimately a lack of flexibility in the current framework. There's a couple things to consider.

A) You cannot use a "Tax when Used" paradigm and then equalize the damage component, because then you move into functional obsolescence. Why bring the job that does 10k DPS when the other jobs also do 10k DPS but bring all the goodies? This is a case of it's better to have them than not.

B) The inconsistent valuing of non-damage utility. How much is this particular bit of non-DPS oriented goodie worth? Opinions will vary widely. The perspective one has on what's more important will change that value.

C) The tight tuning of the encounters. Even when overgearing the encounters, current content cannot be completely ignored. This is how they design. Within this relatively tight windows where all the numbers fall, the game's scaling doesn't allow (and arguably shouldn't allow) players to start a tier clearing it at 50% potential and then capping off at 100% potential (killing the boss at 50% of the enrage).

Within this limited framework, even basic solutions are problematic as they cause problems down the line. There's only so many times we can add 10 potency.

The first step then is that the framework has to change. The Role system first has to expand to accommodate the growing number of jobs. And as a disclaimer, this is less a solution, and more a process to lead to a hopefully more desirable gamestate.

1a. Formalize the Flex Spot into a role, and shove the problem children into it. The "Problem children" being Black Mage, Samurai, Machinist. One can argue that potentially one more melee fits there, but that's a different discussion.
1b. Those in this role gain a trait that increases the potency of debuffs on the enemy/buffs on them from other roles. This is, in effect, their "RDPS" contribution, and the safeguard / tuning lever against being ignored in the future, as well as ensuring that bringing two of them is undesirable.

2. Equalize the baseline "DPS" values of the now 4 DPS roles. Everyone does ~10k DPS by themselves outside of a party. (For example).

3. Role action rebalance. Actions that crossover into other sides of the Trinity (Tank/healer) should have their power reconsidered. Specific example - Caster raise being made into an emergency raise with a long CD. Healer Raise is given a free "Swiftcast" every X seconds.

3cont- This process is mostly about taking powerful but not class defining goodies and ensuring all within a role have it. From here, we can take individual goodies and only compare them against other goodies within the role and adjust them as needed. Another specific example is that Machinist no longer has Tactician, as the -10%/90s mitigation for the party is a Marksman tool. Does the Machinist have enough goodies compared to the Black Mage and Samurai? If not, address it.

TLDR: Our current sorting system sucks, we need a better one for long term game health.

[Aurora428]

Putting BLM, SAM and MCH into their own role is an extremely unnecessary change to the simple answer of Ranged just needing to deal more damage. (and doesn't even solve the problem because MCH would need to be viable in that role)

If BLM is truly so unmanageable that we would need to adjust every other job in existence around it, maybe the easier answer would be to make its GCD recast equivalent to the cast time of its spells so that triplecast exists solely as a movement tool (thus massively increasing mobility)

If we are being realistic after SMN got the changes to Ruby Ruin recast, instant cast optimization of BLM is probably on its last legs this expansion anyways.