Let's redefine "damage taxes"

[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.

[Mithron]

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)

Huh? If MCH did BLM and SAM levels of damage, that would make them viable in their role. It's necessary because if MCH doesn't bring any raid damage buffs like a BLM or SAM, but doesn't do damage like them to justify it, why bring one at all over a BRD/DNC which will make up for it in rDPS?

[Nutshell]

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)

There's a few benefits to putting BLM, SAM, and MCH into their own 4th dps role.
MCH would just need be buffed to do around the same damage level as SAM and BLM if they made a 4th dps role for the selfish dps jobs. Much easier to do than to rework MCH.
RDM and SMN could keep their raises and not be taxed dps for them as they are no longer in the same dps role as BLM
Balancing for all jobs would actually get easier as each job would only have to be balanced to other jobs in the same dps role. The party buff would just have to be great enough to require people to take one of each dps role in high end content to clear. I still think it'd be better if the damage level between all dps roles is closer than it is now.

Plus they could make new dps roles and mix and match dps types to fill these new roles allowing for more unique job identities. NIN, DNC, and the next new dps job released could be their own dps group as an example. This would mean if you like what that dps role brings to the raid but only like playing as melee dps you'd still have an option.