Let's redefine "damage taxes"

[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?

[FireMage]

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

[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.

[Lyth]

Every job has its nuances. But if a job is underpowered, nobody is going to want to bother mastering that job to discover what those nuances are.

Weaker players love seeing power differentials in jobs because they can still get picked on the basis of their job, rather than having to rely on their personal skill to determine their value to the team. Eliminate those artificial differences and you're forced to earn your value on the basis of your personal skill as a player. It's a scary thought, but better for the community as a whole. Balance rdps across all jobs, and let the wheat rise above the chaff.

[Ransu]

There's a better solution, remove the bad

Little does FireMage know that it would be him who would be removed.

[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.

[Rilifane]

Every job has its nuances. But if a job is underpowered, nobody is going to want to bother mastering that job to discover what those nuances are.

Weaker players love seeing power differentials in jobs because they can still get picked on the basis of their job, rather than having to rely on their personal skill to determine their value to the team. Eliminate those artificial differences and you're forced to earn your value on the basis of your personal skill as a player. It's a scary thought, but better for the community as a whole. Balance rdps across all jobs, and let the wheat rise above the chaff.

Yes, I'd like to see that.
Let player skill determine how valuable they are to a party, not the class they chose. Besides, it's only fair to let people pick the class based on their gameplay preferences alone. If more people play a certain class or subrole then, what is even the problem? You have several happy players. If the BLM then goes MCH and is overall happier, that's a win. And if the BLM stays BLM because they just prefer the gameplay, that's also a win.
I don't understand why some people are so adamant about keeping the numbers of players for each class balanced when all that should matter is that a role is not underrepresented to the point of heavily increasing queue times for everyone else.

WHM has historically always been the most played healer even at its worst. BLM has been the least played caster the majority of the time. And that is fine. Better have 4k happy BLM players than 2k happy players and 4k players that only chose it because they feel like griefing the party if going SMN or even RDM in endgame content. So what if double phys ranged is now viable even on higher floors pre outgearing? Nobody is stealing someone's cake here, everyone is still free to enjoy a class picked based on gameplay preferences - moreso than before even.

[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."