Let's redefine "damage taxes"

[Aurora428]

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.

If a prange can be balanced with a melee then literally just do it without making up new roles.

That's literally all we need lol

The balance fix with BLM isn't to then ban it from playing with MCH and SAM, the point isn't more restrictions, it's less.

[Aikaal]

=_= There was really a whole page about Vercure. I simply pointed out that someone said Vercure didn't matter. Is it relevant for the group and is it raid utility? No. It's main niche is the have a cast that can be used during downtime to proc dualcast. The only real time I do use Vercure while I could hit the boss was where I had tower 2 in P3 and I didn't want to greed and launch my tower to Egypt and cause a wipe.

Its niche values are very little similar to Rekindle from SMN. Rekindle can be extremely good depending on the fight timing. Rekindle can be a 2400 potency oGCD and during the first Natural Alignment it is very potent and nice to the healer when used on a target with the DoT. Should it be considered support? No. Does it matters? It does have niches so yes. Deleting Vercure would cause distress and it is deifnitely more niches in fights with a ton of downtime aka a fight like P6S and P7S, it is useless. Is Rekindle useful on the last phase of P8S? There's a ton of damage but it's all AoE. It's great and all to hit 1 target but healers are just going to AoE heal. Is Everlasting Flight useful when it is used during a tank buster and only autos are used and the tank just Bolide it? Nah.

Regarding self-personals and casters.
- Black Mage have Manaward
- Summoner have Radiant Aegis
- Red Mage have Magick Barrier

Red Mage may not have any personal but they have a raid support but I'd consider all these abilities together and since every caster has that kind of ability, it shouldn't be taxed.

- Black Mage are pure firepower
- Summoner have Searing Light
- Red Mage have Embolden

Well, it makes sense Black Mage raw power is a bit stronger since they don't have a party buff. But overall damage should be roughly similar alike the melee role synergy each melee has.

But tools you can't use at will like Everlasting Flight, Rekindle or Vercure shouldn't be taxed. If people really insist on saying it does. I'll just make the argument that Umbral Soul should be taxed since it helps the black mage keep his stacks and build Xenoglossies during downtime (btw, much much better than 1 Dualcast) while Summoners don't have anything.

Really and this is really the only thing that can be said in term of DPS difference. The only support that matters that impacts damage is this one:

- Summoner have a raise they can swift once per minute or lose a lot of DPS to hardcast.
- Red Mage have raise on demand until they are out of mana.
- Black Mage has no raise.

This is the only problem and the only support that validates Black Mage to be doing more DPS than SMN & RDM. Right now, the difference is too high. I do acknowledge a 2% to 3% is a fair tax but it's too high right now. A way to remove that tax is to put it as a role action with a CD so all casters can use it but until SE makes this change, unfortunately, the tax will remain


Take Melee DPS for example
- Monk have Riddle of Earth & Mantra
- Reaper have Arcane Crest
- Ninja have Shapeshift
- Samurai have Third Eye (This increases DPS so the more you can abuse it, the better. It's really is just a DPS gain imho but it does build ressources during downtime like High Concept)
- Dragoon has nothing

I'm not taking Second Wind, Blood Bath & Feint into consideration because those are role action for Melee. Same went for Addle and same should be said regarding Troubadour, Tactician and Samba for Ranged Physical (Why these this not a role action?)

So when you look at melee DPS... why is Monk top melee DPS? They have only received buffs since 6.0 and they have really strong support for healers if you compared to other melees. Reapers do have Arcane Crest. It was nerfed. But not Monk's support? Dragoons have nothing so how are they getting compensated?

Also, I'm not maining melee DPS so let me know if I forgot anything. It's possible.

[Nutshell]

If a prange can be balanced with a melee then literally just do it without making up new roles.

That's literally all we need lol

The balance fix with BLM isn't to then ban it from playing with MCH and SAM, the point isn't more restrictions, it's less.

Well yeah of course they can just make everyone's damage the same and call it "balanced" but I personally like the idea of jobs that do more damage than others but at the cost of utility.
The paradoxical thing about my idea is that through those limitations you've mentioned we would actually see more party variety than we do now. All we have now is 2 melee, mrange, and prange for basically every party. With my idea each role could have choices in what kind of dps you'd want to play in each role. There could be parties of 3 pranged and 1 mranged and still get the party buff because those classes are from different roles.

[Aurora428]

Well yeah of course they can just make everyone's damage the same and call it "balanced" but I personally like the idea of jobs that do more damage than others but at the cost of utility.
The paradoxical thing about my idea is that through those limitations you've mentioned we would actually see more party variety than we do now. All we have now is 2 melee, mrange, and prange for basically every party. With my idea each role could have choices in what kind of dps you'd want to play in each role. There could be parties of 3 pranged and 1 mranged and still get the party buff because those classes are from different roles.

This wouldn't work without designing encounters for triple melee, which would entirely shift the paradigm for raid design.

A ranged can pretend to be a melee, but a melee can't pretend to be a ranged.

[Nutshell]

This wouldn't work without designing encounters for triple melee, which would entirely shift the paradigm for raid design.

A ranged can pretend to be a melee, but a melee can't pretend to be a ranged.

I made this suggestion on the premise that they will continue designing fights like they have for EW. Hitboxes so massive melee has the same uptime as ranged.
You are right tho for older content. Wouldn't be very fun to run old content synced with three melee dps.

I still think my original idea of removing MCH, SAM, and BLM and putting them into a fourth dps role is still a decent alternative to just making everything basically do the same damage and it wouldn't run into the 3 melee issue you bring up.

[Rithy255]

I think mainly the "caster" issue stems from melees you have to also consider just how much more popular summoner is then black mage currently, While Mobility and ease of use, raise, extra utility Makes a difference, Summoner/RDM should also do more then they do.

I more or less don't really think Black Mage is too high, just melees are, BLM actually suffers from mobility issues and can have a tough time compared to any other job in this game, I think the issue comes from more that melees are too high and casters/physranged need a general DPS boost, you will always take a melee on that "free" 4th slot.

BLM should be top damage (yes higher then sam/monk), Other casters and Physranged also need a buff, I just don't think it's a issue of "BLM too high" because it's more complicated of a balance issue then that.

[Aikaal]

This wouldn't work without designing encounters for triple melee, which would entirely shift the paradigm for raid design.

A ranged can pretend to be a melee, but a melee can't pretend to be a ranged.

You are right but here's the issue with that statement.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9_t7md58v0

I look at this week 1 Ninja clear and I really can't tell if he's a melee of ranged physical. He moves so much and has 75% of the arena to smack the boss. On this fight, you can at 100% have quad melee and keep full uptime for all of them.

Also, I do want to mention that Smummoner have a melee combo and Red Mage also have a 1 to 3 melee combo. (They are casters) It feels extremely biased that the dev team heavily favors melee playstyle.

[CKNovel]

This wouldn't work without designing encounters for triple melee, which would entirely shift the paradigm for raid design.

A ranged can pretend to be a melee, but a melee can't pretend to be a ranged.

Due to current design, you could bring 4 melees, 2 of them would have to adapt for the very few ranged mechanics such as P5S puddles or the quite rare spread here and there.
In content like P7S you would barely see any thing change, melee uptime is given.

On the contrary even, in P7S and P8SP2 it's impossible for a range to pretend to be a ranged.
Due to healing, mitigation and raidbuff, it is forced to play like a melee in all mechanics except one or two.

[Aurora428]

You are right but here's the issue with that statement.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9_t7md58v0

I look at this week 1 Ninja clear and I really can't tell if he's a melee of ranged physical. He moves so much and has 75% of the arena to smack the boss. On this fight, you can at 100% have quad melee and keep full uptime for all of them.

Also, I do want to mention that Smummoner have a melee combo and Red Mage also have a 1 to 3 melee combo. (They are casters) It feels extremely biased that the dev team heavily favors melee playstyle.

I'm not saying melee don't have leeway or that triple melee wouldnt work this tier (NIN in particular has a lot of leeway with mudra)

But even last tier there were mechanics like Phoenix spread, Pinax Bio, far towers in Act One on P4S P2. There were plenty of near-full uptime fights that still had limited places for the tanks and melee to be. Even on this tier we would be forcing a tank to run out for regular octaflares, having a melee go far with first wind debuff in Agdistis, and having a melee go to far towers in Carbuncle

I don't think melee should be doing meaningfully more damage, but I think "at most two melee" is core to their raid design, and they aren't going to allow triple roles.

I don't mind the concept of the role bonus. It only was a horrible addition because it was used as a crutch to avoid actually balancing the DPS with each other.

[Dyvid]

You are right but here's the issue with that statement.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9_t7md58v0

I look at this week 1 Ninja clear and I really can't tell if he's a melee of ranged physical. He moves so much and has 75% of the arena to smack the boss. On this fight, you can at 100% have quad melee and keep full uptime for all of them.

Also, I do want to mention that Smummoner have a melee combo and Red Mage also have a 1 to 3 melee combo. (They are casters) It feels extremely biased that the dev team heavily favors melee playstyle.

This is one of the huge problems with the battle design that Endwalker added, Huge Bosses who's hit box is half the arena. The only way for "range tax" to works is if melee have to move out of the hit pocket.