What even is the purpose of all those non melee/blm jobs?

[Valence]

I was kinda hoping for a link. I wasnt asking to be snarky and am happy to be proven wrong. I was under the impression the larger discrepancy between certain jobs was on launch and has since been patched.

I'm sorry, I thought I was being baited as it's often the case with whenever that website is mentioned. I guess my problem is that it's never been adjusted or patched for as long as I can remember. The variance between taxed jobs and the rest has always been hovering between 5-7 and 15% as long as I can remember. This is the crux of the matter for me, it's about the design mentality and message it sends to players. I don't mind about balance occasional issues that arise like even that recent WAR/PLD fiasco that they emergency buffed currently. That's part of every game design and every company isn't a perfect computing entity that can prevent that kind of discrepancy to happen. As long as they eventually re-adjust and fix it, it's fine really. We're all human.

But here we are talking about a systemic design that's been disingenuously there since the dawn of time and that's what honestly makes me angry. As a ranged player, I've felt increasingly more offended that the message i'm being thrown at the face is that I play a second rate job that have lost all purpose in a party but to fill the 1% party damage. Maybe it's less of an issue at lower play, but I play in high level static groups which doesn't alleviate the issue. What my job is capable of is actually part of the game mechanics, whether people like it or not, and it used to do something.

Since Shadowbringers, it has not.

[Valence]

Because the game needs jobs with different skill ceilings and higher ceilings should equal greater performance, if you dont do that then you either end up in a situation where all jobs are too complex for a casual/mid audience, or complex jobs become undesirable.

Imagine if every jobs was as complex as BLM or NIN, they'd make the difficulty too hard.

If all jobs were equal in performance, then why even bother playing BLM? How would pro groups who are going for world firsts feel about a BLM in their group? Might as well have a group full of Dancers and Summoners who can do the same damage with less chance of mistakes on rotations, without the liability of them getting one shotted by a mechanic that other DPS could eat.

I do not agree with that perspective and I do think that design and balance should strive to deconstruct jobs by layers, putting every job on a somewhat equal basis where the learning curve is similar, the accessibility is similar, and their casual performance is similar. And the same way, have an intermediate state (extremes and savage) that is the core bulk of the job rotation that should be comparable. Then if you feel adventurous you can consider an advanced level of play that will only concern 0.1% of the playerbase anyway (like optimal drift monk or transpose lines black mage) for those who choose to push it further, with the correct diminishing grading gains at every step.

With that in mind you get the best of all worlds where you can not only continue applying different job identities but also allow room for every type of player in every job provided they like it and want to play at the rate of their capacities. But hey, what do I know, I'm that weird job commie that never understood the logic behind job hierarchies.

As for BRD, come on? Really? Bard is the exact opposite of a selfish DPS, while their personal DPS might be in the "have nots" their whole thing is making the rest of the group stronger. That balance is kind of fundamental to BRD.

What matters is the rDPS metrics and its best purpose is to gauge what every job brings to a fight. While BRD like DNC has high raid buffs, it doesn't even start to come close making up for what it loses in personal damage. The end output puts it in the "have nots" group. If people are talking about those two groups, it's because that's what they're pulling out of rdps data and charts, which is the only thing that matters when it comes to damage output balance (what you deal personally, and what you bring to the group in the form of buffs).

Those two groups have been there for several expansions already. They just added SMN to it with the recent rework because it lost most of its casting times.

[Valence]

It may no longer be the case that melee jobs have a harder time than ranged jobs staying safe while keeping uptime, and that's probably exactly why every ranged DPS except dancer got significant buffs yesterday.

Signifi-... I'm sorry what?

Not a single one except MCH got a buff actually reaching a punny 2%. Those buffs are just smoke and mirrors to make the playerbase shut up, but they certainly won't even poke at the current paradigm by far. We've gone down from 9-10% to 7-8%, good grief, job balance saved. Whew.

[Valence]

So all of the Ex battles in the game are like this? You're focusing on the current tier, the game is quite a bit bigger than the current tier. Also, you're considering the content as a top 3% player at endgame. A vast proportion of the playerbase do find content challenging on their first run through and many need easier jobs to get through it - so the jobs need to be balanced with that in mind..

I think you're overvaluing the actual impact of job difficulty on the casual playerbase. I see BLM casuals doing fine and respectably all the time, not worse than DNC or whatever you want to consider easier. In both case they do a lot of mistakes, improper rotations, then so what? That's casual content, they're chill and having fun at the game, good on them.

I think the conflation lies more in that some jobs are played significantly less at casual level (I do indeed see less BLMs/MNKs etc) not because of difficulty, but because of job mechanical obscurity, which tackles less the actual execution difficulty and a lot more the job accessibility, intuitiveness. And also possibly some jobs/gameplays that are just a lot less popular really.

[Valence]

R*nged dps won't be happy until their easy role is better than casters and melees again like in ARR, HW, SB.

Joke's on you, they have never been. It was the dragoon that was completely broken. Remove the DRG from those parties (with that 10% then 5% piercing debuff) and you'll magically find that sweet ranged tax we have always had.

The only reason people are only starting to make a fuss about it now is because there has been less and less things hiding it for people to see. No more manasong, no more unique party mitigation, no more piercing debuff, in exchange for a 1% party bonus to make it somewhat worthwhile to continue taking.

Even more amusing considering that MCH was considered as one of the "hardest" jobs of HW by far in popular opinions, yet still had that tax lol. HW balance was a total mess and people still don't see it.

[Valence]

And yet, this is all amount to tilting at windmills because:
1.) It is good that some jobs can pop off, that means there is atleast some nugget of nuance in the game and its gameplay
2.) And you will never eliminate the natural variance that changes each balance patch and then once again each raid tier.

1) Is that what job nuance is to you? The damage differences shown by your parser?
2) Natural variance in balance has nothing to do with an institutionalized damage gap. Dont go conflate occasional balance oopsies like the latest WAR/PLD being too low with something that has lasted for ages to such a degree, and reinforced into SHB.

[Valence]

Phys ranged SHOULD be at the bottom rungs of damage, they're the easiest DPS role

Cool bro, show me your logs with Rphys then since they're that easy to play. I'm waiting.

What a troll.

[Valence]

No no, do not bring that difficulty stuff into this thread too.
It is about consistency, not difficulty. They have some connection to each other but are not directly causal.
I think Bard is harder to play at full throttle than Dragoon, but you still regulate both based on their damage consistency, not their difficulty.
Consistency of damage is decided by encounter design.

Because the charts somehow tend to prove your point? Last I checked at lower percentiles, not much seems to change. I'm not so sure about that consistency vs difficulty idea tbh.

[Valence]

And physical ranged don't have an equivalent, so technically, there is a bit more complexity in that regard.

Yes ironically enough positionals is what repels me to no end of playing melees, and not necessarily because I'm bad at them, but I just hate them as a personal taste. Even though we have less of them this expansion, but they still mess up with my concentration and focus.

On the other hand one could argue that playing around procs introduces a superior difficulty than just following your static, basic melee combo. Which is why MCH is totally a snoozefest for me, even though its accessibility is probably higher than dancer for a lot of newcomers to the job.

So I mean, for some people one is going to be a blocker and not the other one. We all have different affinities and I'm quite happy with that fact tbh, else everybody would play the same jobs.

Edit: now I mean, if they could add something specific to rphys just to shut down the whole argument, I would certainly not complain. Without anything, if anything they should have the most complex rotations ever, since they don't have to worry about positionals or cast time. I never liked the gauss barrel and minuet cast times, but I swear, if that's what it takes to equalize the roles and make that argument disappear for good, I'll take it, even if it turns rphys into casters once more.

[Mikey_R]

Yes ironically enough positionals is what repels me to no end of playing melees, and not necessarily because I'm bad at them, but I just hate them as a personal taste. Even though we have less of them this expansion, but they still mess up with my concentration and focus.

On the other hand one could argue that playing around procs introduces a superior difficulty than just following your static, basic melee combo. Which is why MCH is totally a snoozefest for me, even though its accessibility is probably higher than dancer for a lot of newcomers to the job.

And I am the complete opposite, I prefer the more rigid rotations of melee DPS and it is probably why I prefer MCH over Bard/Dancer for the physical ranged. I definitely know one of the reasons I wasn't a fan of playing Dancer was the complete RNG aspect that seems to be tied to everything (though I do prefer EW over ShB). I am even one of those weird people that liked Monk when it had positionals on all of it's GCDs.

However, this just shows that different people like different things in regards to how a job plays and shows that the "complexity" argument is effectively meaningless. One job is going to be complex for one person, but easy for another, just because it aligns with what they like more. This then begs the question, should a job's DPS be tied to a player's preferences. The obvious answer should be no, which then leads to, every job should do, roughly, the same amount of DPS, irregardless of role. It doesn't matter how complex the job is perceived to be, doesn't matter of it's ranged or melee or any other factors, they should do the same damage.

But, noone would play the more complex jobs, they would just play the easier ones, the naysayers would say, but the answer to that is simple. Different people like playing different things. Not everyone is looking for the easiest way to deal damage. I have already alluded to the fact I liked Monk when it had positionals on everything. I didn't really care what it's DPS was, as I just enjoyed playing the job and that is what is going to decide who plays what, how much they like the job and how it plays.

You can draw a similar parallel to fighting games. Why do people play high execution characters? Yes, they offer more of an advantage when played right (which is the only bit not relevant here) but why should they go through the effort to learn it when there are easier characters to pick up and play. The answer is because they want to learn. This is what they find fun. The same would be true here, people will play what they find fun.