Should most DPS be selfish DPS?

[Mithron]

I'm not even talking about Alexander, I was running with a static so there was no issue there. I'm referring to just trying to do mount farms, groups at the time, at least on my server, would put up PF explicitly excluding monk and machinist, and more than once, I would join a group that didn't have that restriction only to be kicked from the party and the PF relisted without monks allowed.

As a PLD main, I'm aware and dealt with the same. The community's perception of a job often matters more than the job's actual performance, and I believe a good way to solve that problem (and the problems from two minute burst meta) is make more jobs selfish DPS and balance around that instead.

Also healing more comfy doesn't ultimately matter if you still have to throw out the same number of heals. Not until Mantra increases healing received to the point that it will allow healers to throw up more DPS skills will it actually be a good utility skill. For now, it's just flavor.

Good, that's exactly all it should be. Just flavor. All mandatory mitigation and utility should come from tanks and healers only, or DPS role actions. Job specific actions should never be mandatory from DPS for defensive or healing purposes.

[Shurrikhan]

What if the only raid DPS buffing jobs were DRG, NIN, BRD, DNC SMN, and RDM? Would that make the game more balanced and enable devs to come up with less homogenization and end the two minute burst meta or make it worse?.

You kind of have to go all in or not at all. External (raidwide or on-party-member) buffs compel shared timings on other buffs and/or their exploiters (direct damage CDs, etc). If any remain, you're stuck with at least job dependencies.

Personally, I don't care that much either way. The two-minute metas fixate play, sure, but they're hardly the unique reason for anything we've lost outside it. So long as there are interesting mini-burst cycles between the two-minutes and the sustain itself (such as via optimal drift in setting up for those bursts or mini-bursts, etc.) is decently entertaining, that's about all that remains relevant to me in that area.

Now, encounter design itself, on the other hand...

[ty_taurus]

The biggest concern about making most DPS entirely selfish is it makes balance far more cutthroat. If both MNK and DRG offer only DPS, and MNK deals more damage than DRG, then DRG can become invalidated.

Melee, ranged, and caster role buffs would still exist, so there would at least be incentive to bring one of each, but without nuance to further define each DPS, you'd get a dominant trio situation very easily. Difficulty tax can be a factor that creates some nuance, such as BLM dealing more because its harder to play correctly, but FFXIV taxes jobs too greatly on the bases of range, mobility, and difficulty. If properly balanced, the idea is the average BLM would perform on a similar level to RDM, for example, but a skilled BLM will edge RDM out.

That said, something that could be a better source of balance would be what additional aspects of valuable utility a DPS provides. Between BLM and RDM, BLM can offer a higher damage output, but RDM can offer raise utility, which has notable value. It essentially boils down to do you want more room for error meeting the DPS check, or more room for error in recovering from the mechanics before the DPS check. This creates a more meaningful choice between DPS in theory, but FFXIV lacks options to give utility to jobs. Besides giving a DPS a raise, what else can you offer to a DPS that actually holds weight?

What Currently Works
- Raise, as mentioned above.
- Combat sprint a la Expedient, however, an important question to ask is how common would we want a combat sprint to be, and does that take away from SCH's niche as a healer?
- Mitigation beyond existing role actions and Samba/Tactician/Troubadour. Mitigation has become a standard, high-value tool for raids, and having more sources like with Magic Barrier could help give a DPS more value.

What Currently Deosn't Work
- Sustain/healing and increased healing received buffs. As nice as it is, tools like Curing Waltz and Rekindle are too inconsequential to hold weight. They may be nice, but they don't generally heal enough to really make the healer's job noticeably easier. As a DNC, I don't think my team even knows when I use Curing Waltz, or if I do at all. Also, healers are over-capable of handling healing requirements. There are practical applications of these tools, but they aren't impactful enough to considering them weight in favor of those DPS over a more offensive alternative.
- Esuna effects. The dev team does not use cleansable debuffs more than like 3 times an expansion. Were they to expand on debuffs so that they were consistently applied in most fights, either as a mechanic that you can either remove or endure, or as a punishment for a failed mechanic, something like Warden's Paean could actually be useful. Personally, I think it would be great if Warden's became AoE on a longer cooldown, and bosses more regularly could do things like paralyze the entire party with damage for failed mechanics, so BRD could offer more security for those challenges.
- MP regens. These have been killed off from the physical ranged role, but given insignificant MP management has become as an actually important resource, it wouldn't stay feeling useful anymore anyway.

What Currently Doesn't Exist
- Dispel effects. Only BLU has access to buff removal, but introducing bosses that give themselves vulnerability down buffs or damage dealt up buffs that perhaps healers need to remove with a Dispel action could also allow DPS to do this off the GCD potentially.

[dspguy]

Part of the problem we have with all jobs, not just DPS - is that players theorycraft them down to the point where they map out all GCDs/OCDs for many minutes of a raid - and they find which jobs work best together and suddenly those magic 8 jobs are meta and the rest are "crap." The way the game is designed, synergy matters. When SE noticed that some jobs' "burst window" didn't line up with other jobs' burst window... the solution was to just homogenize the jobs so nearly all of them fit into a certain mold.

[Rithy255]

What if the only raid DPS buffing jobs were DRG, NIN, BRD, DNC SMN, and RDM? Would that make the game more balanced and enable devs to come up with less homogenization and end the two minute burst meta or make it worse?

The reason I include SMN is so that every role has at least 2 raid DPS buffers to choose from.

Depends
If raid buffs carry on being 2 minutes then yes, If they don't then no.

The Raid buff issue is theirs no actual meaningful difference between timings of raid buffs, Melees are a good example how lazy their "utility" is it feels pretty bland when every raid buff plays into the same burst window.

They seriously need to revert raid buffs back to what it was in SHB, Let group effort and Optimization be a thing, it's fine that not every group can make perfect use of raid buffs in my opinion. Having this standardise 2 raid buff minute meta effects Job balancing look at Paladin, It needs a rework because it just doesn't properly function (damage wise) with current raid buffs, Look at jobs which got changed before EW, they made it so standard that every job plays into 2 minutes it's not fun.

Reverting back to something like SHB where raid buffs were things that could actually be optimized and were interesting, right now they're so boring that they limit job design with sustained jobs. It becomes a issue of limiting game design for easier balance, which people might like "easier balance" but I personally think limiting it too much will make everything too bland.

[Reimmi]

Honestly wish we'd drop the raid buff meta entirely for more complex cooldown management for jobs on a personal level. Think reapers enshroud but expanded on more (pooling gauge for double/triple enshroud)
Dancer bard and astrologian should still have buffs just because its their identity and all, but maybe instead of just damage increases they become like wildfire on mch so stacking buffs for cooldowns isn't the meta anymore. cause my god is it boring to have everything on the same 2 minute cycle

[Kansene]

Honestly wish we'd drop the raid buff meta entirely for more complex cooldown management for jobs on a personal level. Think reapers enshroud but expanded on more (pooling gauge for double/triple enshroud)
Dancer bard and astrologian should still have buffs just because its their identity and all, but maybe instead of just damage increases they become like wildfire on mch so stacking buffs for cooldowns isn't the meta anymore. cause my god is it boring to have everything on the same 2 minute cycle

While I don't do content where "meta" really matters, I do agree that it's a bad feeling to drift burst in today's rotations, or have someone else on the team do it. I'd rather be responsible for my personal dps than knowing if I mess up I'm literally nerfing everyone else in the party.

[Shurrikhan]

I'd rather be responsible for my personal dps than knowing if I mess up I'm literally nerfing everyone else in the party.

So long as there are any buffers, though, that will remain the case. If you desync even as a SAM, your buffers lose rDPS. If the buffers desync, all exploiting (including other buffers) lose pDPS. In either case, the party is losing damage efficiency from the multipliers and multiplicands being offset from each other, reducing the product.

That's not quite to say that the only viable path therefore is to remove all buffs. It's just one of those areas where it's very hard to determine a "sweet spot" in balance between "synergy/constraints" and "freedom/party-irrelevance," given that perceptions of their effects will vary so wildly with situation and the given individual's mood and more general preferences.