Easiest class rankings?

[Tsumdere]

I feel like the only somewhat obective thing you can look at is the spread between lowest performing players to highest performing players on the balance section of the site that shall not be named. The higher the spread, the more difficult to achieve high perfomance objectively. Its not a fully perfect metric but it generally goes along with community perception (BLM having the highest spread by far for example and jobs like SMN and MCH having the lowest).

It's not objective and you can't glean much information in the way of difficulty from variance. There are other factors that play into why a job has a high/low variance.

Variance can be altered by number of parses (DNC has triple the parses of MCH), influence of crits on the job, flat out mathematical damage potential capping the ceiling, job responsibility (did you know RDM has a higher variance than all melee but DRG, sometimes the second highest variance behind BLM depending on the fight), and the fight itself.

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If we are to take damage variance as the actual difficulty of classes (based on savage), it would be:

BLM > BRD > DRG > RDM > DNC > RPR > MNK > NIN > SMN > SAM > MCH

And for fun so you can see the affects of how it can change drastically per encounter:

DSR: DRG > BLM > MNK > SMN > SAM > DNC > RPR > BRD > MCH > RDM > NIN
Criterion: MCH > SMN > SAM > DRG > BLM > RPR > NIN > DNC > MNK > RDM > BRD
TEA: BLM > RDM > NIN > DRG > SAM > DNC > MCH > MNK > SMN > RPR > BRD

It's kind of all over the place with only two consistent factors (DRG/BLM in top 4). If we were to take the data at face value - SMN is harder than SAM, DNC is harder than MNK, NIN is a melee for brainlets, and DRG shitstomps over the other melees in difficulty.

[ChaozK]

It's not objective and you can't glean much information in the way of difficulty from variance. There are other factors that play into why a job has a high/low variance.

Variance can be altered by number of parses (DNC has triple the parses of MCH), influence of crits on the job, flat out mathematical damage potential capping the ceiling, job responsibility (did you know RDM has a higher variance than all melee but DRG, sometimes the second highest variance behind BLM depending on the fight), and the fight itself.

-

If we are to take damage variance as the actual difficulty of classes (based on savage), it would be:

BLM > BRD > DRG > RDM > DNC > RPR > MNK > NIN > SMN > SAM > MCH

And for fun so you can see the affects of how it can change drastically per encounter:

DSR: DRG > BLM > MNK > SMN > SAM > DNC > RPR > BRD > MCH > RDM > NIN
Criterion: MCH > SMN > SAM > DRG > BLM > RPR > NIN > DNC > MNK > RDM > BRD
TEA: BLM > RDM > NIN > DRG > SAM > DNC > MCH > MNK > SMN > RPR > BRD

It's kind of all over the place with only two consistent factors (DRG/BLM in top 4). If we were to take the data at face value - SMN is harder than SAM, DNC is harder than MNK, NIN is a melee for brainlets, and DRG shitstomps over the other melees in difficulty.

All of those outcomes make perfect sense.
If there is one thing where people lose most of their dmg, even in the current tier, its still good old uptime. RDM with its castbars is still able to lose more uptime than most jobs, thats why in the current tier it can be a bit harder to play optimally.
DRG has been consistently the second to third highest variance behind BLM, which may come as shocker to some people due to how simplistic it is, yet it has been known among the more hard core crowd to be difficult to play optimally just due to its rigidity and strictness.

And naturally the difficulty of optimizing jobs would shift due to encounter design.

[Equitable_Remedy]

I feel like the only somewhat obective thing you can look at is the spread between lowest performing players to highest performing players on the balance section of the site that shall not be named. The higher the spread, the more difficult to achieve high perfomance objectively. Its not a fully perfect metric but it generally goes along with community perception (BLM having the highest spread by far for example and jobs like SMN and MCH having the lowest).

This is basically correct as a metric.

[Tsumdere]

All of those outcomes make perfect sense.
If there is one thing where people lose most of their dmg, even in the current tier, its still good old uptime. RDM with its castbars is still able to lose more uptime than most jobs, thats why in the current tier it can be a bit harder to play optimally.
DRG has been consistently the second to third highest variance behind BLM, which may come as shocker to some people due to how simplistic it is, yet it has been known among the more hard core crowd to be difficult to play optimally just due to its rigidity and strictness.

Yeah, you kinda just agreed with me that variance is not a good metric and doesn't support the community perception.

DRG is simple and static, but punishing in fights and if you mess up rotation. This applies 100% to MCH but the variance is extremely low. This change in variance is because most of MCH's big hits are auto-crits. If Wildfire could crit and Reassemble didn't exist, you would see MCH's variance widen drastically. But this would not change anything about the rotation or difficulty of the class.
This can be reversed where you could add more auto-crits to DRG and BLM and their variance would go down.

I absolutely think RDM is one of the hardest classes because of uptime. But it also has increased variance from rezzing or (god forbid) emergency heal for the clear. RDMs are very affected by bad runs where they drag people across the finish line. This is not indicative of their rotational/optimization difficulty.

And naturally the difficulty of optimizing jobs would shift due to encounter design.

Yes. Difficulty is subjective and different per encounter. That's why variance is a flawed metric and cannot be used as a definitive way to rank classes.

You'll notice how much DRG spikes in DSR. It's because it has two target phases. This is not changing the difficulty of the class, but rather adding another target to crit on and DRG are good at cleaving. You can see this yourself by seeing when the variance spikes in the fight - Eyes (as DRG is only class that can cleave both) and Double Dragons.
SMN spikes because SMN is extremely good at non-gauge burst and the bosses jump a lot. Crits mean a lot in those burst windows.

You'll be very hard-pressed to find people who believe optimizing SMN in DSR is harder than RPR/BRD/MCH/RDM (all notoriously nasty to opti in that fight).

[Lyth]

The higher the spread, the more difficult to achieve high performance objectively. Its not a fully perfect metric but it generally goes along with community perception (BLM having the highest spread by far for example and jobs like SMN and MCH having the lowest).

This is a fantastic little observation and I'm surprised that it doesn't come up in discussions more often.

The nice thing about presenting data in a box plot format is that you can visually see what the interquartile ratio is (75th - 25th, or the edges of the box). It's similar to the variance but is less influenced by swings in outlier data. I looked at the jobs during Asphodelos and saw that the IQR of most jobs was very similar within their respective categories, with BLM being the only really significant exception. It's not enough on its own, though, as you also have to take the skewness of the population into account as well. BLM also has a good going positive skew, which suggests that the job's playerbase probably has quite a few misconceptions about how to optimize it. You see this on PLD as well, and I sometimes wonder if that accounts for those players who stand around afk posing dramatically with Passage of Arms while there's a targetable boss on the field. It doesn't necessarily mean that the job is 'difficult', once you're in the know.

Either way, it's difficult to reach an objective conclusion on such a subjective topic, especially one in which players are likely to misrepresent their own experiences in order to barter for personal gain.

[ChaozK]

DRG is simple and static, but punishing in fights and if you mess up rotation. This applies 100% to MCH but the variance is extremely low.

Funny you mention MCH and DRG as these happen to be my two main jobs. I can 100% tell you that there are worlds between MCH and DRG in terms of how bad play affects these two jobs dps. Most of the stuff that makes MCH very intricate has comparatively minor impact on their overall dps. This is what makes it more forgiving.

[Jirah]

People need to think about difficulty as “how hard is it for a brand new person to play optimal with and how long will it take”

MNK for me is the hardest while MCH can be mastered in like 2min flat less time than DNC and maybe on Par with SMN but least SMN is More optional in its favors idk

[Darkstride]

Why do people consider NIN so hard? I've always found it to be the easiest melee personally, it's my go-to when I want to play melee or learn new fights on. I can execute and optimize it far easier than any of the other 4 melee by a significant margin. Obviously difficulty is subjective but NIN is just single weaving constantly and minimal positionals, what are people finding difficult? I know SAM on a base level feels easier, but I find optimizing it much more difficult than NIN personally.

I don't find Ninja all that difficult either. In contrast, Monk never feels natural to me. It seems silly but having Twin Snakes and Demolish on short timers that don't line up really throws off the rhythm of everything else for me. I can play it fine sub-optimally, but then it feels bad knowing I'm not getting the most out of it.

[seolhyun]

hardest to easiest
melee: drg > nin > sam > mnk=rpr
caster: blm > rdm > smn
range: dnc > brd > mch

[Shiroe]

for me personally, find the timing of Drg multiple buffs with its burst difficult to optimise, while mnk was harder learn, but once you under it's flow, it feels more fluid than Drg
on low end content, Smn is braindead (omg especially pre lv 90 content), but o
lv 90 high end content, don't see it easier to optimise than some other classes, but easier thsn most

... if we only compare savage / ultimate, the difficulty for some classes change compare to others, smn & sam have hardcasts they need to aline with static moments (no movement) or during burst windows.., it depends on the fight, while mnk & drg feel more flexible (but their rotas are more complex)

..
doesn't feel that straightforward to say which is the easiest / hardest