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

[Shurrikhan]

I can hop on BLM and simply obliterate any amount of damage I do on RDM. I can drop the dot, interrupt six casts, have 70% leylines usage and maybe even drop AF/UI and still deal more damage than a 99th percentile RDM parse. What, the skills are transferrable between different casters? No worries. I can do the same on SAM too. Why you ask? Because those jobs are the "higher" caste.

You seem to be conflating nDPS and rDPS here.

No mediocre BLM parse is going to outperform a 99th percentile RDM parse for rDPS. BLM is typically the lowest or near-lowest performing of the upper tier in rDPS, and that rDPS already overestimates BLM's contribution towards clear times as a burstier job of equal rDPS will always grant more rDPS to raidbuff-granting jobs than a more sustained one. The only buff not penalized, point for point, for being put on a less bursty job like BLM is Dance Partner, and even it often ought to be shuffled to another player during bursts before returning to the BLM over lulls.

There is presently too large a gap between SMN, RDM, BRD, DNC, and MCH and the rest. But, it is absolutely worth considering the ease by which damage is achieved, not just job's maximal performance. Else, as soon as something like MCH has the same maximum damage as a BLM despite having next to no vulnerabilities, anyone who would prefer not to play one among the most accessible jobs gets called out for "griefing" their party with "ego picks".

That's also a charge that trickles down much deeper and more vehemently than simply playing a job that underperforms almost only at the highest levels or in dummy tests -- which is the contrast Algernon was drawing attention to -- for practical (still get as much out of it, especially while shot-calling) or personal reasons ("I just like its theme/feel").

[Lyth]

...

Who decides which jobs have a 'lower skill ceiling', though? You?

Historically, the jobs which have done the most damage haven't done so because they were technically challenging by any stretch of the imagination. They've done so because they've been arbitrarily given that advantage over everyone else. At which point everyone switches over to that job and claims that it's the most challenging. But they'll drop it like flies once it falls out of favour.

rDPS balance should never be skewed based off of arbitrary, player-based claims of job difficulty. Ever. They will always, always argue this point in favor of whatever lets them do them do more damage on their comfort job for less effort. If you're a good player, you don't need that sort of job-based advantage over everyone else. Your personal skill will be all the unfair advantage that you need.

[Raikai]

I am starting to get seriously depressed at playing a role/jobs that is underperforming just because somebody decided that they should be balanced on their (subjective) "complexity to play", or is the idea to split balance between "noob jobs" and "serious jobs" really a thing?

It doesn't feel good at all that my role is still picked in savage parties just because it's filling a party bonus 1%.

Why do we get a group of second rate jobs that bring literally nothing worth of value that the group of objectively better jobs don't bring?

Tanks and healers are all always kept tight between each other, and when it's not the case, it gets adjusted, so what's the big deal with DPS jobs?

The recent buffs didn't change anything worth of note to shake up the current state of things.

This is seriously burning my enjoyment of the game and I'm sure I'm not the only one dismayed by all of this.

I think there must be a difference. BLM should defnitely net more dps than a SMN for example, because the first you need to give its simple rotation your undivided attention, whereas the latter you can just breeze through nearly mindless.

But bear with me, while I think it should be like that... I defnitely don't think the dps disparity should be as severe as it is nowadays. It probably could be close to the disparity between the tanks or the healers.

Ideally, a design fever dream, every job should have nearly equal dps at skill floors, but I think these dps differences (as minimal as they are due) should appear at the skill ceiling and very optimized gameplay. And on that note, I think every job should have some sort of "complex rooftop" to aim for once they master the regular gameplay. For example, like BLM does with the Transpose Lines, which is something that requires a lot of practice but can add a marginal dps edge if you master it.

[AlgernonBlackwood]

Ideally, a design fever dream, every job should have nearly equal dps at skill floors, but I think these dps differences (as minimal as they are due) should appear at the skill ceiling and very optimized gameplay.

That's my more or less my position as well.

Jobs with more room for niche optimization and more opportunities to make mistakes should have this variance factored in similarly to jobs with greater variance due to RNG.

Ultimately, all I'm saying is that a job like BLM shouldn't have to maintain perfect uptime, use all triple/swifts on cooldown for dps instead of mobility, force the entire party to change their strategy in order to minimize the amount they need to move, install a mp tick counter, and run the wackiest transpose lines to deal the same damage as the significantly easier to optimize SMN.

I'm definitely not saying that the current gap between BLM and SMN/RDM is healthy for the game or that it is somehow proportional to the amount of effort it takes to play BLM at a competent, but non-optimized, level. I would have zero issue with the gap between ranged, blm, and melee being reduced to one that's comparable to the current gaps within the other roles.

[Quor]

Historically, the jobs which have done the most damage haven't done so because they were technically challenging by any stretch of the imagination.

Patently false. MCH in SB, SCH in 2.0-4.0, SMN in 2.0-4.0, BLM for much of the game's life span and SAM up until 6.1 all required a higher skill threshold to be maintained in order to obtain optimal performance. Or in other words, they were more technically challenging to play at their best, but successful play was rewarded with better damage than other jobs. SCH's dominance as a "green dps" is a huge part of why healer kits from 5.0 onward have the same bog-standard baseline approach of spammable nuke, spammable aoe, DoT and 1-2 unique damage options. BLM's technical difficulty has never been so much about it's rather simple rotation, but rather in maintaining said rotation when faced with fights that are constantly forcing movement for survival. SAM used to split the difference between the moment-to-moment gameplay that most melee dps had and the longer-term plan-based approach you tended to utilize with BLM and SMN. MCH in HW and SB had all kinds of plates to juggle, between Wildfire and ammo management. Top-end MCH's in SB could put out incredibly high damage but the rotation was so demanding that few people had the patience or motivation to master it, especially when you factored in how the MCH would often still be expected to deal with ranged dps mechanics in a fight.

So yes, this game absolutely has a history of technically demanding jobs being higher - and often highest, even if just within their relative role - damage. The common thread among all these jobs is that said high damage is an option, not a requirement. Each job is perfectly functional even when not played optimally, but each job also had great room for skill expression through a variety of methods.

[kajv95]

One thing that bothers me with the damage disparity is that there is nothing in the game telling you that this is a thing. Without third-party tools, we may as well just be guessing and basing things off of clear times alone, and yet... so many people in this thread consider it to be this conscious choice. There are probably plenty of people out there who will try raiding for the first time and get shoo'd away for the choices they made like a hundred hours earlier. It's not like there's a pop-up at the start that tells you "Hi, you're about to choose Arcanist! Please be advised that Arcanist is a suboptimal choice, and you will be doing less damage than the Thaumaturge by the end of the game!"

The way the devs and the playerbase are just accepting that this is a status quo that needs to be maintained is absurd, reprehensible and honestly just a little bit funny to have been watching for the past few years.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: Either fix the damage discrepancy or let other jobs bring more to the table. RDM/SMN Raises do not count unless weakness debuff is taken off or the sentence is lightened for it.
I know the dev team probably won't be reading this especially not 24 pages in, but...

Devs, you cannot continue simply ignoring the fundamental issues in this facet of the game. There are too many players that simply feel like third-class citizens. These players have leveled jobs they do not actively want to play simply so that they can play the content you put out, rather than playing it in the way they want. It's wild to me that I joined an FC the other day and immediately bonded over the hilariously pitiful state of the rphys dps. You are a team that are actively developing content and adjusting things for your customers that pay to play the game they love monthly. Perhaps now is the time to pause that next 26 dollar mogstation mount you're working on and focus your efforts on rebalancing the game as a whole. Perhaps not for Endwalker, but atleast to make the next expansion launch with a rework that gives every player some sort of reward for playing the job they personally *want* to play. Not just your special babies.

also I don't go on mogstation except to resub so I actually dont remember the abhorrent pricing so take the number 26 with a grain of salt ok

[Dogempire]

Snip.

And sadly the amount of challenging jobs goes down every time they decide to "rework" something, and the people who play these newly reworked jobs get punished with inferior damage to untouched jobs.

Regardless of people's stance on higher difficulty jobs yielding more dps, I think anyone who's been around since ARR/HW/SB can agree that jobs have gotten much easier to play across the board across all roles.

[Kabooa]

One thing that bothers me with the damage disparity is that there is nothing in the game telling you that this is a thing. Without third-party tools, we may as well just be guessing and basing things off of clear times alone, and yet... so many people in this thread consider it to be this conscious choice. There are probably plenty of people out there who will try raiding for the first time and get shoo'd away for the choices they made like a hundred hours earlier. It's not like there's a pop-up at the start that tells you "Hi, you're about to choose Arcanist! Please be advised that Arcanist is a suboptimal choice, and you will be doing less damage than the Thaumaturge by the end of the game!"

Summoner and Red Mage almost always outnumber Black Mages at end-game, despite the damage difference. Summoners make up the Lion's share of casters, and it's rare to have a Black Mage without also having Summoner or Red Mage at the same time.

Over the game's history, you're also much more likely to see Black Mage be locked out over Red Mage or Summoner.

Black Mage dominance is generally only in speedkill scenarios, and even then, the more likely case is that Black Mage replaces a melee while Sum/Rdm takes the 'caster' slot. The current case, where Black Mage takes the solo caster slot, is not the norm as we go back through the game's history.

Now imagine what happens if Summoner and Red Mage bring even more to the table.

[kajv95]

Summoner and Red Mage almost always outnumber Black Mages at end-game, despite the damage difference. Summoners make up the Lion's share of casters, and it's rare to have a Black Mage without also having Summoner or Red Mage at the same time.

Over the game's history, you're also much more likely to see Black Mage be locked out over Red Mage or Summoner.

Black Mage dominance is generally only in speedkill scenarios, and even then, the more likely case is that Black Mage replaces a melee while Sum/Rdm takes the 'caster' slot. The current case, where Black Mage takes the solo caster slot, is not the norm as we go back through the game's history.

Now imagine what happens if Summoner and Red Mage bring even more to the table.

Kabooa, I understand that but that doesn't address my point. My point is that it's not as conscious a decision as people make it out to be. I threw out Arcanist as an example but the point is generally the same across Melee jobs and don't get me started on the laughability of the entire prange dps. I'm also not saying that BLM isn't then also to bring something else to the table. It's just that as it is right now, everything revolves around damage so the fact that people are annoyed that their jobs put out less damage for arbitrary reasons like "can move more lol" or "this is how its always been" isn't exactly something you can fault people for, nor is it something new players who want to get into raiding on their first MMO are necessarily prepared for. Probably a good reminder that for a lot of players, this could be their first MMO and the raiding experience is often quite poor compared to how the rest of the game is presented and how the community acts between the portions of the game. People aren't prepared for the raiding experience at all and are honestly babied a lot up until they try to get into Savage, where suddenly so much more is expected of you.

Then there's the problem of simply not having this information upfront. Not exactly rocket science but people who are coming into the raiding scene for the first time probably don't know shit and there's a good chance they can get put off by the community's inherent fixation on dps numbers because of the game's tight DPS checks and the imbalance of jobs. I'll say this; the fault of this lies with the community in part, but also the developers for continuing to let this run rampant for literal years by not fixing their game, continuing on their merry course and simply implementing the "Be Nice and dont mention damage numbers or else" ToS.

Hence why I say it's not a conscious choice for someone to go with a job that does less damage in the game where only damage matters - NOTHING in this game tells you that your damage dealing class deals less damage than the other one. It only says you're a damage dealer and that's it. So unless they address that and actually tell you things within the game how a job is supposed to be so that you can be informed BEFORE you're in for the long haul, it shouldn't be this way.

Tl;dr: Make job picks actually mean something or don't design one to be arbitrarily better than another despite doing the exact same damn thing. If you are gonna be doing that, inform the player early on about "ease of use vs damage peaks"

On that note, yeah, this isn't the norm as we go back through the game's history. Surprisingly this thread is about the current state of the game, not the game's history.
(also wow it's been since the start of shadowbringers since I last exchanged back and forth with you, hope you're doing well these days <3)

[Kabooa]

On that note, yeah, this isn't the norm as we go back through the game's history. Surprisingly this thread is about the current state of the game, not the game's history.)

We get to the current state by ignoring the history. Unsurprisingly, if one is paying attention, there's an undeniable line between what players ask for and what the developers implement. While not one to one translations, nearly every single major change can be traced to a thread like this one that has bulked up enough common interest from the playerbase.

Just because something wasn't implemented exactly as the OP or following discussion would have liked doesn't mean that feedback wasn't taken into consideration. This includes the 2minute meta, Tank stats, caster uptime, and core melee mechanics.

This is why it is important to look back at what we've had before we simply just say what should be added or changed. More often than not we've had effective gamestates that would give us an idea of how such a suggestion would pan out. While it is understandable that not everyone has the time, energy, or the opportunity to read, review, or live that history, the bare minimum we can do is not ignore it.

Also, I'm doing fine. Huffing that hopium for Machinist to get that dang sniper rifle in PVE.