How much difference in damage should the tanks have?

[Melethron123]

there's nothing stopping you from bringing 2 ranged or 2 casters to a raid. the reason why people bring 2 melee is, as often, more damage.

also: why wouldn't people bring BLM if MCH dealt the same damage throughout the fight?

[Rithy255]

there's nothing stopping you from bringing 2 ranged or 2 casters to a raid. the reason why people bring 2 melee is, as often, more damage.

PS: with you saying MCH would take BLM raid spot in the group if they dealt the same dmg you seem to understand that BLM is competing for a spot with MCH and SAM rather than SMN and RDM...

If MCH and phys ranged in general did similar numbers to melee jobs then it would pretty much be 2 phys ranged, 1 melee and 1 caster... You don't see 1 Melee, BLM & RDM/SMN that often but you will see 2melee and SMN/RDM often despite BLM having very similar output to melee Because blm is a much more difficult job to work around and it's less mobile, almost like mobility is a actual reason to take a job.

Again if damage mattered so much over utility, ease of use and mobility, people wouldn't bring summoner way more often then a BLM, theirs cases where damage isn't the be all end all, as long as you can beat enrage comfortably with your current comp it's really not that important.

[Melethron123]

Again if damage mattered so much over utility, ease of use and mobility, people wouldn't bring summoner way more often then a BLM, theirs cases where damage isn't the be all end all, as long as you can beat enrage comfortably with your current comp it's really not that important.

i'm a bit sleep-deprived this week (baby) so my memory is a little fuzzy, but did i say in any of my posts that damage is the only thing that matters when it comes to bringing a job to a raid? from what i remember, i said "utility doesn't matter much for performance, since encounters have to be designed around the group comp with the lowest utility, and therefore those 'unique' abilities go to waste, like cover."

to clarify my thoughts on the subject: having more damage will make an encounter easier than having more special utilities. that's because of the reasons already cited. that doesn't mean people will always bring the jobs that have the highest damage, for the simple fact that people would rather play the jobs they find more fun as long as it doesn't put too much of a strain on their group.
so the reason why people bring SMN over BLM can simply be "because my static member finds it more fun and we can still clear just fine with our comp"

on the other hand, if MCH dealt the same dmg as BLM, the reason to play BLM could simply be "because i find it more fun". There are plenty of people on the forums, on reddit, and on youtube who are constantly complaining about jobs being simple and wanting more complexity, so they'd be happy to play a more difficult job just for the sake of having more difficulty

i'd never claim "people won't play jobs that do less damage" because i can see very clearly that there are people clearing savage and DSR on MCH and PLD. fewer than DNC and DRK, but they're there nonetheless.

the real issue when it comes to dps balancing is this: if the weaker raid comps and the stronger raid comps have a significant difference in performance between them, the encounters will either be too difficult for the weaker comps or too easy for the stronger comps.
what happened this tier was a very good showcase of that. the devs couldn't be bothered to test the raid on weaker jobs, which means they tuned it too highly at release and people who played said weaker jobs ended up having a much more difficult boss than intended.

xenos posted a video talking about how much his group struggled to meet the DPS check while he was playing warrior, and as soon as he switched to GNB they were able to pass even on a pull where he got 2 damage downs. (if you're curious, the name of the video is "ff14 balance is the worst it has been in years")

[Rithy255]

i'm a bit sleep-deprived this week (baby) so my memory is a little fuzzy, but did i say in any of my posts that damage is the only thing that matters when it comes to bringing a job to a raid? from what i remember, i said "utility doesn't matter much for performance, since encounters have to be designed around the group comp with the lowest utility, and therefore those 'unique' abilities go to waste, like cover."

I'm keep this short as, I don't really want to run into circles here
Utility such as cover generally has no "reasonable" application in a real raiding situation while something like POA does sometimes have a impact, obviously none of it's required.

I think Ease of use, Mobility and utility all should slightly effect damage, not to massive extents and difficulty can be subjective at times, while you didn't claim everyone wouldn't play jobs that do less damage, you (I believe so) implied that DPS is the only main thing that matters when it comes to job balancing, which we can see by summoners use and play rate in general its usefulness outweighs Black mages better damage, You realise people do actually pick jobs for more then damage, BLM shouldn't be way way harder and doesn't bring any utility or mobility and do the same amount of damage as summoner, the only way you would fix this issue is remove every utility from summoner and make it hard cast most spells, which ruins the job, what I'm saying is it's fine to have a job that isn't just pure DPS, Mobility & utility are clearly taxed for a reason even if I agree that it's a bit too much right now.

If MCH did the same damage as BLM it would simply be unfun, we'd likely have double ranged meta with DC partner mch, I generally want phys ranged to be buffed a bit more but theirs obvious advantage's to have full ranged uptime compared to playing a caster job such as BLM, if you think people should just choose jobs for "fun" then whats the point of excessively balancing dps to the point where theirs hardly any difference, I believe in Balance & jobs having certain niches but also still being viable.

Xenos was talking about p8s mainly, I agree that warrior, PLD and machinist should be buffed in general I think jobs should be looked at, but the issue wasn't Job balance it was the fights DPS check being so harsh that you had to pick the meta picks, this is why dps checks in general should be balanced around every comp.

[Melethron123]

so TLDR: all jobs within a role should have a dps difference lower than 2% between them

[Rithy255]

so TLDR: all jobs within a role should have a dps difference lower than 2% between them

I'd say 2% between BLM and SMN makes no sense.
I guess we will have to agree to disagree on that one not much else I can say

[ForteNightshade]

I'd say 2% between BLM and SMN makes no sense.
I guess we will have to agree to disagree on that one not much else I can say

To be honest, the only way they can balance the Casters properly is by removing Resurrection and Verraise. It's simply impossible to balance around these two abilities and we've watched them fail at it for two expansions. There's a reason Yoshida outright admittedly Resurrection was on the chopping block until the last minute. You either have a scenario where Black Mage is the undisputed king or you buff the other Casters and make Black Mage irrelevant. Nothing else actually matters in terms of utility because most people playing Black Mage simply enjoy the job. They won't switch off it if Summoner was doing 2-3% anymore than a dedicated Dragoon or Monk player will slightly play Ninja. The issue isn't utility but rather one specific ability that is simply far too strong in prog but far less valued otherwise.

As for the previous discussion about whether balancing is easy. It depends on the specific role. We've discussed the difficulties with balancing Casters but no such issue exists with the tanks. Warrior and Paladin are weak due to the dev team overrating their utility and sustain. No self-respecting Paladin will even look at Clemency beyond as a desperate last resort yet I guarantee the dev team factors it in as the though they use it infrequently but enough to "help the healers." In the same manner the dev team still insists we rely on GCD heals when you hardly need to press them. And don't whatsoever if you're optimizing. In general, the dev team has a very different idea of how the game is played. Which is what creates the disconnect.

Fixing the tank balance would actually be fairly simple. Instead of rolling out baby buffs for three damn patches, slap some actually meaningful potency on Fell Cleave, Inner Chaos and/or Primal Rend until Warrior is roughly within 1-2% of Dark Knight. Adjust Gunbreaker's potencies to put it on par with Dark Knight and we'll wait and see on Paladin given the rework. Bam, you just fixed all four tanks. It's literally numbers for them.