Why is everyone anxious about a PLD Rework?

[Mikey_R]

The aDPS values are not normalized relative to the number of two-minute buffs in each individual run. You'd need to go back and look at it in a per run basis from scratch.

I got the values from FFlogs over all current savage raids over the last 2 months, that is between 28,000 parses for PLD and 48,000 parses for DRK, being the 2 extremes on parses uploaded, GNB and WAR are between them. The mean of each job is then calculated. For what we are trying to achieve here, this is more than enough to average out any difference in party composition or whether they got another 2 minute raid buff in or not. If I were to go back and evaluate each and every individual parse and subsequently find the mean, I would find the exact same results.

However, despite all this, it wouldn't change the fact that rDPS is still not the end all be all for how to balance a job. Again, it just doesn't show the whole story and can be misleading, which is why other DPS metrics exist. No one metric is perfect, noone is claiming that they are, however, it also means you cannot base balance around one specific metric.

[Shurrikhan]

The aDPS values are not normalized relative to the number of two-minute buffs in each individual run. You'd need to go back and look at it in a per run basis from scratch.

You may as well claim that rDPS not taking into account varying rates of crit luck makes it unreliable as a point of comparison between jobs.

At 20,000+ parses for any given job for those comparisons, unless the particular jobs were forcing accordant distinct compositions (they do not, to be clear), those differences will have been more than leveled out.

[Gserpent]

To be fair, it is the CURRENT single outlier; monk was in the same boat pre-EW. Despite the 2-min window being their core philosophy they still managed to design PLD outside of it with the expansion, even as they “fixed” monk to fit inside that box.

I am personally a fan of having at least one class that operates outside of burst damage, and current PLD does it in a way that is interesting to me personally with the longer rotation. It doesn’t even bother me that it generally performs behind the other tanks in terms of damage. I think if they went back to focusing on damage vs utility and found a way to fit more utility (by redesigning the current kit; looking at you, Cover) onto PLD, that would alleviate the pains that exist on it currently.

I also realize that all of that is a pipe dream and they have pretty well settled on what this rework will be. The 3 main things I hope they retain are these:

1) The long, unique rotation. 1-2-3, or 1-2-4-1-2-3 is a big reason why seasoned players don’t like playing tanks. Keep this interesting for PLD.

2) The “party utility” status. Hell, add in a party damage buff even (highly unlikely), but don’t strip PLD down to the generic tank abilities.

3) The caster-tank role. Even if this is relegated to the “burst phase,” keep some form of this alive.

The Famitsu interview makes it sound like it's the other way around - PLD's design goes all the way back to 2.0 and beyond, and they've largely just been tacking stuff onto it ever since then, and after the 2 minute paradigm changes, it was left in a very uncomfortable position.

I *wish* this was the kind of game to actually allow for #2 to any meaningful degree. Stuff like warhorn/shout warrior in GW2 is really enjoyable to play and a distinct departure from the usual healer/supporter roles. But with raids being pretty much nothing but sheet music and the only meaningful degree of player input being their DPS output... it ain't gonna happen.

[Lyth]

...

You've completely missed the point.

When you look at rDPS, you're looking at your own damage plus the additional benefit that your teammates happen to generate under your 16% uptime buff. That second part is really the only variable present. When you look at aDPS, your damage is influenced by the number of those 16% uptime buffs present. That's a major confounding variable. In order to eliminate it, you have to normalize your damage contribution such that you're looking at a 'per buff' gain. Again, aDPS isn't telling you what you think it's telling you, and really only has meaning in the context of two runs with the same group.

The parameter of interest is 'raid clear time', which is directly correlated to 'total raid dps'. The only individual parameter that we can currently analyze in this manner for balance purposes is rDPS, because it shows you individual contributions. If you want to refine that model further, you need to actually quantify what the dps benefit is for having that additional burst under buffs. Which has to be done on a per buff basis. No parameter that we have currently does that.

[Mikey_R]

You've completely missed the point.

When you look at rDPS, you're looking at your own damage plus the additional benefit that your teammates happen to generate under your 16% uptime buff. That second part is really the only variable present. When you look at aDPS, your damage is influenced by the number of those 16% uptime buffs present. That's a major confounding variable. In order to eliminate it, you have to normalize your damage contribution such that you're looking at a 'per buff' gain. Again, aDPS isn't telling you what you think it's telling you, and really only has meaning in the context of two runs with the same group.

The parameter of interest is 'raid clear time', which is directly correlated to 'total raid dps'. The only individual parameter that we can currently analyze in this manner for balance purposes is rDPS, because it shows you individual contributions. If you want to refine that model further, you need to actually quantify what the dps benefit is for having that additional burst under buffs. Which has to be done on a per buff basis. No parameter that we have currently does that.

This isn't about total raid damage, this is about how well PLD takes advantage of raid buffs.

This has been said already, but I will say it again. If you were to judge PLD solely on their rDPS, then, in order to maximise it, the PLD would have to do a 'sub optimal' rotation. If we were instead to look at a PLD's aDPS, by doing the optimal thing they will increase it and because they are connected, it will increase the rDPS of the party as a whole, however, the PLD's personal rDPS will show it to be lower.

This is the whole point. rDPS is NOT the whole picture. You have to use the other metrics to dig deeper to see what is actually going on.

[Lyth]

Let's step back and look at the reason for this discussion in the first place. The tanks are currently balanced when you look at rDPS. But the underlying claim here is that certain tanks ought to do more rDPS than others to offset the fact that less of their damage contribution occurs under buffs, which then impacts the rDPS of the buff providers. In order to evaluate that claim, you need to be able to quantify exactly what that rDPS offset should be, right? Otherwise this is all just feelycraft.

The exact value of that offset is going to depend on the number of such buff providers in the party. For example, if you're running exclusively with non-buff providers like SAM and BLM, you shouldn't have an offset at all. If you're running exclusively with buff providers like NIN and RPR, then you should have a bigger offset. So you need information on what the 'per buff' offset should be, and then you can try to come up with what the average value should be across all comps. aDPS doesn't tell you this because we have no idea how many buff providers are in the group. That's why you don't see actual dps players quibbling about this, despite the fact that we contribute significantly more damage than you do.

Here's the thing. There are plenty of things that you cannot accurately quantify that may boost dps. SCH's Expedient gives your party a movement speed buff. That may translate into extra uptime in certain conditions. How do you determine the 'equivalent' rDPS offset should be for having access to this action? The answer is that you don't. People only bring these things up because they want to curry an advantage over others. If you balance based off of rDPS, the numbers will be close enough that the better player will come out on top.

[Shurrikhan]

(Initial reply obsolete; near simultaneous posting.)

You've completely missed the point.

No, you just seem to clearly not be reading fully reading it.

First, there are parses enough that we have reliable sample across compositions, effectively normalizing it the matter to again give a range with its various quartiles just as we would if we went through these various logs and created a spreadsheet accordingly.

Second, you can see this for yourself on any individual parse, or history of parses through a single static, right on fflogs, just by mousing over the rDPS cell; it provides a complete breakdown.

Take, for instance, the highest PLD parse in the game for Agdistis. That PLD would seem to have blown his 98th percentile DRK co-tank out of the water, dealing 4.3% more raw DPS and 6.1% more rDPS than the DRK.

Now, we cannot draw a fair comparison as to overall performance possible between jobs from that single log --due to confounding variables in gear and skill-- but we can look at their difference in rDPS granted to others relative to their own. The PLD granted 199.4 rDPS to his party through raid buff exploitation. The DRK, despite falling 2 percentiles lower, granted 318.0 rDPS.

In short, despite the lower percentile the DRK also brought to the table 118.6 more rDPS to his party through buff exploitation than did the PLD, all of which was not shown whatsoever in his individual parse despite increasing the party's total DPS. If we were to plug that back in, their rDPS would, be only 4.4% apart, not 6.1%.

Again, those who better exploit their raid buffs bring additional value to the party not accounted for under individual rDPS. Here is one of those cases where "rDPS parity" actually wouldn't be enough for real parity, so long as one job provides less rDPS to its buffers than another would.

Let's step back and look at the reason for this discussion in the first place. The tanks are currently balanced when you look at rDPS. But the underlying claim here is that certain tanks ought to do more rDPS than others to offset the fact that less of their damage contribution occurs under buffs, which then impacts the rDPS of the buff providers. In order to evaluate that claim, you need to be able to quantify exactly what that rDPS offset should be, right? Otherwise this is all just feelycraft.

Precisely that. As for an appropriate rDPS offset, there are a few factors worth considering:

1. Would the community be able not to go apeshit the moment one job has an rDPS lead after being promised parity, since it wouldn't perfectly match with their current at-a-glance, single-chart-only view of balance as seen through individual rDPS?
   (Else, we'll need to have some degree of imbalance still just because the still-balanced choices will be considered underpowered, and across the larger playerbase... the purpose of balance is more on the perception of one's ability to play whatever they like -- within the obvious limits of affinity/differences in specific gear, etc.)
   
   
2. How much should we accept/allow that chasing 100th percentile parses will require meta comps?
   
   
3. Let's pretend we could come up with some sort of rDPS-other hybrid that fairly tracks buff exploitation? How much credit would that metric give its exploiter?¹

¹ In the end, being able to view the real contribution a particular job gives to a party with a single metric is ideal; it's just that current rDPS metrics aren't able to meet that purpose. If we could design something that would, improving on rDPS's intent, provide a real at-a-glance indicator of how much a job brings to a party, perfect. If not, though, we're going to have to accept that figuring out that contribution won't be one-and-done.

At a rough guess, that metric might have players retain half the effect of raid buffs received, effectively just averaging their current rDPS and nDPS. I don't know. I can't promise you a perfect solution off the cuff; if I could, it'd probably already be in use.

[Lyth]

Players are always going to be dissatisfied with the numbers. It doesn't matter if the difference is 50 dps or 500, players are affected psychologically by the knowledge that they're at a 'disadvantage', however slight. That's why having the developers explain their rationale for balance is always important. I think claims like 'jobs are balanced based on difficulty' or 'jobs are balanced based off of access to utility actions like Raise' is going to cause more rancor in the long run, because you know that you'll perpetually be at a disadvantage no matter what you do simply because you picked the wrong job. But if they come out and say hey, jobs in a given role (tank/healer/dps) will be balanced based off of damage adjusted for raid buffs (read: rDPS) and we'll find a way to make you feel good about the utility part of your toolkits whatever it is, most people will be content about that. Perception of fairness is the most important thing, and you do that by setting expectations.

If you want to create a higher-order model of rDPS that accounts for the benefit gained on average by lining up better with burst on a per buff basis (or other currently not-quantified benefits), go for it. rDPS itself was created because we realized that analyzing raw DPS was inadequate. If you can do it and explain your methods, players will get behind it. But designing the metric itself is the challenging part.

[ForteNightshade]

rDPS is a fine metric when comparing tanks against themselves: i.e. Warrior to Warrior; Dark Knight to Dark Knight. Where its accuracy falters is when you compare two different tanks against one another. aDPS shows what the actual damage tanks do when aligning their burst with raid buffs because they don't contribute anything themselves. Hence why we see such a wide discrepancy between Dark Knight and the other tanks, Gunbreaker not always withstanding.

Players are always going to be dissatisfied with the numbers. It doesn't matter if the difference is 50 dps or 500, players are affected psychologically by the knowledge that they're at a 'disadvantage', however slight.

If this where the case than Melee would be getting locked out the same way Warrior and Paladin do. They don't. While there are certainly preferences, and an established meta. No one really cares outside of a small portion. Meanwhile, Dark Knight is ridiculously strong right now speed groups are bringing two of them.

The issue isn't just damage but the utility you mention isn't being made to feel good. Warrior has a fantastic defensive suite but Dark Knight still has a better one. In fact, the only thing Warrior can do this tier over Dark Knight is have mildly sustain. Said sustain isn't enough to give the healers more DPS, which makes it more or less irrelevant. In this game, damage is king. Which is what Dark Knight and Gunbreaker have dominated for two tiers now.

[Shurrikhan]

Players are always going to be dissatisfied with the numbers. It doesn't matter if the difference is 50 dps or 500, players are affected psychologically by the knowledge that they're at a 'disadvantage', however slight.

...So what? Are we supposed to just not bother with balance because of unhealthily obsessive small portion of the playerbase? A number as small as 50 dps out of the likes of 5-digit numbers wouldn't even hold consistent ranking in practice; it'd be bouncing about week to week, percentile to percentile.

More importantly, though, we can qualify a difference as significant or not on a basis more consistent than personal bias or unhealthy obsession. Not everything has to devolve into "my job first" politicking, especially in a game where most people simultaneously enjoy a majority of them.

I think claims like 'jobs are balanced based on difficulty' or 'jobs are balanced based off of access to utility actions like Raise' is going to cause more rancor in the long run, because you know that you'll perpetually be at a disadvantage no matter what you do simply because you picked the wrong job.

Except, if they were actually balanced based on difficulty, you'd see less difficult jobs performing better than higher performing jobs for a roughly equal portion of the playerbase (e.g., under the "50th percentile") across the content considered the balancing point (such as either Extremes or Savage Raids) while that content is still in progression. That would be a buff to the likes of SMN, MCH, and especially DNC, BRD, and RDM.

That balancing philosophy wouldn't necessarily be a problem. It's just that, if it's even been attempted, it's never quite come through. The game hasn't yet balanced around difficulty; it just takes it as something of a factor -- one among apparently multiple, if the process is even so deliberate. If the philosophy, though, were applied with visible consistency, though, we have no way if MCH being neck-and-neck with BLM at the 75th percentiles initially and falling back gradually to a tight balance around the 60th or so... would even be frowned upon so long as each felt like they were able to play whatever they want when the fights were still relevant. (We do not need to placate post-game competition like speedrun records at the expense of the larger community.)

(or other currently not-quantified benefits)

They're literally right there. Mouse over the rDPS cell in the party's fflogs spreadsheet and it has a breakdown of every buff's contribution towards (exploitation by) each receiving player. They're just what rDPS specifically removes in order, specifically, to make comparisons between players/runs of the same job across differing compositions (while very obviously failing to account for the contribution of each to a given party).

:: Note also that all buffers have the same cross-party comparison problems with rDPS that a SAM, BLM, and the like have with nDPS; if a DNC doesn't have a good exploiter in a given party, their rDPS is screwed.