Two Minute Raid Buffs - The Bane of Endwalker Job Design

[ForteNightshade]

You guys know back in shadowbringer it was 0,6 mins raids buff burst and certain job can be ditch out due to excentrique rotation and certain meta comps right? RIGHT!?! So before saying 2 mins is the plague you should do maybe research of old expansion. The current one we have is the most balance I've seen all my life in ff14. Shadowbringer was a lil mess but there was force comps due to certain raid buffs alignments .In Stormblood MCH,BRD,NIN,DRG when? Oh yeah bye bye SAM,MNK,BLM,WHM,DRK get those trash out my yard. In Heavenwards NIN,DRG,BRD,WAR,SMN when? Oh yeah bye bye PLD,MNK,BLM get those trash out my yard.

Ahahahahahahaha

I'm sorry but you must have barely started playing if you genuinely believe this. Endwalker has seen the worst balance since Heavensward. They had to nerf a damn Savage fight because so many jobs were laughably underperforming. You mention the old meta of Heavensward and Stormblood but that fix has almost nothing to do with the dev team and everything to do with FFlogs changing their ranking system. They used to rank based on personal DPS. If that category remained, every single selfish job is instantly dead.

When Asphodelos launched, Machinist, Dancer and Paladin were grief picks. You could technically clear but it meant demanding significantly more out of your team for zero benefit. The Casters have been a mess almost the entire expansion while Warrior has been buffed three times now and they still haven't gotten it right. Abyssos was so bad on release, a rank 47% Dark Knight was only 100 dps less than a 100% Warrior or Paladin. I should know, I was that Dark Knight having switched jobs because even with a damage down, I'd still outperform Warrior. Prior to the panic buff three weeks later, Dark Knight was pulling ahead by 11%. To illustrate just how utterly absurd this is, the Piercing debuff was originally 10%. Which means it was actually a smaller loss to deprive your Bard of a Dragoon in Heavensward than to bring a Warrior over a Dark Knight in Endwalker.

Viability doesn't mean balance. Warrior could clear both Dragonsong and Abyssos on release. Dark Knight just demolished it, thus allowing far more mistakes from your team throughout prog.

[Valence]

Ahahahahahahaha

I'm sorry but you must have barely started playing if you genuinely believe this. Endwalker has seen the worst balance since Heavensward. They had to nerf a damn Savage fight because so many jobs were laughably underperforming.

While I agree on the sentiment, I disagree with this. Using DSR or P8S as example is disingenuous because those dps checks were insanely stricter than what we usually have. What we usually have is able to hide balance issues better, but here, it put them all into the spotlight for all to see.

But yes, I do agree that viability doesn't equate balance.

[ForteNightshade]

While I agree on the sentiment, I disagree with this. Using DSR or P8S as example is disingenuous because those dps checks were insanely stricter than what we usually have. What we usually have is able to hide balance issues better, but here, it put them all into the spotlight for all to see.

But yes, I do agree that viability doesn't equate balance.

For the precise reason I cited in my subsequent response: Dark Knight pulled upwards of 11% higher DPS than Warrior even if both players were of equal skill. Nerfing Hephaistos' HP doesn't change a tank comp of Dark Knight and Gunbreaker allowed for significantly more leeway in performance. We saw that when Xeno swapped to Gunbreaker and his group cleared with two damage downs and a death, albeit the death came near the end of the fight. Reducing the boss' HP doesn't remove this overwhelming advantage. It simply allows that same comp to have even further wiggle room. Had P8S released at its current threshold, groups running DRK/GNB could afford DPS deaths week 1 whereas a WAR/PLD couldn't. In a prog setting, that is absolutely massive.

Any comp which included DRK, GNB, WHM, AST, SCH, SGE, DRG, MNK, NIN, SAM, BLM, DNC and BRD had zero issues with the tighter DPS check provided they performed well. Only groups running WAR, PLD, RPR, RDM, SMN or MCH had issues, especially if they ran more than one of the aforementioned jobs. What's disingenuous is blaming this wholly on a stricter DPS check when thirteen of the nineteen jobs available could meet that check. Especially when every single one of these underperforming jobs have been buffed since—some several times.

As for Dragonsong. None of the Ultimates have an overly strict DPS check even on release. In fact, you could push certain phases with enough DPS such as skipping Nid-stinien before his enrage started casting, killing eyes before their final AoE or pushing either phase of Thordan well before he finished his end sequence. Double Dragons is downright free in terms of DPS, provided everyone is pushing buttons. None of this changes Dark Knight being hilariously stronger than every other tank by a mile. Not only did the phases line up almost perfectly with its burst but the fight being so heavy on mitigation favored Dark Knight immensely. The only advantage Warrior brought was it being easier to do 6-1-1 in Dragon King.

[Valence]

For the precise reason I cited in my subsequent response: Dark Knight pulled upwards of 11% higher DPS than Warrior even if both players were of equal skill. Nerfing Hephaistos' HP doesn't change a tank comp of Dark Knight and Gunbreaker allowed for significantly more leeway in performance. We saw that when Xeno swapped to Gunbreaker and his group cleared with two damage downs and a death, albeit the death came near the end of the fight. Reducing the boss' HP doesn't remove this overwhelming advantage. It simply allows that same comp to have even further wiggle room. Had P8S released at its current threshold, groups running DRK/GNB could afford DPS deaths week 1 whereas a WAR/PLD couldn't. In a prog setting, that is absolutely massive.

Any comp which included DRK, GNB, WHM, AST, SCH, SGE, DRG, MNK, NIN, SAM, BLM, DNC and BRD had zero issues with the tighter DPS check provided they performed well. Only groups running WAR, PLD, RPR, RDM, SMN or MCH had issues, especially if they ran more than one of the aforementioned jobs. What's disingenuous is blaming this wholly on a stricter DPS check when thirteen of the nineteen jobs available could meet that check. Especially when every single one of these underperforming jobs have been buffed since—some several times.

As for Dragonsong. None of the Ultimates have an overly strict DPS check even on release. In fact, you could push certain phases with enough DPS such as skipping Nid-stinien before his enrage started casting, killing eyes before their final AoE or pushing either phase of Thordan well before he finished his end sequence. Double Dragons is downright free in terms of DPS, provided everyone is pushing buttons. None of this changes Dark Knight being hilariously stronger than every other tank by a mile. Not only did the phases line up almost perfectly with its burst but the fight being so heavy on mitigation favored Dark Knight immensely. The only advantage Warrior brought was it being easier to do 6-1-1 in Dragon King.

What I've been saying is that tank discrepancies, healer discrepancies, and DPS discrepancies in balance, aren't new. They've been here since forever. 11% is one of the biggest peaks, but not the first one I've seen. I don't disagree with the sentiment though.

At least they hotfix the tank gaps pretty fast. Meanwhile we're still sitting with a literal institutional apartheid between 2 categories of DPS and it's been ongoing since forever. This is the real sadness.

[ForteNightshade]

Job balance team taking notes:

• Remove Critical and Direct Hits from the game.
• Replace all raid damage buffs with self-only buffs.

Can't say I would miss Direct Hit. Both it and Critical Hit scaling so ridiculously high are partly why we're seeing such massive discrepancies. Of course, I'm not really a fan of how boring substats are to begin with but that's another topic.

What I've been saying is that tank discrepancies, healer discrepancies, and DPS discrepancies in balance, aren't new. They've been here since forever. 11% is one of the biggest peaks, but not the first one I've seen. I don't disagree with the sentiment though.

At least they hotfix the tank gaps pretty fast. Meanwhile we're still sitting with a literal institutional apartheid between 2 categories of DPS and it's been ongoing since forever. This is the real sadness.

Oh, I don't disagree. What prompted my initial response is the person citing Endwalker as being "the most balance I've seen". Hence why I said they must have just started playing because Endwalker is nearly at Heavensward levels of misbalance.

The irony is that hotfix still didn't fix the tank balance. It's getting a bit silly just how many times they keep having to buff Warrior and Paladin because they're too afraid to make either overpowered, especially Warrior. Hell, the Paladin rework is a net loss of roughly 3%. So this is one more Ultimate Paladin just gets to feel sad about.

Nevertheless, I will say at least Warrior and Paladin are getting acknowledged. Red Mage has been drowning all expansion and the Prange role as a whole just doesn't make sense anymore. The fact it took them this long to finally give up on Machinist being selfish speaks to just how... complacent they've been.