Anyone else think caster has suffered this expansion? (hopes for the future)

[Aikaal]

Why are we comparing personal mit to party mit wtf

Because in DSR on my RDM I required more personal mits because I didn't have something like Manaward but I provided Magick Barrier. Selfish mitigation has value, just different kind of value and it's often less valuable than party mitigation.

Anyways, Black Mage got a buff. RDM/SMN didn't because they have raise and that tax is definitely about 10% extra DPS for the BLM or so.


Also, as far as I see. Raise doesn't provide as much utility for the whole infinite raise from RDM plays against them. Their big burst is their mobility and brings them into melee and we all know they ain't having priority over Samurais in raid for mechanics. Summoners only think about casting when it comes to Ifrit, the worst of the three elemental primals for how little it gives for the caveats it provides. Still the better overall pick because you don't think, you can call mechanics and lead the team as a Caster DPS.

Red Mage has Magick Barrier, great. Let us remember a group cleared TOP with 0 healer a group of individuals that are an anomaly but nevertheless proved a point.

Black Mages are just getting buffs to deal same DPS than Melees.

Just... all ranged and casters minus BLMs got ignored, as expected from Endwalker and they made buffing even more easier.

My hot take; Monk is very simple. Like Samurai. Like Summoner. Other jobs will eventually become like Summoner.

[Taranok]

Looks like BLM got some buffs. Interesting. I was told the world would end if this happened.

My take on the buff is that the devs saw BLM as at or near the least played classs in the game and felt the need to super buff it. The 2% increase on enochian leads to a roughly 1.65% increase to all damage, and just looking at xenoglossy itself, it went from a 1258.4 potency spell to 1407.12. A 148.72 potency increase on a spell cast 2.5 times per minute leading to a 371.8 potency per minute increase. This is before factoring in every other spell just innately doing ~1.65% more damage compared to where it was before.

This isn't a minor buff. This is the devs looking at black mage and going into what can best be described as panic mode trying to buff its damage to get people to play it more. I don't see why they'd do such a massive buff otherwise. It's the equivalent of getting an entire extra GCD for free every minute on most other classes.

The PLD change, in comparison, is closer to about 200 potency per minute overall increase. Warrior is likely close to that as well, and it seems they want tanks to more or less do about the same overall damage regardless of utility, give or take.

Oddly, RDM and SMN weren't touched, at all, aside from the generic range increase on buffs. If anything, in theory, should marginalize the use of RDM and SMN, it'd be BLM flat out outcompeting them to such an obscene degree in damage that you'd basically only choose them because they're more enjoyable to play, or the obvious res utility. And yet I still feel SMN will vastly outcompete the other 2 simply because of how EW has thus far been designed.

Its design is, more or less, turning the caster DPS role into a very, very hostile work environment. That combined with well in excess of half the mechanics of all savage+ fights being 1 death = wipe marginalizing RDM's res utility, I expect to see more of the same. SMN, the CDPS that fits in best with EW's fight philosophy, will continue to dominate despite the abysmal damage of CDPS as a whole.

[tearagion]

Say it isn't so. People ITT have been muddying the conversation to distract from this? no way! I was still in fight design school (with a minor in job balance) trying to earn enough credibility to talk about buffs.

people usually ignore popularity because it isn't correlative to design quality. it's easier to make the argument that SMN's barebones design and non-existent skill ceiling are the true motivators of popularity in a context where consistency is key to success (raiding), than that popularity being a result of a fun or high quality design. surveys indicating low job satisfaction among SMN players reinforces this interpretation.

[Aikaal]

people usually ignore popularity because it isn't correlative to design quality. it's easier to make the argument that SMN's barebones design and non-existent skill ceiling are the true motivators of popularity in a context where consistency is key to success (raiding), than that popularity being a result of a fun or high quality design. surveys indicating low job satisfaction among SMN players reinforces this interpretation.

That is 100% true. Summoner has never been so popular. This is always why the prime suspects of getting buffs are jobs like Astrologian.

Also, BLM got a roughly 3% buff, that's like a 10% DPS difference with other casters. I'd reckon for most group that don't go week 1 that's enough of a reason to pick a BLM over SMN/RDM if you have strats shoved to you and know where to stand while progging.



At least tanks seems to have been balanced properly.

[Turtledeluxe]

My take on the buff is that the devs saw BLM as at or near the least played classs in the game and felt the need to super buff it. The 2% increase on enochian leads to a roughly 1.65% increase to all damage, and just looking at xenoglossy itself, it went from a 1258.4 potency spell to 1407.12. A 148.72 potency increase on a spell cast 2.5 times per minute leading to a 371.8 potency per minute increase. This is before factoring in every other spell just innately doing ~1.65% more damage compared to where it was before.

This isn't a minor buff. This is the devs looking at black mage and going into what can best be described as panic mode trying to buff its damage to get people to play it more. I don't see why they'd do such a massive buff otherwise. It's the equivalent of getting an entire extra GCD for free every minute on most other classes.

I don't see anything wrong with this. Frankly BLM isn't played as much as other classes in terms of people who fully level it and main it from data I reviewed a few months ago. Furthermore, I don't think this will work at all. What will actually happen is BLM will simply do more damage, and people who don't like the play style still won't play it. The net benefit is that people who do play BLM will be rewarded for playing it well. I see nothing wrong buffing Xenoglossy, especially given that SAM got buffed as well. Yes this puts BLM further away from other casters in terms of damage, and that's makes complete sense given what it is in the context of this game (and RPGs in general).

Oddly, RDM and SMN weren't touched, at all, aside from the generic range increase on buffs.

I don't play these classes but from an outsider perspective and the data available, to me it appears RDM does indeed need more tinkering but SMN, I would say, just has a gameplay/rotation issue more than anything. SMN is indeed going to continue to stomp RDM, and probably BLM too as I alluded to earlier in terms of utilization.

I can already see some others ITT implying BLM is going to be utlra played now. I eagerly away those results-- considering BLM has literally never been the most popular class since the game's inception (as far as I know) in any mode. But I sure would love to see 80% BLM progging week 1 of a raid, would be cool.

[Taranok]

I don't see anything wrong with this. Frankly BLM isn't played as much as other classes in terms of people who fully level it and main it from data I reviewed a few months ago. Furthermore, I don't think this will work at all. What will actually happen is BLM will simply do more damage, and people who don't like the play style still won't play it. The net benefit is that people who do play BLM will be rewarded for playing it well. I see nothing wrong buffing Xenoglossy, especially given that SAM got buffed as well. Yes this puts BLM further away from other casters in terms of damage, and that's makes complete sense given what it is in the context of this game (and RPGs in general).

The problem with BLM is mostly that its population is outright dying in Endwalker. It has usually been a midling-popularity class as per looking at parse data in fflogs, and often surged in popularity towards the tail end of a given tier as people just went in to parse big numbers with it, but endwalker has been the opposite. Suppressed representation and people abandoning it left and right, not even to parse with it.

This leads me to the conclusion that most players that actually do enjoy BLM's playstyle are finding something wrong with its playstyle in Endwalker as a whole. Given my general opinions and comments on fight design with friends, as well as seeing the data and whatnot, I'd posit that this is actually the case. That BLM's playstyle is flat out not valid in endwalker, thus people are actually rejecting it as an option when raiding, taking options that fit within EW's design as a whole.

I don't play these classes but from an outsider perspective and the data available, to me it appears RDM does indeed need more tinkering but SMN, I would say, just has a gameplay/rotation issue more than anything. SMN is indeed going to continue to stomp RDM, and probably BLM too as I alluded to earlier in terms of utilization.

I can already see some others ITT implying BLM is going to be utlra played now. I eagerly away those results-- considering BLM has literally never been the most popular class since the game's inception (as far as I know) in any mode. But I sure would love to see 80% BLM progging week 1 of a raid, would be cool.

BLM was popular-ish in ARR, but as I said earlier, it has always been at or slightly below average. Even with the DPS bump, I severely doubt people would drag it into TOP or DSR with more regularity. And after fight design like the second tier of Pandaemonium, I am leery any actual BLM mains coming back if they've already left the class. The class is a dumpster fire right now and, short of tier 3 actually being fun for casters to sit still and cast in, I doubt it will see a resurgence.

[Taranok]

people usually ignore popularity because it isn't correlative to design quality. it's easier to make the argument that SMN's barebones design and non-existent skill ceiling are the true motivators of popularity in a context where consistency is key to success (raiding), than that popularity being a result of a fun or high quality design. surveys indicating low job satisfaction among SMN players reinforces this interpretation.

Eh, this is true, and false. Popularity is usually determined by multiple competing factors. Theme is a dominating one. This is why Monk, despite feeling a lot better to play in EW, might be less played overall. Technical issues like inability to double weave with ping, a staple problem on classes like monk and machinist, also can drive popularity down. A big one is how well the class can play in the current content. This expresses itself both as a DPS value (E.G. no one playing a sustained DPS class like paladin in a fight with a ton of downtime,) as well as gameplay issues (E.G. black mage's sit-still-and-cast gameplay is directly at odds with Endwalker's fight design as a whole.)

I posit that difficulty of playing a class has suppressed bearing on how popular the class is as a whole. This is an assertion made by looking at Samurai throughout its lifetime. It was arguably the second hardest class to play in stormblood, and was still the most popular mDPS in SB. It was still one of the hardest classes to play in ShB, still one of the most popular. It took Endwalker, with a really popular theme (reaper) to come out to really dent SAM's number. The rest was playstyle incompatibility due to SAM being more of a sustained DPS class in a burst DPS meta.

As such, I don't think Summoner being easy to play is why it's actually popular. But rather that its playstyle is in line with EW's fight design, with Red Mage as being jarring enough to suppress its numbers, and BLM is outright crippled due to EW's fight design philosophy. High-movement fights are, by design, anathema to the core of caster design, and as the only true high-movement caster, Summoner crushes the competition just on that fact alone.

[Sequora]

I’ll say it again, caster is the only role that has progression jobs. No other role has jobs that are inferior once a fight has been figured out.

RDM is just straight up worse than BLM once a fight has been learned. As others have alluded to, until people are geared up a lot, a player death often means the fight is over. You might be able to get further in progression, but will likely fail a DPS check.

The melee DPS are all hypothetically balanced around each other after you take their DPS utility into account.

[Aikaal]

Oh my God, this is so funny. This is the best reason to buff Black Mage. hahahahaha.

[Taranok]

Oh my God, this is so funny. This is the best reason to buff Black Mage. hahahahaha.

I'm sorry, what? The class that already crushes cdps in damage needed more damage to be competitive with the other cdps? Is this a farce, or do the devs just not realize why BLM is so horrifically unpopular?