Quote Originally Posted by Renathras View Post
To quote Chair "Tell them that their reward is getting to have FUN and not being bored out of their [redacted] minds! Shut up about a whole 2% damage variance."
Idolize whomever you like, but I don't know why you're treating this as some appeal to any real authority, especially when "shut[ting] up about a whole 2% damage variance" would apply as much to anyone insisting that a far easier job should have the same damage as far harder job in the first place. Why, when one chooses the job that's easier on which to hit a job on which it's easier to reach output capable of clearing all content in the game, should they also expect to have the exact same maximum rDPS as a job that's harder to get even to that required output on?

If you wouldn't honestly expect players to, say, play kickdrum riffs and the harmonica whilst optimizing Summoner just to keep from getting bored, why would you expect them to play something harder for similarly added risk at zero reward? Players are free to juggle hamsters as they play Black Mage even now, yes, but that's not going to be a worthwhile alternative to it having more available to it than an Ice Mage's level of optimization.

Added risk for, at best, merely the same reward has never been a worthwhile strategy in any setting in which others depend on you.

The damage bonus isn't a reward to me, and I've been consistent on the point that I don't see "more damage" (or much anything to do with damage) to be rewarding.
I don't know why you're trying to make this out as some sort of narrow fixation. It's the literal only output of the mechanic we're discussing.

I don't mind minimal variations. For my part, I like doing things right because it's enjoyable to know that.
And here is the core of the issue, especially when you exempt any room for optimization that the player might not be aware of. Why limit the rewards of having optimized a situation to "minimal variations"? And why should any job necessarily be constrained to that small gap between skill floor and ceiling?


Though in this case, it isn't even that so much as it's more a survivability argument (mobility) anyway.
Mobility isn't a matter of survivability except insofar as you'd die if you didn't have sufficient yalms-movement-within-X-seconds or you'd call all access to healing a matter of "survivability" (making the term ambiguous to point of near uselessness).

No mechanic requires an external buff increasing their mobility for players to survive. There are no raid mitigation tools that require immobility; even PoA can be flashed and every other ground-effect mitigation has room to dodge around mechanics present at the time those effects would see use. Every personal defensive is mobile. That leaves only whether a healer can produce sufficient healing while moving.

Again, I don't know why you're trying to sectionalize this into 'damage' and 'other' as if you're somehow taking the longer view here. Hell, you have been the one most insistent on segregating a skill's net optimization in context from optimizing the skill itself (in DoT's case, by pruning the latter, thereby vastly simplifying the prior). Moreover, the distinction is moot; damage is the only uncapped resource this game offers, by the simple fact that it doesn't have a single fight with objectives other than "Reduce X's HP to 0", while all secondary outputs (those which do not directly contribute to the fight's objectives) ultimately amount to DPS dealt (through opportunities enabled/preserved).