BLM needs a rework because of new content difficulty

[Supersnow845]

And in the two extreme Trial Picto can outdamage selfish dps by quite a big margin in rDPS. their maximum dps is quite incredible in fact.

PCT is about 1000 DPS above the selfish DPS at the 100th percentile but it’s 50th and 75th percentile is below almost all the melee (it’s 75th is above only NIN). It really only pulls ahead by the wide margin it does at the 100th percentile which makes sense for an rDPS job

There is no reason why an rDPS job shouldn’t be first in rDPS, the selfish jobs don’t always have to be first

[Realfoxy]

PCT is about 1000 DPS above the selfish DPS at the 100th percentile but it’s 50th and 75th percentile is below almost all the melee (it’s 75th is above only NIN). It really only pulls ahead by the wide margin it does at the 100th percentile which makes sense for an rDPS job

There is no reason why an rDPS job shouldn’t be first in rDPS, the selfish jobs don’t always have to be first

Correct, at the end of the day DPS is DPS regardless of if it comes from a raid buff or from your personal damage.

The only thing Picto should get penalised for in damage is for its utility in party shield + heal, which are both very minor parts of its kit - so it's OK if it's close to the top in DPS. Right now it's probably a little bit too strong but it doesn't need to be nerfed that much.

[Supersnow845]

Correct, at the end of the day DPS is DPS regardless of if it comes from a raid buff or from your personal damage.

The only thing Picto should get penalised for in damage is for its utility in party shield + heal, which are both very minor parts of its kit - so it's OK if it's close to the top in DPS. Right now it's probably a little bit too strong but it doesn't need to be nerfed that much.

I honestly don’t think it needs to be nerfed at all, if you get a random PCT in your party there is a 99% chance it will do less than a melee at a similar parse level (for example if both your PCT and melee parse a 66 the melee will do more damage) so for most people PCT is sitting in that space we expected of low melee+ utility

It just pulls ahead at the top end because its incredibly rigid burst has massive potential if you can align all your buffs properly. A difficult DPS (the spread on the two extremes show BLM and PCT are the two hardest jobs in the extremes) with a very high skill ceiling that is rewarded with top DPS is perfect balance in my mind.

BLM is undertuned 100% but PCT fighting for the top spot with the selfish melees is totally fine balance because while it has utility its ceiling is higher, for the average person who can’t reach the ceiling it will fall about where people expect it to fall- low melee

[Ferrinus]

I'm not just talking about maximising your instant cast uses, I'm talking about all the other ways in which they've made the job harder:

- High Thunder can't be hardcast, so a long manafont fire phase can cause it to fall off

- High Thunder has such low upfront potency you lose a lot more damage refreshing it early, compared to throwing out an early T3P in Endwalker

These two complaints are in tension with each other. Is Thunder in danger of falling off, or is Thunder in danger of getting clipped? In the first place, Thunderhead rationing means that you're never going to have a proc burning a hole in your pocket and demanding to be used early by sheer dint of its own timer; you'll only feel the need to burn early Thunderheads for movement (I often find myself doing this early in Ex2, clipping like ~5 seconds of the dot) if you're completely out of other movement tools. On the other end, Manafont gives you the Thunderhead buff, so you'd have to Manafont when your Thunder's already run out, then Thunder, then spend a full 30 seconds in Manafont's extra fire phase, which on paper and with 0 Spellspeed should contain 27.8 seconds' worth of fire spells, and that's assuming you used your F3P instead of saving it. If you also had to dump a couple Polyglots, well... then your enemy's going to not have a DoT on them for like two GCDs tops.

These aren't catastrophic or even significant failures on the level of dropping Enochian, missing a Flare Star, or overwriting a Polyglot. They're just damage shortfalls that can be fixed by better planning and optimization. They don't make the job harder to learn or play at a competent level, they make it harder to optimize.

I should add that I think Thunderhead is a pointless mechanic and that it'd be better if Thunder spells could just be cast at will whenever you had astral/umbral status (to protect newbies from losing the Enochian damage bonus) but while Thunderhead does exist it doesn't increase the job's difficulty so much as constrain (but not entirely remove) your ability to make mistakes.

- Flare Star makes the consequences for missing an F4 much greater

- Flare Star is an additional 3 second long hardcast

This is true (Flare Star definitely makes the job harder to play), but is counterbalanced by instant paradox and guaranteed F3P. If you're just working on making sure you get a Flare Star every astral cycle, you will, thanks to those particular QoL improvements. When I miss a Flare Star it's usually because of a combination of being flustered by boss mechanics and having greedily spent all my triple and swiftcasts last astral cycle to try to save a few extra seconds of cast time. The job is hard for me precisely because my spellspeed is much lower than usual and because I'm aware of, and constantly trying to perform, optimizations that increase my outgoing damage at the cost of risking that my whole rotation collapses.

- If you mess up the end of your fire phase e.g. with an interrupted Despair cast, you can't transpose Para B1 B4 and then resume. You have to slowcast a B3 before you can get back to your normal rotation.

Para -> B1 is two GCDs' worth of spellcasting, while hardcast B3 is 1.4 GCDs' worth, and so gets you back in gear faster. It's less damaging than the now-impossible alternative, sure... but so what? There's no more damaging option. It's not somehow easier doing the first thing than the second thing (in fact I would argue it is harder as it requires more button presses and more game knowledge).

All this is to reiterate that it being harder to maintain hypothetical maximum damage isn't the same as it being harder to just maintain uptime or execute the job's basic mechanics consistently. The difficulty that veterans are feeling is not something new players are feeling, and being able to relax and compromise on things that you wouldn't have to do in Stone, Sky, Sea (e.g. using F3P on mobility and AF maintenance rather than saving it for damage every single time you get it) makes the job feel a lot more able to adapt to movement-heavy bosses.

[Galvuu]

PCT is about 1000 DPS above the selfish DPS at the 100th percentile but it’s 50th and 75th percentile is below almost all the melee (it’s 75th is above only NIN). It really only pulls ahead by the wide margin it does at the 100th percentile which makes sense for an rDPS job

There is no reason why an rDPS job shouldn’t be first in rDPS, the selfish jobs don’t always have to be first

Picto is also the job with most variance in the game. It's the job with the biggest falloff between burst and filler, so if you crit everything in your burst (with multiple 1k+ potency gcds and ogcds) you're literally gonna do like 10+% more damage at the end of the fight than if you don't.
It's a 20k VS 23k ndps difference. Using the top parse is always iffy, but it's especially iffy in Picto, that's the kind of run you see once in 200 kills.

[Realfoxy]

These aren't catastrophic or even significant failures on the level of dropping Enochian, missing a Flare Star, or overwriting a Polyglot. They're just damage shortfalls that can be fixed by better planning and optimization. They don't make the job harder to learn or play at a competent level, they make it harder to optimize.

I should add that I think Thunderhead is a pointless mechanic and that it'd be better if Thunder spells could just be cast at will whenever you had astral/umbral status (to protect newbies from losing the Enochian damage bonus) but while Thunderhead does exist it doesn't increase the job's difficulty so much as constrain (but not entirely remove) your ability to make mistakes.

I think I see where we're disagreeing. Personally, I don't consider "just casting something, anything, to maintain the AF timer" to be the skill floor of BLM, I consider the skill floor to be "how hard is it to execute the developer intended rotation." It is true that the free F3p does help players avoid catastrophic failure more easily than in Endwalker, I just don't think that these "damage shortfalls" you mentioned are in the realm of optimisation tricks. They're what I consider the basics of the job - refresh your DOT on time, don't clip your GCD, etc.

Still, I consider the Thunderhead system to be not only clunky, but an actual trap for less experienced players - I have had to advise more than one person that you should in fact not hit the shiny thunder button as soon as it lights up, since it's equivalent upfront potency to Scathe.

...

All this is to reiterate that it being harder to maintain hypothetical maximum damage isn't the same as it being harder to just maintain uptime or execute the job's basic mechanics consistently. The difficulty that veterans are feeling is not something new players are feeling, and being able to relax and compromise on things that you wouldn't have to do in Stone, Sky, Sea (e.g. using F3P on mobility and AF maintenance rather than saving it for damage every single time you get it) makes the job feel a lot more able to adapt to movement-heavy bosses.

Sure, it is true that if you close your eyes and ignore all the "damage shortfalls" then yes, you could consider DT BLM to be easier. But I don't like this jobs' difficulty to now come from managing an awful DOT system and manafont drift. I don't think that anyone who misses one F4 should be punished so harshly.

(On that note, I consider it poor design that casting Flare Star as soon it becomes available is a mistake since it doesn't refresh your AF timer. Yet another thing the developers appear to have forgotten).

[Realfoxy]

I honestly don’t think it needs to be nerfed at all, if you get a random PCT in your party there is a 99% chance it will do less than a melee at a similar parse level (for example if both your PCT and melee parse a 66 the melee will do more damage) so for most people PCT is sitting in that space we expected of low melee+ utility

It just pulls ahead at the top end because its incredibly rigid burst has massive potential if you can align all your buffs properly. A difficult DPS (the spread on the two extremes show BLM and PCT are the two hardest jobs in the extremes) with a very high skill ceiling that is rewarded with top DPS is perfect balance in my mind.

BLM is undertuned 100% but PCT fighting for the top spot with the selfish melees is totally fine balance because while it has utility its ceiling is higher, for the average person who can’t reach the ceiling it will fall about where people expect it to fall- low melee

I don't like PCT being so burst heavy for two reasons:

1. Crit variance

2. Packing so much burst into its long cast prepared spells means that in any fight with downtime, PCT will be much advantaged compared to other jobs

The devs have to walk a tight balance here to make its paintings balanced for full uptime while not making PCT be the number 1 must have pick for ultimates (with their frequent downtime).

[Supersnow845]

I don't like PCT being so burst heavy for two reasons:

1. Crit variance

2. Packing so much burst into its long cast prepared spells means that in any fight with downtime, PCT will be much advantaged compared to other jobs

The devs have to walk a tight balance here to make its paintings balanced for full uptime while not making PCT be the number 1 must have pick for ultimates (with their frequent downtime).

Tools that have uptime benefits in fights with downtime is just a facet of the game and not something that I think needs to be specifically addressed unless they intend to bring back significant downtime to savage

WHM is already the king of damage in ultimates for healers even beating out the buff healers during the burst heavy uptime ultimate phases simply because of lilys

It’s just the way the game is

[Sylvain]

WHM is already the king of damage in ultimates for healers even beating out the buff healers during the burst heavy uptime ultimate phases simply because of lilys

It’s just the way the game is

I can confirm that WHM in P2 and P5 felt just right dps wise x)

[Ferrinus]

I think I see where we're disagreeing. Personally, I don't consider "just casting something, anything, to maintain the AF timer" to be the skill floor of BLM, I consider the skill floor to be "how hard is it to execute the developer intended rotation." It is true that the free F3p does help players avoid catastrophic failure more easily than in Endwalker, I just don't think that these "damage shortfalls" you mentioned are in the realm of optimisation tricks. They're what I consider the basics of the job - refresh your DOT on time, don't clip your GCD, etc.

Still, I consider the Thunderhead system to be not only clunky, but an actual trap for less experienced players - I have had to advise more than one person that you should in fact not hit the shiny thunder button as soon as it lights up, since it's equivalent upfront potency to Scathe.

Well, no, I do think the skill floor is getting a Flare Star each astral cycle. I just think the job gives you the tools to do that reliably if you don't try to spend those tools on increasing your damage instead. Someone who plays conservatively and hangs on to their triple/swift/xeno is going to be able to do the standard rotation consistently, they'll just put out less damage than someone who knows how to cut corners and spend every spare triple/swift/xeno at optimal rather than conservative times.

As much as I agree with you that Thunderhead is bad, I don't think it creates any danger of DoT clipping aside from the way it might mislead new players into thinking they should do that on purpose. There's basically no pressure to refresh your DoT early unless you're so completely out of movement options that even a high-level player would've made the spot decision to do so, and insofar as there are unavoidable gaps in DoT upkeep, those are, you know, unavoidable. If some otherwise-defensible sequence of Thunder refresh and Manafont activation and so on puts you in a situation where your Thunder falls off and then stays off for 3 or 4 seconds before being reapplied, that's just how the job works, no more your fault than a failure to cast more than one Flare Star per astral cycle is. It's like how the GNB Bow Shock or whatever it's called DoT doesn't actually have 100% uptime either.

Sure, it is true that if you close your eyes and ignore all the "damage shortfalls" then yes, you could consider DT BLM to be easier. But I don't like this jobs' difficulty to now come from managing an awful DOT system and manafont drift. I don't think that anyone who misses one F4 should be punished so harshly.

(On that note, I consider it poor design that casting Flare Star as soon it becomes available is a mistake since it doesn't refresh your AF timer. Yet another thing the developers appear to have forgotten).

I don't think Manafont drift is a serious issue either because, like the very occasional DoT elapse above, it's just a fact of life that's no one's fault and therefore no one's problem. Like, you can, at any time, do a "short fire line" in order to line your rotation up so that you can Manafont on cooldown—you just have to cast Despair early, and bam, your astral cycle has been truncated. Obviously, doing this means you lose out on one or more Fire IVs and a Flare Star, and therefore costs you more damage than being able to Manafont earlier would gain you, so you don't do it. But what's wrong with that? I think it'd actually be worse if it gave you better damage, rather than worse, to truncate your rotation to fit Manafont's cooldown exactly, because it'd be less mathematically obvious that it's a good idea and people wouldn't realize they were losing out on damage by performing the rotation the job appears to expect of them.

That said, I agree with you that there should be a consolation prize for missing an F4 and that there's no reason for Flare Star itself to not refresh AF. I think I suggested somewhere in this thread or another that zeroing your MP with either Flare or Despair could automatically fill your Astral Gauge with dimmer/less valuable pips or something, and depending on how many actual F4s/non-zeroing-Flares you were able to cast, the final damage of Flare Star would be scaled somewhere between that of Despair's own damage and Flare Star's listed maximum potency.

Hell, they could just make Despair work exactly like Flare such that it gives you three pips when it lands (though this might make it look and feel weird to sometimes find yourself swapping to ice mode with 3/6 pips on your bar). The important thing to me is that a 6xF4 astral cycle should remain decisively optimal in terms of potency per second; skipping spells should be a best-of-two-bad-options thing rather than an obscure way to do better than standard.