Pictomancer is insanely overtuned and needs to be fixed before savage drops.

[ForteNightshade]

Having a raid buff doesn’t factor into cDPS, so essentially using cDPS the only thing that PCT has over the “selfish” jobs is its shield

Yes it does.

cDPS stands for "Combined DPS" and is measuring how much damage you've done with single target padding removed and adding how much your damage you've given to others with your buffs.

As aDPS, cDPS does not include Devilment / Standard Finish, Astrologian cards, and Left Eye. But it will add any damage your buffs contributed to the raid as your own, much like rDPS.

Keep in mind that if you're one of the jobs that have zero AOE buffs that benefit others, this is literally the same as aDPS. This is true for any tank job, Samurai, White Mage, Sage, Black Mage and Machinist.

For example, if you are a Ninja receiving buffs from an Astrologian and Dragoon. cDPS would not include those, but would still include the damage gained from Divination and Battle Litany as well as the damage from your Mug ability.

cDPS is essentially aDPS but with AoE raid buffs included. Which begs the question why does Picto have to be the top spot when it functions almost identically to Reaper and Monk? Like I said elsewhere, it's literally the best job in the game right now because it does everything well. Even cast times, which can be annoying, aren't nearly as punishing for it over Black Mage--it's sole competition as a Caster, assuming it even gets buffed.

Melee flexibility means being able to keep perfect uptime while running around as long as the boss is in range. No caster can do that. For example, if you get a bad pattern on M3 with the emerald weapon mechanic into gravity puddles into lariat combo because your party moved wonky, you kinda just take the gcd loss and can't do anything about it, which is the opposite of what you describe as free uptime (actually, the mechanic you're talking about in P10S is also crap for BLM if the party isn't cooperative, which is basically every time in the pf). You also simply don't have enough Swiftcasts for how much *insert mechanic that's annoying for casters here*. It's still up in the air how the Savage fights will be designed, but we'll undoubtedly have aoe vomit of some variety that will force casters to run around while potentially losing gcds. Once again, you're not considering that melee can run around while hitting the boss if they're within max melee. It's impossible to keep caster uptime on that mechanic on some aoe/heart patterns (which are aimed at people, so they're borderline random) because you need to run around in random directions for a good 8-10s.

See how I can construe the same argument for casters? Have you ever played BLM or PCT in your life? You're under this impression they can run around for free no biggie for an arbitrary length of time. You'll find that is not true. Melee really did forget how to work for uptime, any friction is a crime and "casters have it real good" now.

Because you typed a whole lot of nonsense trying to refute an argument I didn't even make. All while conveniently ignoring Casters can disengage from the boss entirely which is a luxury melee don't have. Now if this were Endwalker, we could argue the absurdity of melee uptime. There's a reason the enormous hit boxes were criticised, and ultimately reverted.

Even your M3 example is flawed because you're basing it around normal mode. No one is going to place puddles like that in Savage regularly because it will almost assuredly lead to damage downs or kill people, including the melee themselves, to future mechanic. A prime example of that being E3 where the chaos of headless chicken normal mode didn't extend to Savage. If you do get players that drop puddles randomly and refuse to make adjustments, well... kick them. They're bad. Balancing should never be decided on bad player performance. Regardless, you mention Swiftcast but fail to acknowledge Holy in White, which is your mobility option at only a .6% damage loss. So even in the worst case scenario, you're losing less than a melee forced out of range.

No, you just continue to make strawmen when you don't like an argument. I never once said Casters can "run around free no biggie." What I said, is they can disengage from the boss and stay along the wall. Which is often significantly easier barring some exceptions. You also assume I'm a melee player just because I'm critical of Picto being overtuned.

Why is double caster bad, what is so wrong with PCT being top DPS and being paired with a rezz caster during prog

This is the problem right here. Every critique of Picto's damage output assumes a black and white dichotomy. Most people aren't saying they have any issue with double caster. We're pointing out that assuming Black Mage gets buffed to Picto's level, both will be the undisputed best jobs in the game. They aren't on par with the melee, they're better than them. Like I said above, why does Picto, a job with both a raid buff and utility deal more damage than Monk or Reaper, who have the exact same thing.

To make this clear, if Black Mage dealt roughly around what Picto is now, then Picto itself was in the Monk/Dragoon or thereabouts. We wouldn't be having this discussion. In that scenario, double caster is still perfectly viable and quite strong. Especially if fights where melee uptime might be an issue--assuming the devs do move away from Endwalker's design. Case in point, E8S would 100% be a Caster play in this hypothetical given how much that fight hated melee. And that's fine. Right now though, Picto/BLM would just be better in every fight.