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

[Ramiee]

I mean, try it. Go get full uptime on melee in M2, M3, and M4. I bet you can't do it. Keep casting kid.

I've played mnk, Sam and viper in all of those and full up time isn't hard at all.

[Galvuu]

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.

The absurdity is that you live in lala-land where you think only melee jobs are challenged for uptime, and the non-SMN casters are not- by consistently highlighting their range but neglecting to draw the comparison with the fact you can do damage while moving. Just as it's absurd to think Savage will magically only challenge melee and not casters, who had way more on their plate in recent fights. It'd be like me saying melee uptime is free by noting that TOP p1 and p6 can be back-breaking for casters if your team isn't lending you a hand, and even then, you're bleeding all of your burst to keep almost perfect uptime.
I get it, you think melee jobs have it the worst out of all dps, somehow ignoring the last 3 Savage tiers we had were extremely pro-melee and difficult for non-SMN casters. You're being downright dishonest because you think the range somehow makes the cast bars vanish. I could go over more examples, like Superchain I, Pangenesis, 10S whenever you need to break tethers, Fourfold Fires, Dominion, some Harvests depending on strat... or, if you want to go further back, Singular Apocalypse, Icelit Dragonsong, Light Rampant and Diamondfrost on any non-pure uptime strat (you know, the ones that get melee full uptime, usually also benefit casters, almost like both roles have challenges to their uptime!)... even further back, Pantokrator, Hello World 2, Forsaken 2 (especially painful because it's followed by Celestriad > Trine).

Here's the difference: I understand that melee are challenged for uptime in these new NMs. I've posted in other threads telling people that this is why we need a "mobility tax" on physical ranged jobs (which are over-taxed right now, but that's another problem). You seem to be making up this purely fictitious scenario where casters get free uptime. Which is nonsense and has always be nonsense. Worst, your argument of "people won't run like headless chickens in Savage" also counters your own examples. If the group moves slowly together on Honey Bee's heart spam, the hearts, which are directed at players, will all be dodged at the same time, and everyone keeps uptime. Because you never touched a caster in your life, you also don't realize that the emerald weapon > dark puddles > double lariat is around the time you have a 2 minutes, so you can't just mindless spam Holy in White unless you want to tank your dps. You need to fit four casts there, or you going to either lose burst or drift. Is it possible to do perfectly? Sometimes. Depends on the party you get. BLM is losing uptime there no matter what (and not utilizing their Ley Lines)- but hey, BLM is a caster! Surely their uptime is free.

Yes it does.
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.

So, the problem is that PCT is top cdps? Was it ok, in both patches 6.4 and 6.5, that the top cdps job between the 70% and 95% was a melee, SAM? Was it a problem that, in all of EW, out of the top 5 cdps jobs, 4 were always melee? In patches 6.0 thru 6.3, the top 2 were both melee too. Is that ok?
Or is it just a problem when the top cdps is a caster? If a melee job got buffed to be first place, would it be overtuned? Were those melees overtuned in EW, according to your vision? If the situation repeats itself- like it probably will- does it become acceptable?


(Funny enough, I went to take a look at the funky spreadsheet site, and you, yourself, lost uptime- in fact, you're behind the melee in uptime on most of your own logs... so I literally do not understand how you can't see the problem after having experienced it yourself)

[rewd]

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.

Best jobs for what?
Prog? Certaintly not, you are better off replacing at least one of them for SMN/RDM if you are running double caster (preferably BLM).
To clear for the average group and better than average group? Debatable, especially considering BLM. It's an inflexible job now that still requires skill to just keep basic uptime, let alone optimize. You would be better off playing an easier job that can provide high damage faster and with less effort required.
For speed kills/farm runs? Yeah, I guess. And this matters how?

What does Monk/Dragoon mean? Are we talking about data or vibes here? MNK is unquestionably better than DRG, it deals more damage and actually has utility (which is also stronger/more versatile than PCT's). Since you guys love to consider the 99th percentile, in EX1 MNK is the third strongest DPS, behind PCT and SAM. Dragoon is the weakest melee, on par with NIN. It's a problem for you that PCT, a job with utility, does a bit more damage than MNK and RPR, jobs with utility, but somehow it's perfectly fine to you that MNK and even RPR deal more damage than DRG, which has no utility. Even better: the difference between MNK and DRG is bigger than the difference between PCT and MNK!

Galvuu already addressed this (and we talked about this 596 times already), but do you really believe that if melee uptime is a problem, caster uptime on the other hand isn't? Especially when your entire argument relies on the assumption that if BLM is buffed, everyone will play it and everyone will be good at it because it's an easy jobwith free uptime, unlike those poor melees (won't anyone think of the melees?)?!


You guys couldn't be more clueless about casters even if you tried, I swear.

[YuuYun]

So currently the problem with balance is not really Picto anymore as we can see the adps chart looks like how it should be between Picto and the top melees. (used to be a problem when the highest adps was picto in EX2 and above Viper in EX1 which should never be the case for Adps)

Now the only problem is BLM (Needs a major buff/a rework since it feels like shit to play without transpose rotation) and the melee dps that are falling behind a bit (minor buff for NIN and DRG).
RDM is a discussion whether it should be buffed of not. Imo it should be buffed so its bit behind the other melees due to the amount of rezzes it can cast.

Other than that the balance is fine as it is for the dps role.

[YuuYun]

Actually looking at logs Picto can be nerfed a tad bit because the difference between 2nd rdps and picto (1st rdps) its worse than the difference between GNB and other tanks which is good but not great. So after looking at the data picto can use a bit of a nerf (Not a lot but a bit, maybe reduce the potency on some of those skills by a small amount will do)

[Supersnow845]

Yes it does.



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.

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.

When I said “it doesn’t factor into cDPS” I meant it’s already included as in you can’t go “oh it’s first in cDPS then also has a raid buff on top of that” because the raid buff contribution is already counted amongst the cDPS, so PCT’s only extra utility when factoring in cDPS is tempra grassa

As for buffing BLM, you seem to harbour the illusion that just because PCT’s 100th percentile pulls away because of massive crit luck in the starry muse window that PCT is just unequivocally the better class at all percentiles which it’s not, it falls away incredibly quickly below the top and like BLM has an extremely wide IQR indicating a large variance in skill level. This is how it should be, in general the casters have to fight harder for their uptime than the melee (this has been true since about HW) so their ceilings should be higher

If you think BLM and PCT exceeding the peaks of the melee at 95+ means a hard double caster meta will form that’s just dooming because 19 out of 20 PCT’s will put out less damage than the melee

[Realfoxy]

I'm not that worried about PCT damage for savage, it's just BLM (and really the casters in general) that need to be buffed.

I am worried about PCT in ultimates. The job already completely nukes trash pulls in dungeons with the way you get muses back, but that doesn't matter because that's just dungeons. However being able to cast muses during downtime in ultimates has the potential to create a huge balance problem, you can already see this in the limited data we have on legacy ultimate clears.

It's possible to design around this (have the downtime prevent any casting, use cutscenes/down for the count, have long uptime phases) but I don't like how the job gets so much stronger with downtime relative to all the other jobs.

[rewd]

I'm not that worried about PCT damage for savage, it's just BLM (and really the casters in general) that need to be buffed.

I am worried about PCT in ultimates. The job already completely nukes trash pulls in dungeons with the way you get muses back, but that doesn't matter because that's just dungeons. However being able to cast muses during downtime in ultimates has the potential to create a huge balance problem, you can already see this in the limited data we have on legacy ultimate clears.

It's possible to design around this (have the downtime prevent any casting, use cutscenes/down for the count, have long uptime phases) but I don't like how the job gets so much stronger with downtime relative to all the other jobs.

1) Legacy Ultimates don't matter because they are not balanced anymore. For numbers worth discussing, we have to wait for 7.X Ultimates

2) It's healthy for the game to have jobs that excel in different scenarios, because that means jobs are different and unique instead of being more of the same. PCT shouldn't be neutered to be the same as the rest but should instead be used as a model to have unique jobs again. Jobs that are stronger with downtime, or if you are forced to disengage, or if there are multiple enemies and so on. This requires the community to do a "culture" shift and stop freaking out because of irrelevant dfferences. As this thread shows this is a big demand, but you can't have unique and fun jobs that are also perfectly balanced. Note: for a lot of people "perfectly balanced" means that all melees deal similar damage, what happens with RDM/SMN and phys ranged doesn't matter.

3) Ultimates are more about mechanical execution and consistency, rather than DPS checks. A stronger DPS won't cause a "huge balance problem", not as much as you think. Balance exists to ensure that every job is capable of clearing every fight and balance is good if I can also clear without a perfect execution on my part (compared to other jobs).

[Realfoxy]

1) Legacy Ultimates don't matter because they are not balanced anymore. For numbers worth discussing, we have to wait for 7.X Ultimates

2) It's healthy for the game to have jobs that excel in different scenarios, because that means jobs are different and unique instead of being more of the same. PCT shouldn't be neutered to be the same as the rest but should instead be used as a model to have unique jobs again. Jobs that are stronger with downtime, or if you are forced to disengage, or if there are multiple enemies and so on. This requires the community to do a "culture" shift and stop freaking out because of irrelevant dfferences. As this thread shows this is a big demand, but you can't have unique and fun jobs that are also perfectly balanced. Note: for a lot of people "perfectly balanced" means that all melees deal similar damage, what happens with RDM/SMN and phys ranged doesn't matter.

3) Ultimates are more about mechanical execution and consistency, rather than DPS checks. A stronger DPS won't cause a "huge balance problem", not as much as you think. Balance exists to ensure that every job is capable of clearing every fight and balance is good if I can also clear without a perfect execution on my part (compared to other jobs).

1. Legacy ultimate balance should actually matter, SE just doesn't give a shit about it for some reason. I'd rather they keep it in mind while balancing than not.

2. I agree that it's good to have some job differentiation, I just don't think that having such a clear damage difference is good differentiation.

3. Really don't get this sentiment when DPS checks were a major part of on patch difficulty for TOP, and the DPS check for it was still relevant even a few patches later.

Anyway, I'd just prefer that PCT get some of its damage shifted into its uptime combos rather than its muses, that would mitigate the problem somewhat.

[CaedemSanguis]

I've played mnk, Sam and viper in all of those and full up time isn't hard at all.

Ive played picto and viper/drg on m1-m4

picto casts are way easier than melee uptime