2 melee 2 ranged standard

[Galvuu]

You can't only balance around a realistic performance in a generic setting. I'm not strictly looking at the maximum log, but upper quartile in general, where Picto is performing extremely well. I admit that the highest levels of play do not impact most of the playerbase -- but as part of the playerbase that exists at the highest level of play, should the job's balance for me not matter at all? I don't think it's really fair to say "your way of playing doesn't matter," even if my way of playing isn't popular. I would absolutely hate it if jobs with high skill variances got buffed even more to the point where they're all you see in Savage farms and party finders. I think you could argue that, since balance does not matter for the 90% as you say, they should not even be considered for balance since they aren't engaging at a high enough level for their takes to matter anyway. I don't subscribe to that argument personally, since I think every player's perception matters, and no level of play is meaningless, whether it's high or low.

In the upper quartile, in extremes, PCT isn't first on any of the metrics until the 90% percentile, and even then, all the way to 95%, the lead is below 1% difference to the second and third places.
In NM, PCT has a 1.5% to 2.5% lead between 70 to 95% percentiles. The job is good, but people talk like it's 5.2 SMN. I played 5.2 SMN- PCT is nowhere near that level of dominance. It's over-represented because the other three casters are horrible at the moment. Comparing only the casters between each other isn't very productive, because three of them are performing terribly, and this only becomes evident when you compare all dps jobs across subroles. In fact, PCT-aside, melee is overperforming and all ranged are underperforming.
And it's not "your way of play doesn't matter". People need to realize that the top parses benefit from a combination of things:
- the individual player performing well (which is fine);
- the whole team performing well- performing their rotations, keeping uptime, aligning burst, aligning buffs... (which benefits PCT due to its buff);
- a pre-planned kill time (which disproportionately benefits burstiers jobs).
In addition to this, PCT also inherently has a lot of variance due to crit, with some casts doing literally 0 potency, and some doing 1k+. When you put it all in the pot together, you can see the top performers are skewed by these factors that will most likely not be present in your typical df/pf group, or be completely out of your hand. You can't control your crits, kill time is baically random, you can't control how your party plays and you can't make the not drift their buffs or kill themselves during burst windows. I've farmed pinks on extremes and had to deal with all of these- with no misplays, I often landed on low 90s because one or many of these things went wrong through no fault of my own. These factors must be present in everyone's mind for most jobs, but PCT is extremely sensitive to them, so you must consider them twofold when discussing it. People in the 90% percentile are usually pretty good at their job, so that's a good data point for "people who have decent mastery of the job". I will say that, in terms of pure mastery, it's likely that the top oranges/pinks are better than those at the 90%, but those confounding factors are highly present too, and it's next to impossible to balance for them.

And while job balance should matter at the every level, it should also reflect how relevant that level is. Meaning that the very top and the very bottom should be quartenary considerations for balance. The farther from the middle you are, the less it matters. And, thus, basing an argument on what happens in the top (or bottom) 5% percentiles isn't very useful. That was my point.

(On a different note, on something you said in your other post, PCT and RDM are comparable in terms of mobility- both have a cost to it, mind you- but both are also substantially more mobile than this abomination that's DT BLM. BLM atm is the least mobile and flexible by a mile)