2 melee 2 ranged standard

[Valence]

fact checking

Thank you for the correction then. I'll admit that I probably spoke too fast out of feeling more than fact. I always felt I always had some tool to go back to when it came to mobility on the job so far, but it's on me and I should instead have checked it before speaking since PCT is not my specialty.
I don't see why you felt the need to be an absolute dick about it though. Did I offend you in any way or something? You never make mistakes yourself?

And as someone already pointed above, your fact checking is biased and uses blatantly wrong facts about RDM itself by omitting burst concerns on purpose in order to suit your narrative and win internet points.

You're going to do your favorite move and look at my profile to see if I'm some top parsing Picto, so I'll go ahead and add my sources here: my friend and raid teammate, Kurkee Brakzz, who is a pink- and orange-parsing Picto, helped me formulate this post and compare my RDM experiences with his Picto experiences. Therefore, please engage with the content of my argument to disprove me.

It would be almost embarrassing if someone returned him the favor...

[Ggwppino]

that movement restrictions for casters can almost entirely be mitigated by proactive planning and play.

Exactly, plan.
It seems crazy to me to trivialize this aspect, as you are doing.

[W00by]

snip snap

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.

At any rate, I'm talking about standard party finder, where a 50th percentile Pictomancer is doing more DMG than a 95th percentile RDM. The job is very strong regardless of how poorly people play it at all levels of play, so even the argument that the upper end should be ignored makes no sense here because even the lower end of Pictos are doing just fine for themselves. If we were to balance around that lower end, even median-and-upper-quartile ranges would skyrocket in strength. In general, I think you should balance around all levels, but the higher level tends to be the level where balance matters more.

As for the double caster argument, there are certainly fights where double caster is really hard, I don't dispute that. Fights should try and accommodate both double caster and double melee where possible. But I think when double melee isn't accommodated, it's because one melee simply can't play, whereas when double caster isn't accommodated, it's because both casters are having uptime struggles. At least the casters are getting to play their job, just in a difficult environment. But I can see how it's unsatisfying for primary caster players.

Also, as for not seeing much double caster at all right now, in the Savage community, it's pretty popular right now. Many teams run double melee because they think that's the standard, but PCT + RDM is really popular among prog comps right now (mine included! I'll be on RDM for the tier). It'l be interesting to see the world race.

And sorry the thread keeps going to Picto all the time! It's just really overtuned right now, so any discussion of double caster, casters as a role, etc. will eventually bring it up. I tried to swing back onto topic!

[W00by]

Exactly, plan.
It seems crazy to me to trivialize this aspect, as you are doing.

I'm not attempting to trivialize it. In fact, a lot of my discussion of why it's hard for RDM to use its mobility tools sometimes is a direct demonstration of me not trivializing it, because I'm explaining why it's hard to do! How can that be trivializing something?

It's not trivial, but just because it's difficult doesn't mean it's impossible. And the crux of my argument is that, while planning mobility is difficult for ALL casters, it's harder for some than others. PCT is on the easier end.

[rewd]

Exactly, plan.
It seems crazy to me to trivialize this aspect, as you are doing.

I'll be honest, I still think we are being trolled hard.

[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)

[W00by]

My apologies on the quartile analysis! Your numbers look correct. However, there are some things I take issue with here:

The whole team does not have to perform well for you to parse well. It can help, of course. But in some cases, the whole team doing well actually hurts you because it can get you a worse kill time. I've had many parses this tier where I get a 99 while the rest of the team is doing blues and greens because they delayed the kill time to the end of burst, so that isn't necessarily true. You can still do well without a whole team.

If you are doing a purely statistical analysis, then yes, the middle should matter most because the middle has the most people in it. But you also have to consider whether or not the middle is actually engaging with the entire class. A big part of this thread has been an argument about whether or not low-end players are using the tools at their disposal. If they are not using the tools, how can the balance of these tools matter to them? The reason I say balance matters more at the higher end is because the higher end is where disparity in performance actually starts to matter.

Think about fighting games for a second. The "best character in the game" for a midcore player and a hardcore player will be very different. A brand new player might find the "best character in the game" useless because they are hard to play. But they are still the best character in the game, regardless, and should be balanced as such. Midcore player's concerns should not be ignored, but when players are not using the tools in the game, how can their opinions o the balance of these tools be said to matter as much as the players that are? It's a tricky balancing act, but you can't ignore the top anymore than you can ignore the bottom.

[W00by]

I'll be honest, I still think we are being trolled hard.

Would you like to explain what about my post was trolling? You can try and engage with my argument or you can attack me ad hominem (like usual) and look like a buffoon. I gave measured takes based on my raiding experience and the experience of other high level players in my circle. You gave half-assed, biased log analysis that doesn't amount to anything except "one number bigger than other number woo."

Of course, if you'd like to share your raid experience to disprove me, or maybe a few of your logs, we're all listening...

[Galvuu]

My apologies on the quartile analysis! Your numbers look correct. However, there are some things I take issue with here:

The whole team does not have to perform well for you to parse well. It can help, of course. But in some cases, the whole team doing well actually hurts you because it can get you a worse kill time. I've had many parses this tier where I get a 99 while the rest of the team is doing blues and greens because they delayed the kill time to the end of burst, so that isn't necessarily true. You can still do well without a whole team.

It really depends- I think a good point of comparison for PCT is ShB NIN. Because they're both very bursty jobs with high rdps/cdps and with a powerful raid buff. The multiplicative nature of raid buffs and how much PCT gains from them all stacking both in terms of adps (due to his burst) and getting rdps contribution from others (by putting their burst in their strong raid dps steroid) is very significant. So what you're saying is true- I've had oranges (and even pinks) with drifting buffs or people with weakness on the 2 min burst... but it was honestly because I crit a lot in burst myself. I've hard many runs (like... 95% of my runs) where I play as well as I can (better than many high oranges/pinks) but I get a purple because my team's buffs drifted/they died/I didn't crit. It's really out of my control. I can see an argument for the 95% performance to be considered, but I'd still weight it far lower than the 90% (and also the 80%). This was the case with ShB NIN too- your crit in opener and party bursting properly was a massive factor on your own performance and it was mostly out of your hands.

Think about fighting games for a second. The "best character in the game" for a midcore player and a hardcore player will be very different. A brand new player might find the "best character in the game" useless because they are hard to play. But they are still the best character in the game, regardless, and should be balanced as such. Midcore player's concerns should not be ignored, but when players are not using the tools in the game, how can their opinions o the balance of these tools be said to matter as much as the players that are? It's a tricky balancing act, but you can't ignore the top anymore than you can ignore the bottom.

My mental model for this is League, actually. I'm a ranked soloq player, basically. I know pro play exists and needs some balance, but it's very far-removed from the average player's experience. "Midcore concerns" (borrowing your expression here, but it illustrates the point well) become more important because the game is a cooperative element- you end up paired with these players, so now their contribution affects your gameplay/experience a lot and it's totally out of your hands. XIV leans even farther into the "midcore" part because it's purely cooperative (no pvp)- a big departure from the fighting game hypothetical. Ofc, if there was a job that did 20% more cdps when played to its maximum (both individually and in the team), that'd be a huge issue. But PCT isn't close to that. I'd say, perhaps a bit coldly, that I'm happier ignoring the bottom (if you don't press buttons, nothing really matters). I want to add the addendum that I'm not advocating for simplifying jobs to appease the lowest common denominator (something XIV has been doing as of late), but I actually think PCT's reward for high mastery and overall team performance is adequate. I wish more jobs were like that.
(Strictly speaking, BLM is... but in the worst way possible with miserable payoff)

(Sorry for being harsh-spoken at times, I appreciate the civility. I hope I'm getting my point across. Fwiw, while I have strong conviction in what I'm saying, but I can be convinced... it's just that I've played the game a long time, and I remember when 5.2 SMN was overpowered, and PCT isn't at that level at all)

EDIT: another thought that crossed my mind, I think the extreme numbers might be a bit better because, atm, 99% of NMs are random df groups, while extremes are a bit more planned for/filtered, and probably reflect the Savage/static experience more closely.

[rewd]

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

ShB SMN will be forever missed. Aside from damage, how to forget Egi Assaults/Ruin IV/Phoenix mobility, unlimited Ruin II for the rest, Titan shields, Everlasting Flight, Raise, fast raise in Dreadwyrm and Firebird Trance and Devotion tech. <3