/r/ffxivdiscussion: Interview /w Yoshi-P on the first Arcadion savage tier difficulty

[Aco505]

the only content where actual DPS balance matters that regularly uses downtime is ultimate. They explicitly design savage to not have a lot of downtime.

As I explain at the beginning of my post, there's plenty of downtime in Criterion dungeons and in Savage fights (e. g. P2S, P3S, P5S, P8S, P9S, P12S-1). Whether we want to care about Criterion balance or if there's enough or not downtime in Savage are entirely different questions.

my gold parse comments never related to ultimates anyway

The point here is that PCT is a strong or dominating job in almost all forms of content. There's no duty in which PCT is weak. Whether you look at percentiles in Extreme, Savage or Ultimate fights doesn't matter. The job is very good all the time and it has nothing to do with how high you can get with crit luck or if the 100 and 99 percentiles are misunderstood or analyzed poorly.

[Supersnow845]

As I explain at the beginning of my post, there's plenty of downtime in Criterion dungeons and in Savage fights (e. g. P2S, P3S, P5S, P8S, P9S, P12S-1). Whether we want to care about Criterion balance or if there's enough or not downtime in Savage are entirely different questions.



The point here is that PCT is a strong or dominating job in almost all forms of content. There's no duty in which PCT is weak. Whether you look at percentiles in Extreme, Savage or Ultimate fights doesn't matter. The job is very good all the time and it has nothing to do with how high you can get with crit luck or if the 100 and 99 percentiles are misunderstood or analyzed poorly.

Criterion balance is literally less than meaningless because that invisible aura mechanic they use to compensate the buff jobs ends up benefiting the selfish jobs more because that aura is calculated by who receives it and not who offers it. Criterion balance is just a mess and PCT really doesn’t change that one way or another. As for those panda fights you are describing fights with literal 2-5 seconds of downtime (2 and 5) or fights that don’t count adds phases allowing everyone to prepare a burst (3). At that point PCT is barely getting more benefit than RPR gets from harvest moon. But like I said I’m not opposed to nerfing PCT, I oppose changing the way motifs actually work like lyth suggests. If that nerf is putting more damage back into aetherhue that’s fine, but actually removing motifs out of combat design I do oppose because that’s part of PCT’s core design. We already saw how badly removal of VPR’s debuff went

Saying “there is no duty where it’s weak” is a null statement as that applies to half the jobs in the game, there is no duty where SCH or AST are weak, there is no duty where GNB is weak, there is no duty where MNK or RPR are weak. This is the balance they have created, the melee and the melee competitors functionally are never weak in anything. Hell VPR beats out PCT at most percentiles in most savage fights and a 2 year old could play VPR

[Aco505]

Criterion balance is literally less than meaningless because that invisible aura mechanic they use to compensate the buff jobs ends up benefiting the selfish jobs more because that aura is calculated by who receives it and not who offers it. Criterion balance is just a mess and PCT really doesn’t change that one way or another.

PCT benefits a lot from Criterion due to all the downtime present, not because of the buff. The buff not being properly balanced is a different problem that's likely going to affect other jobs more than it does PCT.

As for those panda fights you are describing fights with literal 2-5 seconds of downtime (2 and 5) or fights that don’t count adds phases allowing everyone to prepare a burst (3). At that point PCT is barely getting more benefit than RPR gets from harvest moon.

PCT is balanced around dealing no damage for a specific amount of seconds. Any downtime that allows them to remove this hurdle will be hugely beneficial. Casting Soul Sow does not have the same level of relevance as getting even one motif out during a downtime phase.

Saying “there is no duty where it’s weak” is a null statement as that applies to half the jobs in the game, there is no duty where SCH or AST are weak, there is no duty where GNB is weak, there is no duty where MNK or RPR are weak.

Not to the same level as PCT among all levels and content type. RPR and VPR are awful at levels 70 and 80. We can then argue that we don't care about older content, which is fine, but I don't think it's a good idea to deny the fact that PCT is a rare job that does very well at most levels and duties regardless of difficulty.

On another note, several melee jobs were equal or below some ranged jobs in Criterion dungeons in EW, precisely due to higher melee downtime. MCH was curiously quite good there as a result although far from the best.

Hell VPR beats out PCT at most percentiles in most savage fights and a 2 year old could play VPR

Not exactly. VPR is better (rDPS and cDPS-wise) than PCT at the following percentiles and below:

- 50 overall, as well as in R1S and R2S.

- In R3S, VPR is never above PCT.

- 80 in R4S.

Whether VPR is an easy job or not and whether it deserves its damage is another question. PCT is strong. I personally don't care if it's #1 in rDPS. However, I do care if the job is top rDPS and very high aDPS-wise (usually just below buffless jobs) while also having higher nDPS than other rDPS-based jobs.

Good game balance is achieved when a job with high rDPS has lower aDPS and/or personal damage and vice versa, as otherwise we repeat what happened with SAM in ShB or BLM in EW.

We could also say that the difference is just of some hundreds of DPS and is not that substantial. That's fine but the premise of avoiding having jobs being high at/topping several metrics should be followed.

VPR was dominating every single metric some weeks ago, which was also unbalanced. The rankings have changed and may still shift as players finish getting BiS. I still think that the overall balance in this tier is relatively fine (besides MCH) but PCT and its relation to downtime should be considered for future Ultimates and Savage releases. We'll see how it ends up.