Please let summoner keep raise

[Lyth]

...

There's no point comparing a tank's access to raise with a ranged job, because there's no way whatsoever to compare the two. Tanks do significantly less damage than DPS jobs. They have significantly more survivability. They're not even competing for the same raid slots. A single tank having access to raise would definitely create tank role balance issues. All tanks having access to raise would not (although I think such a design decision would devalue healers further).

Raise is ultimately gated by MP. Four raises is 9600 MP, and you also need to spend MP on additional spells if you want to dualcast.

I think you're actually reinforcing my point about utility. Utility is always situational. Raise is a really powerful tool, so much so that players have to sacrifice 10% of their DPS to have access to it. But what happens if you never use it? That's why you can't balance DPS against utility. Give players DPS parity, and then be as creative as you like with the utility. If there's a tool that's going to be potentially gamebreaking (invulns, raises), then just give every comp equal access to it.

PCT absolutely dominates most of the current fights due to the design of its burst, and is going to have an even more of an overwhelming advantage in FRU unless the devs wake up and do something about it. The DPS chasm that you see is between a higher and lower tier of ranged jobs. If you're willing to rectify that, we'll have a level playing field.

I'd actually like it if more DPS role balances were done similar to melee, in that you actually see trade-offs in the rankings over the weeks between more burst-orientated jobs and more consistent DPS jobs as fight durations get shorter.

I think it's interesting that your main objection to handing out Raise is that you see it as a potential DPS liability for PCT, while you're happy to encourage someone else to bring it and take on that DPS liability on your behalf. The truth is, if there is a fixed number of raises in every raid comp, then nobody needs to be taxed for having it because it no longer impacts game balance. You'll lose that free 10% DPS edge, but that needs to go away regardless.

[Galvuu]

I think it's interesting that your main objection to handing out Raise is that you see it as a potential DPS liability for PCT, while you're happy to encourage someone else to bring it and take on that DPS liability on your behalf. The truth is, if there is a fixed number of raises in every raid comp, then nobody needs to be taxed for having it because it no longer impacts game balance. You'll lose that free 10% DPS edge, but that needs to go away regardless.

So, in your version of the game, casters can all rez and just flat out trail behind melee by 10%? All of them? I don't even understand why you're talking about PCT's damage and FRU- the topic is about SMN and its raise (spoiler: unless it's a fight comprised of body checks, the rez will almost always have value: just look at how many corpses you can carry in UCoB/UWU/DSR). Somehow, every conversation devolves into "b-but PCT dps". I'm sure melee will dominate again Lyth- again, they're already 60% to 80% of the top 5 in every dps metric for every Savage fight. That's probably what this whole tirade is about anyway.

How fast you can rez someone is what's important anyway, that's what grants RDM its unmatched recovery ability. Every piece of utility is situational to an extent. If you overmitigate an aoe by 10% when it was not lethal, it's probably useless. If you use Asylum or Soil and the former overheals and the later overmits, they're useless in that situation. That doesn't mean they're worthless. Magic Barrier isn't worthless even though content isn't designed with it in mind (hell, you can make an extreme argument that extra damage is worthless too unless it allows you to skip a mechanic, and even then it would depend on what you're skipping).

I'm far less attached to Picto than you seem to suggest. I'd delete this job if I could have EW BLM and ShB SMN back. In fact, I think the niche PCT is currently inhabiting should've been SMN's. I feel like I was forced into this goofy job more than I willingly chose it. But, on the flipside, I'm tired of melee supremacy coming from EW. Like there's an unwritten rule that every dps must trail behind melee. And I'm tired of no actual diversity between jobs too. But sure, something something FRU and PCT supremacy something.

[Lyth]

PCT and BLM aren't trailing behind melee by 10%, though? The top DPS is a caster. The problem isn't raise itself, it's differential access to it. If your access to raise is standardised across all ranged jobs, there's no need to penalise anyone for it, because every raid group will have the same number of raises. I'm not just talking about casters either - physical ranged have it worst of all, because they have the same DPS tax without even bringing raise in the first place. Standardise raise, bring in DPS parity.

Ideally, you should have a mix of fight designs such that different jobs are on top under different conditions. Burst is fine, but it shouldn't be so extreme that it wins out over consistent DPS under all conditions. Melee might have an edge under high uptime conditions, but then perhaps ranged pull ahead on fights where you're forced off the boss more consistently. You don't want to always see the same jobs on top. If balance is well designed, then you'll see jobs constantly trading off. FoTM design is bad because people feel that they are forced to play a specific job just to play that role.

Either way, I have no problem with true DPS parity, so long as I can play a fast melee job that's within striking distance of reaching the top through consistent gameplay and persistent uptime. You are always going to have some difficulty balancing melee against ranged, because fights with high melee uptime will favour melee, and fights with a lot of melee downtime will favour ranged. (That's also probably why they're in separate categories.) But that's less of a problem if you incorporate both types of fight designs.

[Galvuu]

I'm not just talking about casters either - physical ranged have it worst of all, because they have the same DPS tax without even bringing raise in the first place. Standardise raise, bring in DPS parity.

Ideally, you should have a mix of fight designs such that different jobs are on top under different conditions
(...)
Either way, I have no problem with true DPS parity, so long as I can play a fast melee job that's within striking distance of reaching the top through consistent gameplay and persistent uptime. You are always going to have some difficulty balancing melee against ranged, because fights with high melee uptime will favour melee, and fights with a lot of melee downtime will favour ranged. (That's also probably why they're in separate categories.) But that's less of a problem if you incorporate both types of fight designs.

Physical ranged are penalized for their consistent uptime- for being immune to disruption (another penalty I agree with in principle, though the tax is far too large at the moment). That's a whole different matter from this rez conversation. And this last point of yours glosses over fights with long stretches of movement (that penalize casters and are fairly inconsequential for the other two roles).

Either way, the problem with burst is the entire 2 minute nonsense. Ideally, jobs would fall on a spectrum between a flat and a bursty profile, where that translates to different gameplay. The combination of fight design and multiplicative raid buffs is why this doesn't work in practice. Even in ShB you saw jobs breaking from strict alignment (it was often better for SMN to rush the demis instead of delaying for buff alignment because you got one more demi out of a fight on typical kill times). That this type of thing is disappearing is a sign that this forceful 2 meta nonsense is reaching the end of its tether. I mean, even if two jobs did the exact same damage on a dummy, the burstier one is always going to be more desirable because of this very design issue. You fundamentally can't really balance it in a way that suits all comps either, because if you're flatter curve job performs as well as the bursty one on a raid buff comp, then it's gonna overperform everywhere else (even if, selfishly, I'd probably be content with this outcome since it means BLM is topping the charts again).

Anyway, this discussion is pointless because you're solely focused on the "top", which translates solely to killing a fight as quickly as possible. This isn't how most people play the game- and I think balance should primarily look at the 70 thru 90 percentiles, and it shouldn't have the majority of its weight on the fastest kills (unless something really degenerate is happening there). The balance we have right now is atrocious, but I don't think a job doing 5% less damage than another because it has a strong utility niche is a problem, especially when the decision to gain (or sacrifice) that damage is meaningful (there's an actual advantage you're giving up on). Of course the current chasm isn't defensible, but I've posted on like 5 different places saying that those jobs should be buffed (especially RDM and MCH).

Fwiw, if you're solely looking at the top, while not as disastrous as casters, both melee and ranged have jobs which aren't represented in the top 20 fastest kills. No MCH, no RPR and almost no VPR (there's 4 across all fights iirc, from last weekend). And those don't have any special niche that justifies them in prog or a pf environment either (like the rez). Although, again, this is a symptom of the 2 minute disease more than anything. You either abuse the raid buffs, provide your own, or the job is bound to slowly be left behind.

[Lyth]

Let me see if I can recap your views.

• It is unfair to you that melee have consistently good DPS output, setting aside the fact that the top DPS, which even the dev team have admitted on record is overpowered, is a Magical Ranged job.
• You believe that raise should remain as it is on SMN/RDM, with a DPS penalty left intact to create an upper and lower tier of magical ranged jobs. You are willing to make a marginal concession on the value of this DPS penalty, however.
• You believe that BRD/DNC/MCH should carry an intrinsic DPS penalty that make them do less damage than the upper tier of magical ranged jobs because they have 'more consistent uptime and are immune to disruption' than magical ranged jobs. You are willing to make a marginal concession on the value of this DPS penalty, however.

Let me recap my views:

• DPS parity is important. Having upper and lower tiers of damage dealers within a role category is bad. In a well balanced system, variations in fight conditions will push different jobs to the top, promoting comp diversity.
• If access to raises is preventing DPS parity, then making it available across all ranged jobs will allow it to be implemented without penalty.
• There are other forms of utility that are presently untaxed. Once you have established DPS parity, these can be explored as a means of developing job identity.

I think the problem with discussing big picture questions around design direction is that everyone wants to defend their territory and preserve the status quo, at the expense of making changes that would benefit the game as a whole. That's the reason why we see some jobs in an absolutely miserable state for entire expansions on end.

I would have thought that we could at least find agreement that DPS parity is a good thing. If Raise is preventing DPS parity, then it makes sense to standardise it across ranged jobs so that it no longer factors in as a DPS penalty. There are other ways of developing job identity through utility actions.

[Galvuu]

Let me see if I can recap your views.

• It is unfair to you that melee have consistently good DPS output, setting aside the fact that the top DPS, which even the dev team have admitted on record is overpowered, is a Magical Ranged job.
• You believe that raise should remain as it is on SMN/RDM, with a DPS penalty left intact to create an upper and lower tier of magical ranged jobs. You are willing to make a marginal concession on the value of this DPS penalty, however.
• You believe that BRD/DNC/MCH should carry an intrinsic DPS penalty that make them do less damage than the upper tier of magical ranged jobs because they have 'more consistent uptime and are immune to disruption' than magical ranged jobs. You are willing to make a marginal concession on the value of this DPS penalty, however.

"Marginal"? I didn't put a value to the tax. I don't know. It could be 1%, it could be 5%, it could be whatever. I said what we have now is excessive, that I still think it should exist (otherwise you're never using BLM) but that I ultimately don't know what value it should have. Only that the current one is excessive. I mean, you argued for the phys ranged tax yourself in another thread (the "from meleewalker to meleetrail" one, agreeing with me at the time), mentioning that you thought melee uptime was being sufficiently challenged in the normal modes of Arcadion.

I don't have a problem with melee doing good damage. I have a problem with melee outperforming all ranged jobs except BLM in EW and half of ShB (eventually SMN got there too, for two patches). 4/5 of the highest dps jobs in every dps metric in EW were melee. For ShB this was also the case for every patch except two (5.2 and 5.3). There hasn't been a physical ranged in there since we added rdps as a metric in fflogs. I just think maybe the top 5 should be 2/3 melee, 1/2 casters and 1/2 physical ranged. I didn't even want to be talking about dps subrole damage, or a job's specific damage profile or any of that.

Regardless, what I was actually arguing was that some casters having a raise is a differentiating factor that provides a powerful, if situational utility niche (it does), that casters are the only subrole with such a meaningful differentiation between its jobs (they are), that historically it's been very powerful in many situations (it is in early prog and in a more disorganized pf setting, which accounts for 9/10 of raid play), and that it's currently overtaxed in terms of damage (it is) although I, personally, think it should still have some form of penalty (otherwise you're never bringing a BLM).

Your last argument could really be directed back at you. I could sit here and pretend that you're arguing as you are to make sure all casters have a similar baseline damage that's subpar because they all have access to a rez- it's obvious that this is how SE balances access to rez, so if we gave all casters a rez, then PCT and BLM would never be competing with melee again, which would put the final nail in the dps composition coffin (you'd always run 2x melee). As long as 4 of the 5 strongest jobs in every metric are melee, double caster (or, God forbid, double ranged) are never going to outperform double melee. If BLM gets a bit of a bump next patch, this will be the first time since Stormblood where a non-2x melee comp might be the best for a few fights. And I most definitely don't want to preserve the status quo, which is double melee still dominating. If I could have it my way, you'd be seeing double caster and double ranged either be within a hair of double melee, or just beating it outright in some fights. I also don't understand why other utility actions are good for developing identity, but not the rez. Other utility being a source of identity? Good. Rez being a source of identity? Bad. I mean, this exact argument is gonna be copy pasted ad nauseam when you have different utility in the jobs. If every caster suddenly had a rez and the same baseline dps, guess what? People will start looking at Magick Barrier and Tempera Coat because those two give their jobs an edge (not even going to bring up ease of execution, another factor we know SE considers).

[Carighan]

I mean, let's be honest here: Physical ranged jobs and Summoner are significantly easier to not screw up when progressing new raid fights.

As a bad savage raider, I very much feel this. I can do it on Astro or Red Mage, but wow is it all easier on Dancer or Summoner. The 100% respectively near-100% mobility is such a huge boon that changes the whole way you experience the fight and how quickly you can internalize how mechanics are handled. I can totally see a "tax" for this ease of play being fitting: The performance floor is lower, but so is the ceiling. This makes sense. Whether we even want easier and tougher jobs as a community is a different thing, but the downfall of Overwatch to where it is now should readily show everyone that having different characters for all different kinds of player skill levels is useful to have, and beneficial to your game as a whole.

[Valence]

The real solution would be to get away from this unilateral damage meta and bring back other metrics to provide for a more three dimensional aspect to the battle content, instead of this "maintain uptime damage while you do DDR" brainrot we have. Obviously if there is a single metric to measure the value of a job, it will irremediably go back to that problem: either your jobs have some "identity" and that will translate through differences on where they sit on that single damage metric, making some less desirable than others, or your jobs will be homogenized even more trying to make them all the same to justify an identical, perfectly balanced dps output (and still fail at it anyway).

[Galvuu]

The real solution would be to get away from this unilateral damage meta and bring back other metrics to provide for a more three dimensional aspect to the battle content, instead of this "maintain uptime damage while you do DDR" brainrot we have. Obviously if there is a single metric to measure the value of a job, it will irremediably go back to that problem: either your jobs have some "identity" and that will translate through differences on where they sit on that single damage metric, making some less desirable than others, or your jobs will be homogenized even more trying to make them all the same to justify an identical, perfectly balanced dps output (and still fail at it anyway).

Worst part is, game had this in the past. Phases like Titan's heart phase, when it came out, necessitated people holding cds to burst it, which makes for a very interesting dynamic. TEA p1 adds are also a good example of needing controlled/staggered damage. And, while people hate it, there's some merit to kiting like you see in T7S. The closest we've had to this since was Shiva's add phase in Verse. There's space for a lot of cool stuff in XIV, even with all the netcode and design limitations- healing checks like Seph Ex that can't be mitigated (thus making them a real healing/shielding check and not a mit check in disguise), fights that require carefully positioning the boss for tanks, etc etc. We've just devolved into this peak creative bankruptcy that ultimately spills over to job design/balance in some capacity.

[mallleable]

If you want to give phys ranged bonkers support tools, and not fix their damage output then don't give them a rezzes, and instead buff Peloton's movement speed a little more, and let it be used it in combat -- and yes, let it be a buff you maintain throughout a fight.