Concerns Regarding DPS Balance: Physical Ranged, Red Mage, and Summoner

[Valence]

Another thing they removed from rphys, especially MCH while I think about it, is also the involvement. MCH used to burst every minute, and by this I do mean an actual burst, at least in SB. In HW it was definitely slower on a 90s cycle, but the rotation was so choke full with random timers (60s, 80s, 90s, 120s...) that it just made the difficulty on its own. BRD meanwhile had a 80s cycle pretty early.

Why did they feel the need to remove this? For 80s I can somewhat understand, but for 60s bursts? They still fit within the 120s meta... Meanwhile MNK casually keeps a buff every minute even though the odd minute burst sequence is definitely lighter by miles. You know what's MCH burst sequence at every odd minute? Chainsaw. Pretty good amaright? Even DNC has flourish there. BRD kinda tries with Apex/Blast and that's about it. Enjoy your resident sleepers filler on the role that has little uptime issues.

One of the defining factors of rphys could be the filler involvement, like it used to be, with conscious decisions at every turn through meaningful rng on top of it.

And that would be my ideal as far as balancing goes: if you play your job well, your damage should reflect that, so just play the job you enjoy playing! The idea that some jobs aren’t “worth” playing just because they’re not at the top of the dps charts is oddly persistent here for a game that has over 20 battle jobs and keeps adding more each expansion.

Yeah my best mathematical damage is barely equal to any melee's damage after dying. Perhaps more than once. Happy days.

[Reldhir]

You're actually comparing ranged and melee, not rphys and melee dps. There is virtually no difference between caster dps and rphys mechanics in modern raids and this has been ongoing since forever (shadowbringers and the great demolition of all other metrics beyond damage and uptime). And there is actually almost no difference between all melees (dps and tanks) and all ranged (rphys, casters and healers) either beyond that some raid mechanics are role based, but the mechanical execution and solutions on their own aren't specific to support or dps beyond an arbitrary filter.

I think it might help if you consider multiple reasons in parallel rather than finding the similarities across a single point and then concluding that they are the same.

The example I gave was one point to consider, not all of them. Your example of Tanks and melee dps being virtually the same in raid mechanic positioning yet being clearly different in role only furthers my point.

The differences between roles are the sum of multiple attributes, there are some overlap and some differences.

The consideration I am raising is aimed at people calling for DPS parity across the entire roster. This is entirely possible, but would introduce a slew of new issues to have to tackle, it's not as simple as: Phys ranged is a dps, why am I, a pro phys ranged doing less than a lolnoob melee?

Part of the why is what I'm trying to discuss, you are different roles. Just like Healers do less damage than tanks, they are different roles.

Again, I'm not saying phys ranged can't get DPS parity with the entire roster, but that it would mean addressing all the issues that would bring about too. Would melee then be asking whats the point of melee?. would casters then be asking whats the point of blm?

Move one part and it ripples through out the whole balance. It's not as straight forward as people seem to be implying.

The reality is that in modern encounter design in XIV, the only difference is between a melee mechanic and a ranged mechanic. The former allows room for any job to perform it, while the latter doesn't work well with melees and requires range. This is the root of the problem and why melee DPS are constantly kept ahead of everything else by the devs, else they'd be obsolete, even if performing, because all the ranged jobs would be able to take their slots as well. And then, we have BLM and PCT... which have the luxury of ignoring that model and fill for every spot. This isn't a rphys specific issue.

You mention the "root of the problem" being that melee are kept ahead in dps because they would otherwise be made obsolete my phys ranged. But this point is exactly why phys ranged having dps parity with melee would break the current game balance. I'm not sure why you would raise a counter argument against yourself as though it was for? maybe I'm not understanding the nuance of your statement.

As someone has mentioned above, early in ff14's lifecycle bards (and archers from 1.0) we're the top dps yet they had the advantage of range and mobility, this led to people bringing 4x bards/archer and a whole lot of people complaining about that.

Again, asking for Phys ranged dps parity across the entire roster is fully within your rights to ask for, I am simply raising some of the implications for why that isnt necessarily a good idea on its own.

I know we're not game devs and shouldn't be expected to discuss and respond with every possible issue and implication, I get that, so I don't blame anyone for making direct criticisms, but that is exactly why I am raising the points I'm raising, to add more perspective to the conversation~ I don't have the answer either, I'm just adding my 2 cents~

[Rika007]

As someone has mentioned above, early in ff14's lifecycle bards (and archers from 1.0) we're the top dps yet they had the advantage of range and mobility, this led to people bringing 4x bards/archer and a whole lot of people complaining about that.

Again, asking for Phys ranged dps parity across the entire roster is fully within your rights to ask for, I am simply raising some of the implications for why that isnt necessarily a good idea on its own.

Except that was during a time when there were no tools in place to insure that would never happen again. That was when healers and casters needed bard present to insure they didn't run out of Mana. When only bard had access to a TP regeneration song to insure you didn't run out of tp on tank. When Bard was one of the only jobs that had access to central raid wide damage utility. When accuracy was a primary stat so having a job like bard that could pemanently attack from the rear and have the kindest accuracy limit was something that existed. When there wasn't a role damage bonus to insure that every role remained present. When there wasnt a limitbreak gain penalty for repeating the same jobs (and also there were hardly ANY fights that necessitated the use of an LB3 to get through mechanics). When there was only 4 other DPS jobs besides bard instead of 12. Oh and don't forget that was when Rain of Death put a damage down debuff on the target, so cycling it between 4 Bards was a legitimate way to make difficult fights easier.

It was just a totally different time frame and advocating to keep that in mind is just ignoring that there are many systems now in place that invalidate that view. 14 is an entirely different game then it was in ARR. It's the same argument for when people bring up stormblood job balance and the triple ranged comp as why ranged shouldnt be able to do that much damage, as that was when the crit synergy between scholar, bard, astro, and drg still existed (as did the biggest lynchpin of the meta as well, DRG's piercing debuff). None of that would even be close to possible anymore because none of those jobs are even remotely like they were 6 years ago.

The game has changed but those concerns and design/balance philosophy has not changed with it. They are making decisions based on something that no longer exists and it is extremely disheartening.

[Lyth]

I think Reldhir has it right as far as role comparisons are concerned. You can't really make comparisons across roles. There's no point comparing the DPS output of supports (TH) and DPS (MR) because they have completely different priorities, support functions, uptime requirements, stat systems, and resource management. You can't even do that type of comparison within supports, because Tanks and Healers are still different across all those parameters.

Trying to do comparisons across DPS jobs is probably a bit more sensible, but I don't think that you're going to have 100% parity on every fight. What Valence describes as a 'problem' in modern encounter design actually isn't. Contrary to what you might expect, melee players like being pushed to their limits and being challenged on uptime. Because that's how we differentiate ourselves from each other. Target dummy fights with large hitboxes and wall bosses may be easier to balance, but those types of fights aren't enjoyable. The reason why a degree of variation should exist between melee and ranged jobs is so that fight designers don't feel compelled to design every fight as a wall boss with an arena wide hitbox. That's just lazy fight design and lazy job balance. Ideally, you should have fights with variable amounts of melee uptime and challenge, with melee and ranged jobs trading off depending on the fight design. I think the balance could be better in this regard, but I think with a tighter balance and more fight type variation and melee uptime challenges (similar to what we had in the past tier), you would have a roughly fair result.

Where the boundaries are really blurred is Physical and Magical Ranged. Officially, you have two categories. From a DPS balance perspective, you have three: Physical Ranged, Raise Casters, and Damage Casters. When it comes to fight mechanics, you have one category: ranged. Fight roles on PF aren't designated as 'THMPC', they're designated as 'THMR'. It doesn't matter if you're a Physical Ranged or a Magical Ranged, you're going to be doing ranged mechanics as R1 or R2. That's where the discrepancy exists. Why does PCT exist in an entirely different damage category than MCH, despite having better utility and better burst and doing the identical mechanics dance? It's because SE designates one as a damage caster and the other as just a physical ranged.

I think the problem is that we're balancing the DPS on ranged jobs as if they belonged to completely different categories from each other when they really aren't. And points like access to raise are being used to defend the status quo around those differences.

...

If told you what percentile performance someone's BLM play was at, could you tell me what their equivalent percentile is on SMN?

Likewise, if someone is a 50th percentile BLM and a 50th percentile SMN, should they do the same damage in both cases? Should a mediocre player do more damage just because they picked a job that the community views as harder? These are the questions you need to ask when balancing based off of 'difficulty'.

This is more of a philosophical point, but there's an opportunity cost associated with upskilling at any procedural task, which is why people specialize. Becoming better at one job comes at the cost of becoming better in another. There are also layers of complexity to even the simplest job design, and people will always find clever and original ways to optimize that may not be superficially apparent. It's not about 'intrinsic difficulty', it's about getting your efforts and time investment rewarded, irrespective of the job you picked and community perceptions around it.

If a job was truly difficult enough that everyone was bad at it, DPS would be naturally lower across the board. And when you rebalance it into parity, then that gets corrected. That's what I mean by 'it all comes out in the wash'.

[Valence]

I think it might help if you consider multiple reasons in parallel rather than finding the similarities across a single point and then concluding that they are the same.

The example I gave was one point to consider, not all of them. Your example of Tanks and melee dps being virtually the same in raid mechanic positioning yet being clearly different in role only furthers my point.

The differences between roles are the sum of multiple attributes, there are some overlap and some differences.

The consideration I am raising is aimed at people calling for DPS parity across the entire roster. This is entirely possible, but would introduce a slew of new issues to have to tackle, it's not as simple as: Phys ranged is a dps, why am I, a pro phys ranged doing less than a lolnoob melee?

Part of the why is what I'm trying to discuss, you are different roles. Just like Healers do less damage than tanks, they are different roles.

Again, I'm not saying phys ranged can't get DPS parity with the entire roster, but that it would mean addressing all the issues that would bring about too. Would melee then be asking whats the point of melee?. would casters then be asking whats the point of blm?

Move one part and it ripples through out the whole balance. It's not as straight forward as people seem to be implying.

You're moving the goalposts. You specifically spoke within the frame of encounter mechanics, and I responded to that. The only difference in the resolution of modern encounter mechanics is whether it's melee friendly or not, and sometimes whether they're arbitrarily targeted by general role support/dps filters (thus why the raids are divided within a TT - HH - MM - RR model that never changes).

I'm not exactly sure what we're talking about anymore or what's your whole point beyond that "rphys is for babies" which is not even true at the core unless you want to tell me that BRD/MCH (and even DNC, some people have legit troubles with procs) are easier to play than something like VPR or SMN. I do recognize however that those differences aren't healthy for the game and I have always been saying since forever that EW SMN is especially problematic in terms of balance due to difficulty discrepancies, and that SMN and DNC were played by more than half of their respective players within their own roles back in EW for a reason, which by the way didn't just include low skill players, but also people just going for the path of least resistance since more and more of XIV seems to be disconnecting the whole battle system from the encounter design, which is all about uptime nowadays. This ironically should tell us all that we need to know when it comes to dodging uptime constraints, as a side note.

You mention the "root of the problem" being that melee are kept ahead in dps because they would otherwise be made obsolete my phys ranged. But this point is exactly why phys ranged having dps parity with melee would break the current game balance. I'm not sure why you would raise a counter argument against yourself as though it was for? maybe I'm not understanding the nuance of your statement.

As someone has mentioned above, early in ff14's lifecycle bards (and archers from 1.0) we're the top dps yet they had the advantage of range and mobility, this led to people bringing 4x bards/archer and a whole lot of people complaining about that.

Again, asking for Phys ranged dps parity across the entire roster is fully within your rights to ask for, I am simply raising some of the implications for why that isnt necessarily a good idea on its own.

You misunderstood the statement yes. This is exactly why melees are kept ahead by the devs, with the exception of BLM since forever and now PCT. This is a non solvable conundrum within the current one dimensional framework of the modern XIV design.

[Reldhir]

You're moving the goalposts. You specifically spoke within the frame of encounter mechanics, and I responded to that. The only difference in the resolution of modern encounter mechanics is whether it's melee friendly or not, and sometimes whether they're arbitrarily targeted by general role support/dps filters (thus why the raids are divided within a TT - HH - MM - RR model that never changes).

No I didn't, I talked about a move to role-based balance rather than individual job based balance to illustrate why balancing across the entire dps roster is not happening. I used tanks vs healers as an example because their differences are obvious and known. Dps output, healing output, Damage mitigation, defence etc... Again, to avoid being accused of making a one dimentional argument I will explicitly say it: These are SOME examples, not all.

ONE example I chose to differentiate phys ranged from melee was in raid mechanics. ONE example I felt most clearly illustrated the point I was making: That there is a difference between the two because they are different roles and therefore balanced differently.

Also! Even if I explicitly stated that this was the only point of difference (which I didn't, and it's not) It still illustrates the point I was making all the same. There is a difference between the roles and therefore balance across each role should be different.

Also, you say arbitrarily, but its not. These were intentional design choices to encourage the standard TT HH MM RR structure. Again this point only furthers my point about there how dps parity across all dps jobs doesn't fit into the current design. (and just to cover myself, this is ONE of many points that illustrate this idea)

I'm not exactly sure what we're talking about anymore or what's your whole point beyond that "rphys is for babies"

Exactly xD you missed the point and responded anyway :P

I think there may have been a loss of context because I was replying to different people and not just you :P

Also, "Rphys is for babies" is a pretty loaded interpretation of what I said :P

...which by the way didn't just include low skill players,

Again, none of my comments ever implied the entire phys ranged player base were low skill players xD

Low skill, low experience, low effort players flocking to a lower stakes role (in my REAPEATEDLY admitted anecdotal experience) does not equal the entire phys ranged pool is low skill. It also doesn't mean I have never crossed paths with phenomenally talented phys ranged players (I have). I won't say you are intentionally misinterpreting what I said, but misinterpret it you did :P

You misunderstood the statement yes. This is exactly why melees are kept ahead by the devs, with the exception of BLM since forever and now PCT. This is a non solvable conundrum within the current one dimensional framework of the modern XIV design.

Wait, you say I misunderstood, but then immediately summarise your statement the exact same way I summarised it. Huh? So we're in agreement then. DPS parity across the entire roster doesn't work without it breaking a bunch of stuff given the current framework. Cool xD

[Mondodo]

I've mainly played phys ranged and casters since I started and I feel there's generally a balance between them all, it's much less wonky than other games balancing is but I feel that there's a lot of problems that could eventually overboil and come to the surface.

- Red Mage seems generally well balanced, it's brilliant for solo, has some skill in its fragility and combos and has a solid bit of support between vercure and verraise.
- Summoner doesn't feel that impactful to me, I feel they should either make its heal more meaningful like the Red Mage heal is or add another mechanic to the job to raise the difficulty a little and allow more room for new primals rather than whatever Solar Bahamut is meant to be.
- Bard feels like I'm doing a lot for a smaller damage trade off and while I know it's taken a lot due to how powerful the buffs are, I never feel that impactful because I never see the buffs working due to how incremental they are. Perhaps walking casts to raise the damage or a new way of playing songs where the buff lasts even if the song doesn't and you have to fire shots in a certain order for each song so deal increased damage or empower the buff.
- Dancer feels ok, I haven't levelled it much but it seems to do well in its identity of buffing their target. What I do see is at higher levels there's a lot of extra dps mechanics added on to a job that doesn't do that much dps - all they do is add extra complexity to do the same damage as before. I'd honestly rather see the rotation be easier and less finisher packed but have some close range elements to take advantage of their movement.
- Machinist is the class I wanted to play most when I started playing FFXIV and sadly it didn't impress. It's pretty good in Stormblood but beyond that the damage is just disappointing and I don't really feel like my Automaton Queen is even doing much? I believe they need to have a think about what the job is doing as while Bard and Dancer always have the value of their buffs and how much damage they cause through them rather than their personal damage, Machinist doesn't. I think they can learn a lot from the PVP design for Machinist, walking casts at long range but a faster, shotgun playstyle at close range that defines the marksman from the gadgeteer. The turret coming down and buffing people in an area is also a cool concept from PVP.

[Valence]

Again, none of my comments ever implied the entire phys ranged player base were low skill players xD

No, your comments were specifically trying to make blanket statements about a whole role and the jobs within. As I've been trying to tell you since the beginning, this ain't about lower skill players and accessibility, because your metrics are flawed by sheer prejudice about a role you don't even play by your own admission. I even pointed to way easier jobs found in OTHER dps roles, but you don't seem to care at all because it suddenly demolishes your whole fallacy.

Wait, you say I misunderstood, but then immediately summarise your statement the exact same way I summarised it. Huh? So we're in agreement then. DPS parity across the entire roster doesn't work without it breaking a bunch of stuff given the current framework. Cool xD

...

Because you literally jumped on my statement and proceeded to restate the exact same thing. You're the one that chose to turn it into a disagreement. I don't understand why you keep coming back trying to turn the point about melees being designed with more damage output than ranged into a disagreement.

Either way, glad we agree on that one...

[Reldhir]

No, your comments were specifically trying to make blanket statements about a whole role and the jobs within. As I've been trying to tell you since the beginning, this ain't about lower skill players and accessibility, because your metrics are flawed by sheer prejudice about a role you don't even play by your own admission. I even pointed to way easier jobs found in OTHER dps roles, but you don't seem to care at all because it suddenly demolishes your whole fallacy.

I feel like I'm being gaslit rofl. The exchanges are all there for everyone to see lol. You're so determined to pigeonhole my response to some sort of adversarial position despite my repeated clarifications. I almost feel like I'm being used as a proxy for you to debate your grievances for the perceived wrongs dealt to you and phys ranged.

FYI when I said I didn't play the role, I meant I didn't main it. BUT I have played it casually enough to clear content up to the savage level here and there throughout ff14s existence (I am old) Not enough to say I "play the role" but enough, and successfully enough to know that if my limited IQ can comprehend and perform it to a level high enough to clear at least savage content then that should be a pretty good indicator of its ease of entry. I AM that noob phys ranged.

That's not even mentioning all the new and low skilled friends ive put in the phys ranged spot BECAUSE we've had significantly higher success rates covering for that spot over the others. Yes, I can call them low skilled, they're casual AF they know it, I know it, it's not meant in a derogatory way it's just reality. they're not great at the game but still wanna be included!

AGAIN, not that it seems to matter to you, I'm talking about the skill floor. that first post must have really bruised your ego for you to be so obnoxiously insistent lol just stop. or dont? the conversation is veered way off topic and is no longer productive anyway. I feel like we'll just go around in circles so AGREE TO DISAGREE i spose xD



*forgot to respond to one point even though I'll probably just be told some how that my words are not my words and that I mean something else BUT

You mentioned SMN and VPR being the easier jobs that supposedly "demolish my whole fallacy" I already mentioned smn, not that you seem to have bothered to read it. SMN is admittedly the weak spot to the argument, but that job is the unicorn, it's a caster that doesn't cast! that to me seems more like a flaw of the job itself rather than the intention to balance by role.

ALSO it doesn't address the fact that SMN is graded against the potential of picto (or blm in the past) so it isnt as ideal a ROLE to give up to a new or low performing player, AGAIN AGAIN AGAIN, bringing a low performing phys ranged means losing out a percentage of the highest phys ranged potential, which is lower than a low performing SMN when graded against what they COULD BE, that being picto.

what's the term? opportunity cost?

also, i dont agree with you about viper lol. no way is phys ranged harder than viper. tbf im not saying viper is super difficult either, and of all the melee it could probably fit the lolphys ranged slot as a melee the best. BUT if you wanna play it optimally, you still need to deal with melee specific things. things phys ranged doesnt.

again blah blah blah opportunity cost, melee role is more valuble dps wise than phys ranged, so new players go to phys ranged as theyre easier to compensate for~ not that you will read this anyway

again again again again blah blah not talking about high level phys ranged players being bad, not saying I dont want phys ranged players to have more important roles, not saying you're bad at the game, not saying johnny mc fly is bad at the game, just saying that there are a lot of low skilled players in the game and phys ranged is the easiest role to direct them to hands down. You can still ask for what you want to ask for, I said many times im not anti phys ranged improvement. I was only making a point to offer a different view point... like ive repeated several times...and youve ignored... several times.... im sick. why am I still typing xD

Because you literally jumped on my statement and proceeded to restate the exact same thing. You're the one that chose to turn it into a disagreement. I don't understand why you keep coming back trying to turn the point about melees being designed with more damage output than ranged into a disagreement.

Either way, glad we agree on that one...

Your response is only a page or so back for anyone to see... sigh* anyway yep cool agree to disagree, no wait agree to agree in this case :P yay!

[Sylvain]

If told you what percentile performance someone's BLM play was at, could you tell me what their equivalent percentile is on SMN?

Likewise, if someone is a 50th percentile BLM and a 50th percentile SMN, should they do the same damage in both cases? Should a mediocre player do more damage just because they picked a job that the community views as harder? These are the questions you need to ask when balancing based off of 'difficulty'.
.

Well that is exactly the question.
If you think it should be a role thing, then yes a 50% BLM should do as much as a 50% SMN. But the result would be most BLM dropping becaue why bother if all your extra work has no reward.

If we consider that BLM should do more by virtue of having no rez, no utility, and being harder (or any combination of the 3), then by how much. If the gap is too big we have a problem where SMN enjoyers feel punished for playing it altough they would excel with a much more complexe gameplay.

Hence me saying, within the same role, jobs should have an innate equal level of difficulty. All melee need to deal with melee uptime, all casters should deal with casting uptime. The fact that SMN spends 90% of its time not casting nullifies this.
If melee uptime (and positional) are too much of a hassle for you, you don't play melee. If managing casting uptime is too much, you don't play caster. If both are too much to handle for you, there's the range role with 0 restriction.

All melee are currently roughly close to each others in term of dps. Sure it may need some tuning, but overall they all bring the same thing +- a few buff or special utility. The same is also the case for range, by bringing a range you bring a certain amount of dps, lower than what melee (and 2) caster bring, some raid mitigation with extra fluff as heal/healbuff/extramit.

The issue with caster is that as you've said, they're split into two sub categories which creates much problem. Casters have the biggest gap in what they provide among their role.

SE might be trying to be fair by reducing SMN and RDM dps because they gave them a rez. And regarding SMN lowering it slightly more because it's easier. But they also create a problem as job within the same role compete for the same spot.
We were fine this tier as the DPS check was non existent but this will most likely not be the case for FRU. It would really suck that RDM and SMN end up being blocked from that content by virtue of having access to a spell they'll never get to use in this content.

Things would be much simplier if all caster had, or not, access to a rez and were closer in term of difficulty. I agree when you say "it's personal and person A may find some job easy while person B may think the opposite". This is mostly true for most melee jobs and range. But you got to be quite a special case to consider SMN harder than BLM (or any of the 3 casters for that matter).