Quote Originally Posted by Lyth View Post
That's the downside of reducing everything to a single number.

Buff synergy depends entirely on your burst, but not all 'selfish DPS' are burst-focused. VPR and BLM rely on consistency and uptime to do their damage. Of course, you could have predicted this entirely by usage rates in Savage speedruns. Shorter clear times favor burst. (I'll also say, I think Criterion Savage is looking to be especially hilarious, as triple PCT is already the standard for dungeon speedruns given how motifs reset instantly between encounters).

I'm not entirely sure what the 'advantage' of being a 'selfish' DPS is. It's certainly not utility. It's not necessarily even burst. It's not even buff alignment, and if anything you have to be extra aware about how the rest of your teammates are setting up their burst to get the maximum advantage out of your own, especially if you're in PF. Perhaps a better term is 'commensal DPS'?
It's a bit reductive to claim that discussion focuses entirely on one number. Those metrics are one of the scarce tools we can work with when commenting job balance as long as we don't have access to the data that SE collects.

That the second picture is of a PCT burst peaks and troughs doesn't change the fact that it will have less personal damage than the "selfish" jobs over time, on average. In fact, I'd argue that it's positive that a non-selfish job can compete with SAM for highest 120s burst in the game, as NIN did in EW until SAM slightly surpassed it.

SAM, RPR and BLM are consistently the jobs at the top of the nDPS and aDPS metrics, with the difference being mainly how much they can abuse buffs.

The advantage of "selfish" jobs is that they don't depend on the party to deal their personal damage. The damage you deal to a dummy in Urqopacha will be the same that you will deal in your average encounter with a similar kill time. But it doesn't end there because they can further their damage by playing into others' buffs. This is why it's bad for game balance when "selfish" jobs have higher rDPS than buffing jobs, as SAM in ShB and BLM* in EW attest.

*BLM is a bit different, as its aDPS contribution tends to be lower, so the job having higher personal dummy damage than normal would be logical to account for it, as long as it doesn't become overtuned.

On the other hand, a buffing job not only has to do the above, but they also need to expect everyone else in the party to press their buttons properly and align their buffs. This means that it's entirely possible to lose hundreds or even thousands of DPS depending on how well or badly the other seven people in the party play. It will be precisely buffing jobs that will lose more on average in the PF environment that you're citing. For instance, players dying will have a big effect on the rDPS of a DNC or BRD.

Jobs like VPR can even choose to put extra damage like an odd minute Reawaken on a drifted or mistimed buff to get some benefit, unlike many other jobs that are not that free flowing.

"Selfish" jobs are not as affected by party size either. They are even more effective in 4-people content precisely because they don't care about the amount of jobs present that abuse their buffs.

It is interesting that you mention Criterion when in EW and right now, BLM remains the top job. PCT is not far behind though but that's to be expected. However, the current sample size is not that great. RPR was an excellent job in EW Criterion and is likely underrepresented at the moment, so its potential and likely that of other jobs will not show in the current statistics. Conversely, MCH is ahead of more than half the jobs in rDPS, something unthinkable in 8-people duties.

You're right that PCT is extremely strong in normal dungeon speeds and damage but VPR is also quite high and competitive, a fact that you have curiously omitted. Every other job is either absent, very low down the list or has at most one or two representatives in a sea of pink and green.

PCT being overtuned, particularly when downtime is involved, doesn't change the fact that rDPS and aDPS have always had an ideal inverse relationship. Jobs have been designed like that in this game for a while now, as otherwise buffing jobs would be at a (further) disadvantage. All the metrics we have now exist due to player request, and are precisely meant to reflect the state of the game's balance.

VPR or BLM having a flatter damage profile with lower buff contribution should be balanced by their filler. If it's not, then that's a balance problem. You've said it yourself: M2S current kill times at high end benefit VPR because the boss doesn't die after an even burst. Many encounters in PF or otherwise are not always going to end on such a burst for the average player, thus playing into VPR's strengths.

But yes, PCT's ability to benefit from downtime and deal extremely quick high bursts of single target and AoE damage in different types of content is something that we have already discussed in different threads. Whatever SE does or does not do about it is anyone's guess at the moment.