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

[Reldhir]

A couple good posts I missed and want to address:

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.

Ah yeah, I admit it was an off the cuff addition to my thoughts at the time and it didn't fully illustrate the situation back then regarding bard meta in the early life of the game. You make good points about all the other reasons why bard was favoured. However, I will disagree with your statement that the DPS argument is ignoring the new systems. While not the sole reason, Bard/archer dps being so high was also one of the reasons it was favoured, not discounting any of the points you listed. Just because bard had enough reasons to be favoured over other dps does not mean high DPS was not also one of them.

In fact, the systems you make mention that prevent this scenario from taking place is exactly the point I'm trying to raise in regard to people asking for dps parity between phys ranged and the rest of the dps. There was a scenario where bards were far to OP, DPS being a factor (as well as the other points you raised)

Does the current framework mean Phys ranged can never be anything more than what they are at the moment though? Of course not, this is just the "solution" SE came up with. I'm sure there are a bunch of great ideas out there that can address the lacklustre feeling some players have with phys ranged. I was only addressing the call for DPS parity of phys ranged with the rest of DPS and how on its own, would cause problems. Whatever the solution is to this conundrum it is more multi-faceted than "I am a dps too, let me do more damage"

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.

I apologize if I missed some context here but I just wanted to offer my interpretation of YoshiPs comments around difficultyutput in DPS.

My understanding of the philosophy is that: on average, a player of average skill could play an "easy job" at a higher proficiency thus average out at the higher end of the job's potential, where as that same player wpuld play a "harder job" at a lower proficiency but because the job was innately stronger, they would do similar damage to the "easy job"

When we talk about the 50th percentile I don't believe the median value to be a robust enough indicator for whether a job is balanced according to the above philosophy. It would be better to look at the spread of between the upper and lower quartiles. An easy job should have a relatively small interquartile range, as theoretically, an easier job should be easier to execute and therefore have less variation in the average.

Likewise, a harder job should theoretically have a relatively larger interquartile range as with higher difficulty comes a higher variance in its execution.

Therefore if the philosophy for job difficulty equating to higher output as means of compensating the average player is true, we should see a small inter quartile ranges of the "easy jobs" that fully overlap with the relatively larger interquartile range of the "harder jobs"

Looking at ahem* player generated logs, what we actually see is that within the melee role, the interquartile range is very similar, which would indicate on average they are being performed to very similar proficiencies, this might suggest that there is little variance in difficulty between melee jobs. Therefore, differences in output are unjustified under the above philosophy.

Unsurprisingly, PIC and BLM have noticeably higher interquartile ranges than that of RDM and SMN, indicating a greater difficulty to execute the former two, which reflects player sentiment. They are correctly compensated as per the balance philosophy with higher outputs, however, the third condition where the interquartile ranges of all jobs within the caster role should completely overlap is missed. Blm lags behind PIC despite having a similar interquartile range while both RDM and SMN severely lag behind, from a purely DPS balance perspective this role fails the balance criteria, PIC is too unjustifiably strong (putting aside the raise tax debate)

Then we have the phys ranged, and surprisingly all 3 have noticeably different interquartile ranges, suggesting a difference in difficulty between each of the jobs. BRD having the greatest range, followed by DNC and finally MCH, likewise, suggesting a descending order of difficulty. Also consistent with player sentiment.

Interestingly, DNC and MCH to share a complete overlap in interquartile ranges suggesting they meet the balance philosophy, however, like with other roles, BRD extends beyond DNC and MCH ranges, suggesting BRD has an unfair dps advantage over the other two.

With this all in mind and assuming we are balancing purely off: difficulty = more output. BLM needs a buff (or picto nerf), SMN and RDM need significant buffs (ignoring raise tax)

MCH and DNC need a slight buff (or bard nerf)

while melee dps need a few slight buffs here and there (too many jobs to list) to bring them into better alignment

Finally, just for vanity sake, all phys ranged, smn and surprisingly rdm have noticeably smaller interquartile ranges than the other DPS jobs, suggesting that they are indeed easier to play, or atleast the average joe is executing them more consistently than the rest (coz its ez) with MCH being the easiest followed by DNC and then SMN. I mean hey, 2 of the 3 phys ranged jobs are easier than smn with the third not far behind according to the average joe~~ just sayin :P