Why do people care about potency so much?

[Amh_Wilzuun]

I genuinely don’t get it. Picking a “meta” job only matters in like week 1 savage or ultimates. For 99% of instances it doesn’t matter what job you pick. How the job feels to play and how well the job is designed is way more important to me. I know some will claim jobs get locked of PF but I don’t think think that is an actual thing at all from my experience. If that does happen it’s probably just an isolated toxic group and the only reason they think they need to lock out jobs is because of the aforementioned discourse perpetuating the myth that “meta” jobs actually matter.

You can see this happening every new patch. People seem to discuss fell cleave gaining 100 potency way more than actual changes to gameplay or skill ceilings. Why is MCH this patch being treated like it got it around as bad as BLM? BLM’s situation is WAY worse than MCH having underperforming damage for the “leaderboards”. I do get that PHYS range having this much less damage than casters is silly but I’d much rather be a MCH main than a BLM main rn. In my opinion is MCH is one of the better designed jobs in DT currently. Not saying it’s perfect but it has legitimate execution needs, a lot to track compared to most jobs, and a relatively high skill ceiling. It feels a different to play than a lot of other DPS jobs. Things people crap on like flamethrower/the “weird AOE rotation” are things I actually like. I like having the AOE damage not feel like a diet version of the single target rotation and I like having abilities with a situational use case. I think the game could use more of that (I would personally make you able to move slowly though). I know some people still don’t like the post StB Version of the job but I think DT MCH is the best iteration of the reworked MCH so far.

I’m just worried with all of the waffling about potency and what’s “meta” that the devs will get the wrong idea and hit MCH with the lobotomy beam. All I’m asking is just to remember what’s actually important. Some extra potency doesn’t affect your gameplay experience nearly as much as general job design does. I’d play a weak job with interesting gameplay over a strong job that’s braindead any day of the week.

[ZephyrMenodora]

High potency DH Crits = endorphins = fun

[Alice_Rivers]

In the absence of job design potency is all that remains.

[Alexvai]

Players don't really care about potency, they care about the balance between jobs. For example the difference between mch and dnc that are both phys ranged (or smn and picto) is so huge that it feels bad to play the former instead of the latter. Also i'm amazed at how SE is capable of fucking up jobs rotation every time they tweak potencies. Now picto don't even get to use the hammer combo bc it's a dps loss over the basic combo(?) like hello who the hell tested these changes

[Raim]

Players don't really care about potency, they care about the balance between jobs. For example the difference between mch and dnc that are both phys ranged (or smn and picto) is so huge that it feels bad to play the former instead of the latter. Also i'm amazed at how SE is capable of fucking up jobs rotation every time they tweak potencies. Now picto don't even get to use the hammer combo bc it's a dps loss over the basic combo(?) like hello who the hell tested these changes

No its not. The hammer always direct critical hits. The only time the normal combo would beat it is if all of its hit crit which is pretty unlikely.

[Sarantserel]

People have been doing calculations accounting for the Direct Crits on hammer. If you consider the 4s cast time and that filler gives you access to Cyan/Yellow/Magenta/Comet (and that those filler abilities will crit and direct hit too throughout the fight), hammer is looking to be a loss over just doing filler.

[Amh_Wilzuun]

People have been doing calculations accounting for the Direct Crits on hammer. If you consider the 4s cast time and that filler gives you access to Cyan/Yellow/Magenta/Comet (and that those filler abilities will crit and direct hit too throughout the fight), hammer is looking to be a loss over just doing filler.

Forget to mention this to the other guy but yeah that is really bad. This is one of the few cases where potency can affect rotation design (it’s pretty much one and the same here). It’s not the players job to play the rotation the “right way”, it’s okay to optimize your damage. Here the optimal playstyle is now more boring from a job design perspective

[Loggos]

Forget to mention this to the other guy but yeah that is really bad. This is one of the few cases where potency can affect rotation design (it’s pretty much one and the same here). It’s not the players job to play the rotation the “right way”, it’s okay to optimize your damage. Here the optimal playstyle is now more boring from a job design perspective

At this point you really have to wonder whether the devs are purposefully neglectful/don't care about doing their job and the state of the game or are genuinely this incompetent (and I'm so sorry to say this because I know how toxic this sounds) because if players with a spreadsheet can figure this out on the same day the patch notes drop how is it possible that the professional developers don't notice - or care about - this during weeks of patch preparation? And even if they themselves are not the greatest theory crafters I'm sure there are people they can reach out to to do some calculations for them? (Though you would assume that if your job is balancing being able to do those calculations comes with the job description...)

This is such a big balancing misstep. For the price I pay every month plus expacs I expect at least a baseline level of quality checks and I'm honestly not seeing them in PvE anymore. (I know things were always messy when it comes to the balancing team's decisions but this accidental(?) destruction of the pct rotation is really just a big head scratcher.)
I'm praying even harder now that this team will never in any way cross over into PvP development because hell no.

[Alexvai]

No its not. The hammer always direct critical hits. The only time the normal combo would beat it is if all of its hit crit which is pretty unlikely.

Not really from new calculations hammer is only worth using during reopener. What you're missing is that you need to paint the hammer before you can use it and with that it's less potency than what you can get using the palette combo