The identity of Pictomancer is being destroyed

[Aco505]

Non-buffing jobs dealing more rDPS than buffers would make the former overpowered. It's happened in the past (e. g. ShB SAM). "Selfish" jobs already do more personal damage and more damage in general in most situations such as 4-ppl content, solo content, or disorganized environments. Only in organized 8-ppl content do buffer jobs tend to perform better rDPS-wise.

[brinn12]

Non-buffing jobs dealing more rDPS than buffers would make the former overpowered.

This is a common misconception. What truly matters is how much damage they deal under buffs, not their entire rotation. If a NIN and a VPR have the same rDPS in a party, NIN contributes more because its 2-minute burst is significantly stronger. The same logic applies to PCT and BLM.

In FFXIV, raid DPS jobs tend to perform better — not just in terms of rDPS, but in total damage contribution. This happens because SE tries to balance their median rDPS equally to the pure DPS, which results in rDPS jobs excelling in optimized groups while still being slightly ahead or tied in average groups.

[Aco505]

In FFXIV, raid DPS jobs tend to perform better — not just in terms of rDPS, but in total damage contribution. This happens because SE tries to balance their median rDPS equally to the pure DPS, which results in rDPS jobs excelling in optimized groups while still being slightly ahead or tied in average groups.

This is inevitable. SE cannot balance for 95+ percentiles. They have to balance for a more average number. Otherwise, buffing jobs would always be worse except at very high levels of play, which is already the case in most content.

cDPS is the metric that will, theoretically, measure the absolute balance of jobs but it's far from perfect because it's comp dependent. They all are but aDPS/cDPS even more so.

Absolute perfect balance is probably impossible to achieve numbers-wise using the metrics at our disposal, but extreme cases such as MCH shouldn't be a thing either.

[Carighan]

Yeah that's not really a sensible argument. Look at any game that did not grow organically into a purely-e-sports game, and you'll see that forcing pros-focus by balancing for the top 0.2% or so breaks balance in your game and ultimately bleeds you a ton of players.

That's of course something to keep in mind, but it also means that these 0.2 at the top or so aren't the people who you should look at for balance input. Yeah you want to look at "good" players, but more the top 5%. The top 10%. A large enough pool that you still get a wide spread of play performances and play styles, just all near the upper end.