The identity of Pictomancer is being destroyed

[Sunako]

We base every balance decision around rDPS why do people still think the selfish jobs need to be on top. Like that’s literally what rDPS is designed to equalise

Like does anyone have a valid reason why jobs like DRG or NIN should do less rDPS than a selfish DPS

Selfish dps rarely are meta, unless they have insanely high burst. Game generally want to reward for having raid buffs and coordinated 2min burst window between group members. If you play group like WHM/SGE/MCH/BLM/SAM/VPR you don't need any kind of coordination between group members or don't get penalized, if people press their buttons random time. Everybody play their own game and not impact each others rdps except with kill time.

If you would make selfish dps do same rdps than buffer jobs in optimized settings, there would be no reason to use anything else but selfish dps in party finder where people may use their buffs and burst cooldowns at random time.

That's why it is very unlikely selfish dps will ever be meta or it will completely kill buffer jobs in less optimized settings

[Valence]

Selfish dps rarely are meta, unless they have insanely high burst. Game generally want to reward for having raid buffs and coordinated 2min burst window between group members. If you play group like WHM/SGE/MCH/BLM/SAM/VPR you don't need any kind of coordination between group members or don't get penalized, if people press their buttons random time. Everybody play their own game and not impact each others rdps except with kill time.

If you would make selfish dps do same rdps than buffer jobs in optimized settings, there would be no reason to use anything else but selfish dps in party finder where people may use their buffs and burst cooldowns at random time.

That's why it is very unlikely selfish dps will ever be meta or it will completely kill buffer jobs in less optimized settings

Which is why there is this newfangled cDPS metric that's been floating around for a while.
People should try it, it's pretty neat.

[Absurdity]

You're technically correct, it makes sense to reward jobs that require coordination of their party buffs to perform at their best, and if this were still Shadowbringers party buffs I would 100% agree.
Unfortunately they have made the actual coordination part so braindead that there is barely an excuse anymore for them to be above the selfish jobs.

[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.

[Owyn_Addens]

There are some complications with the fact that buffing jobs have that rDPS lead because selfish jobs are putting lots of potency into their buffs. Ideally, the theoretical Best Team Comp™ should have a mix of both. PCT was kind of an outlier because it both had a buff and put the most potency into buffs, but the abomination of a changelog that they got this patch was an enormous overcorrection.

[Absurdity]

Even the overcorrection isn't necessarily an issue, it's just in the wrong places to a point where the new rotation makes the job "feel" bad to play.

[brinn12]

At least you got to enjoy it for 10 months. VPR mains only had 1. SE can't even release two jobs anymore without gutting them, yet they expect us to believe 8.0 will bring major job changes – with the same people responsible for job design still around.

[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.