The State of Machinist in DT - Let's talk about it (again).

[brinn12]

So long as no other role outperforms even the 1% stat bonus to every party member that taking at least one Ranger provides, MCH doesn't need to be able to be buffed up to topping the charts. It need only be able to compete in cDPS with BRD and DNC even when not being buffed by DNC (because it won't be, because it's not BLM/SAM/VPR).

Note that SAM also has to compete with a role (melee + BLM) that likewise leaves everyone else in the dust and yet it manages that just fine even when you remove the results of all single-target buffs from its meters. With Dancer being a non-factor, nothing separates the situation of MCH within its role from that of SAM in its role.

MCH getting a raid buff wouldn't be the end of the world by any stretch, but short of Savage 4-man content forcing VPR and SAM, too, to syphon some of their personal power into raidbuffs instead, there is zero need for MCH to give a raid buff.

I've elaborated about this on the first page. Every new expansion, the game scraps the work the balancing team has done, increasing the ranged tax and heavily favoring melees. Square Enix only work with buffs (PCT case being a rare exception), therefore they're going to buff DNC and BRD for the entire expansion, since any non-MCH buff favors them.

With MCH not buffing other jobs and also not being able to deal high personal damage compared to other pure DPS, the job will be stuck in a loop where it's either super weak or just weak in the meta. This will happen until SE rework the role entirely or give MCH a raid buff.

If you don't believe this, just think about how the job has been performing for the last 3 expansions, and how many times it got buffed. There is 0 chance SE will ever sort this out by keeping it a pure DPS. It takes them until the 3rd tier to do the job justice, and in the next expansion the entire work has to be redone.

[Shurrikhan]

I've elaborated about this on the first page. Every new expansion, the game scraps the work the balancing team has done, increasing the ranged tax and heavily favoring melees.

MCH isn't competing with melees unless the gap widens so greatly as to be worth both the loss in raidwide constant primary stat benefit and LB generation. It's competing against other Physical Ranged DPS.

Square Enix only work with buffs (PCT case being a rare exception), therefore they're going to buff DNC and BRD for the entire expansion, since any non-MCH buff favors them.

If they only buffed the underdogs in pure damage, then likewise NIN, DRG, and MNK would have been buffed to keep up with SAM/VPR, invalidating them. That hasn't been the case though. Nor has it ever been the case for any whole expansion's length.

There is 0 chance SE will ever sort this out by keeping it a pure DPS.

Yes, there is. It's at most about 5% short of being balanced against the best in competition in ST, with that 5% needing to include substantial AoE buffs to make it balanced in multi-target fights. None of that has to do with lacking raid buffs, though; it's a simple tuning issue. We got hit with random AoE nerfs that frankly should have been aimed at Dancer, if anyone, and haven't gotten the basic minor potency buffs we need elsewhere.

[Carighan]

If they only buffed the underdogs in pure damage, then likewise NIN, DRG, and MNK would have been buffed to keep up with SAM/VPR, invalidating them. That hasn't been the case though. Nor has it ever been the case for any whole expansion's length.

It'd also be ridiculous as a concept.

But in fact the way Square does focus on buffing>nerfing is already ridiculous, as it ruins a lot of PvE balance and makes things too easy, leading to half-baked jumps in difficulty in subsequent additions as numbers on bosses need to be tweaked, leading to a very weird damage profile in the second and particularly third tier of an expansion. I wish Square would more rigorously go "Take the median. Are you above, you get a nerf, are you below, you get a buff. Checking again next month.", no exceptions. There is no "I'm above the median but that's where I ought to be", no you get a nerf. Everyone meets in the middle or not at all.

[Shurrikhan]

It'd also be ridiculous as a concept.

But in fact the way Square does focus on buffing>nerfing is already ridiculous, as it ruins a lot of PvE balance and makes things too easy, leading to half-baked jumps in difficulty in subsequent additions as numbers on bosses need to be tweaked, leading to a very weird damage profile in the second and particularly third tier of an expansion. I wish Square would more rigorously go "Take the median. Are you above, you get a nerf, are you below, you get a buff. Checking again next month.", no exceptions. There is no "I'm above the median but that's where I ought to be", no you get a nerf. Everyone meets in the middle or not at all.

Oh I agree that we shouldn't just power-creep all jobs as an answer to entirely separate balance issues. Absolutely. I also agree that we, apart from recent (and playflow-destructive) PIC nerfs, do that -- regularly. But that wasn't my point.

My refutation was of Brinn's claim that only those with lower personal damage ever get buffs. That's not been the case. It's never been the case for a whole expansion's length / more than a few major patches at a time.

You're missing my points here. This isn't about a simple 3% or 5% buff that fixes everything (this would take more than half an expansion to happen btw, since the biggest buff for MCH so far in DT was 2.5%) — it's about how Square Enix consistently breaks the game's balance through each expansion release.You're missing my points here. This isn't about a simple 3% or 5% buff that fixes everything (this would take more than half an expansion to happen btw, since the biggest buff for MCH so far in DT was 2.5%) — it's about how Square Enix consistently breaks the game's balance through each expansion release.

You don't have a point. It is exactly that, because nothing about rough early-expansion tuning disproportionately affects MCH relative to the jobs it competes against. It's just tuning work yet to be done.

While indirect buffs affect melees like NIN and DRG, those jobs contribute around 10% more damage than DNC or BRD, so a 5% buff has a comparatively bigger effect on the Physical Ranged, representing more of their damage.

No. 5% of MCH damage is worth no more or less to MCH than 5% of NIN damage is worth to NIN. And if you're talking flat numbers, then 5% of the smaller-number role's numbers would be smaller, not "comparatively bigger".

And when you combine buffs like Devilment, Standard and Technical Finish, the support contribution from ranged ends up exceeding a 10% buff.

Which literally can be accounted for, and has been elsewhere.

Again:
The game does purposely not balance only around pure damage; it balances around typical total contribution. Any time that fails and cannot be explained by some particular antisynergy between the job and the fight is essentially a matter of rough/unfinished/bad balance.

That total damage contribution includes all three among (1) personal base/unbuffed damage, (2) bonus damage made possible from buffs given to others, and (3) the bonus damage actually done through exploitation of those buffs from others.
:: Yes, that third one is also important. Without it, the second doesn't happen either.

Let's take Dancing Green Savage and the 95th percentile for example, comparing MCH, DNC, and BRD.

Unbuffed Personal DPS: 30464 | 25093 | 24552
Buffs Used Via Others (raw DPS given to others): 0 | 6096 | 7151
Others' Buffs Exploited (raid DPS given to others): 1348 | 1589 | 1791
Total Contribution: 31812 | 33678 | 33494

While that fight is slightly complicated by both short stuns and brief global buffs, that's still a very decent indicator that a simple 5% buff would bring MCH up to almost perfect parity against BRD. Note also that it's not the big raid buff spec that's leading, though nerfs to SAM/VPR/BLM could indirectly bring DNC down to BRD's level.

Now, if you wanted MCH to have a ratio of aDPS to nDPS closer to that of BRD and DNC, you'd have to put more of that buff into its burst instead of applying it equally across the board, since (due to MCH's potency being more spread out) MCH has been averaging only about 4.4% bonus damage from buffs while BRD can manage up to 7.3%.

Likewise, if you wanted MCH to have a nearer ratio of damage between multi-target and single-target to DNC and BRD (say, so it doesn't suck in add Savage fights), you'd have to put a disproportionately larger portion of its 5% ST damage buff into skills that also have AoE and/or additionally buff the discrete AoE components (Scattergun, Auto-crossbow, Bioblaster, and the % damage modifiers on FMF, Chainsaw, Excavator, Checkmate, Double-Check). Obviously, allowing greater banking of that AoE capacity could also go a decent way without even touching the potencies, though how far that goes increases with the buffs to AoE capacity.

__________

Let's be clear here: We've often enough had pure-DPS provide the most total contribution -- not just most damage, but total damage contribution (i.e., enough increase personal and buff-exploiting bonus damage to make the clear faster than it would be with another of the best buffer having been taken even if there were not LB or stat penalty).

Hell, even if you merely average rDPS (wherein buff-exploitation get zero credit, that all instead being given to the buffer) and aDPS (where exploiters get credit for their use of raidbuffs but still not of any single-target buffs), the top 3 jobs... are all pure DPS. Fcs, the top rDPS... is Black Mage, who has no raid buffs. Their personal damage and potency-in-window is simply high enough that the sum of their personal damage and bonus damage created from others' buffs alone is greater than many buffers' personal damage, bonus damage created from others' buffs, and bonus damage made possible for others together.

MCH isn't proof that pure dps can only be underpowered. It's the ONLY pure DPS that isn't topping the meters or within 2% of the top within its respective role.

SAM does 37080 (34224 + 0 + 2856) total contribution opposite the likes of DRG's (same "OP" melee role)'s 36870 (31804 + 2674 + 2392) or NIN's 36939 (31445 + 2728 + 2766).

Even on that high-movement fight BLM does 35601 (33944 + 0 + 1657) vs. the notoriously long-term OP PIC's 36282 (30890 + 2774 + 2618) and RDM's 33450 or SMN's 32642. (Yes, BLM too "suffers" from low its damage profile being far less able to exploit raid buffs, but there is no issue simply raising personal DPS in turn unless we need to mainstream competitive and meaningful 4-man Savage content.)

:: Yes, that does that mean SAM whichever of those pure DPS would best get Dancer buffs is actually doing even more for the party than indicated by being the general top parse, because we haven't even added how much more rDPS the Dancer gets from buffing them over someone else (or that the party total DPS gets from having that extra synergy). Which means they are currently probably a bit overpowered. Every single one of them except for MCH.

Tl;dr:
It's not a problem caused by being a "Pure DPS" (as if the raid buffs we're talking about amounted to anything that wasn't likewise purely dps).
The other "Pure DPS" are generally doing fine. The top job in the game at present is a "Pure DPS".
The problem is tuning -- literally just tuning.

[brinn12]

MCH isn't competing with melees unless the gap widens so greatly as to be worth both the loss in raidwide constant primary stat benefit and LB generation. It's competing against other Physical Ranged DPS.



If they only buffed the underdogs in pure damage, then likewise NIN, DRG, and MNK would have been buffed to keep up with SAM/VPR, invalidating them. That hasn't been the case though. Nor has it ever been the case for any whole expansion's length.


Yes, there is. It's at most about 5% short of being balanced against the best in competition in ST, with that 5% needing to include substantial AoE buffs to make it balanced in multi-target fights. None of that has to do with lacking raid buffs, though; it's a simple tuning issue. We got hit with random AoE nerfs that frankly should have been aimed at Dancer, if anyone, and haven't gotten the basic minor potency buffs we need elsewhere.

You're missing my points here. This isn't about a simple 3% or 5% buff that fixes everything (this would take more than half an expansion to happen btw, since the biggest buff for MCH so far in DT was 2.5%) — it's about how Square Enix consistently breaks the game's balance through each expansion release.

While indirect buffs affect melees like NIN and DRG, those jobs contribute around 10% more damage than DNC or BRD, so a 5% buff has a comparatively bigger effect on the Physical Ranged, representing more of their damage. And when you combine buffs like Devilment, Standard and Technical Finish, the support contribution from ranged ends up exceeding a 10% buff.

This situation makes it nearly impossible for Machinist to keep up. By the time SE manage to fix the issue, the expansion is nearly over — and the next one breaks the meta again. I agree that a fix is mathematically possible, by just increasing some of the meaningless buffs MCH gets. But after 5 years of failed attempts, it's hard to have faith that the devs will actually commit to this. They are way too hesitant and see the job as a pure DPS which simply cannot perform well.