FF14 is a disappointment

[Mikey_R]

Like even back in HW you could clear with anything. The differences in dps contribution weren't wide enough to have it in any different capacity, even though some jobs were more loved than others - exactly like today. It just happened that we didn't have that arbitrary division between second rate dps jobs and melees/casters like we have today that's artificially baked into the 1% party bonus. Instead differences were baked into the slashing/piercing debuff synergies. Different paradigm, but ultimately, as long as your party satisfied the base requirements for synergies to be filled, you were good to go, only difference being that you had more freedom in role composition, but less freedom in job composition since the two debuff providers (NIN/DRG) were meta and required in party - with WAR as a potential rep for NIN.

Being able to clear with anything and the numbers being balanced are 2 different things. If a hypothetical 'lowest damage possible' can still do enough damage to clear a DPS check, then the meta 'most damage possible' party is still easily going to clear.

And let's not beat around the bush, the differences in damage numbers were quite large. Warrior was doing close to DPS levels of damage, which the other 2 tanks couldn't get near, relatively speaking. With warrior also applying the slashing debuff in rotation, it meant Ninja didn't have to use Dancing Edge, so more Aeolian Edges, not to mention Trick Attack, considered the best raid debuff at the time. You then had Dragoon giving piercing, again, in rotation, which provided an extra 10% free damage to both Machinist and Bard. It wasn't worth replacing one for a caster if you wanted the most damage. Dark Knight done more damage than Paladin, so was the better choice, which leaves the healers. AST was a party buff machine, and now we are down to just 1 healer slot to fill. If we then consider their damage buffs, they mostly aligned together, which we know how powerful that is. This is ignoring everything else that made that party the uncontested best party. Arguably, Heavensward was not balanced at all, despite every party being able to clear everything.

[Valence]

Being able to clear with anything and the numbers being balanced are 2 different things. If a hypothetical 'lowest damage possible' can still do enough damage to clear a DPS check, then the meta 'most damage possible' party is still easily going to clear.

And let's not beat around the bush, the differences in damage numbers were quite large. Warrior was doing close to DPS levels of damage, which the other 2 tanks couldn't get near, relatively speaking. With warrior also applying the slashing debuff in rotation, it meant Ninja didn't have to use Dancing Edge, so more Aeolian Edges, not to mention Trick Attack, considered the best raid debuff at the time. You then had Dragoon giving piercing, again, in rotation, which provided an extra 10% free damage to both Machinist and Bard. It wasn't worth replacing one for a caster if you wanted the most damage. Dark Knight done more damage than Paladin, so was the better choice, which leaves the healers. AST was a party buff machine, and now we are down to just 1 healer slot to fill. If we then consider their damage buffs, they mostly aligned together, which we know how powerful that is. This is ignoring everything else that made that party the uncontested best party. Arguably, Heavensward was not balanced at all, despite every party being able to clear everything.

Yes? I don't think I ever claimed that the game has been balanced even once in its entire history? That was actually kind of my point?

[Mikey_R]

Yes? I don't think I ever claimed that the game has been balanced even once in its entire history? That was actually kind of my point?

But that isn't what you said. The initial claim was that numbers are the most balanced they have ever been. Your response to that was, but every job could clear everything and the damage differences weren't enough for it to be otherwise.

Your response to the claim had nothing to do with the claim itself, which is what I pointed out.

[Sunhwapark]

Hmm, while I don't miss the slashing/piercing/yolo debuff nonsense, I do miss the pace of fights in HW/Stormblood, it was a bit slower and gave room for enmity to exist as a party managed thing rather than whatever the heck it is today.

[Valence]

But that isn't what you said. The initial claim was that numbers are the most balanced they have ever been. Your response to that was, but every job could clear everything and the damage differences weren't enough for it to be otherwise.

Your response to the claim had nothing to do with the claim itself, which is what I pointed out.

That's exactly what I said. I compared both the state of pve balance back then and today, and I do think that while everything can clear as back then, jobs/roles are imbalanced in a similar manner, and that no, I don't believe the game is more balanced than it used to be.

You can disagree on the numbers, frankly, I don't even know what expansion and what patch you're even referring to in your previous reply (it sounds like HW with the piercing debuff numbers), and you're already making gigantic fallacies by associating the debuff damage gain to DRG alone when it was shared by the jobs benefiting from it as well - if anything you're the one not answering to my claims here, since I specifically covered the debuff synergy issue and the couple of jobs that remained meta because of it (NIN DRG). The same way you bring up that casters could be overshadowed by double rphys, it's the exact same today except this happens within sub roles between different jobs instead (cf MCH for most of SHB, EW and DT for example, but it's happened regularly with other jobs as well, cf the infamous tank imbalanced during 6.1 DSR and 6.2 that climaxed in the P8S fiasco).

[Mikey_R]

That's exactly what I said. I compared both the state of pve balance back then and today, and I do think that while everything can clear as back then, jobs/roles are imbalanced in a similar manner, and that no, I don't believe the game is more balanced than it used to be.

No it isn't, and let me explain.

In this hypothetical situation, you have a boss that enrages after 61 seconds, Job A can kill it in 60 seconds, Job B can kill it in 30 seconds.

In this scenario, everything can clear the fight. That was the claim you made, however, it is not balanced as Job B is doing twice the damage of Job A, which is the claim you responded to.

if we were to bring this to more realistic numbers, in HW, Warrior was doing (over) 20% more damage than Paladin, this is the data from the last tier of Alexander. If we use Paladin as the baseline, of 60 seconds, then Warrior was killing things in 50 seconds. Current tank balance has the highest DPS tank killing this in 58.8 seconds. That, along with various other changes, means that tanks today are better balanced than they were back in HW.

Going to the P8S scenario, we know the fight was tested a ton by the dev team, and so the bar for enrage was higher. Going back to the analogy, if Job A can kill the boss in 60 seconds, and Job B can kill it in 58, they are fairly well balanced. The problem is that the enrage was set to 59 seconds. So, despite being balanced between each other, the point of failure happened to fall within the balancing gap, which is why some were struggling and others were not.

Hopefully that clears up the difference between the jobs being balanced (the original claim) and jobs being able to clear a fight (your claim) and why you cannot conflate the 2.

[Valence]

No it isn't, and let me explain.

In this hypothetical situation, you have a boss that enrages after 61 seconds, Job A can kill it in 60 seconds, Job B can kill it in 30 seconds.

In this scenario, everything can clear the fight. That was the claim you made, however, it is not balanced as Job B is doing twice the damage of Job A, which is the claim you responded to.

if we were to bring this to more realistic numbers, in HW, Warrior was doing (over) 20% more damage than Paladin, this is the data from the last tier of Alexander. If we use Paladin as the baseline, of 60 seconds, then Warrior was killing things in 50 seconds. Current tank balance has the highest DPS tank killing this in 58.8 seconds. That, along with various other changes, means that tanks today are better balanced than they were back in HW.

Going to the P8S scenario, we know the fight was tested a ton by the dev team, and so the bar for enrage was higher. Going back to the analogy, if Job A can kill the boss in 60 seconds, and Job B can kill it in 58, they are fairly well balanced. The problem is that the enrage was set to 59 seconds. So, despite being balanced between each other, the point of failure happened to fall within the balancing gap, which is why some were struggling and others were not.

Hopefully that clears up the difference between the jobs being balanced (the original claim) and jobs being able to clear a fight (your claim) and why you cannot conflate the 2.

I'm sorry but that's not what I wrote. Read it up again. You're trying to enforce whatever fantasy you read out of it when in reality I've said since the beginning that "can clear everything" =/= "balanced". My claim has never been that every job is able to clear a fight. You're literally obsessed with a single sentence I wrote without even reading it in the whole argument. You're trying to stir up a storm in a teapot for whatever reason.

P8S had two tanks doing way less than the two others (PLD/WAR). It has nothing to do with the dev team overshooting the enrage. All tanks could still clear it, albeit some a lot harder than others, and that made it not balanced by definition. This is again one of the many examples I've brought over to say that no, the game isn't balanced even today.