What is "Sustained DPS"?

[JackFross]

As far as sustained dps goes, there is no finish. That is what I mean by 'indefinite period'. If you are running out of resources, you obviously can't sustain that level of dps.

When you have an end point that you can plan to run out of juice (the boss dies), then you're really dealing with encounter dps. While this is the more useful kind to deal with, it's not what was asked to be defined by the OP.

I don't exactly know what in this argues against what I'm saying in my post. Your TP is a constant drain. The way you said it originally:

I'd define sustained dps as the damage you can maintain over an indefinite period of time. This would include both the burst periods where you're burning cooldowns, as well as the lull and maintenance periods where you're regaining MP/TP and waiting for the cooldowns to reset.

implies that you would stop attacking to regenerate resources which you call "lull and maintenance" periods - which flat out do not exist when discussing dps. You burn your resource until it's out, and then you deal with it until your next resource boost (Goad, Invigorate, Aetherflow, Shroud, etc) rolls around.

The way you explained it sounds like you don't understand how DPS works in this game, because you're talking about things that are just... non-existent? Unless you ARE talking about the points where your resources have dwindled to zero, in which case why are you here talking about DPS and referencing points that are literal non-issues in quite honestly every situation where such a point would matter?

When discussing "sustained DPS" - you can't consider it in a vacuum. You can't create some "ideal world" where these sorts of things matter, because if you discuss Job balance in a world like that, so far removed from the world we actually play in, you cannot draw ANY realistic conclusions about the Jobs in the contexts that matter. And the only conclusions that matter in a discussion of DPS are ones which can be applied to the game in realistic circumstances.