Thread: 4.05 DPS Ranking Expectations

Originally Posted by Krisom

snip

They shouldn't. DRG should be beating out BRD and NIN (probably be a bit under MNK and about SMN in levels of dps).
Preach it brother. Not sure why people perceive DRG as being "more useful" than NIN. Now that the BRD+MCH comp is mostly dead due to the Disembowel nerf, DRG shouldn't be as low.

As for the whole uptime nonsense, the primals we currently have contain a lot of rng mechanics that are going to screw up your uptime- get in the gaols, stunned or knockbacked more than once and that's 1% uptime off the window. So comparing in Susano is very hard. Lakshmi is a dummy fight. On top, it also has some rng (the hands but, mostly, if people Vril the confusion or not).
The last fight where no mechanic specifically punished a member was A11S (A12S had that teleport into adds thing, so one melee would get shafted).
Now, you can go "but you didn't have Triple in A11S". I didn't. So the results aren't exactly valid. But, on the other hand, I did have a ton of speed compared to now, and I had a much better rotation (check the leniency numbers on the other page). Take this as a heuristic. Soon we'll have Deltascape Savage to confirm the validity of this approximation, anyway.
There's 7 caster kills in the top 50 fastest clears, and every BLM is ~1.5% shorter on uptime than their melee counterparts. Note that A11S had that stupid sword aoe mechanic that melee had to deal with and casters didn't, so, by all accounts, this should be a "pro-caster fight".
Now, you can tell me that Triple, if absolutely perfectly used, will cover that 1.5%. I'm confident it won't, though it can mitigate it somewhat. At absolute best, if I use my kit perfectly, get very lucky with the procs (this can always happen- the plants can align and I get a proc for every bit of movement I need to do. Happens one in like ten times, and it feels good), I have roughly as much uptime as melee. At absolute worse, I need to either sacrifice dps to keep my cds for movement (this is an issue, especially if it costs me Triple usages over a fight), or I don't and get messed up if rng doesn't look my way funny.

Every job has difficulties to deal with. The corollary isn't "melee is so easy". Like I said, I play Monk. Not much, and not super well, but I have some idea of how a melee plays. The point I was making is that out of all jobs I've tried in this game, none feels as punished by movement as Black Mage. Now you can try to convince me that I'm wrong and that other jobs have it worse in that regard, and that I'm actually rubbish at this job and should be getting more uptime than my melee counterparts. I just can't believe it.
Sure, an uncooperative tank/party will mess you up. But that's true for any role almost (maybe BRD can handle anything other than a tank sprinting to him and cleaving him with a tankbuster).

This kind of thing is important in balancing jobs because if the devs perceive this wrong, then the balancing will always be questionable- kinda like what it's now. If any of that was true, then NIN/MNK/SAM wouldn't be top competitors- you find two (or even three) of these in every comp on the top 50 fastest kills of each primal (I'm not even joking about this, go check). How can you justify these jobs "have it worse" when DRG/SMN/BLM barely appear anywhere? If that was true, this trio would be able to compete. But they can't. Both because they are inherently weaker and/or because mechanics and transitions punish them heavily (both are true).

(MCH goes separately. I don't play MCH, but my impression is that while it's punishing, the issue isn't just the punishment, though perhaps that could use some work. The issue is that their damage is just way too low for the utility they bring. As in "give them 400 dps single target" too low).

... and sorry for losing my cool, rest of the forums. Too passionate about balance, I guess- being forced to change jobs twice over a year a half ingame does that to you -.-

Originally Posted by KuroTenshi

I actually like what someone mentioned about melee and ranged. Ranged can take the place of melee, but melee cannot take the place of ranged. If melee do less damage than ranged there's no reason to bring melee. Optimally you'd take as many ranged to every fight as you can even now. But currently due to melee dps(sam/mnk) and utility(nin/drg) you still want to keep at least two melee.

1) Ranged DPS would have to do MORE than melee while also being more RELIABLE in their DPS. Neither of these two conditions are true. In fact, they're so not true that you'd be better off taking 3 melee and 1 RDM and in fact the fastest times have done just that.
2) Try to remember stacking jobs and that association with limit breaks
3) Ranged physical can not take the place of melee. In fact, you don't even have to take a ranged physical DPS at all. While you shouldn't do 4 melee DPS. 3 melee and 1 caster works just fine and is actually a better solution than 3 melee and 1 ranged physical.
4) DRG should not be mentioned. Their rDPS contribution does not balance out their low damage.

Originally Posted by Aysen

It's not about how it affects their dps. It's about how likely a party is to choose them over other classes. The utility a RDM brings to the table compensates for a lower damage. If I had a BLM and a RDM who do the same amount of damage and let's say the BLM has embolden too, I would still choose the RDM because of cure and raise.

Their lower damage? On average RDM is HIGHER than other DPS.... The icing on the cake is that they have cure and raise.

Originally Posted by Elnidfse

Their lower damage? On average RDM is HIGHER than other DPS.... The icing on the cake is that they have cure and raise.

I was referring to a hypothetical situation wherein two equally skilled players are playing RDM and BLM respectively and the two classes are perfectly balanced. Now I change the scenario and give cure and raise to RDM. As a result their dps is now below that of the BLM. As a static leader, despite the fact that the RDM does slightly less dps, I will choose the RDM because of his added utility.

I simply wanted to state that skills that lower a class's dps should still be taken into account when determining their overall dps ranking. A class that lacks utility must compensate for it by having something else such as higher dps.

Hopefully, we can all agree that SE wants every class to be equally desireable as a member of any party.