Black Mage

[Remedi]

I was using examples on a broader sense, while I don't agree that it's safe to assume that we won't do mistakes even at higher end, especially in pugs you see ppl not lining cds perfectly or using them at all, I don't think it's fair to say that using raid cds wrongly is not a big deal, I've seen plenty of litanies used during a boss jump (or chain strategem/trick attack applied on the heart instead of shinryu)
I don't think that while talking about game balance we can seriously think only about high end when making an argument to SE, because honestly that's a part of the game too and quite frankly if the meta comp would require a more careful playstyle to reach a certain height of dmg I could actually accept that but I don't play ranged so can't really say

I do agree about what you said about phase skips, but I was talking about the speed kills done with or without meta groups tbh, though ye shoul've been more precise

[Galvuu]

snip

The only thing that could justify a bad litany like that is a random skip, and you can normally predict those accurately (Creator gave me a lot of training there, thanks A11).
When Sfia says "high level" he doesn't mean a god-tier player somehow playing with 7 idiots.
He means a party of skillful people playing together. Which is what you see in serious progression, high-end speed kills and more recently, Ultimate.
This "pug" example in the vacuum where everyone is bad except for the subject of the argument doesn't mean much. Of course if you're shoved into a terrible party things go South fast. That's why Hashmal is such a clown fiesta.

This kind of balancing is always meant for the top cut of the playerbase. This is simply because it's only at that level that the issues become apparent, when people are fully utilising the resources they have available (and optimally) that the discrepancies become visible.
It's these heavily invested, heavily devoted people that become disenchanted when the state of the game balance bodes ill.

Someone who's on the 50% of any job (and that's the majority of the playerbase) can get better just by reading basic guides about their job and try to have good uptime.
Someone on the 75% percentile can start to keep track of their buffs/dots and do the rotation as well as possible while keeping those up.
Someone on the 90% percentile can now optimise the rotation for each specific fight and alter it with regard to skips/timings and make sure the little things are all done perfectly on top (weaving ogcds and stuff like that).
All of these happen regardless of the state of game balance. You have so many avenues of drastic improvement before these imbalances become a critical issue that they honestly make no difference.

But if when you start nearing the 95%+ you still see a big gap between your job and the others, you realise that all your investment was a waste. It's here that balance becomes an issue- you're suddenly limited by the game itself moreso than your execution. This is actually the worst feeling ever.
Especially in a game like this, where we play a self-insert avatar. Oh look, my catgirl witch now has to be a bard in Ultimate. So much fun >.>

[Remedi]

Snip

Tbh I don't disagree with what sfia said It's just I was talking generally not really on the high end spectrum to try and rationalize SE stance on what they said

[zuzu-bq]

The problem is that SE seems to want to balance them all only by average player's output. Which makes better players realize some jobs are just too much better at high skill level so the average players ditch the not so good and bad jobs to play the better jobs even though they won't get much benefit out of doing so.

[Remedi]

The problem is that SE seems to want to balance them all only by average player's output. Which makes better players realize some jobs are just too much better at high skill level so the average players ditch the not so good and bad jobs to play the better jobs even though they won't get much benefit out of doing so.

True that, though not sure if they have a choice in that

That said they ditched one job to make sure that balance was all right so I'd say we should still make them know it