Interview with xenosys-vex

[Crater]

Balance dictates what, exactly? If war has lower utility than pld their dps should be higher because of balance, as well. That they get there through "burst" windows is just a coincidence of design. At the end of the encounter is what matters, not necessarily how they got there.

No, burst windows are inherently more valuable.

- High burst lets you push phases and skip mechanics, which not only makes fights easier from a mechanical standpoint, but has a tendency to cascade into increased party damage, as your healers no longer have to heal the mechanic you skipped, DPS don't need to accrue downtime to dodge the mechanic, etc.
- High burst is inherently easy to optimize. If a fight has 15 seconds of unavoidable downtime per minute, a tank with high burst is only going to suffer a small penalty to damage as long as they put their burst window outside of those 15 seconds - a tank that deals consistently high damage is going to lose a much higher percentage of their damage to the downtime, and there's nothing they can do about it, because every single second is equally important to them.
- High burst synergizes better with raid buffs: If your burst is 30% better than a competitor class's burst, then Trick Attack, Chain Strategem, Battle Litany, Balance, Hypercharge, etc, are all 30% stronger for you than they are for the other classes.

Balancing damage versus damage, higher burst should always be weighted more heavily than total DPS at the end of a fight. If you and I both do exactly 4,000 DPS at the end of a fight, but I did 4,000 DPS in every single second of that fight, and you did 8,000 DPS every minute in a 20 second window and 2,000 DPS in the remaining 40 seconds, your contribution was more valuable, because you had the ability to heavily contribute to phase skips, add burns, etc, and I did not.


The idea that Warrior has significantly lower utility than PLD is also pretty spurious as well, if that's the basis of an argument that Warrior should be better in both burst damage and total DPS. Divine Veil is far and away PLD's biggest contributor to party utility, and Shake it Off is just as powerful. Past that, Passage of Arms is PLD's second most powerful bit of utility, and considering the DPS loss for using it, it's only situationally helpful (and those situations are pretty much limited to "Unending Coil, and low-iLevel Neo Exdeath"). Warrior's second most powerful bit of utility is being able to generate huge amounts of enmity on a pull while losing almost zero DPS, by using Tomahawk and Equilibrium before immediately dropping into Deliverance. This is useful in every fight in the game.

Once you get past those two big examples of utility for the two respective classes, you're left comparing marginal, fringe benefits, like Intervention (only really useful for shared tankbusters), Cover (which is only ever "utility" in situations like the Neo Exdeath Delta aggro reset, and is otherwise just a mediocre defensive cooldown for PLD), and Tempered Will versus Warrior getting their own personal Slashing debuff for add pickups or party splits, using Defiance for a free 20% buff to a Deployed Adloquium, or using Onslaught's mobility to keep Alte Roite centered during Thin Ice, dealing with numerous knockbacks in Exdeath and Neo Exdeath, etc.

You'd probably have to give the nod to PLD over WAR in the 'practical utility' race, but only by a hair. And considering the relative importance of damage versus utility in the first place, that advantage is peanuts compared to what WAR brings to the table offensively.

[Lyth]

Balance dictates what, exactly? If war has lower utility than pld their dps should be higher because of balance, as well.

WAR is at a utility disadvantage, eh? I can see it now:

4.2
Battle System

Warrior
The following actions and traits have been added:
Cover: Transfers all damage from your teammates to you. Also applies a Hallowed Ground effect. 60 second recast. Reason: WAR doesn't have Hallowed Ground or Cover yet.

The following actions and traits have been adjusted:
Defiance: Now heals you for the amount that your max HP is increased by.
Holmgang: The root effect has been removed.
Fail Cleave: Now has a range of 25 yalms. Usable in both stances. Ignores the damage penalty. Heals you for 100% of the damage dealt. Reduces incoming damage by 20% for 6 seconds. Applies trick attack, slashing, blunt, and piercing debuffs. Costs 20 beast gauge. Also does your laundry.
Inner Beast: Shields both yourself and an ally for 25% of your max HP. Usable in both stances. Costs 10 beast gauge. Restores 60 beast gauge when you use it. Also restores 60 beast gauge when you forget to use it. Does your taxes.
Inner Release: Now also changes every button on your hotbar to Fail Cleave. Just in case you were thinking of pressing something else.

The following actions have been removed:
Heavy Swing: This action only had one beneficial effect, so it no longer qualifies for being an ability on WAR (due to a lack of utility).

[Exiled_Tonberry]

Balance dictates what, exactly? If war has lower utility than pld their dps should be higher because of balance, as well. That they get there through "burst" windows is just a coincidence of design. At the end of the encounter is what matters, not necessarily how they got there.

Except WAR does have utility. Not as much as PLD, no. But you also don't see PLD bursting for more than some DPS'.

I'd also argue that SiO is much better and accessible than PLD AOE mitigation.

[MauvaisOeil]

Well if utility should, like Xeno or Whiskey are claiming, balanced around DPS, DRK should be hand down the best damage dealer out of tanks. However argument against it will come as much as necessary, because no warrior wants to be beaten in damage.

[Mycow8me]

Well if utility should, like Xeno or Whiskey are claiming, balanced around DPS, DRK should be hand down the best damage dealer out of tanks. However argument against it will come as much as necessary, because no warrior wants to be beaten in damage.

And the vicious circle goes round and round. It might actually help if devs stated how and what they are balancing exactly so we don't just assume.

[MauvaisOeil]

And the vicious circle goes round and round. It might actually help if devs stated how and what they are balancing exactly so we don't just assume.

I agree. Do they want equality in damage ? In threat ? In mitigation ? In sustain ? Is the flavor seen as superior to the balance ?

[TouchandFeel]

Party utility potential is not solely based on the number of utility abilities you have but also by the strengths and weaknesses of said abilities, the frequency they can be used and whether there are any costs associated with their use.
It seems like these basic considerations are being overlooked for the point of bolstering arguments.

[shao32]

snip

Shake it off is pretty good, better that divine veil and have the best defensive kit, you can complaing paladins dealt almost almost same dps that WAR with less effort, i dont really agreed i think WAR is more easy, but on HW WAR was just a fell cleave bot and dealt huge dps numbers with so little effort and no DRK or PLD complaing about that.

[Exiled_Tonberry]

Party utility potential is not solely based on the number of utility abilities you have but also by the strengths and weaknesses of said abilities, the frequency they can be used and whether there are any costs associated with their use.

Exactly this. That's why I said I'd argue that SiO is a better mitigation tool than anything PLD has.
It's easy to just list the numbers of tools a job has, but did you mention that Divine Viel needs a heal to work and doesn't effect the caster?
And that Passage of Arms completely stops you from attacking?
Or how Intervention costs some of you gauge?

In comparison, SiO is simply use a CD and use the skill for instant benefits. It's easier to use, almost always stronger than what a PLD has and most importantly the WAR benefits from the mitigation as well.

WAR doesn't have as many party mitigation tools as PLD, because the one it has is extremely strong.

[whiskeybravo]

No, burst windows are inherently more valuable.

Unfortunately, this entire line of argumentation can be dismissed for this particular raid tier. There aren't any "phases" to push, fights are 100% scripted. The only mechanics you're skipping are due to a faster clear, and in this regard burst damage is equally valuable as sustained. The only real phase push in current content is in Shinryu, which is pug content at this point. The adds in v3s barely live long enough for more than 1-2 fell cleaves, and the other adds are just used for pad nowadays.

Furthermore, higher burst can not be inherently easier to optimize than sustained. I really can't believe that would be argued. It's much more difficult to line up small burst windows into even smaller raid utility windows. I don't optimize to that high of a level, but Xeno said he uses 9 different rotations based on party comp? How many does his paladin have?

Overall I'm in agreement with you that burst is slightly more valuable than sustained, but you're including caveats in your argument such as the actual structure of the current raids (phase pushing when there are no phases to push) and synergy with raid buffs (party comp dictates performance). Both of these are dependent on the content design and party comp, not inclusive to the job itself.

Well if utility should, like Xeno or Whiskey are claiming, balanced around DPS, DRK should be hand down the best damage dealer out of tanks. However argument against it will come as much as necessary, because no warrior wants to be beaten in damage.

I have no problem with this personally, but myself and I'm sure others agree, just buffing drk dps doesn't solve the problems with drk overall.