What is the General Consensus?

[Chrono_Rising]

"This isn't true for the dps meta. The highest hitting classes aren't taken over those which provided direct damage utilities. " I just said that damage dealt is the number 1 factor. When people talk about tank 'utility' (I know this term gets thrown around a lot so lets be clear what I'm talking about) it is usually in the context of veil, shake it off, TBN, cover, etc. Defensive utilities. That is how I was using the term. Forgive the confusion in syntax.

There is no confusion. Direct damage utility vs. defensive utility, I see no sign of confusion so I assume this is to create wriggle out of the the phrasing

The meta will drop utility like a hot potato if they can grab more damage in its place. This has born out in history for both DPS, healers and tanks. Utility always takes a backseat based on this games setup. It is not of zero value, but it is, unarguably, much less value than DPS.

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We can say that these aren't utilities, but when we are asked to drops some names of utilities tirck attack and shadewalker are probably up there. The fact is that the meta currently drops dps who out dps the meta dps, because the utilities offered by those dps raise the raid dps more than having high dps. We can enter a world of hypotheticals like what if we double sam damage, but I would rather not deal with hypotheticals. Much like trick attack directly increases your output, defensive utilities are there to increase your uptime. Just because a defensive utility doesn't directly raise any single players damage output (what I refer to as a direct damage utility), doesn't mean you cannot use them offensively to gain dps.

Trick attack is not a 'utility' skill in this context. When I say damage defines the meta that includes skills like trick attack. Like sch speed buffs. Brd: Magic damage up is damage. Removing a debuff would be 'utility' in my eyes. Utility gets thrown around a LOT but this is what I mean when I talk about utility skills. Maybe a better term is 'support' skills. Whatever, you get the point.

So when I say damage defines the meta, I mean exactly that. Trick attack is a strong, meta defining skill (read: Damage). Cover is not (read defensive). The meta has very consistently been the combination of jobs that provides the most damage. Drk/War provided the most damage in HW. Right now Drg/Nin provides the most damage. If Sam/Mnk brought more total raid damage to the table than Drg/Nin it would be meta. Mnk has only been meta in the past when it did the most damage. When it has fallen behind it was promptly kicked regardless of having (defensive) utility of mantra. While it was in the meta it was praised for mantra, but conveniently overlooked that it also provided the most damage. Remember double mnk combos? Triple melee+mch combo? All Brd combos in 2.0? Whatever gets the damage done.

I would consider these utilities but lets not quibble about what we are going to exactly call them. The closest thing I would point out to you is that things like shadewalker are an example of a DPS utility that does not directly increase damage. The aggro manipulation of ninja is a huge factor in increasing tank dps on pull. Even without trick attack Ninja would provided a raid dps increase because of its aggro manipulation tools. In that vein:

So when I say damage defines the meta, I mean exactly that. Trick attack is a strong, meta defining skill (read: Damage). Cover is not (read defensive)

The debuff Trick attack isn't damage in itself. You can put up the debuff of trick attack, afk, and then come back to see you've done no extra damage because you didn't use the debuff. Cover is definately a defensive utility. But it has a huge number of offensive uses. If you read my first post you can get at least 5 different applications, and thats not all, of cover as an offensive utility to increase uptime for healers and your cotank. This is no different of an idea than dropping tank stance. We drop tank stance in an effort to increase both tank and healer dps, this requires using our defensive abilities in offensive ways. Defensive utility has exactly the same type of applications.

We are also now back tracking that doing more damage is actually secondary to raid damage, the highest combine dps for the entire team is what matters. Paladin warrior has both higher output for tanks, and for healers, and for dps, all of that is what makes them meta, not just their individual dps. The meta is the highest raid damage, not the highest individual. So once again, its about the utilities the classes bring and how they interact. I know I said I wouldn't quibble about what to call them, but these really are utilities.

As you stated. Combos with the most damage and utility are 'usually' meta. However, combos that provide the HIGHEST damage are ALWAYS meta. All squares are rectangles, not all rectangles are squares. Sure, drk/war had path/reprisal. They also crapped all over pld damage. However, Pld/War was also meta at 4.0 before shake it off existed and Drk actually had more defensive utility than war. (war had zero. Drk had TBN) because it did more damage. There has never been a time in FFXIV history that the combinations of jobs that did the most damage was NOT the meta. Many of those times overlap high defensive utility combos, but not all. The single constant is that Raid Damage is the only factor that follows the meta. Defensive utility does not have this record. Damage does.

Yes, but if Dark Knight brought enough defensive utilities to bring healer dps significantly higher then bringing a warrior, the meta would have been dark knight/paladin. This is the point people have been making, what dark knight offers is not in balance with the other tanks. Things have only gotten worse since then since warrior has seen a damage buff and a utility buff while dark knight has seen little.

But that doesn't make my position less true. I could say the same about toe constant big fish exaggeration being 'less helpful after 10 months of complaints' too. I don't see how pointing out exaggerated complaints is somehow 'less helpful' than jumping on the QQ hyperbole train making issues appear bigger and scarier than they actually are. I'll leave that to the politicians and media.

What makes your position less valid, in my eyes, is that your points for saying things are "over stated" have been analyzed and found lacking, but you refuse to actually acknowledge that your position is not nearly as strong as you make it out to be with your statements of dissent. You have brought up 3.x paladin abilities completely out of context, claimed its utilities were better (which is false in many cases), to try and use that to support your claim that the entire issue with 3.x paladin was its lacking dps, when in fact that was only a piece of the puzzle. You say the defensive utilities aren't that important and are not damage utilities, after I gave you a turn by turn of using defensive utilities to increase dps, you continue to say they are just defensive abilities. At the end of the day you haven't provided anything to show that the issues are hyperbole, you just made the claim, were shown that your reasons for making the claim were not well founded, and then continue making the claim as if it still has support. And the other side of the debate has its merit, dark knight is doing less everywhere and it adds up to something big. It is viable but not great.

Grass is purple, because I think I remember purple grass here are some examples. Well here are all the examples of grass you thought you remembered as being purple, none of them are purple, please stop claiming grass is purple. My opinion is valid, people who say grass is green are wrong I refuse to jump on the "green grass" bandwagon just because people think it. <= Thats not a true or valid position, thats just refusing to admit that our stated reasons were not correct. Persistence doesn't make us correct.

At the end of the day I suppose that is what I take issue with most. That you have an opinion that is not backed up by strong evidence, and are asserting it everywhere like it is absolute truth. People want to engage in hyperbole? Well maybe thats true, maybe it isn't, but we should at least engage in a discussion to determine if it truly is hyperbole before accusing people of it without knowing which.