DPS Balance Thread

[HyperiusUltima]

I’m not sure if this has been made before, but I felt like making one since I haven’t seen one.

In regards to what I’ve read throughout the DPS Forum, I’d like to start a balancing thread so that the devs can see the discussion and input outside of the complaints that are made throughout the forums, legitimate issue or not.

My thoughts in a summary for each DPS Job:

Ranged

BRD: Excels in support; superior to MCH in just about any raid comp and provides a plethora of Offensive and Defensive Buffs while having high damage throughput with songs. Has a higher skill ceiling than MCH and isn’t as reliant on ping.

MCH: High Damage Burst Job, capable of dealing high damage and providing an alternative to NIN(albeit a little weaker) while also bring the same Role Skills as BRD. Lacks all the buffs except Hypercharge(5% rDPS increase) and has a very high skill floor in regards to double-weaving and overheating with ping.

Melee

NIN: Melee Utility Job; capable of mitigating enmity for just about everyone and applying a 10% Damage Up on the boss is essential to high-end raids mainly because of the support this thing provides. Sure, its damage is not as high as some of the other melee, but it more than makes up for it with the utilities it provides. Has a relatively high skill ceiling in regards to rotation.

MNK: Melee Damage Job; MNK does high solo damage with a side of raid utility in Brotherhood, but the rest of its kit has seen improvements to the high-end rotation after Riddle of Wind got its fix for restoring a single GL stack. On the offset, it also brings a useful Mantra for healers, but it's not always necessary. Has a higher skill floor than most, but relatively lower skill ceiling after Riddle of Wind is added into rotation properly.

SAM: Very High Damage Melee Job; SAM focuses on dealing high burst damage with Midare Setsugekka and manipulating their kenki gauge to add onto that damage. Whether it be oGCDs, GCDs, or just abilities SAM is all about the damage; sad thing is, it has no raid utility and thus has been ignored by a majority of the community due to the "trend" we have each raid tier after World Firsts. Same Skill Floor/Ceiling as MNK for kenki management.

DRG: Melee Damage Job; DRG has a good amount of utility in Dragon Sight, Litany, and the coveted Disembowel for Ranged and focuses on utilizing its jump abilities to get into Life of the Dragon. Low Skill Floor, Low Skill Ceiling.

Caster

BLM: Very High Damage Caster; focuses on hardcasting all its damage for big numbers and also has mobility options when they have to move thanks to the QoL changes to Aetherial Manipulation and Thundercloud/Firestarter. Has no raid utility like SAM and suffers the same disability as SAM when it comes to the community. Very High Skill Ceiling, Low Skill Floor

SMN: DoT-focused Caster; While SMN focuses on keeping its DoTs up, it has its pet Ifrit smack the living hell out of the target while also adding burst damage through Aetherflow and Dreadwyrm Trance. It gets stronger with its Demi-Bahamut, but could use a bit of tweaking in regards to how your pet dragon tends to want to handhold you for the duration you're moving with a 100y WYRM WAVE. Also has a utility similar to Brotherhood in Devotion. High Skill Ceiling, Moderate Skill Floor.

RDM: Hybrid Caster; Focuses on balancing White and Black and using the balance to deal high burst damage with Manafication and their Melee Combo. Has raid utility in Embolden, being able to chaincast Res, and also Vercure; however, it still suffers due to the damage it does compared to others even with raid utility. Very Low Skill Floor, Moderate Skill Ceiling.

[Popotato]

BRD: Excels in support; superior to MCH in just about any raid comp and provides a plethora of Offensive and Defensive Buffs while having high damage throughput with songs. Has a lower skill ceiling than MCH and isn’t as reliant on ping.

MCH: High Damage Burst Job, capable of dealing high damage and providing an alternative to NIN(albeit a little weaker) while also bring the same Role Skills as BRD. Lacks all the buffs except Hypercharge(5% rDPS increase) and has a very high skill ceiling in regards to double-weaving and overheating with ping.

This is completely backwards. BRD has a much higher skill ceiling than MCH and a much lower skill floor. A BRD can do a simple basic rotation and still get pretty good dps off, but the the job itself offers a lot of potential to maximise damage if you take the time to learn optimisations. On the other hand, a MCH that doesn’t know the basic rotation is going to do really poor damage, but once the rotation is committed to memory, there’s not much more you can do to push your damage since optimal MCH play is pushing buttons off cooldown.

Next, MCH is in no way an alternative to NIN. They fill different roles, and really they should be used in tandem. Trick Attack lines up almost perfectly with Wildfire, so the presence of a NIN is a big boon to MCH damage. Trick Attack and Hypercharge also stack, so more reason to use them together.

Finally, MCH has more utility than just Hypercharge. Obviously it doesn’t have anywhere near as much utility as BRD, but alongside Hypercharge, Dismantle is incredibly useful in end game, where there are 45k raidwide AoEs and 10k a tick raidwide DoTs. Healers will love you if you use Dismantle well. And while BRD does Troubadour which fulfills a similar sort of role as Dismantle, the cooldown is three times as long and it isn't reliable since it's tied to certain songs. Also, MCH is a better user of Refresh than BRD for the purposes of party-wide regen. A BRD will often Refresh early on in the opener to extend the duration of Foe’s Requiem, which will often result in healers still being at max mana when used. A MCH doesn’t have this same situation and becomes a lot more flexible in its Refresh usage, using it primarily for enmity and regen rather than DPS.

[Kabooa]

Ironically, the main thing that puts jobs off balance is the role menu.

[DaulBan]

Personal opinion on where the jobs stand.

S or essentially flawless: DRG/NIN/BRD (Bold are the crit part)

None of these have particular fight based weaknesses and offer the largest DPS benefits you can acquire. Essentially irreplaceable.

A or Really Good, Shoe-ins for the fourth slot: MNK/SMN/MCH

SMN and MCH are safe bets with SMN having higher base DPS but much lower Raid Buff potential. MCH has a bit more power in that respect but lower damage. MNK probably offers the best balance but can be awkward in fights where the engagements force the MNK away from the boss for one reason or another. In triple melee in particular this causes issues with positioning that are difficult to reconcile under some circumstances. Fight design really is what limits triple melee more than anything as Chad has MNK doing insane amounts of damage that make it a no-brainer for any comp.

B or Situational: Their value depends a lot on how the fight operates: SAM/BLM

My experience with BLM is limited but tl;dr if the fight has constant disconnects and high movement it's fouls wasted and a bad time for a job with low burst orientation. SAM is similar to monk but with a little less punishment for lack of uptime (no stacks to worry about) but no Brotherhood.

C the 'Who am I' tier: RDM

Comparable damage to BRD and NIN with less utility. While some people playing RDM out of their minds may perform well it's an awkward job outside of prog.

Alright, that said, how much does the ranking here matter? Personally when balancing anything I say look to the extremes and look at how you manage them and mostly leave the middling jobs alone. A tier jobs are remarkably well balanced and are probably a collection of the best balance we've seen, at least since I started playing in 3.2. The three jobs below them are 'kinda awkward' in different ways, the three jobs above them are 'kinda really good' in various ways. I'd say that balance isn't a terribly huge problem. No job under A is going to be meta but for the majority of us that doesn't really matter both in terms of proportion (6/9 DPS jobs are really good) and in terms of performance (play literally any comp well enough and you can clear content).

[Aomine1992]

It comes doesn't to jobs people want in raids and speed kills which is where you see the actual balancing issues...

Top tier - DRG/BRD/MCH/NIN

MCH may pose an issue with ping but if ping isn't an issue is a great dps. This group is your buffing team they provide alot of rdps which isn't negligible..

Mid tier - SMN/MNK/RDM

These classes have a decent amount of dmg, small raid buffs that can be negligible, RDM dmg is really low for the utility it offers and sometimes is only a great class for progression purposes.

Low tier - SAM/BLM

Your highest personal dmg classes but provide the least amount of buffs if any at at all, usually labaled persona non grata as they take up spots for classes who offered more which currently is at a higher value than classes who offered nothing...

[Wayfinder3]

If I'd have to dish out a tier list based on overall job balance it'd have to be this.

GOD Tier:
•Bard (respectable damage, Unrivaled kit, solid play style, rewards optimization better than any other job)
SS Tier:
•Dragoon ( Great Damage, Disembowel {worth its own mention}, otherwise great utility.
•Summoner (Great Damage, respectable utility, high AoE damage and mobility for a caster. SMN is probably the best all around for the 4th slot)
S Tier
• Ninja (Trick Attack, Enmity manipulation. However what holds ninja back is its poor damage, it's very weak for a melee and it shows)
• Monk (Amazing damage, decent utility. Best synergy with the meta comp. MNK would easily beat any other contender for the 4th slot if fight design allowed it to let loose)
A Tier
• Machinist ( Good Damage, Great Utility, 60 second rotation, what puts Mch this low is its heavy reliance on synergy to still come up short when compared to bard. (Bad playstyle that's too subjective to other utilities, if you're missing any, this job starts to under perform quickly) Refresh is the only utility really keeping this job in competition with SMN.
A - Tier
• Black Mage ( Greatest Damage, Caster role kit) the fact that BLM is a caster means that it technically offer unique utility to the standard meta or regular comp. BLM is only truly without utility when 2 caster's are present.
B Tier
• Samurai ( Great Dps) The first of SB failures, samurai simply doesn't offer anything, in HW monk at least had mantra. Samurai even with these coming buffs is flawed in it's design because multiplicative buff stacking is too strong to find value. This job much like blm will continue to be bad simply because not having utility is not a good enough in this game. Competing against DRG and NIN is also virtually impossible but also losing to MNK makes this job completely worthless. It is however not the worst
C Tier:
• Red Mage (Unrivaled in progress) (Verraise is the only real pro for this job) The 2nd of SB's failures, RDM is a support job that doesn't quite fit into the same niche as DRG NIN and BRD, This job's damage is far too low to compensate for its chain resurrection ability. Embolden is strong but alone it isn't strong enough to push RDM's rdps contributions anywhere. RDM's personal and rdps is so low that for the 4th slot. Black mage and Samurai will contribute more to that composition past progression. Sad reality but being a jack of all trades isn't good if you don't excel at using everything you've learned. RDM doesn't capitalize on all of its utility with vercure and verraise costing RDM dps where as all other utility jobs use theirs freely. Poor synergy with healers is a major point of contention for the job thats supposed to make their lives easier. It has no efficient way to give them mana, its embolden doesn't even benefit them either. RDM is honestly just too overbalanced. This job feels like the devs were afraid of trivializing fights by allowing deaths to go unpunished, which is fine but if it comes at the cost of RDM not being able perform with the rest past seeing enrage or even clearing. Was it truly worth it?

[Zerathor]

A - Tier
• Black Mage ( Greatest Damage, Caster role kit) the fact that BLM is a caster means that it technically offer unique utility to the standard meta or regular comp. BLM is only truly without utility when 2 caster's are present.

Might be missing extra utility, but with blm+smn, it gets to truly do its highest damage possible. And with all the magic damage this tier, double addle wouldn't be too bad.

[HyperiusUltima]

I'm not sure how this devolved into a Tier List Thread, but I'm not going to put it that way. I meant to get to rewriting some stuff earlier as well but didn't get around to it because of RL stuff. Anyway, yes, I understand why it's perceived that MCH doesn't have a high skill ceiling, but I find it does to an extent mainly due to the fact you have to SQUEEZE SO MUCH INTO WILDFIRE, not to mention on top of that you have to Overheat so it's hard to do the opener properly if your ping is 100ms. Also, thanks for reminding me about Dismantle and its raid mitigation. Completely forgot about that.

Also, BRD's ceiling only raises based on party comp because of snapshotting. Outside of that its ceiling isn't that high since you're going to be busy refreshing your DoTs as well as keeping up with procs, which in all honesty isn't as hard as having to mash all the things perfectly for your main damage every 60s that can either be a big explosion or just a hit that's the size of dynamite.

[Popotato]

I'm not sure how this devolved into a Tier List Thread, but I'm not going to put it that way. I meant to get to rewriting some stuff earlier as well but didn't get around to it because of RL stuff. Anyway, yes, I understand why it's perceived that MCH doesn't have a high skill ceiling, but I find it does to an extent mainly due to the fact you have to SQUEEZE SO MUCH INTO WILDFIRE, not to mention on top of that you have to Overheat so it's hard to do the opener properly if your ping is 100ms. Also, thanks for reminding me about Dismantle and its raid mitigation. Completely forgot about that.

Also, BRD's ceiling only raises based on party comp because of snapshotting. Outside of that its ceiling isn't that high since you're going to be busy refreshing your DoTs as well as keeping up with procs, which in all honesty isn't as hard as having to mash all the things perfectly for your main damage every 60s that can either be a big explosion or just a hit that's the size of dynamite.

I think someone gave you the wrong definition of skill ceiling. Skill ceiling is the maximum potential reward you can get from knowing a job’s ins and outs. Skill floor describes the basic barrier of entry for a job to do well. A BRD that reacts to procs and refreshes songs and DoTs would be playing at the skill floor.

I don’t know how much BRD and MCH you play, but BRD has a lot more optimisation beyond just snapshotting. Things like using two stack Pitch Perfect when there’s a DRG and SCH, holding Sidewinder for Raging Strikes, knowing when you have to use Straighter Shot on Straight Shot instead of Refulgent Arrow, extending Foe’s Requiem with Refresh and clipping DoTs in time for transitions and downtime, these are all a part of optimisation and examples of playing at the BRD’s skill ceiling. However, you can consider absolutely none of these and still do well. Hence, high skill ceiling low skill floor.

MCH on the other hand, just like how you described, will do poor damage if you don’t know what to do for your opener and subsequent Wildfires. You need to learn it to play the job competently. Therefore, this would be considered skill floor rather than skill ceiling like how you describe. Once you do have the basic rotation down, there really isn’t much more you can do beyond knowing the best setups for Wildfire and knowing when to use Turret Overload. Therefore, high skill floor low skill ceiling.

[HyoMinPark]

Ranged

BRD: Excels in support; superior to MCH in just about any raid comp and provides a plethora of Offensive and Defensive Buffs while having high damage throughput with songs. Has a lower skill ceiling than MCH and isn’t as reliant on ping.

MCH: High Damage Burst Job, capable of dealing high damage and providing an alternative to NIN(albeit a little weaker) while also bring the same Role Skills as BRD. Lacks all the buffs except Hypercharge(5% rDPS increase) and has a very high skill ceiling in regards to double-weaving and overheating with ping.

BRD has a much higher skill ceiling in terms of optimization than MCH does. BRD’s DPS optimization is all about making the most they can out of their DoT damage and procs; there is a section in the current BRD guide (that is super long) that gives potency increase values for each raid buff (Litany, Chain, Trick Attack, Spear, Balance, etc.), and how much a BRD gains and loses by choosing to double-snapshot each buff with Iron Jaws. The guide even explains that it is actually a gain to triple weave a Bloodletter > Empyreal Arrow > Bloodletter during Mage’s Ballad and clip your GCD as opposed to doing BL > EA > HS > BL.

BRD isn’t as heavily reliant on ping as MCH (though high ping can cause double weaving problems, and in Army’s at 4 stacks of Repertoire, you end up clipping if you double weave and it just cannot be helped even at a low ping), but the skill ceiling for BRD is still incredibly high. By comparison, the skill floor for BRD is very low, which is why a lot of people recommend it as a first DPS job because it is so easy to pick up and learn at that most basic level.

I do agree with your other points though; BRD massively out-supports MCH with Foe’s, Battle Voice, and its passive crit buff (and even with Nature’s Minne, which is a free Convalescence on the MT every 45 seconds), but I suppose the developer’s answer to this is an increase in personal DPS on the part of the MCH. They are higher in personal damage output compared to a BRD (by comparison, they also suffer more than a BRD by the lack of a DRG, since BRD at least has DoT damage and the ticks are not reliant on piercing resistance down but everything MCH does is). MCH is still meta, but it is usually the first to be subbed out for BLM, SMN, or, if the party wants to do triple-melee, MNK before the group subs out MNK (though BRD was subbed out during UCoB prog because Dismantle was very good, and BRD doesn’t offer anything similar to it to reduce the damage of certain attacks). Because groups that focus on optimization care more about rDPS as opposed to just pDPS, and rDPS will outweigh pDPS—BRD, NIN, and DRG all have relatively low pDPS, but ridiculously high rDPS because of their support.

Things like using two stack Pitch Perfect when there’s a DRG and SCH, holding Sidewinder for Raging Strikes, knowing when you have to use Straighter Shot on Straight Shot instead of Refulgent Arrow, extending Foe’s Requiem with Refresh and clipping DoTs in time for transitions and downtime, these are all a part of optimisation and examples of playing at the BRD’s skill ceiling. However, you can consider absolutely none of these and still do well. Hence, high skill ceiling low skill floor.

Everything you say here is right save for one: unless it has changed recently, you do not hold Sidewinder for Raging Strikes. You actually try to line it up with the NIN’s Trick Attack, since they share the same cooldown timer. Refulgent is usually always used over Straighter Shot, unless SS is about to fall off and you need to refresh your DoTs. But you can actually clip them when they are >10 seconds remaining and not lose any potency by it (the IJ refresh is considered ‘FREE’), so I believe that most BRD opt to refresh them early so that they can Refulgent over Straighter Shot. You will always double IJ regardless of duration if Litany and/or Chain are up (definitely if both are up), and under certain other conditions, such as when there are 2 or more damage-increasing buffs up (Balance, Trick Attack, Brotherhood, Embolden-5, etc.).

Also, BRD's ceiling only raises based on party comp because of snapshotting. Outside of that its ceiling isn't that high since you're going to be busy refreshing your DoTs as well as keeping up with procs, which in all honesty isn't as hard as having to mash all the things perfectly for your main damage every 60s that can either be a big explosion or just a hit that's the size of dynamite.

Not necessarily. Even if a BRD is in the absolute worst comp for them (basically anything without a DRG), they still need to try and optimize for the buffs they have. It’s actually harder for a BRD to reach decent numbers when they are in a comp that specificially hurts them (i.e., no DRG). It says something about a BRD’s personal skill if, with a comp of NIN/SAM/RDM/BRD and with no AST (so SCH/WHM), they still manage to get high blues and purples in terms of percentile rankings.

Even with just a SCH giving me Chain, there have been times where I have been constantly double weaving Pitch Perfects or Bloodletters. Optimization doesn’t just suddenly decrease because you’re in a bad comp. Even in a bad comp you still try to optimize as much as you can with what you have. Again, as I said previously, the BRD guide has a section dedicated entirely to Iron Jaws optimization even in absence of Litany and Chain Strategem. Sadly, it’s even harder with unpredictable rBuffs like Embolden to optimize snapshotting, and RDM is only prog-meta.

I have to respectfully disagree that a BRD’s skill ceiling only increases if they’re in a meta comp, or a comp with a lot of rBuffs. Having nothing can still be a challenge in terms of pushing as much as you possibly can out of the job. I speak from experience (my current group comps have had no DRG, and very infrequently an AST, but I still managed to get 75th on Phantom Train with a comp of NIN/SAM/RDM/BRD a couple weeks ago...I also do not have BRD BiS as I only cleared God Kefka last week).