DPS Balance Thread

[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).