DPS Balance Thread

[Powercow]

And TA is not as beneficial to casters compared to physical jobs because they do not have autos to also benefit for the duration (and the same applies for Litany).

Er, what? Maybe you're thinking oGCDs, but even then that only applies to Black Mage not being able to frontload a bunch of free bonus damage. Summoners and Red Mages can absolutely make use of short-term buffs like physical classes can.

Also, looking at the top speedkill for o6s (which does use triple melee), Trick Attack provided over three times as much raid DPS as Disembowel. It's the combination of Disembowel, Litany, and a teensy bit from the Eye that puts DRG just barely ahead of TA (1001 bonus damage from the dragoon's raid buffs, compared to 967 from Trick Attack.) There's also the much more difficult-to-measure value of Shadewalker, as determining how much more raid DPS you get from tanks using more DPS combos over threat combos adds to the overall raid DPS (it could be none, it could be a couple hundred, it's difficult to say for certain.) Any of the three Bard buffs beats Disembowel, hell even Brotherhood beats Disembowel in a quad-physical comp.

It's still awkward as hell that BRD and MCH is so heavily tied to Dragoon, it just seems like a bigger problem than others because unlike, say, Battle Voice's effect being neat for everyone, all of that power fluctuation is focused on 1-2 people. Losing Brotherhood is a small loss across 5 other players, losing Disembowel is a huge loss for 1.

[HyperiusUltima]

Also, looking at the top speedkill for o6s (which does use triple melee), Trick Attack provided over three times as much raid DPS as Disembowel.

Just a little thing to note: O6S is a dummy not including as many mechanics that force Melee out of range like the rest of the tier does. Disembowel's rDPS increases based on if there's a BRD/MCH included, and that's 600 DPS by itself if you have both. Does that not feel like it's heavily weighted unlike TA which has a cooldown and not 100% uptime?

[Powercow]

Just a little thing to note: O6S is a dummy not including as many mechanics that force Melee out of range like the rest of the tier does. Disembowel's rDPS increases based on if there's a BRD/MCH included, and that's 600 DPS by itself if you have both. Does that not feel like it's heavily weighted unlike TA which has a cooldown and not 100% uptime?

No. On God Kefka one of the top runs I found (same group as the Demon Chad group from my previous post, but slightly different comp) ran with BRD MCH DRG NIN. Trick Attack still provided 20% more raid DPS than Disembowel with both ranged.

[Yeol]

No. On God Kefka one of the top runs I found (same group as the Demon Chad group from my previous post, but slightly different comp) ran with BRD MCH DRG NIN. Trick Attack still provided 20% more raid DPS than Disembowel with both ranged.

When you have two burst jobs (BRD/MCH) taking advantage of Trick Attack while being buffed with Disembowel as well, you'll see Trick Attack providing a lot.

Take away DRG and have BRD/MCH/NIN then see the gain from Trick Attack with no Disembowel to buff BRD/MCH dps.

The results will be BRD/MCH/DRG > BRD/MCH/NIN.

[Powercow]

When you have two burst jobs (BRD/MCH) taking advantage of Trick Attack while being buffed with Disembowel as well, you'll see Trick Attack providing a lot.

Take away DRG and have BRD/MCH/NIN then see the gain from Trick Attack with no Disembowel to buff BRD/MCH dps.

The results will be BRD/MCH/DRG > BRD/MCH/NIN.

In the top 2X Ranged Demon Chad kill, taking away Disembowel during TA results in a whopping 19 DPS lost for the raid. No, your argument makes no sense. In any non-doubles composition in the game, NIN/X*7 versus DRG/BRD/MCH/X*5, TA will still beat Disembowel. But that's an extremely narrow view of the situation.

The problem people in this thread think exists is that Disembowel is too strong -- in a single-ranged group composition, it doesn't even break the top 5 buffs/debuffs for raid DPS (TA, Balance, Litany, BV, bard passive crit, Overcharge all beat it resoundingly.) The problem is twofold:

1) Disembowel is on a job that has one of the strongest buffs in the game (Litany), plus another decent one (Eye), and can still put out good DPS. At least with Ninja their DPS is pretty garbage.

2) Disembowel is extremely focused in its benefit. Slashing debuff is applicable by 3 of the 5 jobs that benefit from it, Dragon Kick is applied by the only job to benefit from it, and Brotherhood and Embolden apply to the majority of jobs in the game. Every other DPS buff applies to everyone (roughly) equally. Disembowel stands alone as being the only debuff that only one job applies that benefits only 2 other potential jobs -- far too narrow of a focus, and it creates this perception that it's too powerful. If you main Bard or Machinist I'm sure it seems that way because its impact on your DPS is huge, but its overall raid impact is mediocre at best. Even in a composition with 2 ranged it's still not as potent as TA, Balance or Overcharge.

So does this mean Disembowel needs a nerf? No, but it does need a change to be more widespread. Imagine if it gave a bonus of 2% crit chance against the target for anyone attacking it -- this would be a noticeable decrease in the DPS of a Bard or Machinist, but it would actually be a buff for the raid overall (excepting double ranged groups.)
Also imagine if, say, Hot Shot applied the debuff, or if Ironjaws could. Would Disembowel be so OP if it was applied by more people? Nobody looks at the Slashing debuff from Samurai and says "oh man, their raid DPS contribution is insane with a ninja, warrior, and paladin!" That's because 2 of those can also apply it!
The last option to balance it out would be to, as others stated, simply remove it and rebalance all of the jobs affected by it to the same overall DPS they're at now. This seems like such a lazy yet surprisingly difficult way of going about it, but hey if it works.

[HyoMinPark]

The problem people in this thread think exists is that Disembowel is too strong

I think you aren’t considering how skewed the benefits of Disembowel are compared to other rBuffs. Like I said in my long wall-o-text above, in a DRG/BRD or DRG/MCH comp, that ~300 DPS is for 1 person. In a DRG/BRD/MCH comp, that ~600 DPS is for 2 people. Compare that to any other rBuff (save Embloden since it won’t benefit other magic users outside of the RDM that uses it), which are benefits for the entire raid of 8 people. Benefits for 1 or 2 versus benefits for the entire 8. 860 rDPS for TA (or even 900+) seems massive, but it’s spread across 8 people. Disembowel benefits 1 or 2. 900+ for 8; ~600 for 2; ~300 for just 1. That’s heavily skewed, and that’s why people say Disembowel is so strong.

I’m not some orange-tier BRD, but my highest for this tier is 90th percentile in V6S. It was several weeks ago and I don’t think anyone in the raid had BiS (though the NIN had consistent orange parses), but I got a +264 DPS benefit from Disembowel. Trick, for comparison, gave the raid +476, but it only gave me +97.4 DPS. +264 versus +97.4. +264 for 1, versus +476 for 8.

[Powercow]

I think you aren’t considering how skewed the benefits of Disembowel are compared to other rBuffs.

I am. That's actually my exact point. Its overall raid DPS is too *focused* in 1-2 other people.

Compare that to any other rBuff (save Embloden since it won’t benefit other magic users outside of the RDM that uses it), which are benefits for the entire raid of 8 people.

Also, Brotherhood is physical only too, but Brotherhood is its own weird box of awkwardness, albeit less so since it got buffed.

[HyoMinPark]

Also, looking at the top speedkill for o6s (which does use triple melee), Trick Attack provided over three times as much raid DPS as Disembowel. It's the combination of Disembowel, Litany, and a teensy bit from the Eye that puts DRG just barely ahead of TA (1001 bonus damage from the dragoon's raid buffs, compared to 967 from Trick Attack.) There's also the much more difficult-to-measure value of Shadewalker, as determining how much more raid DPS you get from tanks using more DPS combos over threat combos adds to the overall raid DPS (it could be none, it could be a couple hundred, it's difficult to say for certain.) Any of the three Bard buffs beats Disembowel, hell even Brotherhood beats Disembowel in a quad-physical comp.

I’m well aware that V6S can run triple-melee; I never said that it could not, only that V7S would be ill-advised to do triple-melee because someone is going to have to disengage for Ink/Chakras. However, as Yeol stated in reference to your God Kefka parse that shows more rDPS gain from TA than Disembowel, they have a valid point in pointing out that BRD/MCH (two high-bursting jobs) are going to inflate the gain of TA. Especially since Wildfire should always line up with every TA (and Wildfire is the only thing out of a MCH’s kit save perhaps their Autoturret that is not affected by Disembowel, but is affected by other rBuffs like TA). Another point to make is that the ~600 rDPS of Disembowel is between two jobs; the ~860 you quoted from TA is across the entire raid.

TA is nice, but it doesn’t hold together the physical meta in the same way piercing does. If the developers wanted to break the meta, all they need to do is remove piercing from the game (and all resistance down debuffs while they’re at it; they’re all redundant as it is now, save for piercing which has 1 option and 3 jobs that benefit). I feel that perhaps you weren’t quite understanding what I was saying. Maybe I did not word it clearly enough, but the physical meta exists because of piercing, not Trick Attack. Trick is nice, but if you removed it, it would only bench NIN because they wouldn’t be able to hold their meta spot with Shadewalker alone; MNK would actually replace them in the all-physical comp very easily because of their personal damage plus anything that Brotherhood gives the raid. TA’s removal (and NIN’s from the meta) wouldn’t affect the trio of DRG/BRD/MCH—they would still happily be holding hands at the Meta Party.

BRD’s buffs do not outright beat Disembowel if there is a double physical ranged comp—the Passive Crit buff, Foe’s, and BV do not come anywhere close. Combined, yes. Individually, no. Taking the second speed-kill ranking for God Kefka (which uses DRG/NIN/BRD/MCH as their DPS comp), Disembowel gave 635.5 rDPS to the BRD and the MCH (keep in mind what I said above—this is for 2 jobs). BRD’s buffs were: Battle Voice at 242.6; Passive Crit at 315.9; Foe’s Requiem at 388.0–all for the entire raid. If there had been only one physical ranged and the other ranged was a caster, then yes, the Passive Crit buff and Foe’s could have contributed almost as much as Disembowel, maybe even a little bit more (depending on how many times Foe’s was used for the raid). But in a double physical ranged comp, they won’t come close individually to beating out Disembowel. Battle Voice actually loses a little bit of rDPS contribution because WARs no longer value it as heavily as before, and they should be in an IR window each time BV is used—they’ll get benefits from 10 seconds of the duration, but the other 10 seconds won’t matter since IR guarantees Direct Hit Crits.



For comparison, I looked at the top speed kill for God Kefka. DPS comp was NIN/DRG/BRD/SMN. Here, both the Passive Crit (321.7) and Foe’s (332.4) outweighed Disembowel (297.4). However, if the SMN had been a MCH, neither would have came close, because Disembowel would have been pushing almost 600 if you assume doubling it’s contribution.

It’s a bit incorrect to say that Disembowel can be flat out beat by any BRD buff. It can, but only if the BRD is the only physical ranged. If there’s a MCH, BRD’s buffs individually won’t touch Disembowel’s contribution. Brotherhood will beat out Disembowel as well, but under the same conditions—in the event the group doesn’t roll NIN and does MNK/DRG/BRD/MCH (odd comp but probably not impossible), Disembowel will still stand at ~600. I’m looking at the top speed kill ranking for V6S, and Brotherhood is at 412.1 with MNK/DRG/NIN/BRD. Assuming it’s value will probably be the same if there was double-ranged, it won’t outweigh Disembowel. Though that comp is unlikely, it’s still something to think about. And, here again, Brotherhood benefits all 8 party members; Disembowel directly affects 1 person. 412.1 for 8 versus 300.3 (the Disembowel value for that same V6S parse) for 1. Still heavily skewed, and it only serves to illustrate further how important Disembowel is.


There is one thing that should be kept in mind, though. Since we are talking about the top speed kill parses, we also have to remember that these runs in and of themselves are heavily padded, and that results are going to be a little bit skewed. I still think that Disembowel is more important to holding the physical ranged meta together compared to TA; I just wanted to make a note that the values we are quote are skewed by pads. (The V6S run I’m quote has over 1,000 rDPS contribution to Balance alone, so that is going to skew the numbers of both TA and Brotherhood, and even Disembowel, since they’re flat damage buffs and not RNG crit-enhancing buffs, which will still be skewed more than likely, just not as much as a flat damage buff).


Hopefully this all makes sense, since it is quite late, and I’m feeling the medicine I took so my allergies would calm down enough for me to sleep starting to kick in (darn anti-histamines).