DPS Balance Thread

[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).