DPS Balance Thread

[HyoMinPark]

FFlogs should show all dps (optional?) like Ifrit radiant shield.

As Sunako said, we have a website that calculates rDPS gains from buffs like Radiant Shield, and adds them into personal DPS as a raid DPS contribution. It's a very handy little site, and I use it frequently. That being said, it would be nice for FFLogs to have rankings based on rDPS contribution, as well as a ranking for personal damage.

Same for Ast balances too, the extra damage from balaces should be shown as Ast's personal damage.

Back when Balance was +20% for single target, and +10% for AOE spreads, FFLogs used to have a "DPS with Balance" and "DPS without Balance" columns. Honestly, I think they should bring that back, because so many people are quick to point out how awesome a particular amount of pDPS is, and while they aren't wrong in saying that this SMN with nearly 8,000 DPS is great, they also don't take into consideration things like "That SMN also received 10 single-target Balances".

Same for all buffs. Maybe even calculate it for debuffs, if not too complicated.

The site Sunako linked also takes into consideration debuffs such as Disembowel (Piercing Resistance Down debuff), Foe's Requiem (because it's technically a boss debuff, since it increases a target's damage taken by 3%), and Trick Attack/Hypercharge (Vulnerability Up debuffs on a target).

sure, some issues might occure (do speed buffs also get the same treatment, if calculatable at all? And buffs being added over buffs might be tricky to calculate too, lime BL + Balance + Embolden at the same time)

The rDPS Calculator app considers all raid buffs, including Arrow (since you mentioned speed buffs; it will not count things that reduce a player's personal GCD that they apply, like MNK Greased Lightning or a BRD's Repertoire during Army's Paeon since that is a personally applied thing, and it does not help the raid). For the "buffs being added over buffs", the calculator shows the values the player contributed with their rBuff (excluding values they gained from it personally) and it also shows the amount they gained from other rBuffs. For example, a NIN's rBuff contribution shows Trick Attack for the other 7 party members (not including the NIN), and the calculator with show a "buffs received" that shows what the NIN gained from Embolden, Litany, BV, Hypercharge, Balance, Spear, Chain, Arrow, Foe's, etc..

if fflogs dps where show like that, pfs would not be fixated on increasing their personal dps with help from other "buff classes"

This would probably not go away. The entire concept of a META comp ("META" itself means the most effective tactical advantage, if I remember correctly) is to find the most advantageous team comp to provide the best optimization for parties that want to optimize. The most that would happen is that players would see things like: "Well, a DRG joined, but I see that he only uses Battle Litany once during openers; and his Disembowel uptime is pretty low, so we would rather have another DRG that has better buff management".

or maybe classes like Drg would get more attention, since they are OP and maybe get a slight nerf or Sam a buff...

What makes DRG OP is the contribution it gives to the raid if there is a physical ranged present. It's contribution is even more if both physical ranged are present, because Disembowel is such a skewed rBuff: ~300 rDPS contribution for one physical ranged, ~600 for both. Meanwhile, Trick Attack, while good, at ~800 total contribution seems large, it's divided between 7 players for slightly over 100 contribution to each player; Disembowel is nearly 3 times that for just one player.

(but imo Drg has become one imo the hardest melee if not dps to optimise at 70, might just be fair to let it be desired if its hard to mastr??.. imo Drg was once the easiest and mnk the hardest melee, they fully switched positions in SB)

I'd say DRG is equal in terms of optimization with MNK and NIN. All three of those melee are about even with regards to the difficulty they have in learning to Min-max. The hardest DPS jobs to optimize are actually BRD and BLM: BRD because you have to learn the best way to optimize your DoTs with regards to snapshotting, and there are so many different scenarios in which you clip early, you don't, you double snapshot during a buff's uptime, learning when to play Foe's because it should line up with important rBuffs and burst phases for the raid, learning how to use Refresh to extend Foe's offensively, learning how to not cast Foe's too much so that you personally lose damage, etc.; BLM because you need an intimate knowledge of fight to know where you can stand, when you have to make use of Aetherial Manipulation or Triplecast for movement, when you can eat damage with or without Manawall to lessen movement and not die from eating things, etc..

[Legion88]

"META" itself means the most effective tactical advantage, if I remember correctly

There are different words but most mean the same:

• Most Effective Tactic Available
• Most Effective Tactical Advantage
• Most Effecient Tactic Available
• and more

All center around the simple fact of using a composition with the highest gain for a fight, for FFXIV it's mostly the highest gain of rDPS, even if only a small percentile of the players could effeciently use the advantages of this specific composition.

[HyoMinPark]

There are different words but most mean the same:

• Most Effective Tactic Available
• Most Effective Tactical Advantage
• Most Effecient Tactic Available
• and more

All center around the simple fact of using a composition with the highest gain for a fight, for FFXIV it's mostly the highest gain of rDPS, even if only a small percentile of the players could effeciently use the advantages of this specific composition.

Thank you! I knew it had a couple different meanings, but I could only recall Most Effective Tactical Advatage.

And I agree. A lot of people but a lot of stock behind "meta", but unless you know how to actually optimize as a team, it doesn't matter if you are running a meta comp. The truth is, is that a lot of people will run meta and think their numbers will magically get better; they don't realize all the stars (buffs) need to align to do so, as well as them be able to personally optimize their own jobs individually.

[Kabooa]

Thank you! I knew it had a couple different meanings, but I could only recall Most Effective Tactical Advatage.

And I agree. A lot of people but a lot of stock behind "meta".

It's not just RDPS.

Recovery options, defensive options, and so forth all play a part as well.

This is my primary problem with the tool distribution at the moment. The damage disparity between a Cannon class like Samurai and Blamurai is too small to justify the suite of tools they lose out on for it. All of which seem to get stocked into the Ranged DPS role.

Universal damage downs, interrupts, party damage boosts, partywide MP/TP restore, and not only sufficient but excellent damage contribution. Combine this with the fact that they are least hindered by movement, they are always capable of hitting the boss, and every penalty they had before was removed in Stormblood, and the 5% nerf on Disembowel felt like a token effort to offset this. Honestly, you could have kept it at 10% and frankly nothing changes.

[Mahrze]

I personally think that the reason why we have ranged swiss army knives is because the numbers on paper mean a very different thing to the development team to what we experience. Tbf, we have no information on how they rate/rank these extra tools, but its also fair to say that its clear they under-appreciate most of them.

[HyoMinPark]

It's not just RDPS.

Recovery options, defensive options, and so forth all play a part as well.

I addressed those:

The truth is, is that a lot of people will run meta and think their numbers will magically get better; they don't realize all the stars (buffs) need to align to do so, as well as them be able to personally optimize their own jobs individually.

The “individually” means “recovery options, defensive options, and so forth”. I apologize if that was unclear.

every penalty they had before was removed in Stormblood

If you’re referring to the damage penalty BRD/MCH had from singing/turret promotion, I agreed with those changes, because it’s silly to sacrifice 10% of your damage (more for MCH since the Autoturret functioned much like auto-attacks, so their loss was ~15% if I remember correctly) in order to assist your party. It was also a huge reason why you ran into BRDs that never sang, or MCHs that never used Promotion. Not to mention a BRD’s MP in ARR and HW could have been better spent on buffing casters/DPSing healers, since Foe’s was magic damage only back then.

the 5% nerf on Disembowel felt like a token effort to offset this. Honestly, you could have kept it at 10% and frankly nothing changes.

I have addressed this in many posts about Disembowel myself. If the developers want to break the meta, it starts with piercing.

[HyperiusUltima]

Well, since we’ve described at least 3 pages’ worth on Disembowel, I want to hear what people think we should do about Casters, specifically BLM. What should they do to improve on it moving forward to the next raid tier?

[Kitfox]

Well, since we’ve described at least 3 pages’ worth on Disembowel, I want to hear what people think we should do about Casters, specifically BLM. What should they do to improve on it moving forward to the next raid tier?

BLM just needs damage, though they're already quite strong.

Let's keep talking about #deletedisembowel for another 200 pages instead so SE will actually do something about it.

[HyoMinPark]

Well, since we’ve described at least 3 pages’ worth on Disembowel, I want to hear what people think we should do about Casters, specifically BLM. What should they do to improve on it moving forward to the next raid tier?

Disembowel holds together the meta of DRG/BRD/MCH. Remove it, and casters will have a higher chance of getting in groups. BLM and SMN have started to trickle into top speed kills already; their damage is fairly strong to offset the less amounts of raid utility they have compared to, say, BRD.

RDM needs some potency tweaks, because outside of prog, its Verraise utility is not that good (in an optimal setting or a farm setting, people aren’t dying constantly, so there’s no need to be Raising them); they could stand to maybe even tweak to Embolden a bit. Because it’s so hard to line up with important rBuffs (like Litany and Battle Voice, for example), and it decays over time, making it weaker compared to something like Litany or Trick Attack. Personally, I think they could do away with Embolden-2 and Embolden-1, extend the CD timer to 3-minutes so that it lines up better with more raid buffs (TA+Litany+BV), and extend the timers of Embolden-5, Embolden-4, and Embolden-3 to make it a bit stronger.

I know that there are some groups that actually hold Litany and Battle Voice until the 4-minute mark to line up with TA and Chain Strategem; this would also work for Embolden timings, but I believe the decision whether or not to hold CDs like Litany and BV is dependent on kill time—if you are killing something in 6 minutes, might as well hold them for 4 minutes, but if the kill time is closer to 10, there is no reason to delay because then you delay the next usage, too.

[Exiled_Tonberry]

BLM just needs damage, though they're already quite strong.

Let's keep talking about #deletedisembowel for another 200 pages instead so SE will actually do something about it.

This. Can we start just honing in on Disembowl at this point? It's the main thing throwing balance out the window and the center of what makes DRG/MCH/BRD meta in the first place.

Or better yet, do what most people thought was going to happen. Change MCHs damage into Blunt damage so both ranged aren playing off a single melee.

Best case scenario would of course be give ranged their own debuff, but SE gave us some BS reason as to why that would be imbalanced (as if to say it's balanced as it is)