So about Summoner...

[Neela]

Neela summoner has always been viable. This is just the first time in a few years a caster has made it back onto the meta. Or at least challenged for it.

you know what I meant >__>

[Dualgunner]

you know what I meant >__>

Just doing my best to keep terminology clear.

[Neela]

Just doing my best to keep terminology clear.

thats kinda nice tho ;3

[Dualgunner]

To sort of shift gears a bit and bring Llugen's talking points up, I think at some point we need to let go of the idea of "selfish dps". This game rewards the utility dps with stacking buffs that give enormous output, and while it is nice to have a dps that can counter bad team play...ideally in high play (where things should be balanced) you won't have a bad team so that tool becomes irrelevant.

SAM and BLM need to offer something to the party beyond dps.

[Neela]

To sort of shift gears a bit and bring Llugen's talking points up, I think at some point we need to let go of the idea of "selfish dps". This game rewards the utility dps with stacking buffs that give enormous output, and while it is nice to have a dps that can counter bad team play...ideally in high play (where things should be balanced) you won't have a bad team so that tool becomes irrelevant.

SAM and BLM need to offer something to the party beyond dps.

yeah their problem is not dps its the concept idea of raw-selfish playstyle and the fact se can't handle their idea in execution... same with rdm - a char who has massive advantages out of savage like eureka, potd or the upcoming HoH, "must" fall behind in savage if we talk about "cls-balance" and not just "savage-balance".

[Megguido]

I have the feeling SE doesn't want every job to be competitive and perfectly equals at very high levels of play. They just want every job to be viable and capable of clearing content, and have jobs that are better for different kind of contents (which is not the case of every MMO btw, e.g. I came from Wakfu, where there's like 18 different classes but 6 or 7 of them are just incompatible with endgame).

Some jobs are the best during progression, such as DRK, WHM and RDM.
Some jobs are the best at speedkill runs, like NIN, DRG, BRD, AST, WAR.
Some jobs are the best for casual content, like BLM and SAM (which can actually speedrun a dungeon for example, or bring very high damage for 24-players raids where everyone is running over the place like headless chickens).

That's only my opinion on the matter though.

[Dualgunner]

Regarding non savage balance...

I don't think that should be a thing. Savage is the natural outcome for battle content--ie, challenging battle content (combat is conflict and conflict is closely related to challenge). Then we run into the problem of RDM being the only job who is weak in savage because they are strong in other content, which isn't fair for RDM who like to raid.

RDM's verraise should be shackled in some way or removed. I don't even particularly care if vercure is nerfed for cure potency, its main use is proccing dualcast in a phase transition.

[Megguido]

Though it's very comfy to have a RDM in the team when you're going in a brand new fight and you don't know / never did the mechanics. RDM can cover some of the party's mistake (a verraise in dungeon can save the run if the healer stood into stupid and died for example).

We're not quite on a competitive game where balance is key. Only a tiny fraction of the playerbase is actually in competition for speedkill runs and ultimate world first. Should the GDs balance the jobs around this ? And take the risk of having some jobs absolutely OP or useless at casual levels ?

LoL is a great example of this GD dilemma. There's a champ which is overpowered at competitive level, so they nerf it to a point pros can use it and not roflstomp their opponents. But then, once nerfed, the champion is complete garbage for casual players. So they either make it balanced for 0.01% of the playerbase and have fair competitions, or balance it for the majority and have the champ banned 100% of the time.

SE probably took the opposite decision and chose to balance jobs around the majority of the playerbase. Wouldn't BLM be insanely powerful outside of optimized raid teams if it were balanced to match DRG or BRD's damage in the same conditions ?

[Zerathor]

snip

It's comes down to how you personally think things should be ballanced:

-ballanced around what average/below average players can do

Or

-ballance around the potential of what the job is capable of

I think it should be more for what it's capable of. Players can learn and improve to reach that potential, but a job that's prematurely capped off will never grow further without patch changes. This game is actually doing a fairly good job of trying for it too imo, so I believe that's what they want.

[Megguido]

I mean, yes it feels unfair. People want to do content with the job they love, and said job isn't necessarily the most catered for savage for example. Like RDM being like 500 DPS behind SMN just because it can spam raise.

Imo, I prefer having a job that is not "meta" and have fun with it rather than playing something I have less fun with. Savage raids can be cleared with any team composition, having a meta comp doesn't mean having more success. Our team had a WHM, DRK, RDM, SAM and MNK, so very little raid buffs, and cleared all Sigma savage just fine.

I am a bit in the same situation as you are Dualgunner, but on tank side. Why would I play DRK when I can be 250 DPS higher with WAR ? Though this difference is insignificant for like 99.9% of the content. And frankly, 250 more DPS on DRK would be nice, but it wouldn't change a damn thing overall (yay the boss would die 0.5s earlier).