So about Summoner...

[xxPheNoMeNa]

Because being able to raise people isn't useful outside of initial progression and pubs, and players want their job to be viable at all times and not just when people are dropping like bricks in the water. Being able to spam raise is useful, but it comes at the expense of having a useful DPS kit in a game where, frankly, the only things that matter are damage output and your ability to better others' damage outputs.

Well this isn't gonna happen. A raid comp in this game is only 8 players, meaning a max of 8 classes. Some classes WILL be left out and considered "sub optimal". People need to understand and accept this. They also need to accept that the design direction SE took with RDM is WHY it's damage has to be balanced where it is, and why it will be viewed as a "lets just take this for progression" job. I also think the rebalancing of savage content is another reason why this is viewed as an issue. If we had Midas difficulty with savage where most players would still be progressing, we wouldn't be having this argument because RDM would be "useful" for a significant time.

Regardless I still hold to the belief that if you're only doing savage content and you've been able to clear without any trouble, then you shouldn't be focused on how "useful" a dps kit is. Any class can clear savage content easily

[Wilbow]

Well this isn't gonna happen. A raid comp in this game is only 8 players, meaning a max of 8 classes. Some classes WILL be left out and considered "sub optimal". People need to understand and accept this. They also need to accept that the design direction SE took with RDM is WHY it's damage has to be balanced where it is, and why it will be viewed as a "lets just take this for progression" job. I also think the rebalancing of savage content is another reason why this is viewed as an issue. If we had Midas difficulty with savage where most players would still be progressing, we wouldn't be having this argument because RDM would be "useful" for a significant time.

Regardless I still hold to the belief that if you're only doing savage content and you've been able to clear without any trouble, then why are you focused on how "useful" a dps kit is. Any class can clear savage content easily

I can't even agree with a single sentence here.


> A group limit of 8 doesn't mean only 8 jobs can be balanced at a time. If jobs have balanced pros and cons, then different comps will be equally viable for a raid. It may be that different jobs play better with certain other jobs by how they cover each other's weaknesses, and that's fine. This is just common sense, imo.

> You can't sit there and say being good for progression only is okay when we have a handful of jobs that get to be good for prog and farm. It is especially apropos here considering that SMN was brought along just as much as RDM in Ultimate prog and will get to be considerably more useful in farm as well.

> As for the rest...rebalancing of savage has nothing to do with this. People want to feel like they aren't holding their group back with their job, that they aren't being carried by default because of their job crystal. Whether the content is on prog or on farm, it doesn't matter. And yes, we've seen this before. AST in early HW and WHM in late HW both suffered the exact same issue as RDM now (maybe a little worse), despite the fact that savage got gradually easier to prog as HW went along. It changed nothing. Nobody wants a comparative liability, in prog OR farm.

TL;DR: We don't have to accept imbalance as an inevitability and say nothing. If something is borked, it's better to point it out and hope they fix it rather than to say nothing and know that they won't.

[xxPheNoMeNa]

> A group limit of 8 doesn't mean only 8 jobs can be balanced at a time. If jobs have balanced pros and cons, then different comps will be equally viable for a raid. It may be that different jobs play better with certain other jobs by how they cover each other's weaknesses, and that's fine. This is just common sense, imo.

All comps are "viable" right now. If ANY caster has an argument for "viability" right now, it's Black Mage due to how punishing that class is if you don't know how to optimize movement. RDM has always been a viable class for raiding, it's inherently overpowered for progression and it falls off in farm. For optimization purposes, there will always be a "god comp" and this has been evidenced for years and it happens in every other MMO. You will never achieve "perfect balance" and it goes beyond just class balance numbers specifically. Raid design also plays a part in this (notice how strong Monk is in o5s/o6s but how it drops off in o7s and o8s).

> You can't sit there and say being good for progression only is okay when we have a handful of jobs that get to be good for prog and farm.

Black Mage hasn't been considered "good" for anything in years, and I think many BLM players are fine with how the class is right now. They received a few good buffs and their damage output is good if played appropriately. The community as a whole still looks down upon it because "lul no utility". Again this community is too fixated on "god comps" and numbers when it doesn't apply to most of them.

This may also be an issue for those who decide to "one trick" a class rather than collectively play everything for their role. Those of us who play multiple casters won't see this as a problem because we know RDM is extremely good for one purpose and SMN another, and we'll play both to fulfill those purposes. The ones who only want to play RDM though feel this is unfair.

> As for the rest...rebalancing of savage has nothing to do with this. People want to feel like they aren't holding their group back with their job, that they aren't being carried by default because of their job crystal.

Actually in a way it does, although it's rather a byproduct from it. Savage being rebalanced to be "easier" has allowed a lot more players to clear faster (or even clear at all), which only emphasizes this complaint of "RDM is useless after prog". Also I've personally never felt that my group "carries me" when playing RDM. Even when I am on the class, I'm among the highest DPS in my group (and these are all 99% players at their respective classes). Yes I can do more on SMN, but RDM is not so low that you're getting carried. If that's actually the case, that's a skill issue and not a class issue.

TL;DR: We don't have to accept imbalance as an inevitability and say nothing. If something is borked, it's better to point it out and hope they fix it rather than to say nothing and know that they won't.

But the arguments people make regarding "imbalance" can be misguided. People just want to point at numbers and say "look our damage sucks, we need buffs" without understanding the full picture. There's a reason some of us say RDM is actually ok, because we know what the class is capable of doing at optimal levels of play and we still understand that while their raise utility is disregarded after prog, it's one of if not the most overpowered ability in the game DURING prog. If people want RDM buffs, then they would have to remove their raise utility to compensate, which at that point you just have a generic caster dps with a melee combo.

[Capn_Goggles]

Well this isn't gonna happen. A raid comp in this game is only 8 players, meaning a max of 8 classes. Some classes WILL be left out and considered "sub optimal".

I don't think the term sub-optimal applies when you're blatantly outclassed in every aspect. Ninja, as one example, does very similar personal DPS while bringing tools that buff everyone else's damage as well as having insanely good enmity tools. Furthermore, the number of slots in a party is entirely irrelevant to making a job competitive (not meta, just competitive).

They also need to accept that the design direction SE took with RDM is WHY it's damage has to be balanced where it is, and why it will be viewed as a "lets just take this for progression" job.

You are wrong. Accepting something perceived as a flaw is not conducive to good design and customer retention, otherwise SE wouldn't bother with player feedback and they certainly wouldn't bother with balance patches. Clearly there is a portion of the playerbase who wants Red Mage to always be useful, rather than only being there to play res-bot and make newbie tank players want to kill themselves, and this portion of the playerbase has every right to desire that. Whether SE wants to act on their criticisms is their prerogative, but the players are in the right to want more out of the job.

All comps are "viable" right now. If ANY caster has an argument for "viability" right now, it's Black Mage due to how punishing that class is if you don't know how to optimize movement. RDM has always been a viable class for raiding, it's inherently overpowered for progression and it falls off in farm. For optimization purposes, there will always be a "god comp" and this has been evidenced for years and it happens in every other MMO

And again... just flat out wrong. Black Mage has a much better argument for viability because it offers strong personal DPS at the expense of being harder to play, but a good Black Mage is only "sub optimal" compared to a summoner, rather than just having no reason to be there like Red Mage. Nobody is saying Red Mage needs to be meta, what they (and I) want is for it to be "competitive", in effect a job that while sub optimal still offers a strong slot to the group that isn't infinitely better served by literally everything else.

[xxPheNoMeNa]

You are wrong. Accepting something perceived as a flaw is not conducive to good design and customer retention, otherwise SE wouldn't bother with player feedback and they certainly wouldn't bother with balance patches. Clearly there is a portion of the playerbase who wants Red Mage to always be useful, rather than only being there to play res-bot and make newbie tank players want to kill themselves, and this portion of the playerbase has every right to desire that. Whether SE wants to act on their criticisms is their prerogative, but the players are in the right to want more out of the job.

A few classes aren't "always useful". BLM isn't "useful" and I don't hear them complaining much since their buffs, WHM isn't always "useful" and many people considered the balance between healers to be pretty good until these last AST buffs that happened (despite the fact that WHM was only taken for prog).

You are wrong. Accepting something perceived as a flaw is not conducive to good design and customer retention, otherwise SE wouldn't bother with player feedback and they certainly wouldn't bother with balance patches. Clearly there is a portion of the playerbase who wants Red Mage to always be useful, rather than only being there to play res-bot and make newbie tank players want to kill themselves, and this portion of the playerbase has every right to desire that. Whether SE wants to act on their criticisms is their prerogative, but the players are in the right to want more out of the job.

The class has a very niche design. Most casual players (the ones who don't even raid) seem to enjoy RDM from what I've personally witnessed and iirc was one of the more popular classes being played. Seems fine for player retention, it's only the small group in between that and those of us at the highest end that believe the sky is falling for the class. Even the best RDM players think the class is fine (and some argue it's still overpowered).

And again... just flat out wrong. Black Mage has a much better argument for viability because it offers strong personal DPS at the expense of being harder to play, but a good Black Mage is only "sub optimal" compared to a summoner, rather than just having no reason to be there like Red Mage.

No that's not wrong at all lol. Black Mage isn't any where close to the viability of RDM in progression, even if you completely ignore the raise utility RDM brings. Outside of prog there's more viability sure, but it's also looked down upon by most because it's damage output isn't "enough". Good black mages actually can match the overall output that SMN brings, the issue is it's very difficult to do so and very few players are capable of playing the class at that level, and if you don't play it well then it will punish you far greater than SMN would (hence the glaring disparity that people always bring up).

Nobody is saying Red Mage needs to be meta, what they (and I) want is for it to be "competitive", in effect a job that while sub optimal still offers a strong slot to the group that isn't infinitely better served by literally everything else.

And in what way is it not "competitive"? Because those of us who optimize at a bleeding edge say "SMN is better"? If I played the class right now and tried to speedrun with my static, I bet I could still compete to be the highest dps in my group. Do you or these other people understand the damage RDM "can" do when you have an optimal group comp with proper party buff usage? Sure there's definitely a disparity between RDM and SMN, I've always agreed to that, but people act like RDM is the lowest dps in the game and that's actually not the case.

[Capn_Goggles]

A few classes aren't "always useful". BLM isn't "useful" and I don't hear them complaining much since their buffs, WHM isn't always "useful" and many people considered the balance between healers to be pretty good until these last AST buffs that happened (despite the fact that WHM was only taken for prog).

You're arguing a non-point however because "useful" is a nebulous non-statement toward overall job performance. Black Mage is useful, but it's outclassed and difficult to play, regardless its playerbase still has plenty of criticism about the job design and overall performance. White Mage is in a precarious position due to the low number of healers and even lower number of healer slots, but it was only marginally outclassed in higher end content prior to the latest patch, but this is a much more nuanced argument than the balance between DPS jobs which are more numerous both in available positions and in sheer volume of jobs.

Red Mage is useful in progression, but becomes entirely useless outside of it because its one piece of utility serves no purpose and it offers nothing outside of that.

[xxPheNoMeNa]

Red Mage is useful in progression, but becomes entirely useless outside of it because its one piece of utility serves no purpose and it offers nothing outside of that.

Useless for what though? Speedrunning? Sure it's not useful there because that dps disparity actually matters. But it's still a dps class that can still compete with other dps classes (non casters) in terms of personal damage and it has embolden which averages out to nearly 6% over its duration (actually in a way it can be argued to be "stronger" due to how it's diminishing effect works, as you'd be aligning the majority of your burst damage during it's 10%/8%/6% windows). I know it only affects physical damage to the rest of the party, but optimal raid comps are mostly physical anyways so you still get good value out of it if you align it properly

This perception of RDM being "useless" is just weird. And frankly, even if they did buff the class, unless it does become meta people will continue to have this perception of RDM only being a prog job

[Capn_Goggles]

This perception of RDM being "useless" is just weird. And frankly, even if they did buff the class, unless it does become meta people will continue to have this perception of RDM only being a prog job

Of course people will still have the perception of it being a prog job, the important thing is that it would be a perception rather than something enforced by the actual job design, and part of that involves giving Red Mage something to offer that isn't spamming resurrection spells. Embolden is a complete joke, and the reason I didn't include it in the discussion is because it provides such a minimal increase in rdps even when used to its absolute best effect.

[Kabooa]

I know it only affects physical damage to the rest of the party, but optimal raid comps are mostly physical anyways so you still get good value out of it if you align it properly

This is the part that gets me.

It's a caster that you wouldn't want in magic based set ups if they ever existed since part of its damage is physical and it buffs Physical classes. By this same token, in strong physical set ups you still don't want it because there's better physical support / supported jobs as well.

Verraise is a pretty awful string to dangle why. Why not make them desirable, both to play and team up with, on other merits?

[xxPheNoMeNa]

Of course people will still have the perception of it being a prog job, the important thing is that it would be a perception rather than something enforced by the actual job design, and part of that involves giving Red Mage something to offer that isn't spamming resurrection spells. .

It's only a perception now. This isn't gordias, content is not tuned to the point where your composition REALLY matters. Any reason why RDM is not played right now is that perception. And buffing the class will honestly not change that, it will just "enforce" that RDM is THE class to take for prog because it will be even better and then will be disregarded afterwards because everyone circle jerks our speedrun meta.

Embolden is a complete joke, and the reason I didn't include it in the discussion is because it provides such a minimal increase in rdps even when used to its absolute best effect

Embolden is easily 400-500 rDPS with proper alignment, which is comparable to pretty much every individual raid buff in the game aside from Trick Attack or the rng of Balance cards. Hypercharge, Brotherhood, Chain Strategem, Battle Litany, etc., Embolden offers about the same (or close to) rDPS as any one of these buffs. In what world is that a "complete joke"?