Thread: What is the Caster Role for 5.0 Going Forward and Where is balance?

Originally Posted by Kurando

To be fair we could say this about any job in the game. PLD shouldn't be using Clemency as it's the healer's job to worry about that, or RDM/DNC/BRD shouldn't be providing heal/esuna support as again it's the healers job. A number of role actions cause several jobs to have access to the same thing, again causing toe stepping on who should or shouldn't be doing things. Granted these are not the same as Raise, but we can't be isolating certain hybrid jobs just because some other jobs can't do the same thing, they all have specific strengths to make up for shortcomings. FFXI was pretty heavy in jobs doing multiple things, should be nothing new for XIV.

Beyond that XIV and XI are very different games, the thrust of this comes down to "These are not the same as Raise." Raise is a strong enough utility that we're even having this conversation; it goes beyond the PLD or RDM being able to sacrifice an entire GCD of damage for healing. Raise is a very specific ability; it's a single-target heal that can target incapacitated players. With casters as they are now, Taranok has a point: Black Mage is at a disadvantage being the only caster that has no access to it. With 66% of the role having it, the role is starting to get defined by it. The caster DPS role is being defined by raising, which is ostensibly a healer utility. It shouldn't be, which is my point.

Casters should be walking nuke factories, not back-up healers. Sure, part of the flavor of RDM is they're part White Mage; if that's the excuse that says they have to have raise, then whatever. Restrict it to a 60s oGCD then remove it from Summoner entirely would be an okay compromise; RDM keeps this weird niche of "It can raise real good!", do pitiful damage and never get taken into raid anyway, and the caster role can stop being defined by raising.

Originally Posted by Taranok

Okay, but right now BLM doesn't have it and that's a serious consideration to have when you flat out don't have res utility on the caster DPS slot, since not having it puts a ton of pressure on the healers during prog or, on the flip side, removes a ton of pressure from healers if you happen to have a double caster group with smn/rdm.

The current situation is bad though and BLM suffers more for lack of it than it would suffer because of having it.

Also, there is not and can never be such a thing as "glass cannon" in FFXIV because of the way encounters and healing is designed. Fundamentally, every DPS is a glass cannon in the game because of this, even if some of them do more damage than others. Every DPS dies to the same things usually, they can survive the same things, the only difference is whether you have Manaward or nothing at all.



No, it's a caster thing. 2 of the 3 casters have it, and Arcanist got in combat resurrections before you could even be a Scholar. The inclusion of Red Mage more or less sealed res utility being a thing on casters since they added it at a time when they were starting to remove abilities they didn't want SMN to have that was there because of scholar. So because of that, it ended up being caster utility.

Sure, you can remove it, or you can keep it, but as long as the majority of casters have it, any caster not having it is a serious balance problem and motivation against taking that class.

And the type of utility I'm talking about on ranged is Shield Samba. It's a baseline thing that all of them take that's very powerful. 2 of 3 casters have something in the same vein, the third does not.

BLM is not suffering in any way. All the top EX clears have one now.
It's 'glass canon' role comes into play as a turret, rather than having less HP/defense. Which means it's vulnerability is entirely dependent on player skill.

And before RDM, there was 1 caster with a Res. It's not a caster thing.

If you give BLM a res, it's DPS gets nerfed, that's the reality.
Nerf BLM DPS and it becomes useless, because of its playstyle. THEN it will suffer as MNK/SAM will always be chosen over BLM for DPS, and SMN/RDM will always be chosen over BLM for mobility/utility.
BLM's USP right now is its high DPS.

Originally Posted by Seraphor

BLM is not suffering in any way. All the top EX clears have one now.
It's 'glass canon' role comes into play as a turret, rather than having less HP/defense. Which means it's vulnerability is entirely dependent on player skill.

And before RDM, there was 1 caster with a Res. It's not a caster thing.

If you give BLM a res, it's DPS gets nerfed, that's the reality.
Nerf BLM DPS and it becomes useless, because of its playstyle. THEN it will suffer as MNK/SAM will always be chosen over BLM for DPS, and SMN/RDM will always be chosen over BLM for mobility/utility.
BLM's USP right now is its high DPS.

Its not high though atm. Not compared to the other DPS.
Thats the issue XD

Originally Posted by TimeraiderGaranyi

Its not high though atm. Not compared to the other DPS.
Thats the issue XD

BLM is the DPS with far and away the highest DPS though.

Originally Posted by Lina_Slayer

Just a small nitpick, BLM only takes top spot after 70th percentile on Innocence EX, but you are mostly right, we BLMs have nothing to complain at level 80 content right now (low level BLM sucks tho) performance is great and the jobs feels just right to play.

Sort of irrelevant. Sub-80th percentile is, given the competitive level of fflogs, generally a failing of your ability to perform the basic duties of your job and maintaining your ABCs. If you're dying and not playing the job correctly that shouldn't really be taken into consideration for whether a job is 'good enough' in the way Timeraider is talking. There's a separate consideration for skill floors and ceilings, but saying BLM doesn't do well (ie, isn't topping other jobs by notable margins at reasonable percentiles) because you personally might not be doing well is similar to saying tanks should be nerfed because you personally are doing less dps than them in a dungeon.

BLM is currently very competitive at a farm level, and (hopefully) can continue to maintain that level going forward. it's likely to be a pain during prog but that's nothing new, and it's likely it will become the best caster when prog is over. That being said I'm not sure what the magic numbers are for SMN and RDM going forward to have similar performance. They're already better during prog, but as someone else in this thread pointed out it's not necessarily fair to pay the prog tax forever. At the same time there's a reason we can gear multiple jobs, and it's not unreasonable to prog on one job and switch to another (I personally might go MCH first then swap to BLM when we're done for example).

First and foremost a Caster's role is to DPS, always. I don't think you can try and lump what they do other than what role actions they have. SE has taken a tiered approach to each job in that role starting with pure dps then flowing down with the more utilities it adds. Basically caster have Addle that would define that role. Physical Ranged DPS has a defensive buff and debuffs; Stun, heavy, interrupt. Melee have stun and lower damage debuff.

Many think BLM should get a raise to finish fleshing out caster as a utility of that role but it does take away from RDMs claim to fame.

Lastly SE defines "Magical ranged DPS attack foes using a variety of arcane arts. Movement is restricted by casting times, but they excel at inflicting high burst damage."

Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

I'd rather play a job than a role. I see no reason why Caster need all be glass cannons or all support-DPS. I prefer the variety we have, and would even like to see that variety expanded upon.

As it stands, Role Actions still muddle that diversity, making it sort of trip over itself when on one extreme or the other, but the value of Role Actions, if their capacities were just accounted for, is almost nill.
Just remove their bloat and give higher base MP regeneration, more ways to counterattack interrupts, more immediate and reliable ways to deal with brief but sustained forced movement (still varying Caster to Caster), and their own utilities into the class kits themselves.

Voila, no more role identity confusion. You're quite simply a BLM, a RDM, or a SMN. Where party utility exists for these it is noticeable, cohesive, and strong, but comes at cost of dps as not to make it obligatory to balance downward from.

This about sums up how I feel.

I'm fine with the way rezzes work now. I think removing them would make complicated raids nearly impossible to clear. I don't think blm needs rez. Smn rezzes once a minute (ideally unless things go very wrong) and rdm is capable of keeping the party afloat as needed. If I had a dollar for every time I've saved a party from wipe on smn I'd be rich. I don't mind being there as support. FF MMO has always had some varying degrees of support and it feels to me that's part of the job.

Now, as low as rdm and smn dps are right now, it does feel super punishing to do the rez work we used to do fairly easily. Figuring out how to fix smn overall and pumping up smn and rdm dps to the proper places is what would make me the happiest. I get rdm takes a bump due to the ability to rez and embolden, but rezzing so much in pug content is taxing. I almost think rdm could use some other utility? Something that would make it more viable in savage? I'm not much of a savage player now so maybe I'm not speaking fairly. Feels like being that low in dps is just an unfair punishment. Smn needs both a dps boost and a rotation fix. We've got all kinds of problems and are not in a great spot atm. We need that fixed first before we can even look at what to do. We lost some utility overall, devotion is good but only every 3 min. Phoenix heal seems weak and we can't time the thing to be useful, which is annoying. For smn, we need to turret so much now and have so low damage to go with that it doesn't feel good. But I miss the mobility overall.

I haven't done savage content in a while, so I get that the same rule apply differently there. However, I don't believe anyone's dps should be so low it automatically bumps them from being used in a savage group setup. If so, then that's a failure on SE's part.