Just remove party wide buffs from dps classes.

[Thi]

Since square is having a hard time balancing selfish dps and support dps, they should just make everyone into selfish dps.

Make all party buffs given to dps only work on themselves and tune the dps of each class to be similar in damage with some variance.

This makes the game far easier to balance, while keeping the gameplay similar to what it is except each class burst window is dependent on the classes optimal time to use it vs alignment of burst windows of the party. An example would be on RDM with selfish embolden vs raid embolden.

This simple solution fixes the dps balance issues and creates a system that a players dps is all in their own hands and can't be dragged down by party members not aligning buff windows.

[ValkyrieL]

Compare to many other games, FF14 is very balanced, idk if you have played other games where the class is garbage and unable to complete content.

Yes, during world 1st progression this is detrimental but after 2nd week having a specific class will not be detrimental to dps check.

[Cetonis]

The balancing issues aren't related to selfish vs. unselfish. They're a matter of SE taxing battle res and mobility by far too much, plus some hangup about Trick Attack in particular that is largely just due to it being such a small and frequent window so the difference between a non-leveraged TA and a max-leveraged one is quite large

[CapricaLangley]

Since square is having a hard time balancing selfish dps and support dps, they should just make everyone into selfish dps.

Make all party buffs given to dps only work on themselves and tune the dps of each class to be similar in damage with some variance.

This makes the game far easier to balance, while keeping the gameplay similar to what it is except each class burst window is dependent on the classes optimal time to use it vs alignment of burst windows of the party. An example would be on RDM with selfish embolden vs raid embolden.

This simple solution fixes the dps balance issues and creates a system that a players dps is all in their own hands and can't be dragged down by party members not aligning buff windows.

This is not a fix. Even then, people will do the maths and a new meta composition will rise, locking people out of content. If, by any means, everyone ended up doing the same exact DPS, literally the same numbers, first we will see ranged dps only comps, then the game would die in about one month

[Allooutrick]

Square has been doing very well with balance in regards to the number of classes. The problem lies with the community and making such a big deal over a difference of a few percent.

[Sylve]

Square has been doing very well with balance in regards to the number of classes. The problem lies with the community and making such a big deal over a difference of a few percent.

Its even more amusing when you realize that every job was present for week 1 E4S clears.
The difference between the absolute top and absolute bottom was all of 2k rDPS.

But what a lot of people don't really pay attention to is the fact that Monks and BLMs need those lower dps jobs around in order to achieve the numbers they do. Some would call it padding, But its literally what they're designed to do. Take advantage of damage buffs given by party members.

True balance is every combination of jobs capable of clearing content. In the same vein, no it doesn't matter if 4 Dancers struggle to achieve the DPS check, because we're actively discouraged from stacking one job by design.
For Savage content, the only consideration should be "Can this combination of jobs clear the content?"
If the answer is yes no matter the combination, the devs have done well.

Is everyone's dps 'perfect'? Well, no. Probably not. Most likely never will be. But the most important step was achieved, everyone cleared in Week 1. Speedruns should NOT be a balancing concern.

[TaiyouSeishin]

But what a lot of people don't really pay attention to is the fact that Monks and BLMs need those lower dps jobs around in order to achieve the numbers they do. Some would call it padding, But its literally what they're designed to do. Take advantage of damage buffs given by party members.

Rdps is pdps + contribution. Which means that "padding" is actually subtracted from thos blm and mnks and given to the ones who gave the (de)buff in the first place to get their rdps total.

[ForteNightshade]

Its even more amusing when you realize that every job was present for week 1 E4S clears.

This means every job is viable not necessarily balanced. You're mixing up the terms. No one is denying Ninja, Dancer or any other job can clear content. The issue is certain jobs are simply much better. Case in point, a 20% Monk contributes more rDPS than a 50% Ninja. This makes it more advantageous to bring Monk even if the player sucks because they'll still do better than an average Ninja. That, however, does not mean Ninja is so weak it cannot clear.

And as Taiyou noted, rDPS subtracts external buffs. Even aDPS removes single target buffs like Closed Position and Astro cards. This means what you're seeing on FFlogs is roughly what Monk and Black Mage are capable of purely on their own.

[Sylve]

Rdps is pdps + contribution. Which means that "padding" is actually subtracted from thos blm and mnks and given to the ones who gave the (de)buff in the first place to get their rdps total.

The point of the line you quoted was that people aren't separating that data and then trying to argue for balance changes based on that misinterpreted data.
It was also pointing out that they're designed to be "padded". The community seems to see it as being a bad thing, but anyone with an ounce of sense knows to attribute the additional damage done by those jobs to the jobs that helped them do it.
Yoshi said it himself during the Live Letter that they're designed to take advantage of group buffs.

What matters is the team, not the individual. Everyone lifts up everyone else.

[Cetonis]

The point of the line you quoted was that people aren't separating that data and then trying to argue for balance changes based on that misinterpreted data.

No, you're the one misinterpreting. There's nothing to separate, rDPS is pre-separated.

Those jobs that allow the BLM or MNK to do more damage are already having that bonus damage credited to them, and discredited from the BLM and MNK.

So the rDPS graph is a very good estimation of the amount of damage being contributed to the team by each job, both directly and indirectly, with the only notable gap being the lack of a way to pin a number on defensive support.


Obviously, it's not strictly necessary to have those numbers be balanced at all, so long as everything can clear stuff. However, it's not like there's any good reason to have large gaps between the jobs on purpose. Making the jobs more balanced instead of less can only have positive impacts, and the gaps right now are so large that it'd be quite easy to make significant improvements from where we currently stand.

Deciding between options for what to buff, design wise, is a real conversation. But at the end of the day, the goal of getting much closer than 15% gaps is trivial in and of itself. The players are very good at being able to work out within a few minutes what impact a certain potency change will have, and there's no reason why the devs shouldn't be either.

If the jobs were 1-2% apart or something, or 4% but-caster-res and it's within the range of that debate, then yeah it's tricky to try to nail a target much closer than that. But the divides right now are gaping, and given how not-hard-at-all it'd be to do better, it's rather inexcusable.