Let's Theorize a 5.1 Balance Patch.

[Leidiriv]

Red Mage : Increase potencies across the board, but especially on Jolt II. Maybe add damage over time to some skill (though which is hard to determine) to help with up time during movement phases. Increase duration of Embolden and give it a flat increase rather than diminishing returns over time.

1) Why should RDM be rewarded for poor play/proc management with an even stronger Jolt II?
2) No DoTs, the class quests explain why RDM doesn't use any DoTs and they just plain don't fit with the class's playstyle. Also, Reprise is meant to be that skill for movement phases.
3) Embolden's fine as is, it's currently either the second or third strongest buff in the game, being roughly equivalent to Technical Step (750-800 rDPS in a phys comp)

[zonol]

Machinist needs a all around damage buff. It’s suppose to the the greedy dps of the the physical Range dps. Queen is use less in aoes give her a bishop mode. Flamethrower is crap. Reassemble should have 2 stacks. Wildfire should ctr. If not It shouldn’t feel so weak. Do something about queen summon timer and animation. THE TIMER SHOULD NOT START UNTIL QUEEN ATTACKS A TARGET. Thank you. Also ping issues specially on ps4 and why is queen attacks weapon skills yet doesn’t work on wildfire.

[DenzelVilliers]

No new skills or old skills back ( to not write a huge post ), based in what we have and i leveled, i hope for:

WAR

- Nascent Flash: Be able to cast in yourself ( no 10% defense bonus, only heal effect ) or a Party Member with same actual effect, this way WAR self-sustain especially as solo become decent.

- Onslaught: No Gauge Points required to use, i can deal with not being able to charge because it's way faster CD, but use my Gauge whenthe other Tanks don't use anything to it isn't fair.

WHM

- Fluid Aura: 160 Damage Potency + Bind, Stun OR Interrupt effect ( 1 Lilly Required ), that way you don't need to overheal to build Afflatus Misery most of time, FA does damage again and become usefull, because right now is a Hotbar Slot waste.

[Cetonis]

Gonna try to actually play along with OP here:


1. I think nerfing BLM and MNK should be trivial enough (trim some percentages, most likely) that it's not worth diving into as a topic. Not certain SE would actually do it, but might as well play along with the premise.


2. I think combat res warrants a tax of roughly 3%, as I'd guesstimate that to be the damage-output value of 1.5 dps swift raises, which seems like a reasonable target to account for. I'd also put a 3% tax on ranged dps, because you don't want them to be quite close enough for people to "why not" them into the free slot every time.

Other defensive utility... frankly, until they make healing tougher, I'm not going to think too hard about valuing those all that highly. Maybe shave half a percent or something.

One more thing though, it's important to recognize the other major blind spot of rDPS - it cannot tell you which jobs are better able to leverage buffs by squeezing more damage into them. i.e., if SAM and MNK had identical rDPS, in the real world SAM would definitively be the stronger of the two.


3. I could not begin to guess at what ought to be done for NIN or SMN, especially with the exact 5.08 changes being unknown, so I'll shelve those. I'd imagine the upcoming meditate stack changes for SAM could be enough to bring them up to DRG, depending on how that's done, and I've heard little in the way of QoL complaints about SAM so they may be fine as of 5.08.


As for the other four:


DNC - target gain: ~7.5%

Dancer gameplay is in a pretty good place, save for Improvisation. That skill is kind of just a mess overall, beyond truly fixing in a patch, but I think the common-sense tweaks of (a) make the Mantra buff linger for 15s after it expires, and (b) just make it generate a flat 10 esprit instead of being weirdly party reliant, should do well enough for now.

As for their numbers, I'm a fan (ha) of buffing the fan skills, as that's pretty non-disruptive in terms of their math afaik, and increases the payoff for skillful play. I'd add 50 to each Fan, and then 25 to each GCD, and that should come out pretty close to our 7.5% goal.


MCH - target gain: ~7%

This one's a bit tougher because you really want to deal with the ping problem somehow, first and foremost, and working out the math of different solutions is hard. The other problem is the difficulty of constructing a good solution that does not simply create another problem.

The safest option I can think of is, reduce Hypercharge to 7s and give Heat Blast a normal GCD cooldown, but have it trim 30 seconds off of Gauss/Rico instead of 15. That should reduce the ping burden to equal that of general double-weaving, while maintaining the feel of pressing all the things for several seconds. As a bonus, it'd make SkS a tad less awkward.

You'd have to replace the lost 440p by buffing Heat Blast, so make HB 350p, and you'd need to adjust Wildfire... somehow. A MCH guru will probably have a better design idea than I would, but off the cuff my inclination would be to make it deal double damage if it detonates while Hypercharged (and it'd likely need to go to 9 seconds).

That WF idea in itself is worth maybe a percent-plus, so we need a bunch more. I think Gauss Round should be more meaty in general, so I'd look to that and make that 250p, and remove the damage dropoff from Rico because that's dumb too. For the last couple percent-minus, I think maybe sliding Drill and AA up to 750p would do the trick.


BRD - target gain: ~7%

Easy stuff first. Apex Arrow to 800. Add a second charge to Empyreal. Make Muse 15s. Should be worth about 3% all told, the latter two are mainly QoL and Apex just ought to be less sad. 800 is a "nice" number in that it makes 20 gauge Apex worth it in some very narrow circumstance,

Now to play up the support. I think the easiest way to fix the "Minne is just worst Mantra" problem is to buff its percentage, from 20% to 40%. Warden's I would leave alone in this configuration, but sooner or later it ought to be reworked.

For the big change, I'd up Battle Voice to 30%, give it a second charge, and make it physical-only. Then add "Foe" back as a magic-only mirror of Battle Voice, and have it so you can't be using both at the same time.

On the net, the overall impact of this should be an approximate doubling of added raid damage - so around +4%, which would still leave Bard a very far cry from DNC, but much more solidly above random jobs that aren't support-flavored. More importantly, it'd greatly enhance the frequency and decision weight tied to Bard's party buffing, enhancing that flavor as widely demanded, without actually making things scary power-wise.


RDM - target gain: ~6%

Kinda like DNC, the gameplay here is largely fine, though they should maybe think about making single-target Moulinet a not-thing. Returning Reprise to 300p and perhaps a little more expensive should do the trick if I understand things correctly. Not likely to be much of an actual damage gain, just some QoL really.

Past that, I wouldn't mind giving +30p to all four single target Verspells (should be ~4%), as proc mistakes feel a little too free right now anyway. For the rest, doubling Manafication to 10% seems sound, and then you'd need a little something more still... maybe Scorch to 750 and Fleche to 450? Something around that scale should do.

[Zyneste]

Red Mage:
Verfire/Verstone potency increased to 290
Verthunder/Veraero potency increased to 330
Scorch now grants 10/10 mana instead of 7/7
Reprise potency increased to 300
Reprise mana cost increased to 7/7
Manafication magic damage buff increased to 10%

Jolt II would need brought up as well. Its not about "rewarding bad play" but managing bad proc RNG now that impact is dead. It would have to be around 265-270.

Scorche and reprise changes are okay.

Increasing manafiction is good, so its not so weak.

Magical Embolden is going to have to happen at some point though. We can't keep being the black sheep of casters who can't play well with other members of our role.

[Leidiriv]

Jolt II would need brought up as well. Its not about "rewarding bad play" but managing bad proc RNG now that impact is dead. It would have to be around 265-270.

Scorche and reprise changes are okay.

Increasing manafiction is good, so its not so weak.

Magical Embolden is going to have to happen at some point though. We can't keep being the black sheep of casters who can't play well with other members of our role.

The first point is why Thunder/Aero got buffed. Good proc management should be a bit more rewarding than just 20 potency, and it's not like RNG has that much of an effect on RDM's gameplay now with 2 hardcasts every melee cycle guaranteed to be Fire/Stone and having 2 Swiftcasts every Manafic to fish for even more procs. If it gets dire enough, there's nothing saying they can't add an Impactful equivalent back in for 6.0.

My main concern with making Embolden omni-damage is that it'd make us want to use Fleche/C6 awkwardly in an attempt to get the damage buff on them, and it'd bring what's already an incredibly strong buff up above 1k rDPS more likely than not. Such a buff would have to come at the cost of our personal damage, which I'd absolutely dread.

[Zyneste]

The first point is why Thunder/Aero got buffed. Good proc management should be a bit more rewarding than just 20 potency, and it's not like RNG has that much of an effect on RDM's gameplay now with 2 hardcasts every melee cycle guaranteed to be Fire/Stone and having 2 Swiftcasts every Manafic to fish for even more procs. If it gets dire enough, there's nothing saying they can't add an Impactful equivalent back in for 6.0.

My main concern with making Embolden omni-damage is that it'd make us want to use Fleche/C6 awkwardly in an attempt to get the damage buff on them, and it'd bring what's already an incredibly strong buff up above 1k rDPS more likely than not. Such a buff would have to come at the cost of our personal damage, which I'd absolutely dread.

Magical Embolden would only affect party members, but even if it did affect our fleche it wouldn't really change when fleche is used. Personally, I do hate unsynergistic design so I wouldn't want our CD alignment to be at the mercy of embolden, so if embolden does change I would want it to change for party members only, but at the end of the day, nothing is changing for the worse.

Fights like e3s show how much of a detriment bad procs can be. You only have so much wiggle room. Being ready for Manafiction by the 2nd drenching puddles and again when stormy comes up, you need to be within 20/11 on either mana to get the needed mobility via melee combo]

Changing Embolden would increase our RDPS by about 15~20%. That's about 175* RDPS on a good day. A comp with MNK + BLM might increase that a bit, to about 200, but thats it. RDM still has 800 DPS to make up with personal damage.

*based on a 95 percentile party in E3s, with all 99 percentile DPS. Other fights with more uptime like E2s change these values by ~15.

[MaelleRiou]

My main concern with making Embolden omni-damage is that it'd make us want to use Fleche/C6 awkwardly in an attempt to get the damage buff on them, and it'd bring what's already an incredibly strong buff up above 1k rDPS more likely than not. Such a buff would have to come at the cost of our personal damage, which I'd absolutely dread.

Um, Embolden already increases magic damage for the red mage so I don't know why it'd change anything.

[Zyneste]

Um, Embolden already increases magic damage for the red mage so I don't know why it'd change anything.

He's specifically talking about our Physical damage. Fleche, Contre, Corps, Engagement, Displacement. These are all physical and not affected by current embolden, but at the end of the day if embolden affected both physical and magical for self and party members, the best course of action will still be using them off cool down, between the decay and awkward cool down timers.

[HyperiusUltima]

Dancer could use a QoL so that it's more consistent, given the fact that we don't even have rates for Esprit due to how the wording is. It says that you're supposed to gain Esprit from any successful weaponskill or spell, but it doesn't translate well. There have been people asking for Saber Dance to be oGCD, but the only way we'd be able to allow that is probably to do the following:

Saber Dance: 50 Gauge
Deals damage within a 5y radius of target with a potency of 400.

You'd have to scale down the damage for it a bit as well as consider Technical Step, though in doing this you also increase the APM for DNC as well as its damage respectively since you're not subject to RNG anymore. As with the other person in this thread said, making Flourishes guarantee Feathers would also allow more solid consistency when you're already dealing with proc RNG too, so removing some of the RNG away from the class would help improve its capability and make it more on even ground with BRD/MCH since currently their damage is on the low side(which is understandable, but the Curing Waltz/Shield Samba/Esprit Buff/Devilment/Improvisation "tax" holds it back a lot compared to other jobs).