Thread: 5.08 Patch - DPS still not balanced.

Originally Posted by IruruCece

It's a liiiiiiiittle early to start seeing threads complaining about classes not yet being perfectly balanced as all things should be when I don't think there's been a time where that has ever been the case, not to mention only days after a relatively minor set of QoL changes. But we are already seeing threads about how ranged DPS roles are going to be TOTALLY EXCLUDED from ALL CONTENT FOREVER (until the next patch maybe) so I don't think waiting and seeing is the strong suit of some folks.

While jobs may have still had imbalances in the past, they are nothing like the current imbalances between the top 3 damage dealers (MNK, BLM, DRG), and the ones at the bottom (SMN, RDM, DNC, BRD, MCH). There are anywhere from 1,000 rDPS to 2,000 rDPS differences between the jobs with very little reason for such a large gap to exist. The balance could definitely be much better, and the only way to draw attention to it—short of simply boycotting the jobs as players did with MNK and NIN—is to make threads about it, and then hope the developers read them and take them seriously. This isn’t even to mention how SAM still deals less in terms of rDPS compared to a melee that has utility (MNK).

As for the physical ranged thread, I don’t recall anywhere in the opening post of that thread that states that the role would be “EXCLUDED from ALL CONTENT FOREVER”—just that they will start seeing exclusions in more than just Savage via the trickle down effect metas tend to have. Some of the physical ranged have already been excluded from Savage since the tier dropped—DNC being one of them. They were locked out of early Titan progression and clear runs due to their lower damage leaving less room for error in an already minimum item level setting.

With regards to “waiting and seeing”, both MCH and DRK waited the entirety of Stormblood to see changes. RDM waited until Patch 4.4 to see buffs to its potencies. WHM dealt with the defunct 4.0 Lily system the entire expansion, despite the 100+ page threads on here warning the developers that it was a poor mechanic since the Stormblood media tour. Given these precedents, simply “waiting and seeing” doesn’t always seem to work.

Originally Posted by IruruCece

Screw the Savage meta. The people who help "trickle down" that garbage are not worth actually listening to for anything.

Unfortunately, there will always be a meta. There is no way for there not to be. If that is what you are hoping for, you will be disappointed. The high-end will always find the most effective comp, and there will always be people below them who listen and wish to emulate.

People who exclude specific jobs from party comps are either actually pushing the very limits of this game, or they are pretending they can outside of Savage for some reason and are trying to imitate those who are while also having a very crappy attitude to be around.

Pushing the game to its limits is generally why people run meta comps and optimize to the levels the most hardcore 0.1% do.

As for “outside of Savage”—no one cares about dungeon meta. When you talk about meta, you’re talking about Savage and Ultimate. People seem to think that this applies to dungeons, but it doesn’t. The trickle-down I am referencing merely applies to lower-end PF Savage groups attempting to emulate what the higher-end Savage raiders do. Not trickle-down from Savage into things like dungeon content. That’s just silly.

No developer should listen exclusively to either one of those groups.

Then, who should they listen to? Balance should always be done around what jobs are capable of—their max potential. It should always take place within the hardest content in this game, since the easiest content would never require anything close to maximum potential from any job: it only requires the bare minimum. Listening to players who know the ins and outs of jobs, how to push them to their maximum potential, and who have collected data about jobs’ performances seems like the crowd to listen to, in my opinion. Versus a crowd that has none of these, and instead wants to talk about balance with unquantifiable metrics.

5.08 was never, ever promised to be the grand fixes that Samurai or Ninja are in need of, nor was it intended to be the nerfs some of the angrier folks in this community were expecting the current dps kings to get slapped with.

Never implied that 5.08 was meant to be anything else other than what it was. However, it did a poor job of actually balancing much of anythin,g outside of NIN no longer being in the grave: SAM still does less than MNK, and SMN is still getting destroyed by BLM. 5.1 will hopefully bring more balance to some of the roles, as well as gameplay changes for NIN and possibly SMN, but there are still larger balancing issues present: if SMN is buffed considerably in any way, RDM dies. And the physical ranged are still facing their own imbalance issues, which haven’t really been addressed, or even acknowledged, by the development team.

If Samurai want to be king DPS so badly, they should also have to play the same ridiculous keyboard bemani than Nin or Smn do to go along with the huge bursts they get to squirt out just for following a rotation correctly.

I’m sorry, but there is no reason for a job that has utility (MNK) to deal more personal damage and contribute more to rDPS than a job that doesn’t offer any sort of utility within that same role (SAM). Jobs should also not be balanced solely around complexity: otherwise, RDM would never get off the ground. (And I think balancing off of a moderately subjective measure is poor balancing practice anyways.)

The more “selfish” DPS jobs should always deal more personal damage and have slightly higher raid contributions compared to the jobs that bring utility. With it being the other way around, why would one bring the selfish job to an optimized setting over a job that buffs the party? This has been seen numerous times in this game’s past: starting from Creator in Patch 3.4, when DRG/NIN/BRD/MCH absolutely dominated and casters were pushed aside until Patch 4.1 when the developers broke SMN. It took until Alphascape for BLM to finally wiggle its way into speedkills and optimized settings as well.

Originally Posted by IruruCece

Hard disagree. If complexity is so subjective that it's barely a factor worth considering whatsoever for balancing, then what is the point of mudras or the various OGCDs for SMN? Why even have positionals in general? Because at this point we've reduced "complexity" to busywork for the sake of having it, and two jobs are dealing with more inputs (as part of their identity) for less output than the higher end jobs.

While it sucks to say it, RDM should not be used as an excuse to not address the concerns SMN players have been raising, or any other DPS for that matter. It should still get looked at, it should absolutely get some serious changes to make it more competitive. Should it be looked at sooner? Maybe. Unfortunately, jobs have been left hanging for information and fixes before, but that doesn't mean fixes and changes aren't coming.

Complexity is to make the job interesting or engaging, but the issue we've had since Heavensward is that jobs eventually got too complex to the point that even the newer players had a little struggle here and there on the casual end with certain jobs(namely the jobs that had high APM). Positionals are there to add flavor to the job; and sure, there are arguments out there saying that positionals are detrimental in some fights, but True North's CD is not that long for Melee now compared to back then since it got knocked down to a flat 45s CD with 2 uses to combat this argument with skill level.

As for jobs with more inputs, MCH would like a word with you. MCH still is near SAM in regards to damage, but as Hyomin said the rDPS on top of both MNK and DRG's superior pDPS is allowing them to top without question and create this inane gap we have currently between the top end and bottom end; namely in the 50th percentile. On top of that, they weren't using RDM as an excuse; they were stating how the simplicity of RDM would not allow it to see the light of day in Savage if complexity was a metric they used.

Originally Posted by IruruCece

Most players, myself definitely included, will never see the absolute peak of their job's performance. The people who do are a fraction of the overall player population. While the numbers and hard work are helpful at revealing what issues do currently exist. when those players start saying crap like "even if they buff my Jobs, I won't be happy if another Job is strong," then all they are generating beyond the data is raw sewage.

They can address the current DPS imbalance without nerfs to "those who need it" because there is no one who actually "needs" nerfs. There are, however, plenty of jobs in the game right now that need buffs and mechanical changes. Something isn't synergizing. Something isn't working. Address those things.

Hell, despite the numbers, even Monk has mechanical issues with how it works. If Anatman in the opener was real intention of the developers from the beginning, then it was an extremely bad call. It's not fun to use, and it relies on server ticks we can't really see without a mod. Tornado Kick is back to being situational. Six Sided Star doesn't belong anywhere in any rotation, serving as yet another button to fix our Greased Lightning problems (that we also have Riddle of Earth AND the current Form Shift for).

I am not even slightly opposed to seeing the pure DPS jobs firmly at the top of the heap. But I don't want to face nerfs on top of mechanical issues going unfixed, and the majority of players who are calling for nerfs here aren't even pretending to make that consideration when they throw around "utility" as an excuse.

Well, I would want to argue after they lifted the slow-down on Riddle of Fire it's gotten pretty out of hand for MNK in general since it's basically like throwing MNK Raging Strikes for free. People wanted to go faster, so SE listened and lifted it; but I don't think they checked the repercussions of doing so given DRG was already at the top of the heap pre-5.05. If anything, true balance lies at what jobs bring to a raid; whether it be buffs, a damage increase, whatever it takes to get their job done and help the group. Some of these jobs are outliers in this regard since they have one or both things listed:

1) The most damage potential in a given fight.
2) Powerful buffs to "necessitate" their presence in a static group

In this regard, I'm talking about Dragoon mainly. MNK can be composition dependent because of Brotherhood, but running 3 Melee is already an arduous task; hence why people look to BLM's dominance over both the Ranged and Caster Slots due to their substantial DPS output to fill the gaps.

Dragoon in general has been a crutch for statics to lean on ever since inception due to both the damage they do and the rDPS they provide through both Dragon Sight and Battle Litany. Even if they do provide small gains in rDPS, their pDPS was buffed this expansion to make up for the loss of Piercing Resistance Down. The only thing I believe is that they overtuned it pre-5.05 and probably will adjust their numbers in 5.1, but it seems their focus is more on NIN/SAM/SMN due to how both NIN/SMN play and SAM's Shoha being nigh useless on 100% uptime fights for a capstone ability.

Originally Posted by IruruCece

Hard disagree. If complexity is so subjective that it's barely a factor worth considering whatsoever for balancing, then what is the point of mudras or the various OGCDs for SMN? Why even have positionals in general? Because at this point we've reduced "complexity" to busywork for the sake of having it, and two jobs are dealing with more inputs (as part of their identity) for less output than the higher end jobs.

I advocate for complexity to not be used because it’s subjective. For example, I was just told that there have been DNCs talking about how hard the job is to play. This was a bit shocking to me, because I find it very easy to play. Should the job be balanced against what those who say it’s hard say? Or should it be balanced because I say it’s easy?

Any job becomes easier the more you play it—which is why we shouldn’t say “X job is harder/more complex to play, so it should deal more damage”. Jobs that are more complex should feel more rewarding—but that doesn’t necessarily mean that they should be top damage dealers, and the “easy jobs” stay at the bottom.

While it sucks to say it, RDM should not be used as an excuse to not address the concerns SMN players have been raising, or any other DPS for that matter. It should still get looked at, it should absolutely get some serious changes to make it more competitive. Should it be looked at sooner? Maybe. Unfortunately, jobs have been left hanging for information and fixes before, but that doesn't mean fixes and changes aren't coming.

Where did I say that RDM should be used as an excuse to not address SMN? I simply said that, if we balanced jobs because they have a “more complex” rotation, then jobs like RDM would never deal high damage (this would also include jobs like DNC and BRD—both of whom have easy rotations; and, in the case of the latter, a lot of complexity was removed going into ShB from SB).

I merely contested your original “wait and see” suggestion because it has failed to work in the past. MCHs waited 16 months for adjustments in Stormblood. DRK waited an entire expansion for significant changes. RDM waited until Patch 4.4 to not be outDPS’d by BRD, which had far more utility and higher personal damage than the former. And WHM had to deal with the OG Lilies for the entirety of 4.0. Given how long some jobs had to wait and see changes, I am hesitant to just “wait and see”—simply because we may be waiting for quite a while, and end up watching certain jobs being favored over others. Just like what happened in SB.

Most players, myself definitely included, will never see the absolute peak of their job's performance. The people who do are a fraction of the overall player population. While the numbers and hard work are helpful at revealing what issues do currently exist. when those players start saying crap like "even if they buff my Jobs, I won't be happy if another Job is strong," then all they are generating beyond the data is raw sewage.

You haven’t answered my question about who we should balance around, since you seem opposed to balancing around the 95+ percentiles.

They can address the current DPS imbalance without nerfs to "those who need it" because there is no one who actually "needs" nerfs. There are, however, plenty of jobs in the game right now that need buffs and mechanical changes. Something isn't synergizing. Something isn't working. Address those things.

Where was I talking about nerfs? I don’t recall ever bringing up nerfs with regards to any of the jobs in my conversation with you.

Hell, despite the numbers, even Monk has mechanical issues with how it works. If Anatman in the opener was real intention of the developers from the beginning, then it was an extremely bad call. It's not fun to use, and it relies on server ticks we can't really see without a mod. Tornado Kick is back to being situational. Six Sided Star doesn't belong anywhere in any rotation, serving as yet another button to fix our Greased Lightning problems (that we also have Riddle of Earth AND the current Form Shift for).

I am not even slightly opposed to seeing the pure DPS jobs firmly at the top of the heap. But I don't want to face nerfs on top of mechanical issues going unfixed, and the majority of players who are calling for nerfs here aren't even pretending to make that consideration when they throw around "utility" as an excuse.

Several jobs have issues right now: mechanical and/or potency-wise. While Anatman, Tornado Kick, and 6SS have their issues, this is not something exclusive to MNK. We’ve already mentioned SMN’s current design with the Egi Assaults, but: NIN also has rotational issues, SAM’s Shoha is a joke of a skill, BRD has some room for rotational improvements (mostly changes to Apex Arrow and give Bloodletter/Rain of Death charges), MCH needs its latency issues addressed. I’m sure there are more.