Thread: 5.08 Patch - DPS still not balanced.

Originally Posted by whiskeybravo

Snip

Assuming we go back in time to right before savage hit, when people had 450 Eden gear and Titania weapons/Innocence accessories, and gear is basically not a factor anymore, the dps rankings at 95th percentile were as follows:

BLM: 12,019
Monk: 11,631
Samurai: 11,390
Dragoon: 11,202
Machinist: 10,832
Summoner: 10,559
Bard: 10,475.35
RDM: 10,077
Ninja: 9,460
Dancer: 9,102

That's a difference of 2,917 between dancer and black mage, black mage literally does 32% more rdps than dancer. We have had some post savage updates to jobs, but unless I'm recalling wrong black mage and dancer have largely remained untouched, and even though savage content is way more movement demanding than extreme content so it should bring blm's damage potential down a bit, this just shows that even without the high hitting jobs being super padded with raid gear, there's a huge gap between top and bottom.

That being said, while a 95th percentile dancer and a 95th percentile blm are both conbributing well to a party's damage, it doesn't sit well with me that skill doesn't translate to high damage (relatively speaking) for a lot of jobs.

Edit: These numbers seem kind of low considering that going back to my own personal logs, 95th on Titania was 11k on dancer, and on Innocence 95th was 10.8k, but regardless, the numbers are probably lower on all the other jobs too, though I can't figure out what I did in the filtering options to make the numbers so low. My point still stands though on there still being a significant gap even when gear isn't an issue.

Originally Posted by whiskeybravo

No, your comment that I had a problem with, which is what we've being going back and forth about, clearly claimed BLM was nearly 2000 above RDM. It's not. It's about 1500 by your own example.

The problem is actually that you're clearly just not interested in playing fair. Otherwise you wouldn't have had to include dancer in order to justify your exaggeration of the disparity.

Just keep shifting those goal posts.

Which is a pointless semantics argument since I said "nearly 2,000." In Voidwalker, for example, the difference between the two is 1,842. If you want to argue the veracity "1,500+" and "nearly 2,000." Be my guest, but I've wasted enough time on this nonsense.

Originally Posted by whiskeybravo

Please quote where I either said massive or dominant lead as a result. And if you can't then stop putting words in my comments or implying I said things I didn't. Just because you can't wrap your head around the concept doesn't mean you get to make stuff up. I know there is some word that's defined as "an intentionally misrepresented proposition that is set up because it is easier to defeat than an opponent's real argument." but I just can't think of it.

When you quote where I said you did. I cannot very well put words in your mouth if I don't actually claim you said them. What I actually said is your were implying speed killers influence the data to such an extent it would impact the accuracy of higher percentiles enough to at least partially explain the sizable gap between say, Black Mage and Red Mage. This... is nonsense. For one, it's entirely dependent on enough people speed killing, and secondly, that the the remaining non-meta jobs not having competitive logs. Neither which occurs. A Dancer or Red Mage wouldn't suddenly close the enormous gap between them and even Ninja—the current weakest "meta" job.

Perhaps you should stop trying to throw around fallacy accusations and argue what's being presented. You'll get further.

Originally Posted by whiskeybravo

After some number of weeks the percentiles begin to become gear locked. It doesn't matter how well you play if you can't get an orange until you get weapon, therefore percentiles to do not automatically represent a given level of "skill". After some point in time your item level and gear simply has a much larger influence on breaking through to higher percentiles. That is why gear acquisition must play a role in the spread of the statistics. If the more dominant jobs are gearing up faster, it pushes their higher percentiles to a further degree compared to jobs which aren't being played as much. By the very same token as people start gearing up more jobs and running them through, the higher percentiles get pushed further out of reach for those lacking the same gear. Even if the jobs are played at an identical skill level the higher percentile is out of reach until you get the gear. To further illustrate this point, we can compare the number of e4s logs between DRG (10,312) and NIN (2,399). This would certainly seem to indicate there are more geared DRGs out there than geared NINs, and so the overall average of the 95th percentile DRG would be higher than the overall average of 95th percentile NIN - because the 95th percentile NIN doesn't have as many players pushing it's average up. Another way of putting it would be NIN is further away from realizing it's full potential compared to DRG. It doesn't have to be a large degree for this to make sense, as I stated previously even 1% is relatively meaningful within the current operating margin.

I am going to stop you on that first sentence. Even week 1, where everyone had i450 gear, the difference was staggeringly one-sided. You needs only look at Extreme Primals to see the jobs currently behind were also behind then. Furthermore, there were still enough people playing the weaker jobs to average out gear discrepancies. It remains a moot point regardless because we're long past gear having any significant influence on the higher percentages. Everyone in those brackets now are either BiS or close to it. As for the comparison between Dragoon and Ninja. You may almost have a point... if the Range role didn't exist. Bard is currently the third highest parsed job in Savage yet finds itself weak enough two Black Mages are statistically superior. The gap between them and the big three never shrank. In fact, it's actually grown despite this being week six. Bear in mind, Bard is the most represented in speed kills for the Range role. So it isn't as though they haven't been efficiently geared. Considering Ninja's damage back then had been comparable to the Casters (sans Black Mage) and Range, we could easily posit how significant the discrepancies were. Ninja is now something of an outliner because it's been buffed considerably with 5.08. That being said, the buff shows how absurd the gap between them and the remaining melee was.

Originally Posted by whiskeybravo

I looked at the 25% percentile for reasons I expressed in a previous comment. Upon doing some quick math, indeed at the lowest percentile with which a group can clear (full group of 8x 25%'ers) the group with the combination of weakest jobs will be 500 short of e1s enrage, while a group with dominant jobs will clear with 2500 to spare. I didn't care to do the other turns since I'm sure it'll play out similarly, but that's a pretty big difference with several different things that can be inferred. For one it aligns with the claims being made in this thread that it's more difficult for certain comps to meet damage checks. Fair enough. But on the flip side, we are talking about 25% which means there's plenty of room for improvement. Therefore the claim that taking certain jobs is a detriment, while it has some merit, is really more of an obfuscation of the facts. The fact is you only need to be a little above 25th percentile (as a group) in order to clear e1s (at least) even with the worst composition of jobs.

Only if you ignore the context which spawned this whole argument. We aren't talking about simply clearing each fight but the overall advantages and disadvantages between each job. When a below average player can contribute equal or even superior overall damage by simply playing a "meta" job, it does make the remaining jobs a detriment to some extent. Bard, for example, cannot afford the same mistakes as Monk. This, in turn, makes it easier to clear with less skilled players the more you stack meta jobs—something FFXIV has been generally good about avoiding.

Originally Posted by whiskeybravo

You're basically making up an argument that I never disputed. I simply wanted to know for myself what the minimum requirements looked like and it's relevant statistics. Never did I make a claim that balance should be focused on the lower percentiles, again that's something you made up on your own for argument's sake. Citing the lower percentiles for an example to back up a claim is not the same as basing a philosophy of balance around them.

Dude, your arguments have been all over the place; ranging from accusations no one made (perfect parity), insisting lower percentages do have an impact on balance to outright nonsense such as "Why did SE refuse to create male Vierra? Because that's simply what they decided to do."

Don't try and backpedal.

Originally Posted by whiskeybravo

And I'll go one step further. If you won't bother to look at the lower statistics relative to the argument that DPS needs to be adjusted because enrages, then you clearly aren't interested in that being a real issue. By focusing on the upper statistics of potential, you are focusing on the ego of a job instead of it's actual utility, because the upper statistics don't indicate any sort of relationship with "hitting enrage". It doesn't matter if you compare a 95th DNC to a 95th BLM, they're both killing it and in neither case is their contribution detrimental to the team in any sense whatsoever.

Sigh...

Now you are conflating viability with balance. They are two different concepts and aim to achieve different things. The latter is what we're focusing on. And being able to clear each fight doesn't mean the jobs are balanced. If a Black Mage can afford several mistakes, be it rotationally or mechanically, that the Dancer cannot. Then Dancer can, indeed, be a detrimental job simply because it requires the person playing it to be that much better.

Originally Posted by whiskeybravo

To hearken back to Lynn's comment with which I sort of disagree, we do need to provide feedback, but it needs to be reasonable feedback. There is no place for exaggerated claims and incomplete pictures. The actual situation calls for something in the range of ~5% one way or the other. There are slight issues with DPS checks, and there are slight issues among players who feel their efforts aren't proportionately accounted for. The latter having a worse impact on the community. They've already said they are addressing some issues, clearly it's ongoing effort and we know very well how they like to take their time. In the meantime, there's no actual issue in jobs clearing content, only hypothetical situations. Any group putting in the effort will get their kills if they haven't already. The main issue is perception which we as players have a huge role in shaping, possibly even more than the devs.

None of this has been exaggerated. In fact, I'll cite my own log from two weeks ago where I, on Dragoon, parsed 9% due to a death and being unable to raise for quite some time. Despite that, I only did 400 less rDPS than the Dancer who parsed 94%. And she had better gear than me. Furthermore, I re-direct you to my reply several pages ago and ask you cite a single piece of evidence where the dev team mentions, by name, Bard, Machinist, Dancer, Red Mage or Summoner, doing far too low damage. They have yet to say a word, which is why this has become so heated. People are concerned we'll have another Stormblood where they straight up ignored the overwhelming amount of feedback for Dark Knight and Machinist.

Originally Posted by AikenDrum

P.S. For the love of god, please, stop mention how all jobs can clear - if you don't understand how it's absolutely irrelevant to the balance between jobs i suggest you learn first what the term "balance" means...

Hey look someone used lower percentiles to make a point, haven't you learned that's not relative to balance?

Sarcasm aside, you realize you example isn't that much different from my own, right? I already conceded that at any given percentile the upper jobs have a significant advantage. Thanks for looking at the extra turns, though. Although I'm not so sure of the integrity of your claim. For example I used the lowest jobs of an average comp build of 2 melee, 1 ranged and 1 physical - if you simply added up the bottom 4 irrespective of imitating a reasonable composition then the results would be more misleading than necessary. In e2s the bottom 4 dps are DNC, RDM, BRD and SMN. If you're running that comp you probably don't deserve to clear in the first place honestly.

Originally Posted by ForteNightshade

What I actually said is your were implying speed killers influence the data to such an extent it would impact the accuracy of higher percentiles enough to at least partially explain the sizable gap between say, Black Mage and Red Mage.

The problem is that you can imply beyond original meaning. I simply choose to look at the statistics with a grain of salt. I mentioned the intricacies of the statistics about 15 times throughout my posts because there are an incalculable number of little things that make taking 1-2% off the spread one way or the other at least a reasonable starting spot. That doesn't mean the one or two things I mention make up my entire worldview. Either way, the conversation has been exhausted. I can't make my point any more clear and concise so if you haven't gotten them yet then you won't anytime soon, I guess. Peace.

Originally Posted by CKNovel

Sorry if I did not understood what you meant but are you saying that if 4 DPS players are playing the jobs they love and those happens to be DNC, RDM, BRD and SMN, they don't deserve the clear because they love jobs that aren't in the DPS Pantheon?

No. It means strategically building a team to clear content or else having enough skill/gear/desire to compensate for lack of such strategy. 8 people picking out of 17 jobs within 5 roles isn't exactly inflexibity. In cases where it does become inflexible you have choices, and the outcomes simply depend on the particular relationship of individuals in that situation.

Originally Posted by AikenDrum

Well this means that jobs aren't balanced, full stop. Whenever all jobs can or cannot clear, or what is the perception of those jobs is not relevant to balancing.

Balance for balance's sake? It's nice poetry I suppose.