Is Blm gonna be the only accepted range option now? :(

[ForteNightshade]

After reading everyone's posts in this topic, I guess I really am gonna have to just learn to play Blm and stop playing Mch despite being so much more skilled at it and loving it to pieces. v_v

Guess I could go Ninja when 5.1 comes out and they hopefully make it easier to play, but that still isn't a job I'd be thrilled to play, also I'd be giving up being ranged entirely and having to learn to melee which I tend to do the worst at in any mmo. x_x

CKNovel has the right of it. You can still clear on Machinist. My static runs DRG/SAM/BLM/DNC. So it's not as though Machinist will prevent a group from clearing. I do think if you have any aspirations for Ultimate, learning how to play Black Mage may help you find a group since they'll be in higher demand. But who knows, maybe all this complaining will force SE's hand. At the end of the day, most of us are so aggressive about this issue because we want to see the Range, RDM and SMN buffed.

[Katie_Kitty]

You're getting tunnel-vision. There's a massive difference between Stormblood balancing and Shadowbringers balancing, the most important of which is that you don't have DPS utility enforcing its own meta. In stormblood, a buff to a ranged DPS meant a buff to dragoon, because if you have a dragoon you're always going to bring ranged, and you're ALWAYS going to have a dragoon because he makes every job stronger. And of course, because you have dragoon and ranged DPS get a free 5% damage buff, you're going to bring bard because it's ranged, also bard buffs everyone elses' crit rate and damage, which is just inflating the power level again. Buffing machinist in Stormblood wasn't *just* buffing machinist, but an indirect buff to Dragoon and Bard who were already oppressively strong.

Compare this to Shadowbringers where you no longer have piercing/slashing debuff, and BRD no longer universally buffs everyone just by virtue of existing, and now you can finally start tweaking jobs at an individual level without worrying about the insane cascading effect of buffing one minute part of a job. Furthermore, it wasn't a "buff" MCH needed in stormblood, it always had a guaranteed spot in the speedkill meta, it needed an entire rework because the stormblood kit was complete nonsense and was zero fun to play.



Black Mage is in a fine spot. This is the first time a DPS with zero utility deals enough damage to justify its own existence rather than being flat out useless because it's completely overshadowed byde damage buffs. The real problem is that the bottom half of the jobs are underperforming to a pathetic degree. I'd also like to point that despite being closer to the bottom of the DPS charts, SMN only does 800 rDPS less than BLM at the 50th percentile, and only 1200 less at the 95th percentile, so if a black mage is overshadowing you by 2-3k they're just playing better and/or are better geared (or you're a dancer)... Theoretically anyway, because I would never think about looking at aggregated date from an unsanctioned game addon.

I'm not saying this to insult your skill level either, only that you shouldn't be discouraged from playing your job because of Black Mage being exactly where it's supposed to be at.

I don't know why some insist that massive rDPS gaps of 800 at minimum to up to 1800-2000 are acceptable. They're not. RDPS should be damn near equal because it represents a job's total contribution without padding. Maybe SOME gap is fine in order to justify the existence of selfish DPS but a BLM should not be smacking down SMN and RDM by 1000+ rDPS.

[ForteNightshade]

Black Mage is in a fine spot. This is the first time a DPS with zero utility deals enough damage to justify its own existence rather than being flat out useless because it's completely overshadowed by raid-wide damage buffs. The real problem is that the bottom half of the jobs are underperforming to a pathetic degree. I'd also like to point that despite being closer to the bottom of the DPS charts, SMN only does 800 rDPS less than BLM at the 50th percentile, and only 1200 less at the 95th percentile, so if a black mage is overshadowing you by 2-3k they're just playing better and/or are better geared (or you're a dancer)... Theoretically anyway, because I would never think about looking at aggregated date from an unsanctioned game addon.

I'm not saying this to insult your skill level either, only that you shouldn't be discouraged from playing your job because of Black Mage being exactly where it's supposed to be at.

This is actually incorrect. Black Mage either matched or outright exceeded Summoner by Alphascape, and consequently, saw far more use than it ever throughout Stormblood. The issue was FFlogs maintained a pDPS ranking, thus it always benefited your parse to have utility jobs. With the recent shift to rDPS, that is no longer an issue. Nevertheless, Black Mage isn't fine. No job should be leading another by over a thousand rDPS. "Only 1,200? at 95th percentile"? That's absurd. What use does Summoner have when it gets utterly demolished despite rDPS purposely accounting for both jobs' overall contributions? Attempting to dismiss these numbers because you dislike their source is, frankly, disingenuous at best... unless you have statistics to offer. Now that isn't to say FFlogs is the end all be all, but it's what we have publicly available. And it's what the vast majority of the raid community uses.

[Noitems]

After reading everyone's posts in this topic, I guess I really am gonna have to just learn to play Blm and stop playing Mch despite being so much more skilled at it and loving it to pieces. v_v

DO NOT let the meta dissuade you from playing a job you find fun.

I cannot stress this enough, if you want to play MCH then keep playing MCH because you enjoy it, KEEP PLAYING IT. If your raid group can't comply with it and wants to keep their normal set, then you'll just have to work harder and improve yourself through practice to cover that gap.

The only reason people are shifting to BLM is that they can meet the same damage numbers a high lvl BRD/MCH can reach doing much lower level gameplay. I believe (please correct me if I'm wrong) it was stated a 50%tile BLM can meet the same as a 75-80%tile MCH in terms of dps.

[Zerathor]

DO NOT let the meta dissuade you from playing a job you find fun.

I cannot stress this enough, if you want to play MCH then keep playing MCH because you enjoy it, KEEP PLAYING IT. If your raid group can't comply with it and wants to keep their normal set, then you'll just have to work harder and improve yourself through practice to cover that gap.

The only reason people are shifting to BLM is that they can meet the same damage numbers a high lvl BRD/MCH can reach doing much lower level gameplay. I believe (please correct me if I'm wrong) it was stated a 50%tile BLM can meet the same as a 75-80%tile MCH in terms of dps.

Pretty much this. It's always better to be on a job you know well than to jump to another job for what it can potentially do. Unless you plan to really practice that new job. We're several weeks into the tier, even if people haven't been in savage yet the 460 gear everyone should have been buying is more than enough for any comp to cruise through e1-4s atm.

What use does Summoner have when it gets utterly demolished despite rDPS purposely accounting for both jobs' overall contributions?

Raise. And people still don't understand the amount of comfort a dps raise gives for how many dumb mistakes it'll let you get away with. Hell, we had 8 deaths on a titan reclear because we were messing around too much the other week, and brought someone new to the group. There's no way in hell we would have cleared that without a caster raise.

[Akiudo]

The only reason people are shifting to BLM is that they can meet the same damage numbers a high lvl BRD/MCH can reach doing much lower level gameplay. I believe (please correct me if I'm wrong) it was stated a 50%tile BLM can meet the same as a 75-80%tile MCH in terms of dps.

50% blackmage pretty much does the exact same dps as a 80% mch, yes. and it stays like that, blm in the 60-70 range does as much dps as a 95% mch

[Capn_Goggles]

This is actually incorrect. Black Mage either matched or outright exceeded Summoner by Alphascape, and consequently, saw far more use than it ever throughout Stormblood. The issue was FFlogs maintained a pDPS ranking, thus it always benefited your parse to have utility jobs. With the recent shift to rDPS, that is no longer an issue. Nevertheless, Black Mage isn't fine. No job should be leading another by over a thousand rDPS. "Only 1,200? at 95th percentile"? That's absurd. What use does Summoner have when it gets utterly demolished despite rDPS purposely accounting for both jobs' overall contributions? Attempting to dismiss these numbers because you dislike their source is, frankly, disingenuous at best... unless you have statistics to offer. Now that isn't to say FFlogs is the end all be all, but it's what we have publicly available. And it's what the vast majority of the raid community uses.

During Deltascape summoner consistently put out higher personal DPS than Black Mage while also bringing party DPS utility. In Alphascape we finally saw black mage pull ahead of summoner, but by this point if somebody *was* going to bring a caster DPS they'd still bring summoner because the rDPS it brought still beat black mage out by a solid margin. It wasn't until Alphascape when Black Mage provided a viable alternative to Summoner by offering MORE personal DPS than summoner's rDPS. So yes you're correct that Black Mage was finally viable by the end of the patch cycle AFTER all of the balancing.

Also when I say "just" 1200, what I'm trying to say is that black mage isn't pulling 3k higher than other jobs like some people like to exaggerate. The issue is that Summoner and Red Mage are NOT where they are supposed to be at, and the solution isn't to nerf Black Mage because you're just going to create another expansion where nobody wants to bring along black mage because its difficulty of play and lack of party utility doesn't make up for the damage that could be brought by playing a better job.

[Noitems]

Pretty much this. It's always better to be on a job you know well than to jump to another job for what it can potentially do. Unless you plan to really practice that new job. We're several weeks into the tier, even if people haven't been in savage yet the 460 gear everyone should have been buying is more than enough for any comp to cruise through e1-4s atm.

Add in that we're getting the next set of Primal weapons in 5.1 (next month) and augmentation options for Deepshadow through Logs/Weekly drops and it'll be much easier.

My hope is that SE notices outcry for Range Physical, SMN, and RDM(especially this one) and does proper adjustments to them. My current casual comp (Just been at E2S and haven't had a chance to get much in due to scheduling) is made of a dps core that usually winds up being BRDx2,MCH, and RDM. Legit this comp would make someone in the meta scream their heads off.

Everyone in it needs to personally improve and the general parse numbers for other players shows that, but I won't ignore getting everyone more geared up to 460 will help ease people in, slowly working our way to better 470 gear.

The moral though is having fun, and playing a job like BLM (for the OP's sake) simply for an ease in power creep is a bad sign of balance design. Here's hoping 5.1 takes care of these issues.

[AikenDrum]

Raise. And people still don't understand the amount of comfort a dps raise gives for how many dumb mistakes it'll let you get away with. Hell, we had 8 deaths on a titan reclear because we were messing around too much the other week, and brought someone new to the group. There's no way in hell we would have cleared that without a caster raise.

The one on aug 30? Where your rdm casted no raises, all 6 were from healers?

[Dogempire]

During Deltascape summoner consistently put out higher personal DPS than Black Mage while also bringing party DPS utility. In Alphascape we finally saw black mage pull ahead of summoner, but by this point if somebody *was* going to bring a caster DPS they'd still bring summoner because the rDPS it brought still beat black mage out by a solid margin. It wasn't until Alphascape when Black Mage provided a viable alternative to Summoner by offering MORE personal DPS than summoner's rDPS. So yes you're correct that Black Mage was finally viable by the end of the patch cycle AFTER all of the balancing.

Also when I say "just" 1200, what I'm trying to say is that black mage isn't pulling 3k higher than other jobs like some people like to exaggerate. The issue is that Summoner and Red Mage are NOT where they are supposed to be at, and the solution isn't to nerf Black Mage because you're just going to create another expansion where nobody wants to bring along black mage because its difficulty of play and lack of party utility doesn't make up for the damage that could be brought by playing a better job.

Black mage does pull 3k higher, however, it's 3k on fights with minimal movement like Titania or E2S