Some views on DPS balance that everyone cares about

[SaitoHikari]

-snip-

I would say there's still clearly a problem when the Black Mage and Red Mage population combined barely edges out the Summoner population at high end play today. And I was one of the people that constantly argued how it was stupid that Summoner and Red Mage were that far behind Black Mage during the first tier of Eden, and that the huge 'raise tax' was an oxymoron because if there was a point where a caster actually needed to use raise, the run is probably a wipe anyway. (Though the bigger problem then was the big disparity between the top 5 DPS and the bottom 5 during that era as well, while this obvious gap no longer exists today except towards the very bottom.)

That said, I would think Summoner does too much for all they're capable of, except I noticed the gap between Summoner and Black Mage can actually be explained by the existence of Devotion. In that case, taking away Raise would probably be enough, so then it becomes an exclusive trait of Red Mage.

[Kabooa]

I would say there's still clearly a problem when the Black Mage and Red Mage population combined barely edges out the Summoner population at high end play today. And I was one of the people that constantly argued that Summoner and Red Mage were that far behind Black Mage during the first tier of Eden, and that the huge 'raise tax' was an oxymoron because if there was a point where a caster actually needed to use raise, the run is probably a wipe anyway.

That said, I would think Summoner does too much for all they're capable of, except I noticed the gap between Summoner and Black Mage can actually be explained by the existence of Devotion. In that case, taking away Raise would probably be enough.

I swear to god, if the new caster comes with a raise variant as well I'm going to !@#%ing ree to the hills.

[Myon88]

I would say there's still clearly a problem when the Black Mage and Red Mage population combined barely edges out the Summoner population at high end play today.

You could not have picked a more irrelevant metric. So we're balancing based on popularity now? If you look at the page on a certain site you pulled that information from, you'll see that other jobs like samurai, dragoon, and whm are similar outliers that far outstrip their peers. Guess you're just outta luck huh, if your job is padded with people looking for their 'pure healer fantasy', or people looking to play iconic final fantasy jobs. Here, these are total number of parses per job in Eden2 so far:

Summoner 24,815
Black Mage 13,194
Red Mage 13,834

Samurai 21,945
Ninja 16,560
Monk 11,998
Dragoon 25,837

Machinist 17,712
Bard 14,272
Dancer 16,393

Astrologian 16,236
White Mage 39,613
Scholar 32,653

All sorts of factors affect what job people choose to play. You have reasons like monk not being 'flashy' enough for most melee players, or astrologian being less straightforward than the other two healers. By your logic, we're going to need to buff monk even more too, as if they weren't monsters already.

[SaitoHikari]

You could not have picked a more irrelevant metric. So we're balancing based on popularity now? If you look at the page on a certain site you pulled that information from, you'll see that other jobs like samurai, dragoon, and whm are similar outliers that far outstrip their peers. Guess you're just outta luck huh, if your job is padded with people looking for their 'pure healer fantasy', or people looking to play iconic final fantasy jobs. Here, these are total number of parses per job in Eden2 so far:


Summoner 24,815
Black Mage13,194
Red Mage 13,834

Samurai 21,945
Ninja 16,560
Monk 11,998
Dragoon 25,837

Machinist 17,712
Bard 14,272
Dancer 16,393

It's nice that you chose one sentence to argue over while ignoring 80% of the post. And the other guy replying to you at the same time.

Population is usually a metric of where a class stands design-wise and balance-wise. People are bad at explaining exactly what's wrong, just that we know something IS off about the balance and react accordingly. The Bard population was extremely high back in Stormblood for one, while Machinist was low. But now it's the other way around, though the gap between both isn't as big as it was back in Stormblood IIRC (which could also be somewhat explained by some Bards switching to Dancer).

The point being is that Summoner is so dominant within their role now that their population makes up nearly half of the total casters (24,815 recorded logs VS 27,028). The other roles don't have this large of a population disparity within their roles at all, unless you're cherry picking the melee by emphasizing Monk - which has more to do with how that class has a high skill ceiling as well, not to mention that Monks on these forums swear up and down that their class has had fundamental gameplay design problems for a while. In that case, the perceived gameplay of Monk is enough to keep their population low even though they're relatively well off damage-wise - in the same way Machinist population at the end of Heavensward was still very low even though they were buffed into the stratosphere in that era.

Still though, one class making up some 47% of the total population of a role tends to indicate something is up, especially when compared to the relatively even distribution of classes in the ranged role in comparison. Summoner should really just have Raise taken from them then, which would strengthen Red Mage's position as the 'hybrid' caster, rather than their objectively weird identity-less limbo they're in now.

[Risvertasashi]

Summoner just has everything.

Superior raw DPS output, but it also gives DPS buffs for burst windows.
It can res like the caster of lower DPS output, which BLM can't do at all.
It has exceptional mobility, to the point where I've seen people call it "like physical ranged DPS, but flashier and not-garbage damage."

SE seems to be pretty happy with the status quo, however. They didn't do much in 5.2.

[Silverquick]

Summoner just has everything.

Superior raw DPS output, but it also gives DPS buffs for burst windows.
It can res like the caster of lower DPS output, which BLM can't do at all.
It has exceptional mobility, to the point where I've seen people call it "like physical ranged DPS, but flashier and not-garbage damage."

SE seems to be pretty happy with the status quo, however. They didn't do much in 5.2.

That's because what you're saying is incorrect.

SMN only has dominance in Savages and Ultimates (8 Man content), NOT Normal Raids, Alliance Raids, End Game Dungeons, or even Normal Trials. There it depends as generally you see BLM or SAM sometimes even DRG. You can check that against the various things in FFLogs at the 90th percentiles.

Why?

Because Savages and Ultimates are almost catered to every strong point of the Summoner Job. First of all, like BLMs they don't have to "fill their guage". They have their strongest technique usable right out of the gate the way BLMs have Enochian off the bat.

Second of all EVERY SMN technique is set out almost perfectly for any scenario that requires a LOT of Movement, the ONLY exception is during the Bahamut trance and even then they can sacrifice damage for movement.

Both DoTs and Pets are automatic, and done server side on a per tick basis... ergo are not affected by Lag, I don't care who you are, you are not playing right next to the server so no matter what technique you use its going to have latency. The largest portion of the SMN damage does not and never will. SO they have a leg up on ANY content where movement becomes a factor where even a Split Second away from DPSing is going to count... (aka a Savage or Ultimate). Remember if you're parcing you are doing it from your machine, not at point zero on the server. So their activity rate would appear the same as anyone else's even though its not.

SMN damage is actually lower than most other jobs, when you compare direct damage to direct damage. So until they change the way Savages and Ultimates are done, SMN will alway dominate even though they do not in other forms of content.

You have what is called a content balance issue not a Summoner balance issue because the type of content you are tunnel visioned into.... plays to EVERY strength of the Summoner job.

[Risvertasashi]

That's because what you're saying is incorrect.

Nothing I have said is incorrect and you went on a wild tangent. I never said SMN is dominant. Not that I'm saying it isn't either, but you're arguing your own made up point that was never in my post.

But to address your post anyways:

On a striking dummy, I can clear things in SSS on SMN that I can't on physical ranged. I play physical ranged a lot better than I play SMN, as I have far more practice on it. My overall DPS on SMN, even in this striking dummy scenario, is far far higher.

Yet SMN also brings the raid buffs, rez, and so forth. This isn't SMN "playing into the content."

This is summoner being brokenly overpowered and not having weaknesses to counterbalance its strength. Its DPS output would be fine if it did not have rez, did not give DPS buffs, and didn't have mobility. But then it would basically be black mage 2.

I wouldn't use world first as anything more than "they figured it out first".

Summoner and Bard had world first in E4s, and Summoner / Bard were world first on TEA too. If the logic is "world first so they're fine", 5.0 Summoner was "Fine" too.

Bard is great in TEA because of its AOE. Bard AOE is actually really, really good, but in high end content besides TEA, this doesn't matter so much.

As for e8s, well, the standards there aren't very high. Yes, they cleared with a bard. They could have done better with a Dancer or anything else. World first ultimate in Stormblood also had a DRK, but that doesn't mean DRK didn't have issues.

So, yeah, basically I agree. So many people on these forums do seem to think a sample size of 1 is a good basis for saying something is balanced, though...

[Silverquick]

Nothing I have said is incorrect and you went on a wild tangent. I never said SMN is dominant. Not that I'm saying it isn't either, but you're arguing your own made up point that was never in my post.

But to address your post anyways:

On a striking dummy, I can clear things in SSS on SMN that I can't on physical ranged. I play physical ranged a lot better than I play SMN, as I have far more practice on it. My overall DPS on SMN, even in this striking dummy scenario, is far far higher.

Yet SMN also brings the raid buffs, rez, and so forth. This isn't SMN "playing into the content."

This is summoner being brokenly overpowered and not having weaknesses to counterbalance its strength. Its DPS output would be fine if it did not have rez, did not give DPS buffs, and didn't have mobility. But then it would basically be black mage 2..

So then you can explain THIS right?
https://www.fflogs.com/zone/statisti...ty=100&boss=71

And THIS...
https://www.fflogs.com/zone/statistics/31

And This...
https://www.fflogs.com/zone/statisti...524&metric=dps

And this...
https://www.fflogs.com/zone/statisti...520&metric=dps

And this...
https://www.fflogs.com/zone/statisti...523&metric=dps

And this.. .
https://www.fflogs.com/zone/statisti...difficulty=100

And this...
https://www.fflogs.com/zone/statisti...ty=100&boss=66

I do not know where you got this idea SMN was dominating ALL types of content... but whoever told you that was lying.

What SMN dominates in is content with a LOT of Movement.

[ReiMakoto]

Snip

BLM has to "fill" their enochian gauge to use xenoglossy.

The Latency point is meaningless as long as youre not missing gcds using the buffer system, more latency isn't going to harm your dps unless its so bad it causes gcds to clip, the only big thing lag effects is double weaving, which summoner has to do a lot of, so its effected most by latency if anything. You're not making any sense about latency I don't think you understand what youre talking about, dots tick every 3 seconds, and pets have a gcd so smn doesn't have a magic leg up in this regard.

Also content IS balanced around savage, normal raids and alliance raids and such are a by product of the balancing done FOR savage, which means it is a balance issue, because jobs are only going to be buffed or nerfed based on how they perform in savage.

Also at 90th percentile in normal raids its summoner who's on top so I don't understand that point, also people dont compete for ranks in normal raids and their uploading is just a byproduct of people mass uploading logs after savage

You seem to be very uniformed about all of this, and im not sure what point you're trying to make? SMN is the strongest in savage, which is where balance matters most, saying it not as good in normals and dungeons (which it is by the way) doesn't matter as that content is so undertuned it can be beaten by 24 healers or tanks week one or 2 in terms of alliance raids, and e4 normal was beaten by literally 2 people its first week of release.

[Akiudo]

the type of content you are tunnel visioned into.... plays to EVERY strength of the Summoner job.

lets see, summoner dominate in savage raids, summoner dominate in 3 out of 4 normal mode raid turns, summoner dominate in ex trials, normal mode isn't listed, while its pretty fair to assume its the same there lets just say "not enough data" and call this neither a loss nor win for summoner,, it dominates in ultimate and dungeons don't even list class dps as such, if going by dungeons than bard isn't just good but great.

oh and yea, smn actually is in a pretty good spot in the alliance raid, fun fact, the alliance raid actually lists your "regular" dps instead of rdps for rankings, don't know why it does this, but it indeed does, i'd imagine its because of nin and trick attack not being designed for 24 people but no idea really, either way summoner is in a pretty good spot there aswell, like it actually looks like summoner is falling behind, but in reality its very much contender for the top spot on all fights, its just that "pure" dps look better by default as they have no buffs they offer to the group, and if say the blackmage does only 100 personal dps more than the summoner than a dancer would be advised to buff the blackmage, which in turn would widen the gap, add to that that melees will mostly buff each other if given a choice (mostly thinking dragoon and dragon sight range here) and you end up in a situation where certain classes look way better than they actually are, which mostly was the reason for the switch to rdps for rankings to begin with.

so yea, summoner only clearly dominates in all the hardest content, while at worst being in a very good spot in every other bit of content as far as we can tell, certainly the problem lies with only cherrypicking the data set one wants