So you're telling me..

[Shuuli]

Yes and no.

You´ve to keep compelxity and / or difficulty in mind when it comes to balancing. Imagine there is a class with just 1 button spam doing the same damage as a class with 20 buttons. It´s impossible to missplay on the 1st, while the 2nd is able to fck up everything. On top you´ve content which puts different pressure on different classes.

- Melee´s should always have the highest average DPS, just because they have to keep uptime and have the most trouble playing about certain mechanics. You rely on tank-positioning too.
- BLM should´ve pretty even damage to melees, because you´re static. You´ve to know the fight, etc... but you still have a range-advantage, which doesn´t justify being better than melees.
- MNK / RPR should be at the bottom of all melees now. Both are easy to play.
- RDM should stay on MNK / RPR level, it´s not harder to play, has a range advantage and great utility.
- SMN and all RDPS classes have a lot of freedom. They can do whatever they want at each mechanic and they´re easy to play. There is no reason, why they should be top DPS, even if you´ve executed your job perfectly.

Yes, balance should be around 80% or even 90% plus players. But it shouldn´t be about "perfect parse-raiders". We´ve an average playerbase and the skill-level in FF14 isn´t that high. You´ve to keep in mind that ppl do mistakes, especially on melee-classes or even BLM. Such mistakes aren´t a real or atleast a rare thing on easier classes. It´s not only a matter of "job-execution", it´s about the easier execution of everything in any encounter.

Don´t get me wrong, i´m not talking about a 20% gap or something. Something like the following in kind of the average DPS (buffs already taken into account) would be fine i guess:

- 8k SAM , NIN, DRG, BLM
- 7,8k MNK, RPR, RDM
- 7,5k SMN, BRD, MCH, DNC

EDIT: Later with max scaling maybe like 16k / 15,6k / 15,1k , but not 4k gaps as we´ve seen them in Shb.

This is not a huge thing and gives some space in kind of DPS on classes, which have way more chances to missplay or need to play around the downtime. Some range or "easy to execute" tax needs to be paid.

Based on this Reaper should be dealing just a slight higher dmg than SMN in my opinion based on its "difficulty to play" and its "added attributes to the team with its mobility".

[Kolsykol]

Based on this Reaper should be dealing just a slight higher dmg than SMN in my opinion based on its "difficulty to play" and its "added attributes to the team with its mobility".

SMN vs RDM is a bit interesting because while yes SMN is perhaps way too easy to play.
Their utility is also not as strong as RDM, even ressing RDM blows SMN out of the water a SMN ressing now is even more of a hurt to their dps.

Imo I think SMN and RDM should basically be the same even tho SMN is easier to play, but I think that the utility of RDM evens it out a bit.