The current State of Casters 6.05 edition - balancing discussion

[Aikaal]

@Azuri

It's been proven that the dev team was wrong in the past. Mobility tax might be a thing and it's wrong of them to think that way. Ranged physical just suffers from it since ShB. What kinda bothered me if all casters gained extra mobility. Red Mage the least of the 3 but they do bring more on the table.

I did originally said that SMN should be slightly above RDM because RDM just brings a lot to the table. They are the ultimate caster for progression. Well, if RDMs would rather them be stopped called for raise superiority, the whole suggestion I placed to have a long CD on raise on both SMN and RDM would fix that department.

I would also favor RDM on reclears especially on pug reclears because you can't tell what kind of pepega you're gonna carry around. In any case, we'll see how the devs reply to us. If they straight ignore the Summoner change requests, they'll be more and more threads like this about complains. People are also bound to just compare RDM and SMN together.

In my case, I tend to change my job each tier of progression. I played BLM/DRG in 2.x and 3.x. Played MNK/DRG/SAM in 4.x and then played PLD/DRK/BLM/RDM/SMN in 5.x.

I'm also aware and I've experienced pretty efty bad experiences. You can only imagine what I felt when my "established" hardcore static turned out to be a week 1 only static after the WHM raid leader yoinked the weapon coffer that I basically paid an injury on my left hand for no good reason. I got worst stories than that one under my belt. Hardcore progression groups can have the best and worst people in it.

My guess is you really like and only play RDM during progression / reclears / speed comps. I will say only a selected few people would be toxic enough to deny any job from speed clear but the more you dive in hardcore, the more common these situations happen. I would say however that being a 1 trick player that only plays one job can limit you. It's not like you can't clear anything however and if you're not doing world/week 1 prog, any group that would deny you because your job is weaker straight up doesn't deserve you. Summoner might be the weakest caster, I can still easily clear Pandaemonium savage and I have a group that respects whatever I play. I just personally can't stand being unable to optimize on SMN because the rotation doesn,t offer any liberty

[IdowhatIwant]

TBH though, I think the mobility argument is heavily flawed. It isnt about a job being Mobile, its about what benefit it brings. On the whole Melee are mobile, and the only issue they face related to mobility (outside of hitting positionals) is when they need to disengage, However, given the sheer size of max range, that seldom happens from what i can see. You can argue that targetability for Ranged classes is always 100%, but there are only a handfull of cases where this actually is a boon for them only. Mobility Alone is such a strange metric to use to determine a jobs DPS.

Every DPS should have roughly the same rDPS at 100% uptime. That should be the goal of SE.

[Aikaal]

Every DPS should have roughly the same rDPS at 100% uptime. That should be the goal of SE.

I actually don't believe that. If melee must deal with uptime and what little left they have of positionals, it should be a job caveat that rewards them with extra power. Similar to casters that need to plan their mobility.

That being said, mobility is an overrated metric. The moment a melee has the same uptime than a ranged, then mobility has no value. I do believe people overestimate how much value mobility has.

Speaking of melee uptime, both Summoner and Red Mage are dealing some degree of melee uptime in their kit with RDM having a heavier melee uptime now.

[Grimoire-M]

If there’s any job that should be taxed for mobility and utility more it’s Summoner. Red Mage and Black Mage need buffs but Summoner arguably needs nerfs or to be left alone. I don’t see an argument that applies to them that doesn’t apply to the ranged who ARE in a bad spot right now. Machinist needs significant buffs due to its supposed selfish role too (I’d rather Dismantle back but I get that Reprisal’s already good).

To be clear, it’s to such a degree that I think Summoner should be fighting for the bottom, caster spot be damned. That’s how much the raise, Phoenix taxes, mobility differences, Searing Light, and their brain dead rotation are collectively worth.

You want damage buffs on Summoner? Make it a caster DPS again.

[tearagion]

I actually don't believe that. If melee must deal with uptime and what little left they have of positionals, it should be a job caveat that rewards them with extra power. Similar to casters that need to plan their mobility.

That being said, mobility is an overrated metric. The moment a melee has the same uptime than a ranged, then mobility has no value. I do believe people overestimate how much value mobility has.

Speaking of melee uptime, both Summoner and Red Mage are dealing some degree of melee uptime in their kit with RDM having a heavier melee uptime now.

Mobility often has the value of providing melee uptime, for example The Vault's final boss tether, non-melee can easily break the tether to give uptime, and a much more extreme example baiting liquid hells in UCoB, where any melee, healer, or caster is going to have to either lose damage or spend resources to bait them whereas physranged can bait them all without altering their rotation at all. This is something often overlooked in rDPS debates, probably because it's entirely dependent on a fight having such a mechanic.

[Aikaal]

If there’s any job that should be raced for mobility and utility more it’s Summoner. Red Mage and Black Mage need buffs but Summoner arguably needs nerfs or to be left alone. I don’t see an argument that applies to them that doesn’t apply to the ranged who ARE in a bad spot right now. Machinist needs significant buffs due to its supposed selfish role too (I’d rather Dismantle back but I get that Reprisal’s already good).

To be clear, it’s to such a degree that I think Summoner should be fighting for the bottom, caster spot be damned. That’s how much the raise, Phoenix taxes, mobility differences, Searing Light, and their brain dead rotation are collectively worth.

You want damage buffs on Summoner? Make it a caster DPS again.

Well, sorry to say, Summoner is a caster. I don't see them in the ranged physical category and overall physical ranged needs an overhaul. I'm not sure I follow you on the Phoenix tax. It gives a cheap single target heal that may give an extra regen + a cheap AoE heal that you can't use when you want. The AoE heal is automatic and you have a time frame of 15 seconds. Their raise tax is a complete joke because Summoner use swiftcast for DPS like RDM. This effectively removes the entire support of raise. Not only that, but if you were to hold it, you woul raise once per minute when there's just better. Searing Light is decent but it's niche. Weaker than Embolden, the duration is good but most jobs are done with their burst within 20 seconds. It's niche for Summoner. Pretty much any job has a party damage buff so it shouldn't be taxed more than any other job.

Mobility is a petty reason for people to say SMN is balanced right now. People see it as it makes them easier to play, yeah to a certain degree but they never needed that mobility. Here's a list of the changes that simplified jobs;
- Blood of the Dragoon is a trait
- Enochian is a trait now

I don't see them taxing those changes and I don't want them to be taxed.

Mobility was greatly improved for all SMN, BLM and RDM.
- BLM has a quickcast Paradox on their Ice Rotation. 2 Triple Casts, 2 Sharpcasts for quickcast Fire III and/or Thunder III. BLM has absurd mobility in their toolkit, they simply optimize when they have to move during a fight.
- RDM has a quick cast every 2 GCD. They have more melee combos now. Accelerate is now a quickcast and has 2 charges, they can effectively just swiftcast for mobility since they don't need to hold swiftcast for raise. They, too, can optimize around an entire fight.
- SMN hard cast 7 times per 2 minutes which 2 of those hardcast are 2.8 seconds and 1 is 3 second. Ifrit Rite spell can be improved with swiftcast for a damage gain.

I doubt any summoner would have issue to be forced to cast more, we don't need this much mobility. When you take a look, RDM has a quick cast every 2 GCD. This is such an amazing mobility tool. Not only that, but once they go in melee combo, they spend 15 seconds with no mobility issue because everything is instant. You're going to tell any main SMN that knows and plays all casters this is why they should be doing no caster DPS? I'm sorry to say but nope, you can't taxe one job in a category without taxing the remaining jobs of that same role. I doubt they will do nerf also. Yoshida seems to think that Reaper isn't overtuned so its better to say all other jobs are undertuned.

To reiterate the goal of this post is to provide solutions and suggestions for caster balancement issue. Not pointless comments like you just did. There's plenty of posts on why mobility isn't a valid argument and same argument is probably being told for physical ranged discussion. This is also not a post about physical ranged but caster DPS.

[Anvaire]

ive said this before, Circular arguments about DPS numbers, Mobility and SMN being a "true summoner" are pointless at this stage because the fundemental issue with Summoner is of a mechanical basis. Its in how simple its rotation is. Its that it has too many instant casts. What Summoner needs is rotational adjstments. Once these have been done, we can tackle the case of DPS and Mobility. But right now, the core issue should be the priority. There will be zero effect if the devs read these posts and go "Oh the problem is too much mobility" or "Oh we just need to buff x"

I understand that there is a discussion to be had around over balance including DPS, but until the core issue is tackled, its secondary beyond the idea of perhaps reducing Summoners Mobility and making adjustments to make it more engaging.


In terms of overall balance the three casters need to sit in their relative spots BLM - Highest DPS, Zero Utility. SMN Less than BLM, slightly above or on par with RDM DPS wise, Utility: more than BLM, Less than RDM. RDM, Highest overall utility for casters, lower dps than SMN by a smidge due to the ablity to duel cast Vercure and Verraise, and party wide barrier.

To do a utility comparison between red mage and Summoner:

Redmage - Vercure - Can be duel casted and used at any point.
SMN - Rekindle, Phoenix - Can only be used once every 2 minutes on a strict timer as part of roation.

RDM - Verraise - Can be used freely with Duel Cast and Swift cast - MP Tax is high restricting multiple uses. Swift cast is used for DPS rotation, but Duel cast avaialble in leui.
SMN - Resurection - Hardcasted or Swift Casted... But as Swift Cast is used for DPS Rotation it is highly probable that when required swift cast is not available. Mp tax is high restricting multiple uses.

RDM: Party Wide Damage Mitigation 10% and healing buff 5%
SMN: 2x Charge radiant Aegis 20% of SMN maximum HP for 30secs - can only be used on self and is on par with BLM's "Manawall" is limited for Carbuncle phases only therefore only intemittantly available. This not be counted as utility as it supports on the SMN same as Blms manawall. Blm is considered to have Zero Utility

RDM: Embolden: 5% Magic Damage buff to self, 5% buff to all over damage to team for 20secs
SMN: Searing Light: 3% Damage buff to self and party for 30secs.

Overall i would say that RDM does have more utility than Summoner, simply because of the lack of restrictions. The Damage buffs are on par with one being 5% and one being 3% with durations bringing overall parity. On Barriers Red Mage offers team damage mitigation, Summoners should not be counted due to being a self cooldown similiar to blms. Healing for redmage is strong and as needed while summoners come at a specific point in the rotation. Summoner does offer Party Regen and strong heal but this is limted and cannot be utilised when needed unless sacrificing damage or rotation aligns. For raise, Summoners have to hard cast, while rdm has duelcast making it more readily available. The MP tax is high for both.

[Grimoire-M]

-snip-

Not to bypass your entire post as it has merit, but if Summoner is a caster then Samurai is a caster. That's the degree of impact their 'casting' has on their actual rotation. I'll be the first one to say that is one of many mechanical incongruities with the job, but I'm not about to introduce another overtuning era for the third expansion in a row to justify a 'role slot issue'. That hasn't mattered since Stormblood where Piercing/Slashing maintenance rightfully died and Brotherhood and Embolden both got their necessary fixes since then. (On that note: Refresh your job guide pages. Red Mage Embolden is 5% for 20s per 2m, Searing Light is strictly better purely due to its duration. Searing Light also happens to be the second or third best group raid buff right now, depending on how you look at Bardsongs).

If you need proof of that role slot issue, consider that there are top 10 parses with both Bard and Summoner in the group right now in Week 2 where the overtuned grey parsing Reaper is the one holding them back. Player skill, item level, and fight/class familiarity still matter way more than which class has the most DPS. But if we're talking about balance for the purposes of having their tuning reflect the value and the difficulty and friction inside their toolkit (which frankly speaking applies to all DPS comparisons, not just caster to caster)? I'm absolutely okay with Summoner being in the bottom two with Dancer for the exact same reasons I think BLM and SAM should be top two, and yet it's also why I think Machinist and Red Mage should be similar in rDPS contribution. I felt Summoner was overtuned the last two expansions and it was the faulty argument being made in this thread that got them there every time. At least they had some reason for it. Many of them are present in the points you've gone over, and many are not. For example Raid DPS is easier than ever to line up properly across a group which naturally increases its value. Every Job has natural 1m/2m spikes for it and we have two healers with their own buff, and a healthy heaping of extra filler potency on the two that don't to keep them in line relative to their contributions.

For a point of average comparison that highlights the role differences, let's look at Ninja compared to Machinist and Red Mage. Ninja goes above them primarily but not only because Ninja is a melee job. It is a utility/burst focused job with a lot of positional ease for correcting mistakes and maintaining uptime relative to the other melee thanks to Shukuchi and Raijus, but it's still a melee uptime job. The dealbreaker quite literally is NIN still being a relatively tough melee job to execute well despite all of its inherent flexibility as despite its relatively straightforward burst phase all the little parts make it very prone to getting out of sync. Additionally, Ninja doesn't have Raise utility like Red Mage does, but it does have a highly consequential channel that is actively used in its single target and AoE rotation alike, nevermind it's distinctly weaker defensive utility over both. What could edge Red Mage out over it depends purely on how you evaluate their Raise utility relative to their inflexible cast rotation and occasional melee requirements. I happen to evaluate it quite highly because I've turned hard-cast Resses on Summoner into clears that shouldn't have happened on Summoner in the past and have no problem seeing how Red Mage would enable that with less overall cast time cost, even when its MP was worse than it is now.

For an in-role contrast, Red Mage has nearly every advantage Summoner does, but has an actual rotation with things to think about, and trades a faster raise and extra mitigation for a distinct lack of AoE healing. Unfortunately it is AoE healing from DPS roles that precisely let Shadowbringers Summoner break E4S and Reaper break the Elder Primal Extremes (on top of their ridiculous damage tuning in both cases). I don't think those situations or solo-heal ultimates should happen at all. And that's not because those aren't cool as hell. They are. But they are proof something went wrong with the healer jobs and encounter design somewhere that allowed that to happen. And if SE isn't fixing healers (lol) or encounter design (signs point to no), then DPS taxes or outright gutting and/or removal of those AoE healing mechanics on DPS is in order. Personally, I want the defensive utility on all DPS to have its place, so Summoner gets its tax for that weighted higher along with Reaper. And I consider that fair with the context of preventing that specific situation. But it's not the tax causing the problem. It's a bandaid over it.

But let's look back at the extremes of the DPS role as a whole for a moment. When compared to Summoner Samurai gets to be better than it due to a combination of melee uptime, cast bars in melee range, and having to adjust their sen alignment without any of the explicit affordances a Summoner gets to guide them through an otherwise similarly lockstepped rotation. And we haven't even gotten to Summoner's utility or healing at all. I consider Samurai an easier melee job to pick up for casual freestyling but I don't consider melee uptime or its fight-specific optimizations easy to figure out. You have to play Samurai a fair bit to really understand why the guides say what they do about how it lines up and more importantly how to break that without losing damage somewhere when you need to. That's ultimately what it consistently has over other jobs that justifies its spot near the top. And the jobs that don't? Raid DPS. Utility. Range. And immediately understandable complexity. Summoner ticks all those boxes.

Think about it. No, really. I bet if you went and picked apart then compared every DPS job pair in the game right now and evaluated it on an individual case by case basis with every factor considered and ranked them you'd put Summoner somewhere in the bottom two because every other job has a good reason to be ahead of it. Many have multiple. It's purely this false assumption that every job within a subcategory of DPS needs to be balanced relative to the others within that role that's making you evaluate it incorrectly. SE is designing around the bare minimum where it matters while trying to eliminate gear problems, so limiting your discussion to casters only without the context of every other DPS job -is- a problem. Reaper and Monk are overtuned relative to Black Mage and Samurai which must go up a bit. Dragoon's fine if the latter happens. Ninja's fine. Red Mage could use a small tune up to help the ranged gap a bit but should remain below Ninja. Summoner is more than fine. It would be overtuned if Ranged DPS weren't in such a bad spot to begin with that it literally comes down to "Bardsong and stats or Raises" for their presence in the flex slot. And I sure as hell don't think that comparison favors Bard over Summoner.

Degrees of gaps between DPS can be a problem, sure, I'll allow that, but preserving overall ranking is also important, and the degree problems with Summoner are entirely due to Reaper and Monk being wildly out of rank. No one else is in a good spot relative to them right now. And if you want SE to close those gaps, go for it. If SE wanted to they could just nerf those two and Dragoon below Black Mage. And I think that would make the tier better overall if they did. It actually would be easier for them to implement too, but player reception to nerfs is bad on average, so EVERYONE GOES UP instead. I'm expecting the degree issue to be solved in 6.08. What I don't want to see SE take threads like this out of context of 6.0 or 6.05 and use them to justify further buffs to Summoner and Red mage that put it above the ranged DPS and/or into the melee tier in order to 'keep up' with BLM or 'justify a caster slot'. It has what it needs to compete on that front for the times it actually matters. And it frankly doesn't make sense until 7.0 to re-insert casts back into Summoner if you've paid any attention to how long it has taken pet AI to get to precisely where it is right now, why it prior iteration was kneejerk abandoned for Resummons, which is the root cause for every single issue brought on by the rework. They forced the kit to always be about doing the same baseline DPS so the only impact of your choices was on how those micro phases functioned in an encounter environment. That way you wouldn't deviate from spamming Demi-Summons as soon as possible when fights screw you with downtime.

Reaper Carby is the future of the job because it allows SE to fix those issues with Summoner by re-implement good pet gameplay AND better Summons that can actually be hardcast Summoned. Despite the clear failure in its design and my desire for another rework asap, Summoner nevertheless is in fact, very pretty looking, takes a long time to alter or rework compared to other jobs and is completely fine in its current state tuning wise. Their rDPS is more than enough to handily get the clear with a Bard and a bad Reaper/BLM combo. And while Red Mage may have gotten World First, it was ultimately due to Raise that it happened to be there in the first place. If you want the degree of differences between DPS to be squished further, I'd start mentally pairing and/or grouping up jobs that you think should be roughly equal and demanding fights that actually take advantage of their different nuances. For example, I'm totally okay with melee punishment and casters not being able to cast. Summoner just doesn't do that right now, so it's DPS should be lower than other classes, pound for pound. And that's fair.

[Kolsykol]

I dunno what you guys are talking about.

But buff BLM.

[Aikaal]

-snip-

I would say melees shouldn,t be discuss there. Even if they cast one weapon skill that doesn't make them casters because they are in the melee role, not caster role.

Embolden > Searing Light. On the current top logs on fflogs for P1S. Summoner taxes 504 DPS with Searing Light, RDM taxes 576 with Embolden. Why you ask? 30s buff is pretty niche and every job is done within 20s on their burst. Searing Light is niche on Summoner so you can still have the buff past Bahamut but it is niche specifically on SMN. Fun little fact, the current best log on P1S has SMN at 8339 while RDM is at 8312. More interesting enough, the SMN has a bit less gear. However, the clear times are 7:20 and 7:23 on both groups. Summoner greatly benefit from clear times that finish at around 7:15 to 7:20 because its the end of a Phoenix burst. So you could say that Summoner is doing just fine if they do more damage with less gear but Summoner DPS is a rollercoaster. They get really high burst during Bahamut and Phoenix then you drops hard during I/G/T. Red Mages have a lot more consistent DPS.

Again, as you add further points on other roles, I will not read them. This would be derailing this post which focus on the caster role.

As for utility, Summoner is gated if when they use Phoenix and the AoE heal actually matter. In P2S, it works. In P1S... ehhhhhhh, I would favor RDM. In a sense, RDM utility will always be good no matter the situation as per Summoner's phoenix healing is gated by convenience and niche. Meaning it is unreliable. If the AoE heal and the single target heal wasn't restricted to Phoenix than yeah, the only thing RDM would have more is better raises. If they'd put a long cooldown on the caster raise and make the phoenix support change with Searing Light being niche, it would put both casters to similar support.

As for the elephant in the room. RDM DPS is always higher right now than SMN. SMN may have times where it could do more depending on the end time. P1S fastest clear is 7:20s. Not everyone is BiS. Once you have everyone BiS and you drop the time to about 7:00 or lower, suddenly SMN will flat out lose to RDM and getting a pink log could require you to be in a party with people doing less DPS for you to gain more. That's also why top logs are pretty bad examples lol. What's the big issue is SMN rotation isn't engaging. It's a line that you follow and can't get off. Yeah you can say you can summon Ifrit first or Garuda/Titan. Who are we kidding? Titan is always first then you base Ifrit and Garuda on the incoming mechanics. If no mechanic inders you, Garuda is second if you have your pot up. Otherwise you send Ifrit second with a swiftcast.

I would say the new summoner has potential but I'll also say that SE got unprecedent popularity and server stability took a huge priority for SE so they likely didn't get the change to check balancement of jobs properly. The way Yoshida speaks about the feedback on forums suggest he was well aware people would be unhappy about job balancing.