Thread: Job Balancing 6.08 (still needs work)

Right now I feel if you do not play Reaper you aren't doing decent damage in comparison. Ranged makes sense to do a little less damage since you have a lot more freedom, but other melee shouldn't be this weak in comparison.

Dragoon:
Raiden Thrust > Vorpal Thrust > Heaven Thrust > Fang and Claw > Wheeling Thrust
280 > 280 > 480 > 300 > 300 potency means an average 328 potency per weapon skill

Samurai:
Hakaze > Jinpu/Shifu/Yukikaze > Gekko/Kasha
180 > 280 > 370 (over 8 weapon skill is 2120 / 8 = 265 average potency), but due to passive 13% shifu/jinpu speed/damage and able to skip to last weapon skill with Meikyo Shisui is actually closest to on par with Reaper.

Ninja:
Spinning Edge > Gust Slash > Aeolian Edge
210 > 320 > 420 potency means an average of 316 potency per weapon skill (371 effectively with passive skill speed huton provides)

Reaper:
Slice > Waxing Slice > Infernal Slice
300 > 380 > 460 potency means an average of 380 potency per weapon skill (418 effectively with Death's design). This doesn't include the use of off global cooldown Blood Stalk/Gibbet/Gallows and Enshroud when they can do 520 potency every 1.5 seconds for 15 seconds.

Now you might say Dragoon has more AoE, but even AoE combos fall short.
Doom Spike > Sonic Thrust > Coerthan Torment
110 > 120 > 150 potency means 126 average potency per weapon skill

Reaper on the other hand...
Spinning Scythe > Nightmare Scythe
140 > 180 potency means 160 average potency per weapon skill

I think the biggest changes needed are making melee classes more unique while adding some potency.

A few examples:
Monk has 20% speed due to Greased Lightning III. Give them 40% attack/skill speed to make them do really fast weapon skills vs stronger ones. This would give a whole new feel to Monk. Going from 2 > 1.6 seconds to 2 > 1.2 would feel much faster and rewarding at the higher levels.

Dragoon is all about Jump so maybe make more damage based off Jump cooldowns. Make a branching ability based off Jump and transition to single target or multi-target to give variety for large group vs boss. Like...
High Jump 400 potency followed by Mirage Dive 600 Single Target Potency
High Jump 400 potency followed by Stardiver 300 AoE Potency

Samurai you could remove the cooldown of Kaeshi: Setsugekka or make Meikyo Shisui reset cooldown of Kaeshi. Another thing is third eye rarely is used and Samurai is a DPS so why not put an offensive aspect to it like adding a mini Meikyo Shisui or add Higanbana effect to next weapon skill.

Ninja I liked Forked Raiju/Fleeting Raiju after using Raiton. Maybe add weaponskills that can be used between ninjutsu with a cooldown so you are rewarded for not doing them all at once. The bunny is funny, but annoying if lag means you mess it up and you can lose A LOT of damage when it happens. You could make the ninjutsu all draw from the same cooldown, but just use the Doton Ability rather than doing Ten→Jin→Chi for example.

> Ranged makes sense to do a little less damage since you have a lot more freedom, but other melee shouldn't be this weak in comparison.

Getting melee uptime in this game, especially in this tier, is not difficult. There is absolutely no reason for melees to do more damage than casters.

Originally Posted by Oxidized

> Ranged makes sense to do a little less damage since you have a lot more freedom, but other melee shouldn't be this weak in comparison.

Getting melee uptime in this game, especially in this tier, is not difficult. There is absolutely no reason for melees to do more damage than casters.

I was looking at a stream tonight on P3S, the most melee unfriendly one.
I forgot how ridiculous the melee uptime was, there is literally 1 single mechanic that forces you out of melee range for... A maximum of 3 GCDs.

Even P4SP2, we agreed on respecting the mechanic and to use our ranged attacks and not caring about DPS.
During progress, I used at most 10-11 ranged attack.
During weeklies, I use around 6 ranged attack.

Mobility tax should be 50-100 rDPS at most, not 1k, especially with the many mobility tools such as Thunderclap.

Originally Posted by CKNovel

Mobility tax should be 50-100 rDPS at most, not 1k, especially with the many mobility tools such as Thunderclap.

Either that, or the last holdout from having unfettered mobility (BLM) would need to be changed with the universal removal of any tax save for a benefit for any class with hardcasts. And I have an entire thread of people who want to vacuum seal BLM and never let it grow one bit because they find the class perfect as is and impossible to improve.

Originally Posted by Taranok

Either that, or the last holdout from having unfettered mobility (BLM) would need to be changed with the universal removal of any tax save for a benefit for any class with hardcasts. And I have an entire thread of people who want to vacuum seal BLM and never let it grow one bit because they find the class perfect as is and impossible to improve.

Blm has a ton of instant casts now. With longer duration on procs, force poly charge and 2 charges of triple cast movement is not nearly as much an issue as it was pre ew.

Originally Posted by CKNovel

Mobility tax should be 50-100 rDPS at most, not 1k, especially with the many mobility tools such as Thunderclap.

Right now all melees are top damage. Black Mage is the anomaly. Raid fights were specifically designed for melee DPS so yeah, I'm not surprise they have little downtime. they also have less positional and P2S doesn't even have a single positional. One thing that is also pretty important to consider is when you have a mechanic that forces you to be disengaged. Theres a part of P3S where a DPS has to bait a tornado cone. Only a psychopath would make a DRG or a SAM do it over a ranged physical. That mobility is helping the melee DPS.

Strats are designed to make melee DPS not lose uptime or casters move. I can tell you when you get spreads in P3S that it's not the BLM who is adjusting.

Yeah, Ranged Physical and Caster should do less DPS than melee. Not by 10% to 12%. 1-2% at best imho. BLM shouldn't be doing 7-8% more DPS than casters.

That said, 6.1 is technically where the real balance changes will occur. I loathe the lack of communication to the player base on questionable decisions like MNK buff and the massive BLM buff. Like, okay, you buffed them. But why?

Originally Posted by Sequora

There’s a reason there’s such a ranged DPS shortage. No one wants to play that role. The ranged tax needs to either be removed, or reduced.

Melee DPS are fine. They’re all in a relatively good spot.

Nobody wants to feel useless and weak. That sums up Ranged Physical since 5.0. They never got compensate from Piercing debuff. While melee got it easier in Endwalker, nothing has changed. Reaper's design is fantastic. Monk rework was just an upgrade and SMN which is basically a new job got completely shafted. You could call it Melee Fantasy XIV

Originally Posted by Aikaal

That said, 6.1 is technically where the real balance changes will occur. I loathe the lack of communication to the player base on questionable decisions like MNK buff and the massive BLM buff. Like, okay, you buffed them. But why?

If you look Phoinix or Hesperos 2 parses RDM is only around 250 DPS behind BLM right now and the gap is only getting closer once people are closer to bis gear and play better. If BLM would not get that massive 300+ DPS buff, it would already be behind RDM in 100% parse in Phoinix and Hesperos 2. Balancing selfish and buffer jobs is always kind of tricky because buffer jobs have so much more DPS potential after prog. Average DPS is always BLMs flavor because it is easier to have a good run with one job in a single run than a good run with 8 different people. To balance jobs around average DPS BLM would be out of the question for a speed kill meta. I think casters are currently pretty fine if SMN would be buffed somewhere between RDM and BLM right now.

Originally Posted by Sunako

If you look Phoinix or Hesperos 2 parses RDM is only around 250 DPS behind BLM right now and the gap is only getting closer once people are closer to bis gear and play better. If BLM would not get that massive 300+ DPS buff, it would already be behind RDM in 100% parse in Phoinix and Hesperos 2. Balancing selfish and buffer jobs is always kind of tricky because buffer jobs have so much more DPS potential after prog. Average DPS is always BLMs flavor because it is easier to have a good run with one job in a single run than a good run with 8 different people. To balance jobs around average DPS BLM would be out of the question for a speed kill meta. I think casters are currently pretty fine if SMN would be buffed somewhere between RDM and BLM right now.

On Hesperos 2 BLM is still top did you sort it by last 1 week or left it on 2 weeks wich would include results before 6.08.
On P2S and P1S BLM is 2nd only slightly behind monk.
P3S is only anomaly where BLM is slightly behind all melees.

Yet MCH is dead last on every fight by 1k+ dps.

Right now I feel if you do not play Reaper you aren't doing decent damage in comparison. Ranged makes sense to do a little less damage since you have a lot more freedom, but other melee shouldn't be this weak in comparison.

Reaper is second last in rdps among the melee jobs on FFLogs right now. BLM is also beating it by quite a bit.

Originally Posted by AlgernonBlackwood

Reaper is second last in rdps among the melee jobs on FFLogs right now. BLM is also beating it by quite a bit.

And all it took was removing the nerf on Xenoglossy and increasing the potency on practically everything (except Despair) across the board to fix it. It's quite interesting to see how they nerfed the class going into EW so massively and gave it the single largest buff I've seen since about 4.1 when Fire 4 became a 2.8s cast with 300 potency (from 3s/260 iirc, or was that multiple patches).

They truly were fine with reaper. It was everyone else who was in an awful position.