Quote Originally Posted by Lyth View Post
It's very rarely so neatly compartmentalized, and you can always count on players to act based on short-term self-interest above all else.

The problem is that the argument for buffs is always predicated on the claim that 'I' play a more difficult job than 'you', which very rarely has an objective basis in fact. I very rarely see someone discussing job IQR within a role (which is an interesting discussion in itself), and most mentions of complexity are invariably made to freestyle gameplay on a job that you don't actually play. In the short term, this gets players the buffs that they want, in terms of both damage output and utility. In the long term, however, the dev team invariably simplify the jobs in question down to address the 'complexity' discrepancy, which makes this all come karmically full circle.

But it's a nuisance for players on other jobs in the short term as well, because historically powerful jobs are going to also have a lot of vocal backing to keep them that way. All of DRK's problems in Stormblood were a direct consequence of the overpowering debate around making WAR more powerful again. DRK provided low reward for effort despite being dismissed as being easy to play by an overly jingoistic WAR playerbase who had no clue about how the job was actually played. And it's because we were willing to patiently keep silent and watch that we spent the better part of four years at a massive disadvantage to everyone else.

I don't think there would be any significant job adjustments or controversy in the melee dps section this expansion had they not happened to release a new job into the category. And that's really what prompted the turf war around 'complexity vs. performance' at the start of the expansion. Unsurprisingly, we yet again see short term buffs to all melee followed by long term plans for simplification. A lot of heartache could be saved if the devs simply saw through why people have these 'complexity' discussions in the first place and just ignored it. This exact same problem will repeat itself with Casters next expansion if they release a new Caster.

I wish that players could have discussions based on their love for a particular job and talk exclusively about making things more fun without impacting other jobs in the process. But it's very rarely so simple, and everyone in the category ultimately has a stake in the discussion.
I personally don't believe in the complexity argument. RPR for example is pretty brain dead easy to play and I'd have no problem with them doing high dps. My only view point on how much DPS a job should output is based on their kit, not how easy or difficult they are to play. SAM and BLM for example imo should ALWAYS be the top DPS because they offer nothing else to the raid. Their utility is their damage output. If another job is outperforming them then the BLM and SAM should be buffed or the overperforming job should be nerfed. Outside of that, the range of dps output should come down to how much utility you offer. The more raid utility you offer the lower your DPS should be.

Its a simple viewpoint, but that's generally how I believe the balance of the game should be. Like in ARR it was difficult to deal with the double bard meta because bard had amazing raid utility to go along with high mobility to deal with mechanics easily and pretty good damage, especially paired with a dragoons piercing debuff, which lead to the design of adding a cast bar to bards "dps stance" in heavensward which naturally most people hated. Its also why MCH is so low in the damage category because they effectively have 100% uptime and no casting. I do personally think their output is a little too low though, but I agree with the design of them not competing with melee dps numbers. They should be outdpsing bard and dnc easily though.