Transparency in playtesting

[Aco505]

Clearly it's Lance Charge not being Blood for Blood. Every time you use it, you can remember that you're not taking extra damage instead. Or Dragoons having enough magic defense to survive raidwide damage now.

Serious answer, probably Life Surge. And if I understand the context of the original message, consider two Life Surges for free every minute and a half is probably better than Arcane Crest's healing anyway. What can it get to, 20% of max HP I think? The real answer is taxing DPS over something like Arcane Crest is silly.

RPR should not be taxed due to having Arcane Crest (I don't think SE taxes DPS on this regard anyway since MNK exists).

However, Life Surge is not a defensive ability. It's a random, minimal heal that you can't use when you need it the most. LS main purpose is to increase your damage.

[Rithy255]

*cries in paladin*
Y'know I thought we were gonna have it good this expansion we're the poster boy... haha..... Seriously it's a bit upsetting Paladin still is pretty bad in comparison and it's 6.2
Honestly this is not the main issue, but I think the dps check for one is slightly overturned (They're good but i don't think dps checks need to be that strict, reinforces just choosing jobs for the optiomal dps)

The main issue is obviously class balancing, Machinist has no utility compared to DNC/BRD but also doesn't bring better total damage(by alot) so theirs no reason to bring it (unless you enjoy playing it), Paladin Defensives are kinda wonky (good but don't work with how raids are right now) for really bad dps, warriors good at tanking but gunbreaker/dark knight do a general good enough job for you not really needing a warrior for prog ect. Reaper isn't performing well, I think it's pretty simple potency buffs & adjustments that are needed mainly I will say some jobs should be given a bit more beyond that.

While I think SMN/RDM should be a bit far down compared to BLM I don't think it needs to be at the point where you have to bring a BLM, with raise utility its kinda harder to balance because raises are super powerful. You generally need to hit a sweet spot where the damage difference is enough for BLM to be worth it but its not too bad where bringing and rdm/smn makes enrage easily happen.

[CKNovel]

*cries in paladin*
Y'know I thought we were gonna have it good this expansion we're the poster boy... haha..... Seriously it's a bit upsetting Paladin still is pretty bad in comparison and it's 6.2

Poster boy curse.
WAR was the poster boy in ARR but was a terrible tank with no invuln at start and forced to tankstance with 20 damage malus.
DRG was the poster boy in HW but... Hold on this one was pretty good.
SAM was the poster boy in SB but no one wanted one since it had no utility, no rDPS.
MNK was a side poster boy, I forgot how it performed but NIN and DRG were still there, killing machine.
DRK was tthe poster boy in ShB. The rework had a mixed reception and it had to compete with the brand new shiny Gunbreaker and the mitigation king WAR, while dealing with Living Dead.

Honestly, PLD needs more than just potency:
-Cover shouldn't cost gauge or at least apply the same buff from Intervention. Also get rid of that 10 yalm distance...
-Change gauge regeneration to being time based, in the future make something else from that mitigation. PLD suffers from downtime.
-Passage of Arms should cover allies around you and/or you should be able to move. I know you lose the RP aspect but it really doesn't work to spot you from moving at all when DRK, WAR and GNB can do the same thing while moving
-Hallowed Ground to 360s rather than 420s. I don't care if it's the same cooldown as Bolide, PLD should be the mitigation king but it has the worst invuln due to a massive lack of flexibility. 360s cooldown should be a freeby.
-Divine veil should apply a shield instantly. I know the RP side. But it's necessary to have a smooth cooldown rather than a RP one.

Then PLD needs to have its rotation updated, I don't feel like many have fun with it.

[Rithy255]

Lemme reply to some of those suggested changes cuz i think these are some good stuff:

Cover: I kinda wish this had no Gauge cost & did something like give knight's benediction to the target, maybe that would be too overpowered but the idea would be you could heal up a target while taking their damage, also yes the range should be boosted, IF not just covering for no cost & having more then 10 yalms would be a great change.
Passage: I agree, if paladin gives up a personal mit for a party mit, it should at least be less situation where you have to angle it, in a lot of fights where realistically you're going to be standing in certain positions a lot of the time.
HG: I'd go further and change the difference from each tank invul to be 30 seconds, instead of a minute apart, Holmgang should still be shortest and HG should be longest but closing the gap makes it more appealing to choose a invul for a "better effect" even then HG wouldn't be the best but at least it would be a lot more reasonable why it's longer.
Divine Veil: fully agree, RP reasons should effect game balance.

I think PLD rotation is fine? I think theirs a big issue with all the jank in it's rotation but the idea behind it having 2 more consistent bursts makes it more interesting and fun for me Instead of "dump all your dps into burst jobs", they do need to fix a lot of jank around paladins rotation in general. I do really enjoy it compared to lets say warrior or dark knights general rotation. I'd be worried if they made a complete ground up rework like they did with summoner tbh.

[SargeTheSeagull]

It was just a pun, nobody has a clue, including maybe SE ?!?

So any explanations is as good, as any other. Remember that "no-echo-yet, little tome-gear yet" savage raiding is affecting only minor part of playerbase.
Community seriously running deep dungeons is actually a thing. I cant really say, how many that involves.

Minor part??? By best estimates it's around a third of the playerbase. One in three people does savage. That's not a minor bit. If this were an issue only in ultimate, okay fair enough. But a LOT of people do savage.

[Kachou_]

I am still expecting SE to have more Transparency in playtesting. More so due to the 6.21 patch.

[Ransu]

"Every job is viable" copium that used to intoxicate the community is hitting back very, very hard in this tier.

There are 3 logged MCH clears, 2 logged RPR clear. Around 90% of the ranged players are DNC.
We had a MCH in our comp and couldn't pass the DPS check even with multiple perfect runs. If we had a Dancer, we counted around 15 runs that could've been a potential clear and 11 that were a 100% clear.
We stopped aiming for week 1 because we were smart enough to realize that we aren't good enough to compensate for what the MCH lacks.

That tier balance has been the worst since early Heavensward.
I really hopes this shakes things up and ends once and for all the "every job is viable" mentality.

Every job has been viable for years...They are currently changing their design approach whether good or bad is going through hiccups. No balance is ever perfect, but that mantra existed because its been factual for years.

As far as dev playtesting goes. There is never going to be any kind of transparency on how they do things internally. That is simply just not going to happen.

[RylaBee]

Minor part??? By best estimates it's around a third of the playerbase. One in three people does savage. That's not a minor bit. If this were an issue only in ultimate, okay fair enough. But a LOT of people do savage.

Read what was written: "no-echo-yet, little tome-gear yet" savage raiding.
What that means is people who hope to seriously tackle content in first 1-2 weeks while dressed in almost all greens(crafted gear).

Not a third (33%), rather 5% and that is generous.

[Kabooa]

Every job has been viable for years...They are currently changing their design approach whether good or bad is going through hiccups. No balance is ever perfect, but that mantra existed because its been factual for years.

As far as dev playtesting goes. There is never going to be any kind of transparency on how they do things internally. That is simply just not going to happen.

There have been peeks into it, or at least, they provide snippets and from there we drew assumptions. For example, there was an interview shortly before 5.2 where they were talking about the difference between Titan and Shiva tuning, where they claimed to have slashed the dps requirement on Titan by 15% from what they were testing, but only did 10% on Shiva.

I don't remember the entire discussion, but from there, the assumption was made that the devs playtest in Tome Gear, and they slash based on expected values on pentamelded Min Ilvl so that the encounter is achievable. 15% sounds like a lot, but the extra is due to differences in intended strategies vs prog strategies, so, again, the assumption is that the slash is overestimated because if an up-time strategy exists, it is not likely to be the first one that catches on.

So while the P8s explanation is raising skepticism, rightfully I'll add, it's not exactly out of line of what they've told us so far. This time they made a mistake, and it isn't even the first time they've made the mistake, because E4s and Titan presented a similar situation.

[Kachou_]

Every job has been viable for years...They are currently changing their design approach whether good or bad is going through hiccups. No balance is ever perfect, but that mantra existed because its been factual for years.

As far as dev playtesting goes. There is never going to be any kind of transparency on how they do things internally. That is simply just not going to happen.

Well, there was an interview in 3.0 detailing how savage content is tested. They also said a lot in the 6.21 patch note. I don't see why they can't provide more detail. For example, do you test your game with all jobs?