Comprehensive breakdown over Endwalker job balance

[Aexnidaral]

I agree with a lot of what Zheph highlighted in his tweets and document. I genuinely dislike the Endwalker era combat design philosophy centered around 2 minute raid buffs/bursts. It makes so many classes feel very same-y, and pretty homogenized. It feels super punishing that that a disproportionate amount of our damage potential is tied to the burst phase, especially in prog situations. While the big direct crit numbers under the raid buff window tickle a part of my monkey brain that dispenses the dopamine, I find it overall less fun than some of the past expansions combat design philosophies, and hope that in 7.0 the Developers reconsider this 2 minute window homogenization and make things more interesting by reverting some of these things.

[Panthurrr]

I expected to see something a little more "comprehensive" than reducing combat to a square wave analysis for made up burst numbers, though the goal of this analysis seems to be more about explaining the new timing windows in fights and how that's changed.

Would be a bit more comprehensive to see an analysis with actual potency numbers and calculations.

Could someone explain this a bit more?

DPS checks now have to be tuned low enough to account for mistakes rather than being tuned for average play with room to do even better.

What distinguishes average play from making mistakes in rotations? I would think average play is equivalent to making mistakes.

[TabrisOmbrelame]

snip

I think it depend on the type of mistakes. Is it a rotation mistake ? Is it a mecanics mistake (Inducing Damage down for 30 sec or a death penalty for almost 90 sec ) ?

Making a mistake into a rotation isn't as bad as a mecanics mistake that would cost much more DPS and damage.

But balancing savage fight is made by taking into account that player want a challenge. Extreme is a end-game difficulty for people who are not interested at all into the savage. Savage (and Ultimate) are High-end difficulty content were mistakes may cost you a run.

Not easy to balance for some average play, and even then, what is an average play ? This definition will be different for every person. It's too abstract

[LittleImp]

What distinguishes average play from making mistakes in rotations? I would think average play is equivalent to making mistakes.

For my own job, I would define 'Average play' as playing the bog standard loop regardless of the encounter, and not really making super serious attempts to optimize the jobs kit around the fight. A more concrete example would be something like missing an entire usage of Requiescat because a player chooses to play 'standard' instead of using an opener like -18s or -4s fof that gives them more value in a phase.

On the other hand, an optimized player making a rotational mistake is something like accidently drifting your damage buff by a GCD, or clipping something in a way that denies you an extra GCD before the boss jumps away.

[CaptainLagbeard]

On the topic of Paladin...

PLD in EW feels like it's in an extremely weird position... As Holy Spirit and the Confetior combo are spells and completely unaffected by Skill Speed, using 4 Holy Spirits and the combo they always take up 20 seconds of your 25 second Fight or Flight so it essentially becomes your entire burst window. Maybe fitting in 2 of your 3 Atonements at the start, as using the 3rd one would make Fight or Flight end before Blade of Valor...

Also, with how Fight or Flight shares the same 60s CD with Requiescat, and as there's no reason to not use both at the same time, they might as well just become one skill...


And if they want Sustained DPS to be good, make fights with that in mind. If a class is "bad" because their specialty is dealing sustained DPS rather than bursting, that's a problem with encounter design rather than class balancing.

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

[...]Also, with how Fight or Flight shares the same 60s CD with Requiescat, and as there's no reason to not use both at the same time, they might as well just become one skill...

Why would you want to use both at the same time? FoF only buffs PLD's physical attacks. Holy Spirit/Circle, Confiteor, and all Spellblades aren't affected.

[CaptainLagbeard]

Why would you want to use both at the same time? FoF only buffs PLD's physical attacks. Holy Spirit/Circle, Confiteor, and all Spellblades aren't affected.

Does it not affect them? I haven't done any deep testing so I am not certain, and if it doesn't I guess I am in the wrong on that one.

[Absurdity]

Does it not affect them? I haven't done any deep testing so I am not certain, and if it doesn't I guess I am in the wrong on that one.

FoF only works on physical damage, Holy Spirit, Confiteor and your entire Blade combo are all magic damage so Fight or Flight does literally nothing for them.


The way paladin is set up is that you alternate between your buffed physical dps phase and your buffed magic dps phase, with 1 unbuffed physical combo afterwards before it repeats.
It doesn't really have a burst phase and is one of the very few remaining sustain dps jobs, although their magic phase deals quite a bit more damage than their physical phase.

[localareanetwork]

On the topic of Paladin...

PLD in EW feels like it's in an extremely weird position... As Holy Spirit and the Confetior combo are spells and completely unaffected by Skill Speed, using 4 Holy Spirits and the combo they always take up 20 seconds of your 25 second Fight or Flight so it essentially becomes your entire burst window. Maybe fitting in 2 of your 3 Atonements at the start, as using the 3rd one would make Fight or Flight end before Blade of Valor...

Also, with how Fight or Flight shares the same 60s CD with Requiescat, and as there's no reason to not use both at the same time, they might as well just become one skill...


And if they want Sustained DPS to be good, make fights with that in mind. If a class is "bad" because their specialty is dealing sustained DPS rather than bursting, that's a problem with encounter design rather than class balancing.

even though it's "weird", it's pretty disheartening to know that they're intent on reworking Paladin to be cookie cutter and less unique

[Rilifane]

And if they want Sustained DPS to be good, make fights with that in mind. If a class is "bad" because their specialty is dealing sustained DPS rather than bursting, that's a problem with encounter design rather than class balancing.

No, it's a problem with class balancing and how buffs work.
Encounter design doesn't punish sustained dps more than burst dps; SE would need to design encounters so that they frequently force you to lose uptime outside of burst windows while having easy uptime during burst windows but they don't. Sustained damage being less attractive than burst damage stems from class design and how buffs work, not from encounter design.

Let's say two players deal exactly 1.000 damage over 2min.
One does it by sustained damage output which stays fairly even over the 2min.
One does it by dealing 500 damage outside burst and then the remaining 500 during a 15s burst window.
Raid buffs can easily turn this 500 damage into 665 damage with 3 generic "increases damage by 10%" buffs while the one with sustained damage may only get 50 additional damage.
Now what's more attractive: 1265 damage or 1050 damage?

It was far easier to balance burst dps vs sustained dps when we had raid buffs on different timers because people with sustained dps could strew in a strong skill here and there under every buff while burst dps classes might have missed a 60s or 90s window with their strong skills but had more for 2min buffs. Now with burst dps getting exponentially stronger with the streamlined 2min buffs, sustained base dps has to be inherently higher than burst base dps because nobody with buffs profits from it.
Case in point: PLD.
A DRK has an opener burst that is so strong, it has highest melee card priority. Even above NIN which is known for having some insanely high burst. And since it's impossible to run a 0 buff comp unless you're taking either dbl SAM, dbl BLM or dbl MCH, you will have buffs. Several of them even.