Yoshida's post about p8s nerf and job balancement

[Aikaal]

https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodes...340b373870140b

It's great and all but I do think there's a few things the devs are missing out. Week 1 & week 2 SHOULD be challenging for hardcore raiders. What is not factored is the more you spend time and week, the more geared you are for later floors.

The HP nerf changed nothing. My group cleared P8S, 95th percentile in speed. We never saw Ego Death enrage cast. The nerf didn't matter. What mattered was that if SMN/RDM had been properly compensated for the fact melee DPS have no downtime, we would have passed the DPS check. If our Warrior had been Gunbreaker, we wouldn't get those random clean run enrage wipe because of bad Crit/DH RNG.

We know why you nerfed P8S, we simply don't agree with the change, it was not the solution because starting on week 3 & week 4, that 1.8k DPS is easily covered.

I'm not sure why it's mentioned mechanics impact DPS. Melee DPS lose nothing. If anything, RDM and BLM are taking the big L along with healers in the door boss. I feel the dev team just don't understand we're not expecting a magic patch that solves the whole problem. To the very least, we'd expect names of jobs that are currently in need of help and see some sort of buff to acknowledge the situation.

The whole burst window meta is a plague for many jobs. SMN suffers the most. They can't hold. I have to hold in P8S before the buff because there's no way I'm ever getting an extra Phoenix phase with the DPS my group does and it just hurts SMN so hard to the point they trail further back.

That's my 2 cents on the topic. Regardless, I don't have much hope for casters.

Edit; My point being is they didn't test with all the jobs or they'd have notice Caster role is considerably weaker this tier and none of the jobs of that role benefited the Crit/DH buff. Yet, there's not a single word about Casters. MCH is still very sad in his corner as the King of Jokes even tho Bards are usually the comedians.

[Stasya]

The "we will continue to fucking up because why bother trying" post. He continues to being silent about what comps were used for raid testing, what gear was used for testing. "Appropriate item level,employing available material" can mean 610 pentamelded or full 620 tome gear.

They legit nerfed fight after watching week 1 streamers wiping to clean pull at 50% enrage. This is how they do balance.

[Aelin_Ashryver]

"Attempting to ameliorate this by buffing certain jobs without making changes to the raid itself would have negatively impacted overall balance within each role, and likely resulted in disappointment for those whose jobs were already dealing sufficient damage for the raid and therefore received no adjustments. Unfortunately, adjusting all jobs in such a short period is also not feasible."

It's this bit that has got me quite annoyed. Why would you not buff us underperforming jobs for fear of upsetting the jobs who are ALREADY performing to a good standard? Why should they feel bad they got no adjustment when they do not NEED one? My reaper should be able to get a buff on it's own for example and not be denied just because a samurai would be salty he is not hundreds of dps ahead anymore. The disparity should not have been there to begin with!

So they refused to buff us other lacking dps jobs because they didn't want to upset the jobs who are currently fine. And they didn't want to adjust ALL the dps just to make sure nobody got upset. So those jobs who are lacking will remain so. Unacceptable.

[Stasya]

"Attempting to ameliorate this by buffing certain jobs without making changes to the raid itself would have negatively impacted overall balance within each role, and likely resulted in disappointment for those whose jobs were already dealing sufficient damage for the raid and therefore received no adjustments. Unfortunately, adjusting all jobs in such a short period is also not feasible."

This comes from a person who buffed monk even more in 6.08 while it was broken in 6.05.

[Reimmi]

"Attempting to ameliorate this by buffing certain jobs without making changes to the raid itself would have negatively impacted overall balance within each role, and likely resulted in disappointment for those whose jobs were already dealing sufficient damage for the raid and therefore received no adjustments. Unfortunately, adjusting all jobs in such a short period is also not feasible."

It's this bit that has got me quite annoyed. Why would you not buff us underperforming jobs for fear of upsetting the jobs who are ALREADY performing to a good standard? Why should they feel bad they got no adjustment when they do not NEED one? My reaper should be able to get a buff on it's own for example and not be denied just because a samurai would be salty he is not hundreds of dps ahead anymore. The disparity should not have been there to begin with!

So they refused to buff us other lacking dps jobs because they didn't want to upset the jobs who are currently fine. And they didn't want to adjust ALL the dps just to make sure nobody got upset. So those jobs who are lacking will remain so. Unacceptable.

Didn't they also say they don't nerf jobs for this same reason?
So what, never do balance changes to not upset people?
wtf...

[Valence]

I think what the dev team is truly missing out of the picture here is the elephant in the room from the previous patch, which is DSR Nidhogg phase, facing the exact same issue, maybe even more (try this with a cursed party comp like WAR/PLD and double ranged for giggles), and this will NOT be overcome by gear until next expansion at the earliest. It is good they emergency fixed the two problematic tanks, but that kind of mega tight dps checks we haven't had in ages in putting in perspective the fact that the game job balance is pretty good usually, but still has issues if you really cut it close like that. It was a non problem before because almost everything could beat those dps checks, which hasn't been the case here, or was left to crit/dh rng as said by the OP. In short, a good (but imperfect) balance was never put into question by high end encounters before, but it has been not only once but twice in the two last major patches. I am happy if you're trying to make fights tighter (within reasonable margins), but job balance HAS to follow. This is not even negotiable, else we're constantly gonna end up in this situation (and still do in DSR btw). There is such things as job mathematical caps, when we're past a matter of player skill at that level.

I for one, would love a tighter balance instead of getting fight difficulty dialed back, but I am not holding my horses on what will be chosen ultimately, because it's safer.

I for one, am also really spooked by that specific line stating "When balancing jobs, each job’s base damage numbers at the applicable item level are adjusted with respect to the difficulty of playing that particular job and its rotation, as well as its support actions and their effects.".

Can you for one not balance jobs around subjective difficulties of play, and let people decide if they want to play a challenging job or not? Difficulty of a job should not matter in whether your job composition is good or bad, or at least not on the level of having literally half the DPS jobs dealing 5% (or more) less damage than the other half. This is not only disheartening for players of the first half, but also opens so many cans of worms that have been part of the root of the problem, and only kept in check by the party bonus bandaid. Is the dev team vision for the game to make double caster or double rphys composition subpar and not wanted for example? They're not doing this for tanks and healers, as seen with this WAR/PLD emergency balance fix.

You do NOT need to remove job identities and flavor to have a smooth, harmonized balance.

[Mithron]

When balancing jobs, each job’s base damage numbers at the applicable item level are adjusted with respect to the difficulty of playing that particular job and its rotation, as well as its support actions and their effects.

Yoshi admits job difficulty is considered when adjusting their base damage. So why are SAM and NIN so high? lol. Why is DNC higher than SMN, BRD, RDM and MCH?

[momokami]

Yoshi admits job difficulty is considered when adjusting their base damage. So why are SAM and NIN so high? lol. Why is DNC higher than SMN, BRD, RDM and MCH?

its confirmed, the devs dont read tool tips!

[Lorefiend]

There's a part of it that I find especially concerning for several reasons, enough to push me to finally come on here to get the best chances to be heard...

"Attempting to ameliorate this by buffing certain jobs without making changes to the raid itself would have negatively impacted overall balance within each role, and likely resulted in disappointment for those whose jobs were already dealing sufficient damage for the raid and therefore received no adjustments. Unfortunately, adjusting all jobs in such a short period is also not feasible."

All right, time to break it down.

"...without making changes to the raid itself..."
Raids are supposed to be designed around jobs to begin with: if their design runs directly opposite of what the jobs allow, as was the issue for PLD, then the balance changes released together with the raid should address that. Additionally, if it's about how the tier has so much free uptime for melee DPS while giving them a massive edge over ranged DPS, then it should also be addressed by making them comparable.

"...overall balance within each role..."
Are DPS all balanced together, or within their own sub-role? If so, there are two issues: balance within each role is messed up. I main SMN but I won't argue about RDM being harder to play right, why is it performing the worst? The raises? The raise tax should be casting the raise to begin with. If it's such an issue, increase their MP cost or recast time (maybe to 8s, equal to the cast time, instead of the generic 2.5s?) to make them more punishing to use or less readily available. Likewise with ranged DPS, how can MCH being so far behind be justified in any way? Because BRD and DNC are reliant on their party members? Next part then...
Are all three DPS sub-roles balanced together? Because they don't look like it at all. BRD and DNC are okay because their value gets provided by the melees, who are significantly inflated. MCH provides neither utility to the party as a whole nor extra damage from piggybacking the jobs at the top, and is as a result at the very bottom. BLM has one of the highest skill floors and ceilings in the game, and barely competes with other melees as a reward. Were it not for the 1% buff per sub-role, triple melee would be viable: triple ranged was questionnable, and almost entirely because of their tuning.

...

[Lorefiend]

"...disappointment for those whose jobs were already dealing sufficient damage for the raid and therefore received no adjustments."
THOSE JOBS DO NOT NEED HELP. YOU DO NOT HAVE TO BUFF JOBS FOR THE SAKE OF BUFFS WHEN TWO ROLES ARE SEVERELY LAGGING BEHIND. The fight design already vastly accomodates melees: just look at P7S, entirely taking away one of the root elements of the ranged DPS fantasy: not having to stand next to the boss to do your thing. That is completely moot, because melees only need to disengage for less than a handful of GCDs in the worst case scenario. In most other games, seeing a tree off the platform will make you grind your teeth if you are on a melee, since you will likely only be able to hit it when it leans over for its mechanics, and is thus a risky fight. In FFXIV, ranged DPS have no advantage above melees in that scenario, yet melees are compensated as if they were. The PLD changes addressed that partially, but the status quo still stands.

"Unfortunately, adjusting all jobs in such a short period is also not feasible."
I am repeating my last point here, but not all jobs need to be changed. What we want is that the jobs lagging behind get brought up to the level of those who have it all already. There is no need to change anything about the jobs that aren't at issue, and to pretend there is feels like a slap in the face. Encounter design as a whole has already evolved in a way that makes the ranged tax obsolete, and you have already acknowledged it in paladin's case, so only the jobs still affected by it need to be adjusted. It even is a long-running issue, I know for a fact I was complaining about it in 6.0, but the buffs for the sake of them in 6.2 along with the tight tuning made it worse.


The harsh tuning on the fight only brought the issues with job balance in the sunlight, and to nerf it instead of addressing them feels like a slap in the face of the players that were affected. It only made the strong jobs stronger, instead of bringing the numerous, omnipresent (but not for much longer at this rate, 1% base stats only go so far!) lackluster jobs on par with them.