Damage "taxes" deserve serious reconsideration

[FireMage]

I'd rather BLM be top DPS in the game with no raid damage buffs and a job identity of low mobility hard casting. No raise. I do not think SMN and RDM should have damage tax for raise, but I do think SMN and RDM should have raid damage buffs and thus lower aDPS than BLM, and that all jobs be within 1% rDPS between each other.

Then you aren't advocating for actual balance

[Ferrinus]

I do think it's correct that difficulty shouldn't correlate to damage; a hypothetical MCH which is exactly the same but you have to press an extra button every five seconds or else take a damage down shouldn't get extra damage for its trouble but instead not have the trouble. What SHOULD be worth extra damage is fragility, ie the capacity to lose damage to factors outside your control. For melee characters that (used to be) a combination of short range and positional requirements; for spellcasters it's the conflict between attacking and moving. Ranged physical dps could on the one hand be "buffed" by the existence of bosses which give melee and caster characters legitimate positioning and movement problems, or with their own slightly inconvenient or inflexible mechanics (occasional cast times or self roots, attacks that do LESS damage with proximity, etc).

[Aurora428]

I don't think they will backtrack on boss design favoring uptime.

I don't think there is anything wrong with the current design for melee to be honest, ranged jobs just need to be doing a LOT more damage than they are.

I think rather than discussing what type of raid design would give mobility high worth, maybe just accept that it's a very minor advantage and any damage loss should be similarly minor.

[Mithron]

I don't think they will backtrack on boss design favoring uptime.

I don't think there is anything wrong with the current design for melee to be honest, ranged jobs just need to be doing a LOT more damage than they are.

I think rather than discussing what type of raid design would give mobility high worth, maybe just accept that it's a very minor advantage and any damage loss should be similarly minor.

I dunno, I think downtime can be healthy for a game, and encouraging greed can increase the skill cap between good players and great players. That kind of stuff creates fun, in my opinion. The reason they're trying to remove downtime is mostly because it completely destroys their current design of 2 minute party burst. So rather than nuking that and making the game better and more fun, they're just redesigning all jobs and fights to fit the 2 minute party burst. I think that's the main overarching problem, here.

[Aurora428]

I dunno, I think downtime can be healthy for a game, and encouraging greed can increase the skill cap between good players and great players. That kind of stuff creates fun, in my opinion. The reason they're trying to remove downtime is mostly because it completely destroys their current design of 2 minute party burst. So rather than nuking that and making the game better and more fun, they're just redesigning all jobs and fights to fit the 2 minute party burst. I think that's the main overarching problem, here.

I don't think that's the issue. A majority of savage fights this expansion throw wrenches in the 2 minute burst, almost as if it was a mechanic.

Regardless, the amount of downtime it would take to justify the ranged tax is ridiculous to the extreme where something along the lines of 8-10% damage loss in downtime would be required. People seem to forget that the tax failed to justify itself even in early ShB. Additionally, I don't think that amount of melee downtime would necessarily be engaging.

No matter how you spin it, all Ranged need substantial buffs.

[Mithron]

Oh I absolutely agree ranged need buffs right now, but I don't find 100% up time necessarily fun and it would restrict a lot of creative boss mechanic design. If every job was more individual rotation designed, like some had power spikes at 40s or 90s, then some jobs would naturally shine more on some fights where downtime was forced, and I think that's good and healthy for the game.

[Aikaal]

I don't think the fight design is an issue. It was pretty rough to play melee in the past and it's always more enjoyable to beat on a target dummy. But lowering the skillcap this way on melees should have the consequence to remove that tax ranged and casters been paying for a while.

[Rithy255]

People will continue to play and bring BLM because it does 1% more damage than other jobs due to its lack of utility and people enjoy that job fantasy. My argument still makes sense because there are no mechanics that deaths are necessary. Every death is a mistake, so if you stop making mistakes, there would be no deaths. Doing less damage on top of the time and resources necessary to cast Raise on someone, which is already enough of a DPS loss, losing more on perfect runs means it would always feel bad to play that job in farm, because you would be better off bringing whatever other job without raise tax. The 3 slots of "melee/physical ranged/caster" don't have to be fulfilled. You would simply go 3 melee or 2 phys ranged instead or whatever other combination that doesn't include casters, and always be weighing down your team by playing caster. That's not fun or good balance.

So having options to raise a player as RDM/SMN using the raise action itself on someone's mistake is a DPS gain, you argue that it isn't a gain in that situation, it doesn't matter if it's someone elses mistake it's still a total gain in that situation to raise a player, You should consider that mistakes are a thing in progression runs and the only way you're going to learn a fight in hard content is actually making mistakes that the SMN/RDM can help make it a bit more smoother to learn.

People don't even play Black mage as much as red mage right now, because people actually recognise that bringing a BLM is more a determent unless you need a reach a DPS check, Having a battle raise is nice to have around, having mobility and utility on smn is very nice also, theirs a actual reason why people are choosing those jobs outside of "more damage".

Do I think the gap should be so big as it is now? no I think BLM should be ahead realistically speaking around 3-4% (roughly) of SMN/RDM, Red Mage likely slightly ahead of Smn because they also have mobility problems, Black Mage Should be top dps. I want groups to have more variety then 2 melees, 1 caster, 1 ranged meta

I think theirs also a point where raises aren't designed that well in this tier where their usefulness comes into question, AGAIN. fix that and let raises be useful in more harder content or just balance it so theirs no raises between casters or theirs raises between them.

I feel like your "Solution" is to make black mage borderline useless.

[Aurora428]

So having options to raise a player as RDM/SMN using the raise action itself on someone's mistake is a DPS gain, you argue that it isn't a gain in that situation, it doesn't matter if it's someone elses mistake it's still a total gain in that situation to raise a player, You should consider that mistakes are a thing in progression runs and the only way you're going to learn a fight in hard content is actually making mistakes that the SMN/RDM can help make it a bit more smoother to learn.

People don't even play Black mage as much as red mage right now, because people actually recognise that bringing a BLM is more a determent unless you need a reach a DPS check, Having a battle raise is nice to have around, having mobility and utility on smn is very nice also, theirs a actual reason why people are choosing those jobs outside of "more damage".

Do I think the gap should be so big as it is now? no I think BLM should be ahead realistically speaking around 3-4% (roughly) of SMN/RDM, Red Mage likely slightly ahead of Smn because they also have mobility problems, Black Mage Should be top dps. I want groups to have more variety then 2 melees, 1 caster, 1 ranged meta

I think theirs also a point where raises aren't designed that well in this tier where their usefulness comes into question, AGAIN. fix that and let raises be useful in more harder content or just balance it so theirs no raises between casters or theirs raises between them.

I feel like your "Solution" is to make black mage borderline useless.

Honestly I think a 3% gap between BLM and the other ranged is completely fine, with melee at the 1.5% mark between them.

I think 150-200 DPS above and below melee for BLM/other ranged is completely healthy.

Most importantly, this would bring MCH up to third place in personal damage where it should be as MNK (and RPR, but it has issues right now) both provide more than that value in raid buffs.

[Rithy255]

Honestly I think a 3% gap between BLM and the other ranged is completely fine, with melee at the 1.5% mark between them.

I think 150-200 DPS above and below melee for BLM/other ranged is completely healthy.

Most importantly, this would bring MCH up to third place in personal damage where it should be as MNK (and RPR, but it has issues right now) both provide more than that value in raid buffs.

I'm not a numbers expert but that sounds around right, MCH should do more personal damage then everyone but BLM/SAM but including raid buffs it should be lower then the rest of the melees (if that makes sense)

I'd love to see more comps viable then 1 ranged, 1 caster 2 melee I think stuff like this would actually push more general diversity into the game