Damage "taxes" deserve serious reconsideration

[SaberMaxwell]

The three of them have to be used as a tool of analysis.

Balacing only around rDPS means that if the top jobs are the "selfish" ones such as SAM or BLM, then they are good for every piece of content in any comp.

Balancing around rDPS means the only variable is non-DPS support, such as Curing Waltz.

For these jobs, rDPS = nDPS. Their rDPS will be the exact same (ignoring variance) whether their group has no buffs or optimized buffs. They're also not punished in this metric if they don't align their cooldowns within buffs as only aDPS tracks that although partially (single target buffs have to be manually checked through rDPS).

Yes it's true, for these jobs rDPS does = nDPS. This doesn't change that their rDPS is the total raid damage contribution they offered.

Therefore, if only rDPS is considered for balance, then these jobs are the best in every single scenario on top of getting the highest benefits out of buffs.

That's not true at all. Your premise is flawed based on the idea that rDPS is not a job's total raid contribution, when it by definition is. Just because their rDPS = their nDPS doesn't change anything, it just means that they themselves don't bring raid buffs that would modify their own personal damage.

aDPS also depends on composition, so while it is a relevant metric to look at, it can vary a lot in a similar way that rDPS does for buffing jobs.

The metric that will tell you the individual performance of a person without taking other people from the party into account is nDPS.

Yes. This is why I mentioned that for gauging your own personal ability, nDPS/aDPS are better gauges than rDPS. For general balance, however, rDPS is superior as it goes into aggregated data points.

Jobs that are strong in the nDPS/aDPS department should be lower in the rDPS department and vice versa, because the higher the percentile, the more damage players will squeeze out of buffs and so the more they will feed into others' rDPS. For example, since SAM is the job that benefits the most from buffs, it should be higher in aDPS than BLM, but lower in nDPS since the latter does not benefit as much from them (though it still does).

This isn't true at all. First of all it's a blatant misunderstanding of what r, a, and nDPS are; second, these are FFLogs measurements, not Square Enix measurements. In general, all jobs' rDPS should be within a few percent of each other bar whatever "taxes" are deemed necessary on an entire role. Where their a and nDPS will fall is a metric of flavor and personal skill in comparison to others of the same job.

I'm not saying rDPS is a perfect metric, but it's the best for inter-job comparisons while nDPS and aDPS are more or less better for intra-job comparison.

Balance seems to be made around the average player, not the very top (95+ or more).

You can see this when checking more accessible fights (i. e. those cleared by many people of different skill) such as P5S. MCH is the top ranged/caster job in the rDPS charts in the overall percentile and until the 80th because it doesn't rely on others for its damage and actually overtakes some melee jobs (NIN and DRG, so the ones with the lowest personal damage) in both aDPS and nDPS until higher percentiles. In fact, MCH's nDPS is still higher than DRG's in the 90th percentile.

Yeah, MCH's median and upper quartile surpass RDM's, BRD's, SMN's, and DNC's as of 9/20/22. Talking about who balance is decided on is a bit tangential to the topic of how taxes should be approached in balance.

But again, nDPS is a measure of a job against itself. It's purely meant to be a gauge of how well one performed their own rotation in a vacuum, hence why it excludes all buffs including one's own buffs on other players. It doesn't MATTER how its nDPS is doing vs other job's nDPS.

[Cithaerias_pyropina]

I wonder how the 4 player Criterion dungeons are going to go considering just how bad the balance is in the 8 player content. Will the issues ranged and casters are having be exacerbated when there are half the amount of people present? Watch the devs just go and nerf the hp of all the mobs in the Criterion dungeons before that goes live.

[Rilifane]

They must be balanced for all content. Not only the high end, hard content. So, my points are arcurrate.
People are doing normal stuff to. And has hard times in it to. Balancing mean, that the class need to be usefull in most content. Not necressary in everyone (heared, that blm was bad in 6.1, because of many movement in the content)

So it's valid because you said so?

You know why content cannot and never will be balanced around normal content?
Because normal content does not and cannot require any form of specific party comps outside of 1/1/2, 1/2/5 or 2/2/4. Ever. Which means, you can end up with 4 melees in your normal raid. Or with 4 DNCs. You don't know what you'll get. Balance is out of the window the moment comps are completely random and can include as many double classes/ subroles as slots allow.
And because it's story content and as such is easy enough to clear all content by only grabbing aggro and then doing the /beesknees as a tank, by only spamming Cure I as a healer and by only doing auto attacks as a dps.
The game also evolves and all classes underwent numerous class changes throughout the years.
Do you remember Largesse? Eye for an Eye? Feather Step? Blood for Blood and old MDEF/ PDEF values? Old combo potencies? No? Many skills got scraped and given back at a much later levels so old content already plays completely differently from when it was released thanks to class changes, stat squish and now even reworks to make them Duty Support-suitable.

Do you know what would happen if you would suddenly balance healers around WHM not having Largesse in Stone Vigil anymore? Or a melee having to disengage for one GCD on that one boss in that one dungeon that someone runs maybe 1-3 time during leveling?
The content where balance actually matters, where you have enrages, where you need the 1% buff, where LB generation speed matters, where optimization, gear and uptime matters, would be pretty much unplayable.

If content A doesn't push anything at all but content B does.
Tell me, with all your logical conclusions, which content should have precedence for balance considerations? Should balance be made for content A, which does not push anything and can be completed with auto attacking? Or content B, that pushes toolkits, has enrages, needs coordination etc?

You need a better argument than "I say they must balance for all content so my point is accurate".
You're talking about things you have no experience with, you're just making wild guesses and compare a MMO with single-players, apply your arbitrary class/ role fantasies without even checking how the reality in this game looks like.

You know when the last time was when the DRG floortank meme was accurate and how it even came up?
When Blood for Blood increased the DRG's damage taken while also having by far the lowest magical defense. Try living through an unavoidable magical raidwide with 25% increased damage taken and the lowest magical defense of all classes. That is a risk that deserves higher dps as a reward if executed well. Not drooling over your keyboard and still outdpsing every other non-melee barring BLM while being packed in cotton wool and have hitboxes the size of an Earthly Star.

[Aikaal]

Oh, thanks for the clarification on Embolden and aDPS. I'm actually not that great with these. I just know overall rDPS is the best metric to evaluate.

Because this is simply my opinion (and there are multtiple threads with the exact same content).

Meele have much more risk of beeing hit. Be it this thunder cats, who create close aoe. This plants with the close up spore attacks. Cerberus, who has aoe in his front and his back. This big mouthed plant enemy. The first boss of the new 90er ini (and many of the mob).
Than, are there the positonals (even, when they are reduced), that is relevant for max dmg. And not that easy to hit each time. And the phases by bosses, where you can not go near them, because of aoe.
Ranged classes need some drawbacks in combaring to meele, to be balanced. Esspecial the physicaly ones, who can attack the whole time, while running around. Otherwise, would whe have practicly only ranged classes and practicly no meele (i see in most cases more ranged classes as meele classes, in normal raids).

Maybe it is not the cases in the current savage stuff. But, it is the case in older content, story, the 90er ini and probally again in future content.

I'm sorry but I swapped from RDM to SMN because it p8s door was too risky for me as a caster. There was significant more risk for me on this fight than any melee DPS. The fight designs have changed to favor melee DPS so the tax shouldn't be applied anymore.

[SaberMaxwell]

The way FFLogs does it is a bit weird yeah. But weird in the "I can't think of a better way to do it so this will do" way. The way I think of it is aDPS specifically filters solo padding like dance partner and card dumping so you can't pad one person's parse like back in the day with pDPS. nDPS is a bit novel compared to a and r, and was selected specifically as a "here's how I did compared to others of the same job" type of metric.

[Payadopa]

So people cried because uPtImE and now that circles are bigger they cry about maH dEePs as ranged. SE should just stop catering to number slaves. There is no winning. Only the removal of interesting abilities because someone did a spreadsheet. I don't think XIV can afford to become more boring in terms of job design. lol

[CKNovel]

So people cried because uPtImE and now that circles are bigger they cry about maH dEePs as ranged. SE should just stop catering to number slaves. There is no winning. Only the removal of interesting abilities because someone did a spreadsheet. I don't think XIV can afford to become more boring in terms of job design. lol

The ranged tax is a topic that exists since Shadowbringer.
Is it wrong that we want to feel that our jobs are valuable?

As far as I know, buffs and balancing never removed interesting mechanics from jobs.

[SaberMaxwell]

Its not the "number slaves" that are making the jobs simpler. Its the casuals that SE desperately want to stay on the game and worry that anything requiring a pulse would scare them away.

[Aco505]

Your premise is flawed based on the idea that rDPS is not a job's total raid contribution

That's not what I have said in my post. The point here is that the damage of "selfish" jobs depends entirely on their performance whereas the damage of any job with a damage buff depends on their performance and the other players in the party.

rDPS and aDPS/nDPS rely on each other. Synergy jobs need the other jobs to capitalize on their buffs. The stronger a specific job is at a particular thing (e. g. 2-min burst windows), the more they will provide. This is why NIN, for instance, is one of the best DNC partner, because despite the fact that their personal damage is lower than other jobs like MNK, their 2-min burst is stronger than the latter but their filler is weaker.

Therefore, if you put "selfish" jobs or jobs with stronger personal damage at the top of rDPS, they will always be the best jobs in most cases because their damage depends entirely on themselves, not others. The weaker a group is, the more a buffing job will be negatively affected and vice versa.

This is why the MCH example is relevant, because it is better than the other two p.ranged and non-BLM casters until a specific point in which buffs/comps are more optimized.

Even if the theoretical difference between all jobs was like 1-2%, synergistic jobs will always struggle to keep up unless we're talking about the 95th+ percentiles or, in other words, more optimized environments.

Yes. This is why I mentioned that for gauging your own personal ability, nDPS/aDPS are better gauges than rDPS

The three of them need to be taken into account or otherwise you can end up with unbalanced jobs. MNK right now is very high in nDPS compared to the other melees and top in rDPS, just like at the beginning of the expansion. Whether this is their right spot or not is SE's decision, but ideally if their nDPS is that high, then their rDPS should be lower.

rDPS is superior as it goes into aggregated data points.

All three metrics work in the same way, they just include buffs or take them out as necessary.

it's a blatant misunderstanding of what r, a, and nDPS are

all jobs' rDPS should be within a few percent of each other

I'm not entirely sure you understand my point or if you know what these metrics actually represent. Ideally jobs should be close to one another in rDPS and nDPS, with their order from top to bottom changing depending on where their focus is (personal or buffing), but in a general scenario you will never have absolute balance like this because overall is not the same as 75th, 95th or 99th percentile and the devs choose to balance around a specific group of players.

Take the 1-2% difference I mentioned above. What's the point of reference? If we choose the top percentiles, then synergistic jobs suffer until they reach the necessary requirements to actually be within the accepted number.

these are FFLogs measurements, not Square Enix measurements

We cannot know the way SE measures job performance so the only tool we have available to us to discuss the game's balance is the FFLogs website. You yourself are using their metrics so bringing this up is contradictory and strange.

Talking about who balance is decided on is a bit tangential to the topic of how taxes should be approached in balance.

Not tangential at all. Some of those taxes are based on SE's idea of how useful they are. In weaker groups, people will die more and so rezzes are more important than in stronger groups where people die less.

[Keichi]

So it's valid because you said so?

You know why content cannot and never will be balanced around normal content?
Because normal content does not and cannot require any form of specific party comps outside of 1/1/2, 1/2/5 or 2/2/4. .

That you dont need specifics classes for the content is balance. When you need specific things, than you excluded something and people will only choice the best Option (and no matter what it is, it will allways be a best option, even, when it is only 0,00001% difference).

And nope, this skills say nothing to me. I started in shb (ok, the first time was in hw, but i dont remember anything from it, except, that mch had many random proccing skills), and focused only on blm, summoner/sch and dancer. The other classes came only, when i was unable to play casters anymore (to many skills i had to watch with lvl 75). And i dont cared much about classes, i didnt played (i even forgot, what kaiten was). So, i can not say anything about the skill part. Because i dont know, what you mean (i only know the names of the blm skills).

Whe have simply other things whe value and focusing, for what balance is needed. For me, is the whole enrage things bs. Why punishing Player for beeing a little to slow? That isnt necressary, to make content harder. The whole extra aoe and mechanics are enough. Why even the need of extra pushing and coordination? That work rarely with randoms and exclude the player, who dont have groups.

It is true, that i dont have much experience with savage. The only two i was doing was zodiak and Hydaelin. And only Hydaelin had i understanded (the Rotation by zodiak is to much for me). But, i simply dont like, how you guys speak about the devs (they are working good, not perfect, but good). And, i simply think, that you guys gives savage to much importance. Balancing for the masses and normal content is more important (has bad experience from wow, where they balanced pve content, because of pvp stuff).

And drg became floor tank because of to many failed jumps (at last, how i noticed it^^).