Why is everyone anxious about a PLD Rework?

[ForsakenRoe]

and the only reason it comes up in discussions is when people want to use the term to leverage more rDPS for their preferred job.

Big true, Big real. I've never heard someone say 'oh isnt it great we had Warden's Paean there' or 'Hey that Nature's Minne is really doing work eh', but you always hear about Battle Voice and Radiant Coda, and the effect they're having on people's numbers. 'Utility' is a complete farce, and we shouldn't use the term, because what people mean is 'raid DPS increasing buff'. Actual utility doesn't matter, because the devs don't design around the existence of the utilities, rather, they design around the non-existence, so that every comp can (mechanically) complete any content. It's why we don't see stuff as prominent as Alphascape's Cover Cheese being possible now, or Expedient being a 'you really really need this'.

Contrast this to a 'certain other game', where there's movement speed increases, damage redirects, raidwide damage mit effects (even on dps specs), threat redirection skills, incidental off-healing caused by doing your rotation, on top of damage increasing raidbuffs like 'ok you have this class, so all your magic damage is increased by 5%', and you realize that actually, no, FFXIV's 'utility' is definitely not 'utility'. Chain, Litany, Mug, BattleVoice, TechStep, are not 'utilities', they're damage. Call it what it is.

[Lyth]

The only parameter that matters for job DPS balance at the end of the day is total raid DPS, because that determines

• Whether you clear the dps check in the first place
• Your group's clear time

The reason why rDPS is used for job balance is because your group's total raid DPS is equal to the sum of everyone's individual rDPS contributions. Although it's still a 'fictional' parameter in a manner of speaking, it just reallocates dps done under buffs to the person providing them. That's all.

The problem with aDPS (and nDPS) is that these values permanently discard certain types of buffed damage from the total. So if I gave you a list of a group's aDPS totals, you cannot rederive the group's total raid dps from them, because you have lost data in deriving these terms. The reason why these parameters exist is so that you can compare your own performance over time, and lets you troubleshoot issues in your own gameplay with buff timing/alignment. But they're entirely fictional parameters that have lost their original connection to your group's performance.

The rDPS totals we see come from all varieties of group compositions, with players of all types of performance. Even setting aDPS aside, if I put the same player in two different groups, one with more skilled players and one with less skilled ones, your DPS will be higher in the group with the shorter clear time. But when you look at a large number of players paired with many different group skill levels (and compositions), those variations disappear in the overall average. So it's not something that you needed to control for in the first place.

The only time that you actually need to homogenize actions is when players can draw a clear numerical comparison between them. The classic example was Shadow Wall in Stormblood, where it was 30% on a 180s recast against Sentinel's 40%/180s and Vengence's 30%/120s/thorns. Anyone with common sense can see that there is a worst option. This is where homogenization becomes necessary. But how do you compare Ingress/Egress vs. Thunderclap? That's a slightly more difficult question. When you start comparing non-numerical benefits, then you'll see a bit of personal preference enter the picture. I think this was one of the interesting points of Cover before it entered the gauge system, in that there really wasn't any other ability in the game that you could compare it to.

Again, I think just balancing rDPS and shifting the focus and conversation away from this will allow for more of these types of subjective discussions about which ability 'feels' better to use rather than which one has obvious numerical superiority.

[Mikey_R]

The problem with comparing tanks rDPS is that it is essentially useless for them. Any benefits that a tank gets under a raid buff is given to another job. However, this causes issues as you cannot see how much a tank contributes in the 2 minute buff window. Get the tank on a striking dummy and it will do the same DPS as when you compare rDPS in a group. So really, you need to measure tanks on how well they can put their bursts in the 2 minute window, which is where aDPS comes into it.

This discrepancy can be seen on FFlogs where the ranking for rDPS is GNB > DRK > PLD > WAR, however aDPS is DRK > GNB > WAR > PLD. This differences comes about because different tanks can utilise the buff window differently. DRK can save up Edge of Shadow and increase their aDPS, whereas if you were to just look at rDPS, this factor is not considered for the DRK as that contribution is split between several other party members.

To give you an idea on this, based on the upper quartile of players, this is the % of damage the lowest job is doing compared to the highest. In the case of rDPS, GNB is top and WAR is doing 98.6% of the GNB damage. Compare this to aDPS where PLD is doing 97.0% the damage of DRK (this is based on the whole of Abyssos over the last 2 weeks).

rDPS should not be the only thing you look at when trying to balance jobs, because using the wrong data in the wrong context is going to lead you down the wrong path.

[Lyth]

Again, total raid DPS is the only DPS parameter that matters. Saying that 'rDPS is useless for tanks' is akin to saying that actual raw DPS values are useless for tanks. aDPS is a fictional parameter that was invented to help you compare two of your own performances. There's no point in balancing jobs based off of arbitrary fictional parameters that cannot be directly used to calculate total raid DPS.

[Shurrikhan]

Except, as you just noted yourself, to know the total rDPS a job contributes, since exploitation of raid buffs appears only on someone else's rDPS, requires looking also at the variance in a job's rDPS and likely raw damage. Else you can only rightly compare compositions against each other, not jobs. A job that supplies greater rDPS to its buffers, and therefore greater total rDPS, can still have the same individual rDPS.

That's what was being referred to: that job rDPS slime does not tell the whole story, not that tank damage or rDPS is useless or that they should be balanced solely around aDPS either.

[Mikey_R]

Again, total raid DPS is the only DPS parameter that matters. Saying that 'rDPS is useless for tanks' is akin to saying that actual raw DPS values are useless for tanks. aDPS is a fictional parameter that was invented to help you compare two of your own performances. There's no point in balancing jobs based off of arbitrary fictional parameters that cannot be directly used to calculate total raid DPS.

Again, that doesn't tell you the full story for tanks.

Take PLD. If you attack a striking dummy, it is more damage to use 3 Atonements each and every time. However, stick this into an actual party, and it is more beneficial to drop 1 unbuffed Atonement to keep everything lined up as much as possible in the raid buffs. Going by just rDPS, it would be a better parse for PLD to always use 3 Atonements, however, if you were to rank them based on aDPS, then PLD would get more damage by using 2 atonements, just because things line up better.

Now, yes, rDPS is what kills things, but so does the unaltered DPS numbers. The raw data ACT parses. The total damage done by the raw data and after FFlogs has got ahold of it will be the same, so, by that logic, raw damage also kills the boss? Same data, different results. That SAM who was at the top in the raw data is now below the DRG (or any other melee) based on rDPS. The fight was killed either way, but which set of data properly shows how much the SAM contributed? The only reason DRG shot up is because it effectively piggy backed off of the damage from the other 7 members, including the SAM. So, the better the SAM does, the better the DRG seems? Do you see the rabbit hole we are falling into? rDPS is not a measure of how good you as a job are doing. It is a partial factor, but it also takes other people's skill into it, so you cannot get an accurate gauge on the skill of that DRG.

So, again, comparing rDPS for tanks does not work. You need the raw damage to compare them as it shows how well they can contribute inside the raid buffs.

[Lyth]

You do realize that your party composition is a fairly significant confounding factor in any aDPS comparison, right? It's not just influenced by buff alignment, but also the number of buffs you have access to (minus very specific buffs that can be used for artificial single target padding). That's why it's specifically intended for self-comparison. This is why we switched to looking at rDPS in the first place.

[Shurrikhan]

You do realize that your party composition is a fairly significant confounding factor in any aDPS comparison, right? It's not just influenced by buff alignment, but also the number of buffs you have access to (minus very specific buffs that can be used for artificial single target padding). That's why it's specifically intended for self-comparison. This is why we switched to looking at rDPS in the first place.

Yes, which is why I mentioned the comparison of one's rDPS to their raw damage for a given composition.

nDPS specifically precludes looking at buffs received. rDPS specifically precludes looking at their exploitation. Neither is a complete picture until looking at the whole party.

That's why a PLD can have plentiful rDPS in itself while still putting the party behind.

It's not so significant that I'd, personally, reshape the job over it instead of just increasing its rDPS to perhaps even just barely above DRK or GNB (with its contribution to total rDPS falling neck-and-neck), especially as there is no mainstay challenging light party content anyways in which for PLD to be thereby overpowered, but an individual's rDPS alone does not tell the whole story.

[Lyth]

No, neither nDPS or aDPS is appropriate for job balancing, and they were never intended to compare performances across different jobs in different compositions in the first place. If you wanted to do this sort of a comparison, you would need to specifically determine the amount of additional damage a player is doing under raid buffs, and then normalize it relative to the number of two minute buffs active. If you can determine the actual per buff damage contribution and equate it to rDPS, then you can say how significant this effect is.

[Mikey_R]

You do realize that your party composition is a fairly significant confounding factor in any aDPS comparison, right? It's not just influenced by buff alignment, but also the number of buffs you have access to (minus very specific buffs that can be used for artificial single target padding). That's why it's specifically intended for self-comparison. This is why we switched to looking at rDPS in the first place.

Yes, which is why, for general balance, averages are used. Also, party composition plays a role in rDPS calculations as well, so....

Also, rDPS was never the main measure for DPS until Dancer was made available and even then it is only because so much of Dancer's damage is based on how much it provides to someone else, a constant 5% damage buff is significant after all.

No, neither nDPS or aDPS is appropriate for job balancing, and they were never intended to compare performances across different jobs in different compositions in the first place. If you wanted to do this sort of a comparison, you would need to specifically determine the amount of additional damage a player is doing under raid buffs, and then normalize it relative to the number of two minute buffs active. If you can determine the actual per buff damage contribution and equate it to rDPS, then you can say how significant this effect is.

In this case, we can compare between different groups if we take an average, as that reduces the impact of specific party compositions. You can then use that data to compare. So, since we have data for rDPS and aDPS for all tanks, and since no tanks have a raid buff, we can take the aDPS of each tank and take away their rDPS to get an average of how much each job gains from raid buffs:

DRK: 7374.70 - 6915.93 = 458.77
GNB: 7343.68 - 6966.77 = 376.91
WAR: 7214.75 - 6870.19 = 344.56
PLD: 7153.74 - 6890.23 = 263.51

Ordered for your convenience. This is how much each tank gains from raid buffs, based on the upper quartile. PLD just does not utilise raid buffs very well. This is shown when comparing aDPS but is not shown when comparing rDPS as PLD's raid contribution there is split between the rest of the party.

Again, rDPS is not the end all be all of damage as it only tells part of a picture. Just in the same way aDPS/nDPS only tells part of the picture or even just the raw damage numbers only tell part of the picture. Unfortunately, since people don't care about the underlying maths or what the data actually shows, and just want a single number to compare, rDPS has come out as the king of damage (thanks to Dancer) when it only tells part of a story.