Why is everyone anxious about a PLD Rework?

[Lyth]

...

The aDPS values are not normalized relative to the number of two-minute buffs in each individual run. You'd need to go back and look at it in a per run basis from scratch.

[Mikey_R]

The aDPS values are not normalized relative to the number of two-minute buffs in each individual run. You'd need to go back and look at it in a per run basis from scratch.

I got the values from FFlogs over all current savage raids over the last 2 months, that is between 28,000 parses for PLD and 48,000 parses for DRK, being the 2 extremes on parses uploaded, GNB and WAR are between them. The mean of each job is then calculated. For what we are trying to achieve here, this is more than enough to average out any difference in party composition or whether they got another 2 minute raid buff in or not. If I were to go back and evaluate each and every individual parse and subsequently find the mean, I would find the exact same results.

However, despite all this, it wouldn't change the fact that rDPS is still not the end all be all for how to balance a job. Again, it just doesn't show the whole story and can be misleading, which is why other DPS metrics exist. No one metric is perfect, noone is claiming that they are, however, it also means you cannot base balance around one specific metric.

[Lyth]

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You've completely missed the point.

When you look at rDPS, you're looking at your own damage plus the additional benefit that your teammates happen to generate under your 16% uptime buff. That second part is really the only variable present. When you look at aDPS, your damage is influenced by the number of those 16% uptime buffs present. That's a major confounding variable. In order to eliminate it, you have to normalize your damage contribution such that you're looking at a 'per buff' gain. Again, aDPS isn't telling you what you think it's telling you, and really only has meaning in the context of two runs with the same group.

The parameter of interest is 'raid clear time', which is directly correlated to 'total raid dps'. The only individual parameter that we can currently analyze in this manner for balance purposes is rDPS, because it shows you individual contributions. If you want to refine that model further, you need to actually quantify what the dps benefit is for having that additional burst under buffs. Which has to be done on a per buff basis. No parameter that we have currently does that.

[Shurrikhan]

No, neither nDPS or aDPS is appropriate for job balancing

Nor is any single job's rDPS in isolation. Else you end up with things like CD drift or freestyle Samurai being considered "optimal" just because their own rDPS is slightly higher that way (nevermind the greater negative impact on the rest of the party's rDPS).

There is, for instance, up to ~200 rDPS a DRK brings to a party over a PLD that is not accounted for in the DRK's own rDPS. The gap in total (party-wide) rDPS produced by taking a DRK over a PLD is therefore larger than it would first appear. We can compensate PLD for that, but we'd then have to actually expect that people are capable of doing more than just looking at a single, non-comprehensive chart and going "higher, better, done."

[Shurrikhan]

The aDPS values are not normalized relative to the number of two-minute buffs in each individual run. You'd need to go back and look at it in a per run basis from scratch.

You may as well claim that rDPS not taking into account varying rates of crit luck makes it unreliable as a point of comparison between jobs.

At 20,000+ parses for any given job for those comparisons, unless the particular jobs were forcing accordant distinct compositions (they do not, to be clear), those differences will have been more than leveled out.

[Lyth]

Let's step back and look at the reason for this discussion in the first place. The tanks are currently balanced when you look at rDPS. But the underlying claim here is that certain tanks ought to do more rDPS than others to offset the fact that less of their damage contribution occurs under buffs, which then impacts the rDPS of the buff providers. In order to evaluate that claim, you need to be able to quantify exactly what that rDPS offset should be, right? Otherwise this is all just feelycraft.

The exact value of that offset is going to depend on the number of such buff providers in the party. For example, if you're running exclusively with non-buff providers like SAM and BLM, you shouldn't have an offset at all. If you're running exclusively with buff providers like NIN and RPR, then you should have a bigger offset. So you need information on what the 'per buff' offset should be, and then you can try to come up with what the average value should be across all comps. aDPS doesn't tell you this because we have no idea how many buff providers are in the group. That's why you don't see actual dps players quibbling about this, despite the fact that we contribute significantly more damage than you do.

Here's the thing. There are plenty of things that you cannot accurately quantify that may boost dps. SCH's Expedient gives your party a movement speed buff. That may translate into extra uptime in certain conditions. How do you determine the 'equivalent' rDPS offset should be for having access to this action? The answer is that you don't. People only bring these things up because they want to curry an advantage over others. If you balance based off of rDPS, the numbers will be close enough that the better player will come out on top.

[Lyth]

Players are always going to be dissatisfied with the numbers. It doesn't matter if the difference is 50 dps or 500, players are affected psychologically by the knowledge that they're at a 'disadvantage', however slight. That's why having the developers explain their rationale for balance is always important. I think claims like 'jobs are balanced based on difficulty' or 'jobs are balanced based off of access to utility actions like Raise' is going to cause more rancor in the long run, because you know that you'll perpetually be at a disadvantage no matter what you do simply because you picked the wrong job. But if they come out and say hey, jobs in a given role (tank/healer/dps) will be balanced based off of damage adjusted for raid buffs (read: rDPS) and we'll find a way to make you feel good about the utility part of your toolkits whatever it is, most people will be content about that. Perception of fairness is the most important thing, and you do that by setting expectations.

If you want to create a higher-order model of rDPS that accounts for the benefit gained on average by lining up better with burst on a per buff basis (or other currently not-quantified benefits), go for it. rDPS itself was created because we realized that analyzing raw DPS was inadequate. If you can do it and explain your methods, players will get behind it. But designing the metric itself is the challenging part.

[Shurrikhan]

Players are always going to be dissatisfied with the numbers. It doesn't matter if the difference is 50 dps or 500, players are affected psychologically by the knowledge that they're at a 'disadvantage', however slight.

...So what? Are we supposed to just not bother with balance because of unhealthily obsessive small portion of the playerbase? A number as small as 50 dps out of the likes of 5-digit numbers wouldn't even hold consistent ranking in practice; it'd be bouncing about week to week, percentile to percentile.

More importantly, though, we can qualify a difference as significant or not on a basis more consistent than personal bias or unhealthy obsession. Not everything has to devolve into "my job first" politicking, especially in a game where most people simultaneously enjoy a majority of them.

I think claims like 'jobs are balanced based on difficulty' or 'jobs are balanced based off of access to utility actions like Raise' is going to cause more rancor in the long run, because you know that you'll perpetually be at a disadvantage no matter what you do simply because you picked the wrong job.

Except, if they were actually balanced based on difficulty, you'd see less difficult jobs performing better than higher performing jobs for a roughly equal portion of the playerbase (e.g., under the "50th percentile") across the content considered the balancing point (such as either Extremes or Savage Raids) while that content is still in progression. That would be a buff to the likes of SMN, MCH, and especially DNC, BRD, and RDM.

That balancing philosophy wouldn't necessarily be a problem. It's just that, if it's even been attempted, it's never quite come through. The game hasn't yet balanced around difficulty; it just takes it as something of a factor -- one among apparently multiple, if the process is even so deliberate. If the philosophy, though, were applied with visible consistency, though, we have no way if MCH being neck-and-neck with BLM at the 75th percentiles initially and falling back gradually to a tight balance around the 60th or so... would even be frowned upon so long as each felt like they were able to play whatever they want when the fights were still relevant. (We do not need to placate post-game competition like speedrun records at the expense of the larger community.)

(or other currently not-quantified benefits)

They're literally right there. Mouse over the rDPS cell in the party's fflogs spreadsheet and it has a breakdown of every buff's contribution towards (exploitation by) each receiving player. They're just what rDPS specifically removes in order, specifically, to make comparisons between players/runs of the same job across differing compositions (while very obviously failing to account for the contribution of each to a given party).

:: Note also that all buffers have the same cross-party comparison problems with rDPS that a SAM, BLM, and the like have with nDPS; if a DNC doesn't have a good exploiter in a given party, their rDPS is screwed.

[ForteNightshade]

rDPS is a fine metric when comparing tanks against themselves: i.e. Warrior to Warrior; Dark Knight to Dark Knight. Where its accuracy falters is when you compare two different tanks against one another. aDPS shows what the actual damage tanks do when aligning their burst with raid buffs because they don't contribute anything themselves. Hence why we see such a wide discrepancy between Dark Knight and the other tanks, Gunbreaker not always withstanding.

Players are always going to be dissatisfied with the numbers. It doesn't matter if the difference is 50 dps or 500, players are affected psychologically by the knowledge that they're at a 'disadvantage', however slight.

If this where the case than Melee would be getting locked out the same way Warrior and Paladin do. They don't. While there are certainly preferences, and an established meta. No one really cares outside of a small portion. Meanwhile, Dark Knight is ridiculously strong right now speed groups are bringing two of them.

The issue isn't just damage but the utility you mention isn't being made to feel good. Warrior has a fantastic defensive suite but Dark Knight still has a better one. In fact, the only thing Warrior can do this tier over Dark Knight is have mildly sustain. Said sustain isn't enough to give the healers more DPS, which makes it more or less irrelevant. In this game, damage is king. Which is what Dark Knight and Gunbreaker have dominated for two tiers now.

[Guntank81]

As a long-time PLD main, I am excited about the potential improvements that the revamp may bring. While I have enjoyed my current rotation, I am open to any changes that will enhance my performance in this role. Despite the ups and downs that come with playing PLD, I am confident that we will adapt and continue to thrive in any situation.