Why is everyone anxious about a PLD Rework?

[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.