BLM DPS

[Mikey_R]

Uptime for melee isn't an issue anymore.

[NOTE: I know this isn't the case with more recent fights and this is a problem with fight design in general. If this is the direction they want to go in for the future, then all jobs need to be looked at.]

Don't know if this was meant to undermine what I said, however, I did address this point in the post I am assuming you are referring to.

First of all, a standard composition is 1 melee, 1 caster, 1 p-ranged and 1 free. No one said there must be 2 melee in the group, but SE has forced people to do so recently with job balance and fight design.

Besides, I don’t believe any melee job is more difficult in keeping uptime than BLM, even before EndWalker. And since EndWalker, there has been little difference between melee and p-ranged.

No, that is fundamentally false. All DPS mechanics are designed to be tackled by 2 melee, 1 caster and 1 p-range. Whilst you can replace a melee with a different role, that doesn't change the fact it was designed to be done with a melee.

Melee keeping uptime has gotten easier and easier throughout the expansions, yes, however that doesn't change the fact that the dev team see it in a certain way and balance jobs around that that metric. This is why I also made the comment, which I have quoted above that if current design philosophy sticks, then job balance as a whole needs to be looked at.

[Bubos123]

I don’t think there is a rule in the game that 2 melee is mandatory. Could you please point out? Again, a standard composition is 1 melee, 1 p-ranged and 1 caster, after that you have got all the attribute, leaving the 4th dps position free to choose.

“All DPS mechanics are designed to be tackled by 2 melee, 1 caster and 1 p-range. Whilst you can replace a melee with a different role, that doesn't change the fact it was designed to be done with a melee.” This is not an evidence that 2 melee is mandatory. Since you can replace one melee with caster/p-ranged, it’s designed for a standard comp, and 2 melee + 1 p-ranged+1 caster is just one case of that.

However, what you said has become more true since EndWalker, especially Phase 6 in TOP, which is definitely a bad design.

No, that is fundamentally false. All DPS mechanics are designed to be tackled by 2 melee, 1 caster and 1 p-range. Whilst you can replace a melee with a different role, that doesn't change the fact it was designed to be done with a melee.

Melee keeping uptime has gotten easier and easier throughout the expansions, yes, however that doesn't change the fact that the dev team see it in a certain way and balance jobs around that that metric. This is why I also made the comment, which I have quoted above that if current design philosophy sticks, then job balance as a whole needs to be looked at.

[Bubos123]

I think YoshiP said there was “difficulty tax” regarding damage output. But obviously it’s just an excuse after they found people were unsatisfactory with job balance, bc what they did isn’t consistent with what they said. Difficulty is a subjective thing more or less, but I bet you most people will agree BLM is harder to play than SAM. Managing job balance is not easy, I agree. And buffing one class will certainly annoy those playing other classes. But the thing is, SE is just doing it with their own criteria. Since the beginning of EndWalker they have put an emphasis on melee.

If BLM does the same damage as SAM it would absolutely break balance, there is only so much loss of DPS the general playerbase will tolerate before the utility becomes meaningless.

Going right back to the core, fights are designed with a DPS split of 2 Melee, 1 Caster and 1 P-ranged.

Each DPS role is designed to do a specific amount of damage compared to the other roles. Melee > Caster > P-ranged. This stems from the perceived difficulty in keeping uptime. [NOTE: I know this isn't the case with more recent fights and this is a problem with fight design in general. If this is the direction they want to go in for the future, then all jobs need to be looked at.] The harder it is to keep 100% uptime, the more damage the job is designed to do, which also meant you lost more damage when you couldn't hit something, which helped to balance things out more.

Now, using this model, if we have a BLM who can do the same or more damage than a SAM, where the BLM can have a higher uptime, this breaks the optimisation the SAM has to do in order to try and stay in melee as much as possible. BLM is now the easier job to keep uptime AND it does more damage, no contest, it is the better job to take.

If you take this into the context of party composition, BLM has basically become a melee, which means you end up with an effective party of 3 Melee and 1 P-range. There is no point replacing one of your melees with a different caster, depending on fight mechanics, it could cause things to not be predictable, among other things, however, in the same vein, you aren't going to replace the BLM with a different caster. DPS is king after all and i have already stated that a job utility can only do so much.

On the subject of utility, if all jobs in a given role do NOT have the utility (res being a small exception), then that utility is not something they balance fights around. They do not want to make a specific job mandatory after all. Res is a bit different as it is a loss in damage, not just from the job being inherently weaker, but because you have to take time to res, but healers should be the priority in ressing anyway. So really, unique utility for a specific job is meaningless. This is why jobs tend to get similar tools, which is where

[Turtledeluxe]

So, my question is, why do you think BLM has to do more damage than SAM? What makes you say that? What are the pros and cons to this change? How is this going to affect balance? Are you going to need to change other jobs to balance this? How do you plan to change them if that is what you want to do? So many questions from just asking a simple question and whilst the initial question only seems to look at Casters and Melee, it will also impact P-Ranged. Feelings do no come into this, just the logical steps which leads to a specific conclusion.

I asked if bringing its DPS above SAM would break the game. That's different from saying it should absolutely be above SAM. If you read my other posts you can see that I just feel BLM should meet SAM, at minimum, and that's only one possible option. I see from newer posts you are trying to claim this breaks the game, but others are disputing you. So I am still left wondering-- why exactly can't BLM do the same damage as SAM or better? I do understand btw that buffing/nerfing has a dramatic affect on gameplay/fight design yes. But also this game is 10 years old? I think they can make it work. I don't need to consider all the various things that might be impacted or need to change just because I feel BLM feels redundant-- that's what the dev team is paid to do. This feels like something you are saying simply to stifle discussion, and that's fine. But don't pretend you or I design XIV's boss fights across the entire game.

It seems to me you are saying basically we can't buff BLM because then other ranged players will be angry. I'm curious to know what was the conversation like when it was decided to make SAM the top dps? That did not seem to end the game. Hmm. Does nerfing SAM a bit also ruin the game as well? Very convenient.

Also regarding your comments on utility-- I never said utility makes jobs easier. I also didn't comment whatsoever on its relation to DPS (i.e. you have to take time to cast res). I'm not sure why you're going into all this. Homogenization has nothing to do with jobs? Huh? People talking about job homogenization every day. In the threads I linked, it's one of the reasons people citied for not giving res to BLM. You and other users are saying res is useless, res is meaningless, then why is it so valued for prog, why do users constantly talk about it, why were people defending it from BLM in the threads I linked?

I mean if you're all correct, why did TC ask this question? Why does this topic periodically come up? It's because something about it just doesn't make sense-- not because players suck at the game or the class.

[Mikey_R]

I don’t think there is a rule in the game that 2 melee is mandatory.

Never said it wa mandatory to have 2 melee DPS, just that fights were designed around 2 melee DPS. Slight, but important difference.

I asked if bringing its DPS above SAM would break the game. That's different from saying it should absolutely be about SAM. If you read my other posts you can see that I just feel BLM should meet SAM, at minimum, and that's only one possible option. I see from newer posts you are trying to claim this breaks the game, but others are disputing you. So I am still left wondering-- why exactly can't BLM do the same damage as SAM or better?

I never said break the game, I said break the balance. Subtle but important difference. I also talked about why buffing BLM to SAM levels would be problematic, I will admit however that, whilst it is clear in my head, I found it hard to articulate into words that properly expressed the meaning behind it. With that said, in the same post I do acknowledge that IF fight designs continue as they are, then they would need to look at job balancing as a whole, which would include buffing BLM to SAM levels, assuming all jobs are having essentially 100% uptime.

Also regarding your comments on utility-- I never said utility makes jobs easier. I also didn't comment whatsoever on its relation to DPS (i.e. you have to take time to cast res). I'm not sure why you're going into all this. Homogenization has nothing to do with jobs? Huh? People talking about job homogenization every day. In the threads I linked, it's one of the reasons people citied for not giving res to BLM. You and other users are saying res is useless, res is meaningless, then why is it so valued for prog, why do users constantly talk about it, why were people defending it from BLM in the threads I linked?

I mean if you're all correct, why did TC ask this question? Why does this topic periodically come up? It's because something about it just doesn't make sense-- not because players suck at the game or the class.

I never made the claim that job utility makes a job easier, I said fights cannot be designed around a utility unless every job in that specific role happens to have that utility and so you can guarantee that the party has it. Because of this, things are added to every job and that is what causes the homogenisation. I also never said jobs have nothing to do with homogenisation, I said a job's DPS and ease of play has nothing to do with homogenisation, as a direct response to this comment you made:

Because it is obvious from the way you talk about the game like it is a job or a science experiment that min maxing is your thing, and the hyper focusing on that is what has led to the obsession with dps across all roles and in part played a role in their homogenization. <b>Part of the homogenization isn't just smoothing out the gameplay, it's making any given classes DPS higher and easier to dish out.</b>

Homogenisation, by it's very definition, is making things uniform or similar. I will admit, I misspoke slightly. If fight design is going the way it is, then jobs will need to be homogenous with their damage, this does not necessarily mean just boosting a jobs damage, this could also be reducing it, as long as they are roughly similar. However, noone is going to complain that this is homogenisation as it is just game balance. The biggest homogenisation of EW is the 2 minute meta, everything fits it now. Every job has the same burst profile, every job is homogenised in that way. However, making jobs easier to play is not homogenisation as you aren't making it similar o another job, just changing it.

As for res, I never said it was meaningless. I even stated that it was different to the other utilities that jobs bring. I was specifically talking about things like Magick Barrier. RDM is the only caster with a raid wide damage mitigation tool, however, despite that, they cannot make Magick Barrier a utility that is required to clear a fight as SMN and BLM do not have something similar. So, do you take RDM for the situational raid mitigation and res and lower damage, or, the BLM with much higher damage but does not have these tools. There will be a point where BLM's damage is too high for the utility and lower DPS of RDM to matter, so BLM is picked over RDM more often than not.

As for Res being useful in prog, that is mainly so statics can hopefully have a glimpse at the next mechanic and start formulating strats based on that knowledge. if BLM has high damage, this might still be the case, but in alot of cases, they will switch to BLM for the higher damage output to make DPS checks easier. They aren't going to be dying so the res utility in this case is going to be wasted, so there is no point. Context in this case matters.

As for why this keeps coming up, it is because people have a fundamental misunderstanding on how to use FFlogs. they see the rDPS value, see that, despite BLM being toted as a high damage caster, it appears to lag behind, it isn't top, so there must be something wrong with the damage, despite the fact that rDPS is the absolute wrong metric to judge a selfish DPS job. This is why I gave a brief explanation in post #22 in the difference between rDPS and aDPS to show the flaws in looking at just one metric.

I also want to comment on why you keep saying BLM is a glass cannon. It takes the same damage as the other casters and, whilst SMN has a better personal mitigation tool, RDM has no personal mitigation outside Magick Barrier. So why do you keep saying this?

[Turtledeluxe]

IF fight designs continue as they are, then they would need to look at job balancing as a whole, which would include buffing BLM to SAM levels, assuming all jobs are having essentially 100% uptime.

Well great.

The biggest homogenisation of EW is the 2 minute meta, everything fits it now. Every job has the same burst profile, every job is homogenised in that way. However, making jobs easier to play is not homogenisation as you aren't making it similar o another job, just changing it.

I was more using homogenization to refer to the fact that people perceive making the classes similar as homogenization. So if we give Res to BLM, that's homogenisation as it takes away something unique from other casters.

There will be a point where BLM's damage is too high for the utility and lower DPS of RDM to matter, so BLM is picked over RDM more often than not.

So currently RDM is not played more in all modes of content than BLM?

Context in this case matters.

I'm not disputing that some groups use BLM. I can see it in the logs.

they see the rDPS value, see that, despite BLM being toted as a high damage caster, it appears to lag behind

I am so glad you brought this up because even in your preferred metric BLM is more comparable to a Machinist than Samurai. It's very strange to me that you have no issue with the dramatic difference between SAM and well, everyone else. What benefit does BLM have that justifies such a difference in DPS from SAM? Why does SAM need to be top DPS? Riddle me this?

I also want to comment on why you keep saying BLM is a glass cannon. It takes the same damage as the other casters and, whilst SMN has a better personal mitigation tool, RDM has no personal mitigation outside Magick Barrier. So why do you keep saying this?

Uhh because those classes are mobile and BLM is less mobile? I was literally in Limsa yesterday and a RDM was talking about how they'd never play BLM because you need to stay still so much. It's a downside I've only ever seen so glaringly ignored in this topic. Yes, BLM has mobility options that are okay, but it's not even comparable to running around all the time. How is it not a glass cannon? To maximize damage it needs to be stationary, it has low defense/HP, and it does high damage. I've used it just for shorthand to denote that. Cannons don't run around...lol..and not to circle back but this is a reminder that optimizing BLM does take effort, which is why the player expectation is there when they look at the logs that you ask to them to look at (I had never even see that website until you referenced it) and why it's so surprising.

I feel like you're about to tell me Blm is the most mobile class and I just...no pls...

[Mikey_R]

I am so glad you brought this up because even in your preferred metric BLM is more comparable to a Machinist than Samurai. It's very strange to me that you have no issue with the dramatic difference between SAM and well, everyone else. What benefit does BLM have that justifies such a difference in DPS from SAM? Why does SAM need to be top DPS? Riddle me this?

You keep missing that BLM is not competing for a melee slot, it is competing for a caster slot, therefore, it is balanced against the other casters. The fact it can do the same damage as a melee is irrelevant. As for why SAM is top, SAM is a melee, they naturally do more damage than casters, so, for SAm to be a selfish melee DPS, it has to do more than the melee, which puts it at the top. Simple.

Uhh because those classes are mobile and BLM is less mobile? I was literally in Limsa yesterday and a RDM was talking about how they'd never play BLM because you need to stay still so much. It's a downside I've only ever seen so glaringly ignored in this topic. Yes, BLM has mobility options that are okay, but it's not even comparable to running around all the time. How is it not a glass cannon? To maximize damage it needs to be stationary, it has low defense/HP, and it does high damage. I've used it just for shorthand to denote that. Cannons don't run around...lol..and not to circle back but this is a reminder that optimizing BLM does take effort, which is why the player expectation is there when they look at the logs that you ask to them to look at (I had never even see that website until you referenced it) and why it's so surprising.

People always underestimate how mobile BLM actually is, between Triplecast, Swiftcast, 2 Sharpcasts, 2 Xenoglossy and at least 1 Ice Paradox, per minute, that is already 9 casts per minute that are instant cast (the actual is higher as an FYI) and this is ignoring Amplifier every 2 minutes, Fire 3 and Blizzard 3 have very short casts that allow for extra mobility there, you also have Aetherial Manipulation to instantly take you to someone else and Between the Lines to go back to your Ley Lines. So, when played right, BLM is very mobile, more mobile than many people give it credit for.

As for defence/HP, it has exactly the same as the other casters. So, actions aside, they have the same defensive profile.

Yes, BLM is harder to use than the other casters, but that is rewarded by being the best caster in terms of DPS there is, without question. And, just to point out, I did mention earlier that people's ignorance on how to use/understand the data on FFlogs does not mean they can use that ignorance to try and justify balance changes. This is why you need to properly read and understand the data that is presented, the pros and cons of each measurement and how each one is limiting the view of the total picture.

[Ransu]

Uptime for melee isn't an issue anymore.

[AsiTsurugi]

Uptime for melee isn't an issue anymore.

It never really was an issue, it really was a skill that players had to learn. Then we have SE "devs" overcompensating for their own ineptitude in comprehension, design or both, by making boss hitboxes at least 50% of the arena size starting in Promise. Catering to whiners like the OP and the other guy who can't understand the concept of "class is doing just fine, you need to learn your class before vomiting words" most probably played a role in it as well.

[Valence]

I'm at a loss. Last I checked and every month without failing, BLM has been clustered with the top group of DPS jobs on rdps metrics for ages. What is there to even buff, when it brings the exact same kind of raid dps than the best DPS (melees) already?

Is this one of those threads where people have literally no clue how to read rDPS charts again? *sigh*