Quote Originally Posted by ForteNightshade View Post
Yes it does.



cDPS is essentially aDPS but with AoE raid buffs included. Which begs the question why does Picto have to be the top spot when it functions almost identically to Reaper and Monk? Like I said elsewhere, it's literally the best job in the game right now because it does everything well. Even cast times, which can be annoying, aren't nearly as punishing for it over Black Mage--it's sole competition as a Caster, assuming it even gets buffed.

To make this clear, if Black Mage dealt roughly around what Picto is now, then Picto itself was in the Monk/Dragoon or thereabouts. We wouldn't be having this discussion. In that scenario, double caster is still perfectly viable and quite strong. Especially if fights where melee uptime might be an issue--assuming the devs do move away from Endwalker's design. Case in point, E8S would 100% be a Caster play in this hypothetical given how much that fight hated melee. And that's fine. Right now though, Picto/BLM would just be better in every fight.
When I said “it doesn’t factor into cDPS” I meant it’s already included as in you can’t go “oh it’s first in cDPS then also has a raid buff on top of that” because the raid buff contribution is already counted amongst the cDPS, so PCT’s only extra utility when factoring in cDPS is tempra grassa

As for buffing BLM, you seem to harbour the illusion that just because PCT’s 100th percentile pulls away because of massive crit luck in the starry muse window that PCT is just unequivocally the better class at all percentiles which it’s not, it falls away incredibly quickly below the top and like BLM has an extremely wide IQR indicating a large variance in skill level. This is how it should be, in general the casters have to fight harder for their uptime than the melee (this has been true since about HW) so their ceilings should be higher

If you think BLM and PCT exceeding the peaks of the melee at 95+ means a hard double caster meta will form that’s just dooming because 19 out of 20 PCT’s will put out less damage than the melee