Do you think that Picto needs a nerf?

[IOwn92FCHouses]

The more I think about it, the more I realize that Picto is exactly where Square wants it to be. It will not be nerfed just because over performs in FRU. Let's get that out of the way right now. Square's general balance point has always been a mix of casual and savage content. Never ultimates, as evidenced by general lack of changes for ultimate content underperformers over the years.

Now, Picto looks like it does a ton more damage than everything else in other content. It does not. It's rDPS contribution is always within a few percent of non-res/phys range jobs when you look at percentile tiers that don't enter into "I had good RNG and a good kill time" tier. Because kill time is, by far, the biggest boon to your parse, and you better believe that almost all top picto runs have good kill times.

Yes, this also is reflected in cDPS as well.

But every single fight has a few common aspects with Picto:

It has a delta in performance on par with Black Mage, and looking through the various percentile tiers shows it falls way, way off the worse you are at the game (aka causal players).

It usually sits in top 3 in higher skilled tiers.

It's a few percentage points off from whichever non-res/non-phys range job is at the bottom.


Going off all available data for non-ulti content, Picto is performing exactly as Square has said: stronger than expected, but competes with the melees.

The only nerf we may expect to see comes with a precedent: Altering Picto's burst to be less RNG-heavy by making it guatentee DHC for less overall potency, which is the exact thing they did with SAM when it's burst was insane if you got all DHC on everything that mattered. This solves the perception issue for people who don't know how to use fflogs, makes their burst profile more consistent, and hits their dps slightly.

Other than that? Do not expect picto nerfs, no matter how doom-tastic your attitude at this video game is.

[Wayfinder3]

The more I think about it, the more I realize that Picto is exactly where Square wants it to be. It will not be nerfed just because over performs in FRU. Let's get that out of the way right now. Square's general balance point has always been a mix of casual and savage content. Never ultimates, as evidenced by general lack of changes for ultimate content underperformers over the years.

Now, Picto looks like it does a ton more damage than everything else in other content. It does not. It's rDPS contribution is always within a few percent of non-res/phys range jobs when you look at percentile tiers that don't enter into "I had good RNG and a good kill time" tier. Because kill time is, by far, the biggest boon to your parse, and you better believe that almost all top picto runs have good kill times.

Yes, this also is reflected in cDPS as well.

But every single fight has a few common aspects with Picto:

It has a delta in performance on par with Black Mage, and looking through the various percentile tiers shows it falls way, way off the worse you are at the game (aka causal players).

It usually sits in top 3 in higher skilled tiers.

It's a few percentage points off from whichever non-res/non-phys range job is at the bottom.


Going off all available data for non-ulti content, Picto is performing exactly as Square has said: stronger than expected, but competes with the melees.

The only nerf we may expect to see comes with a precedent: Altering Picto's burst to be less RNG-heavy by making it guatentee DHC for less overall potency, which is the exact thing they did with SAM when it's burst was insane if you got all DHC on everything that mattered. This solves the perception issue for people who don't know how to use fflogs, makes their burst profile more consistent, and hits their dps slightly.

Other than that? Do not expect picto nerfs, no matter how doom-tastic your attitude at this video game is.

I really hope they don’t give anymore gifted crits hits. That mechanic absolutely sucks in this game

[Valence]

I'm gonna put forth an idea a little radical perhaps, but if you remember in Criterion every job grants hidden damage buffs to party members based on its raid buff profile (since a light party of 4 will by definition benefit less from raid buffers than a full party of 8). Rough numbers can be found here. Obviously, SE kinda missed the mark as usual with balancing those, but they're a good idea in concept.

They could perfectly introduce that kind of things in any kind of instanced content, based on the amount of downtime, and if possible with a clear indicator for each job in the duty description or something.

[Realfoxy]

“Have some empathy”

Give it a rest drama Queen, Red mage has been my favorite class in the game since it came out and the job has always been used in exactly 1 scenario. Meanwhile, black mages weren’t caring about how bad rdm and SMN have been for ages now because blm doesn’t have a raise so they’re entitled to being better. Now the job has always been legitimate contender in pictomancer and we have people like you complaining about smudge, Tempura Grassa and Starry Muse like those skills justify pictomancer being perpetually weaker than black mages.

That’s ridiculous, get over yourself and accept that the entitlement black mages have towards needing to be the best purely cause hey have nothing else to offer was and always has been stupid. It doesn’t matter if you’re worse than pictomancer in a fight it was designed to dominate in. The only justifiable reason pct at this current point needs a rebalance is because of how it breaks the ultimate encounter, but the fact that it’s better than black mage doesn’t matter. If black mages are getting locked out of parties. Just make a party and add a pictomancer slot and run 2 casters. The top clears in the world were largely double caster so what’s your excuse.

I’ve played caster since HW, I’ve seen SMN completely dominate both blm and rdm, I’ve seen blm dominate rdm and SMN, I’ve see mch dominate casters entirely. I’ve seen it all. What’s happening in fru literally doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things. This is like complaining about nerfing verraise becuase red mage is too good for prog and SMNs can’t raise as fast. Well DUH, becuase thags what it was intended to do. It was designed to be this dominant in FRU, this wasn’t a surprise that they didn’t forsee. They knew and accepted it anyway

Look I agree that caster raise has been a blight on caster balance, and I think that RDM's damage should be brought up. If it was up to me we'd delete caster raise, give SMN some actual complexity, and buff RDM+BLM+SMN to make them all competitive with melees, maybe with SMN slightly below depending on how easy they want to make the job.

However I also full recognise that the moment you delete Verraise you're going to have people banging on the doors of SE headquarters demanding it back.

But saying that "selfish jobs are fundamentally flawed" or whatever you're going on about is just being salty. Look, I want to run double caster comps. What I don't want is the current situation where the DPS composition has a slot locked to PCT.

Hell, you could even buff RDM to compete with BLM and I'll still play BLM for the love of the job. But this ridiculous saltiness about BLM just makes you look bad.

[Supersnow845]

Look I agree that caster raise has been a blight on caster balance, and I think that RDM's damage should be brought up. If it was up to me we'd delete caster raise, give SMN some actual complexity, and buff RDM+BLM+SMN to make them all competitive with melees, maybe with SMN slightly below depending on how easy they want to make the job.

However I also full recognise that the moment you delete Verraise you're going to have people banging on the doors of SE headquarters demanding it back.

But saying that "selfish jobs are fundamentally flawed" or whatever you're going on about is just being salty. Look, I want to run double caster comps. What I don't want is the current situation where the DPS composition has a slot locked to PCT.

Hell, you could even buff RDM to compete with BLM and I'll still play BLM for the love of the job. But this ridiculous saltiness about BLM just makes you look bad.

But this has nothing to do with double caster comps

You are basically saying “I support double caster comps existing so why are you so salty about BLM” when the problem isn’t so much melee preference disfavouring double caster it’s the fact that the concept of selfish DPS is inherently flawed because the other person has basically fully agreed with our assessment that there is no situation in which BLM should ever be anything but first amongst the casters because it brings nothing but damage.

This is just as toxic to BLM as it is to the other casters because no only does it mean the other casters will always be weaker than BLM it also leads to the current situation BLM is in where “if it’s not first it’s last” because since BLM has nothing but it’s damage if it isn’t first in damage by definition it’s functionally useless

This problem also applies to SAM and VPR as well

[Reginald_Cain]

I really appreciate how much the pictomancer conversation has exposed how badly undertuned selfish dps are and have been in this game. Picto is disproportionately strong in this game's content but to me that's a symptom of the terrible design decision that was the 2 minute meta introduced in endwalker. black mage by design is a sustained damage dps and without insane buffs in power (which it deserves) there was never a chance it was gonna shine in ultimate. This two minute meta has destroyed the opportunity for unique ways to deal damage with each job and now most of the good jobs are designed around pumping big skill into buff window. Let's also address the fact that pure dps jobs in general are not given significant enough buffs to exist in a game were buff stacking in tandem with raid utility is god tier. The fact jobs like black mage and machinist are knee capped to not "outperform" the members in their role with utility makes no sense. The devs need to stop being afraid of people running anything besides double melee or the odd picto red mage combo. Machinist by nature of its design should be able to pump out near samurai/viper damage. If it continues to be balanced around the two weakest personal dps jobs then it will never be anything but bad. Back in stormblood machinist had a place in the fourth dps slot because like today the default ranged slot HAD to be a Bard. Machinist could take advantage of buff stacking teams to pump out high damage while not needing to provide buffs of its own. Without getting a party wide damage buff machinist still will never be taken over bard/dancer outside of prog, and without more damage injected to its kit machinist will never replace a melee, red mage or pictomancer in the fourth slot. The crazy part as the forums have been talking about this for YEARS and the devs don't see any issue with it

[Reginald_Cain]

It's crazy to me that square enix has forgotten that the fourth dps slot should be available for any at least ONE JOB in ANY role not just melee. They are so afraid a strong machinist will kill bard and dancer chances of getting a team slot and if they are then bard and dancer should get a new role because machinist just is not and should not be balanced around support jobs like that. We used to have so much comp diversity when there were LESS jobs in this game and that should be considered an issue by more people in this community and dev team. My suggestion would be to group up selfish dps (samurai, viper, machinist, black mage) and balance all of these around being the fourth slot. Pictomancer's damage is so high that they really should see some nerfs to utility like the aoe shield, the heal on starburst and the %damage buff on starry muse. pictomancer is like the caster reaper but more overtuned. reaper has an aoe regen from a personal shield that needed a nerf shortly after release and a raid wide damage buff that gives it an enshroud and it puts out damage thats high but importantly NOT HIGHER than selfish dps like samurai or viper. 7.0 reaper was a little cracked in that regard but buffs to other melees brought it in line. this was not the case with pictomancer and i think that boils down to two truths. it's damage potential is infact to great and black mage got the most pathetic half assed "buffs" ive ever seen. The ease of use on black mage was increased but the damage was not buffed enough at all. I'm happy pictomancer broke the double melee only curse but im unhappyit wasn't black mage. selfish dps should make you have a reason to run two of ANY dps role NOT a utility class like picto. i know if picto did equal or close damage to red mage and summoner it would get abandoned almost completely since it has no res. This is why the res casters and supportive phys ranged need to be consolidated into their own role. Pictomancer should be the monk to black mage's samurai. Monk and samurai have always been close, but samurai consistently had slightly higher damage while monk brought lots of utility in the form of mantra and brotherhood. However a good monk with really good crit rng can compete with a samurai. Currently picto is defecating all over black mage in damage and utility when black mage was the historic rival of all top dps jobs like samurai.

[Realfoxy]

But this has nothing to do with double caster comps

You are basically saying “I support double caster comps existing so why are you so salty about BLM” when the problem isn’t so much melee preference disfavouring double caster it’s the fact that the concept of selfish DPS is inherently flawed because the other person has basically fully agreed with our assessment that there is no situation in which BLM should ever be anything but first amongst the casters because it brings nothing but damage.

This is just as toxic to BLM as it is to the other casters because no only does it mean the other casters will always be weaker than BLM it also leads to the current situation BLM is in where “if it’s not first it’s last” because since BLM has nothing but it’s damage if it isn’t first in damage by definition it’s functionally useless

This problem also applies to SAM and VPR as well

You keep asserting that if selfish DPS jobs aren't top DPS then they're "functionally useless". Why do people keep making excuses for bad balance?

Yes, they should be on top, and I'm tired of pretending that shouldn't be the case. Like if BLM loses to PCT by 1-2% I'll state that balance isn't ideal, but I'll still play the job - also because that would mean a 95 percentile BLM would be better than a 90 percentile PCT.

And the problem with MCH isn't some fundamental issue with selfish DPS or anything like that. It's the developers refusing to get their head out of their ass and give the job some proper, substantial buffs.

Like, if you want to make the argument that party utility is underappreciated by the playerbase outside of res, sure, I'll accept that. But you haven't actually made any sort of case for why we should ignore party utility. Have you ever actually progged an on patch ultimate? Or at least something where mitigation actually matters?

EDIT: And to make things 100% clear, I don't consider raid buffs utility. They're just damage in a different form. If PCT had no party heal and Tempera was self-only, then sure, balance it to be competitive with BLM.

[Supersnow845]

You keep asserting that if selfish DPS jobs aren't top DPS then they're "functionally useless". Why do people keep making excuses for bad balance?

Yes, they should be on top, and I'm tired of pretending that shouldn't be the case. Like if BLM loses to PCT by 1-2% I'll state that balance isn't ideal, but I'll still play the job - also because that would mean a 95 percentile BLM would be better than a 90 percentile PCT.

And the problem with MCH isn't some fundamental issue with selfish DPS or anything like that. It's the developers refusing to get their head out of their ass and give the job some proper, substantial buffs.

Like, if you want to make the argument that party utility is underappreciated by the playerbase outside of res, sure, I'll accept that. But you haven't actually made any sort of case for why we should ignore party utility. Have you ever actually progged an on patch ultimate? Or at least something where mitigation actually matters?

EDIT: And to make things 100% clear, I don't consider raid buffs utility. They're just damage in a different form. If PCT had no party heal and Tempera was self-only, then sure, balance it to be competitive with BLM.

“Why do people keep making excuses for bad balance”

Because the idea that selfish DPS have to always be first because if they aren’t first they are last to me IS THE BAD BALANCE PARADIGM

Selfish DPS being required to be first is why BLM consistently ends up bad, because it offers NOTHING if it doesn’t do the most damage, which is just toxic design both to itself when it’s not first and to the other jobs when they aren’t allowed to be first ever because otherwise the selfish jobs whine

Do you not see the problem of having 21 jobs and only 3 of them are allowed to be first because they offer nothing else, that’s just garbage design and excessively restrictive

And in answer to your question about it I’ve progged an on patch ultimate I progged all three legacy ultimates on patch on SCH, so yes I’m intimately familiar with mitigation thank you and I know the advantage of DPS mitigation, it doesn’t affect my point

[Realfoxy]

“Why do people keep making excuses for bad balance”

Because the idea that selfish DPS have to always be first because if they aren’t first they are last to me IS THE BAD BALANCE PARADIGM

You're still not making an actual argument here, it just sounds like you have some vendetta against SAM/MCH/BLM.

And since you aren't making an argument, I'll make it for you. I guess you could say that adding utility to selfish jobs would give you more leeway in job choice, because the value of utility would be incomparable between jobs, which means that you could pick one over the other in certain situations for utility rather than damage reasons, lessening the need to balance their DPS as closely.

To which I would counter with two things:

1. The devs should buck up and actually do their damn jobs balancing DPS output

2. It would be a shame to lose the identity associated with selfish DPS jobs. SAM is a loner with a sword. I'd argue it's quite key to the class identity that they stand alone and launch hard hitting high damage attacks. Same goes for Black Mage. A master of the arcane arts, studying in isolation to perfect magic with pure, destructive power associated with the downfall of a civilization.

I won't rehash the job identity / homogenisation discourse again. I'm sure you could come up with some utility themed for SAM/BLM that would fit with them. I just don't think it's worth the loss in job identity compared to jobs that are themed to be more supportive.

EDIT: You'll notice I omitted MCH here. Its job identity is a little less clear since it's kind of a blend between 'lone sniper' and 'master of gadgetry'. I'll let the MCH mains decide whether they want to be supportive or selfish.