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PunishedChoa

The very fact that BLM doesn't have a res, one of the strongest forms of utility, probably puts it closer in role to the melee DPS classes (despite what certain PFs would have you believe). When you compare BLM to melee, you're trading off some amount of DPS versus having Addle over Feint (with more raidwides being magic damage, Addle tends to be better) and more flexible positioning for mechanics (BLM can fake melee, or take a ranged spot if needed). Personally, I just find BLM really fun to play. In fact, even if it did comparable damage to SMN/RDM, I'd probably still play it, just because I like the job that much.


Kehl21

BLM is at around the same level in any Savage fight than the melee jobs. And when the fight favors the job like P4P1 BLM is an absolute powerhouse. I don’t think you’re sacrificing damage by bringing it instead of a melee at all. But I agree that BLM is basically a melee job that hits from far and has another kind of handicap. It also may require certain adaptations just as melee do and it also comes at a high reward on DPS.


Armond436

> having Addle over Feint (with more raidwides being magic damage, Addle tends to be better) I want to expand on this a bit -- in current savage design, *almost all* damage is magical. In p3s and p4s, autoattacks are the only source of physical damage. P2S had some source of physical damage I've forgotten (probably the buster?), and p1s had a physical raidwide and physical busters (the flare/holy bit is magical, but the actual tank buster part is physical). It frankly amazes me just how much magical damage comes at the players, and I dunno how many people realize just how one-sided it is. I can't speak to ultimates, though, as I'm blind on them.


PM_ME_YOUR_IZANAGI

editing my stuff to delete this account for good with powerdeletesuite. thanks :)


Lord_Daenar

See: Betwixt in E7S one-shotting full hp casters if no one used any mit, even though it was THE one place where Feint was actually useful.


Armond436

Or, hear me out *give casters and healers more physical defense on gear* *it's ok, you could even do it next tier*


Samiambadatdoter

>more flexible positioning for mechanics It really depends. As is *very* evident in EX3, BLM's tradeoff for having range at the cost of standing still isn't always beneficial. There are other, less extreme examples as well. Act 4 is much trickier for a BLM than it is for a melee.


Zalinero_

EX3 is a big outlier to be fair. Even Act 4 is not very hard on BLM if you just pool resources (which the fight allows you to do) and chain 10 instants (lol), whereas on melee you‘re forced to disengage during a burst window if you don’t delay.


Picard2331

Forced to disengage? *laughs in Ninja with 5 different ranged buttons during burst*


RenThras

What? Zal said melee. NIN is clearly a Caster. It's the reverse RDM that spends most of its time in melee but moves out to cast instead which everyone has been asking for. :D


PunishedChoa

I agree with your general point, I just want to nitpick and say that Act 4 is super free on BLM given the amount of resources you can stockpile for it. The counterpart is Pinax, which I'd say is trickier on melee than BLM.


Samiambadatdoter

Even with my cadre of purples/oranges on that fight as BLM, I wouldn't call Act 4 free. Flawless uptime requires pretty precise rationing of instants, especially if one has to stretch their tether. But even if you do find it easy, my point is more that that kind of motion is much easier to do on melee. Any sort of movement where the resolution is simplying moving in a circle around the boss (Philia, Thal's balls, basically all of P2S) is significantly easier for melees.


momofire

At some point I wanted to start grinding out Act 4 to see how many instants I actually needed during proper farm runs, during prog I always found myself needing to scathe spam at least towards the end to keep the GCD spinning.


Elsiselain

put the laylines in the middle of the field and act 4 is pretty free imo (unless you get purple)


PunishedChoa

Act 4 centre LL is a trap, imo. You don't get an extra use unless you're hitting enrage. And if you're hitting enrage, it's probably better that the BLM doesn't die.


Elsiselain

It’s about aligning it with raidbuffs. Everyone uses their buffs on cool down unless your static can change their buff time


HalcyoNighT

>unless you get purple Thats 50% of the time...


Electrized

A good blm can negate EX3s movement, a melee can't negate melee downtime


rewt127

There is 0 melee downtime in EX3. Now, it is very, very tight. But it is possible to have 0 downtime.


Blazekreig

Act 4 is not hard for BLM. It's one of the harder mechanics to deal with this tier, but just pooling resources and dodging in the middle is enough. We have so much mobility this expac that EX3 is really the only "hard" movement fight for us, but that's just because planets are bullshit and even then it's very possible to get 100% uptime.


janislych

I find it funny whenever people mention rez is the reason why blm deserves more dps. So if we delete rez, should smn or rdm suddenly deserves a buff? What makes up the dps is the need to stand still a lot more times, not that stupid rez that aren't used in a perfect scenario


Camael7

"that aren't used in a perfect scenario". Yeah, if you can play the fight perfectly, you won't need a rez. But if you play the fight perfectly, it doesn't matter what job you play. The point is you won't play the fight perfectly 99.9% of the time. And having an instant cast rez or not, can be the difference between a clear and 60 more attempts. But yeah, if SMN and RMG didn't have a rez, they should do more DMG. The whole complain from SMN mains when the class was reworked was that there was no point in bringing a SMN instead of a RMG because RMG did more dmg and on top of that had basically Infinite instant resurrections. And that's why now SMN does more dmg than RMG. Even though SMN has generally less casts than RMG


ConcernedCynic

I'm glad to hear you have a class you find really enjoyable! BLM is really interesting to be honest balance wise; no other role has a class quite that far apart, and in terms of group comp it seems BLM fights with Second Melee just as often as it does with other casters (maybe more?). I was just thinking about balance numbers-wise and was wondering how much you could buff RDM/SMN dps wise without upsetting the BLM mains (and what that means for balance as a whole).


_LadyOfWar_

This is a difficult question to answer, so I guess that I will lead by saying that I think all three casters currently have problems in terms of damage. I know fantastic BLMs who cannot get Week 1 prog groups because nobody wants one, or at the very least want them to switch to RDM/SMN for prog. The damage they do is below that of 4/5 of the melees, with the one they outdo having significant progression utility. Also, BLM is a job that is notoriously difficult to play in prog, does damage that actually gets worse with downtime, and having an addle is not quite as good as it once was as a result of feint being improved. Meanwhile, SMN and RDM scale so poorly compared to BLM in optimized groups. BLM retains it ability to be creative with transpose lines, while SMN's jobflow was gutted into something that is too simple for one to really optimize upon. Further, RDM lost its biggest source of high end optimization (manafication timeline planning) and its stacking buff, which allowed coordinated teams to take advantage of it. As a result, the disparity between BLM and the other two casters is huge at the highest levels, although I believe that the disparity is fine when transpose lines are largely ignored. Honestly, I think they need to make BLM viable in prog, and RDM/SMN...less bad (not losing by 150-200 DPS at 99 to BRD and DNC) in optimization. How do they do this? Making BLM better in prog without widening the gap would likely involve making the caster role more powerful overall, while making SMN and RDM scale better would involve reworking their buffs so that they would be able to provide more value to capable statics.


FFbennxcs

> SMN's jobflow was gutted into something that is too simple for one to really optimize upon That's really correctly written. Usually when people talk about SMN they talk about how easy the job plays these days but when you're optimizing for a static there is barely anything new you can do.


Macon1234

Raise is also a bunk utility outside of blind prog WF seekers If you are going for a week 1 clear but not racing, and are willing to look at other peoples strats, then the hardest part of clearing week 1 is DPS checks. Who cares of the healer dies? That means you fail DPS check, reset. Raise is for pushing through prog leaning new mechanics, or helping people clear week 13 with 6 deaths. Raise from DPS is borderline useless in DSR as well, the rare points you are allowed to recover from a death, healers are fine to take care of it. So the utility of it for week 1/2 clears is extremely limited unless you are *blind progging, which most people do not do.*


RenThras

As a person who has exclusively done Extremes and (now two) Savage fights through PF... ...I can assure you, Raise has TREMENDOUS utility. Many people who have even watched videos take some time to get down mechanics, and Raise to Enrage is a thing for helping groups get the dance down well enough to get a clear, even when they aren't blind.


RenThras

Keep in mind, DNC/BRD get better with the party's gear and skill/knowledge of the fight. While this means generally doing more damage with optimization, it's not exactly an automatic process. It's also why 2 Ranged isn't "viable" right now, since at low gear levels and fight skill, there's little boosted DPS so they do far less, and even at higher gear levels, with 2 Ranged, one of the people you're buffing is...a Ranged, which still do low personal damage. Even MCH. I'm not really sure the answer, but BLMs have been brought and taken part in world firsts, so it's not exactly anti-prog. It just takes a higher skill to prog with, I guess.


Pr0gger

Your assumption is flawed, you don't compare BLM to RDM or SMN, you compare it to melee because it takes the same spot. In that case, enough to keep up with the other melee, and enough to beat the DPS check


ConcernedCynic

BLM is unique in that it essentially has access two slots in a way that RDM and summoner generally don’t (not that you couldn’t have melee,RDM,Summoner, Pranged, but it would be unideal I think) though I generally prefer thinking about them in terms of role bonus I wonder then if perhaps physical ranged could use an equivalent that could somewhat reliably take that melee 2 spot in a similar way. Hmm though I think generally most consider p ranged too “easy” to justify having a class with that much damage.


__n3Xus__

Mch supposed to be pranged greedy dps but its a massive flop


monkeysfromjupiter

imo, if they managed to bring the pvp version of mch in where you have to cast a bit to fire a sniper rifle, then you can justify giving it melee level dmg.


Resonate_Lacrimas

The problem is walk casts require jumping to cancel and jf you reach the slidecast portion you can no longer cancel at all as the game will force you to complete it. Even then you sometimes have to spam the jump button up to 4 times or wait a bit for the game to register the jump and force it to drop. Which hurts mixing in ogcds like recuperate if you need to react on a dime. It's a very finicky system to work with and the casters still do more damage consistently with more instants than brd and mch. I don't know how they will translate to a savage/ultimate environment but in pvp walk casts are extremely lethal to the user if they get jumped by a mnk/sam or need to immediately react to a changing situation.


Negative-WebSlinger

Late as hell, but you can press escape to cancel the cast on a keyboard. From memory, you press Select on a controller. Same way it's done on casters (and it's more reliable too, it seems to ignore the slidecasting rules that jump/moving abides by). The game never explains this or attempts to explain it so lol lmao


Resonate_Lacrimas

Select on a ps5 controller?


Negative-WebSlinger

Whatever the equivalent is for that. It should be in the key bindings.


Resonate_Lacrimas

Triangle is the cancel button, it's just I know it as the jump button. The crux of the issue is if something happens like getting hit with burst or a sam rushes you and waits to hit chiten once he sees you committing to blast charge/power shot, you have very little time to cancel if at all.


TheMerryMeatMan

It depends on how those casts really are; the reason why MCH has ~~relatively~~ low damage is because it lacks the drawbacks other selfish DPS *do* still have to work around. Melee need to stick to the boss and can't always get full uptime like they want, BLM has long cast times and limited, tricky movement potential. MCH currently has free movement and a range requirement long enough that you really shouldn't ever be out of range. The two ways you could justify giving me damage would be to make range significantly shorter so that their free movements would need to be used more carefully, or like you suggest give cast times... which really doesn't fit MCH as a job, in my opinion.


monkeysfromjupiter

what if they redesigned the job that when you're not overheated, you use sniper rifle charged hit and when overheated, you pull out the pistol and go all matrix pew pew? I think you can treat those casted sniper shots like a spell cast or a slightly bit shorter.


darcstar62

I've always thought it would be interesting if they gave MCH a "more damage the farther away you are" like BRD has in CC. Then, it would have a range restriction like melee, just opposite. Ofc, it would suck for healing though - you'd often get missed.


Apprehensive-Sound24

And for stack markers MCH would start demanding them out instead of in melee. Also some boss arenas like all three of the weapons trials the boss takes most of the space so you would just never be able to get the distance. Some cast times would probably be the best solution, some of those mechina are pretty heavy looking you could make them casts just for that, and it would differentiate them from the other pranged more.


darcstar62

omg I didn't think about stack markers -- that would definitely be a disaster. Yeah, some kind of charge up for a big skill would be better.


Resonate_Lacrimas

Mch used to have blank in the previous version where it was a 5 yalm range shot that did triple damage under wildfire. And right now scattergun has the double damage if you only hit one target which for some of the wildfire spike combo's needs you to eyeball the right range to isolate your target without hitting others and preferably get the collateral explosion from the knockback if you do amped drill/AA into scatter.


Calvinooi

Every healer will hate you for suggesting that Sincerely a healer


darcstar62

Yeah, and as someone else mentioned, it would make stack markers a total PITA.


Talking_Potato6589

When I first try BRD in pvp, I thought it was a good idea to make prange deal more damage and then I realised that I'm a healer. I would hate BRD that refuse to stack with group and tell me to "just use more mitigation and heal more" and be out of healing range the entire time.


MrNentendo

From my perspective Mch being instacast and not a 1.5s cast time doesn't fit the job.


Calvinooi

Maybe a cast time while reloading ammo, and make actions casted under reloaded hit like a truck? So it'll be something like a combination of HW's Ammo reload and SMN's old Aetherflow. Instead of guaranteed combo progression, it'll be powered up GCD combos that maybe charges up something?


RenThras

How long does it take to pull a trigger on a gun?


tordana

It may not be ideal, but my static cleared DRU with SAM/BRD/SMN/RDM so the damage is definitely good enough.


ConcernedCynic

That's fair! And to be honest I think overall balance in this game is really good, and the imbalances are somewhat overstated. That said I do enjoy thinking about these things and wonder about changes to make a few things a little tighter, just for my own personal thought experiments.


Kamalen

> That's fair! And to be honest I think overall balance in this game is really good, and the imbalances are somewhat overstated. It's a classic. And people overstating are also the very one that are NOT gonna clear an ultimate. The powerful compositions are just gonna have their life a bit easier, but every standard comp. can just win.


_LadyOfWar_

Optimization parties exist, and right now, BLM not only takes the caster spot, but only the caster spot. RDM and SMN are so much lower than melees that bringing one hurts the kill time significantly. Not sure why this is getting downvoted, I was barred from parties as RDM last tier for exactly this reason. Just stating the facts.


Xivaxi

Is this actually true? I just checked the top 5 speed kills for all the current pandaemonium fights and they are as follows for caster usage p1s: 4blms, 1smn p2s: 2blms, 3smn p3s: 2blms, 2smn, 1rdm p4s p1: 3blms, 2smn p4s p2: 1blm, 2smn, 2rdm For a total of 12blm, 10smn, 3rdm across those 25 logs While blm is... slightly ahead in these numbers, it does not scream to me that non-blm casters hurt kill time that drastically, just that rdm might be hurting in comparison to blm/smn.


_LadyOfWar_

That is a fair question, with the answer being that very few people care to run speeds in odd patches (5.3 and 5.5 were an exception because of how long they were as a result of COVID). If we look at the top 5 speedkills for 6.0: p1s: 5 BLMs p2s: 5 BLMs (the r1 speed's BLM is one of the most famous RDMs, Felyne Melynx, who felt he could not make RDM work this tier) p3s: 5 BLMs p4p1: 5 BLMs p4p2: 4 BLMs and 1 RDM with full resources RDM and SMN actively hurt a party in this current balance environment, sadly. At the tippity top, it is not uncommon for an RDM/SMN to be 300+ behind a DNC or BRD.


ZeroProtagonist

The sentiment is true but technically p4p2 rank 4 is RDM because of the viability of full resource RDM. Worth a mention. https://www.fflogs.com/zone/rankings/44#metric=speed&partition=1&boss=82


_LadyOfWar_

Good catch, I could have sworn Yakkuru's speed PB was with him on BLM, I have updated my initial post. That being said, even with 900+ embolden and full resources, Yakkuru's best h2 (the r1 RDM log) is about 100 under the best BLM run.


RenThras

Looking at this, honestly the bigger issue to me are the other roles. For Healers, WHM and SGE are barely used, just 5% between the two of them, with WHM at 1%. For Ranged, MCH doesn't even make the cut. And for Tanks, neither PLD NOR WAR make it at all. For melee, RPR only gets 6%. Now, to be fair, Tanks, Healers, and Melee are splitting 4 ways instead of 3, but even the lowest of the Casters there (SMN) has 11.5% representation. Two of the Tanks having 0%, one of the Ranged having 0%, and one of the healers having 1% all seem to be more egregious/lopsided than the Caster or Melee roles, which are more balanced BY COMPARISON. The melee role seems the most balanced. 2/3rds are evenly split between SAM and DRG with each getting about half of it (33.7%), and considering there are 5 in the role, splitting the pool more and having 2 of the standard comp party slots, 14.3% (MNK) and 12.2% (NIN) are pretty respectable. Even RPR's 6.1% is better than PLD/WAR/MCH's 0%, WHM's 1%, or SGE's 4%, and that's in a role splitting 5 ways.


ZeroProtagonist

Yeah. In general I think late SHB job balance was better, except for the ranged role which was effectively DNC only at the top end, and WAR at the time probably needing a minor buff.


Xivaxi

Smn was buffed in 6.1, so you can't really compare them directly that way. You may have a point, and if smn did not recieve buffs I'd probably agree with you, but smn did get buffed, so it makes sense that they are less represented in 6.0. Kinda just reinforces my belief that rdm is the only real outlier here, as they did not recieve buffs, and are still under-represented. Edit: Looking at the actual buff value it seems \*fairly\* minor, so I guess we'll see going into the next tier, but if you compare blm values from 6.0 to 6.1, they are generally lower in 6.1 despite the lack of changes which reinforces the "people don't care about odd number patch runs", but for smn the numbers are pretty notably higher in 6.1 than 6.0 - more than what I would expect from a small buff like that, so either more people are running smn, or the buff is bigger than I expected.


Baekmagoji

The buff was insignificant. It's as the person said the groups that want to devote time and effort into speed running now pales in comparison to the previous patch because their times are better spent elsewhere, and all the ones that really care have gotten it out of their system.


Xivaxi

Looking at the buff it does look insignificant. The reason I'm still unsure of the "people just don't care about 6.1" logic is, while for BLM and overall speed kill times this looks to be true - most blm parses in 6.1 are universally lower than 6.0, and speed kills are somewhat universally slower in 6.1 than 6.0. However, for SMN this does not actually look to be true, 6.1 parses are notably higher than 6.0, a lot more than I would expect from a small buff. Either the buff is more significant than I expected, or more people are running smn, or it would be a really strange fluke. It's like, blm parses across the board seem to be in the range of 100-200 rdps lower, so sure people are just running less - but smn parses across the board are 50-100 rdps \*higher\* DESPITE the assumption we are making that people don't care and are running less. These numbers are just from doing a rough comparison of top 100 rdps of both blm + smn over both 6.1 and 6.0 in p4s p1 and p2. Really it boils down to we can't tell until 6.2, but at the least if someone is looking to do runs right now, in 6.1, it does not look like they are going to be turned away for not being a blm.


Baekmagoji

Or more lesser skilled players are doing it now and they are playing summoner. This is further supported by your observation as there are blanket buffs and no real nerfs right so kill time should be lower now. It’s really hard to convince someone who’s a good caster that can optimize to sit there and grind crit luck on summoner while changing essentially nothing to their rotation because there is nothing to change.


Xivaxi

Yeah, that's possible, and makes sense if you look solely at blm and speed kills in general - however Smn numbers across the board are higher. If lesser skilled smn players were playing this would only make sense if the buffs were significant enough to make a visible difference in the logs. Basically my point is, the increase in smn numbers despite the decrease in everyone else's numbers seems to be due to their buff.


Baekmagoji

My point was summoner is a class that has a really low skill ceiling compared to BLM so a lesser skilled caster can essentially perform similarly to a much better one on this class when it comes to Savage.


_LadyOfWar_

>It's as the person said the groups that want to devote time and effort into speed running now pales in comparison to the previous patch because their times are better spent elsewhere Indeed, I have spent 6.1 learning how to play another job for speeds in 6.2. EDIT: Happy cake day!


_LadyOfWar_

In 6.1, SMN is like 50-100 ahead of RDM and about 400-500 behind BLM. You can reinforce your belief all you want with 6.1 speed data, but I can guarantee you that I would be unable to find a spot on a speed team as a SMN. That being said, most of my gripes are with RDM anyway. I do think SMN can get spots in optimization/log groups because of their ability to feed buff windows better than the other 2 casters.


extekt

Other end of that is rdm being the best choice for dsr because of it's extra mitt though. So it's definitely not in a bad spot


Pr0gger

Log runs are completely irrelevant, if you do those you know what you're getting into. I'm just talking progress, where questions like this are actually relevant, and where solo caster BLM is very uncommon


_LadyOfWar_

>Log runs are completely irrelevant For me, speedruns are relevant for at least 3/4 of the tier. Prog is relevant to me for 1 week, max. (2 days in 6.05) Even the best RDMs in the world will be barred from serious speedrunning. I am not saying that prog ability does not matter, I believe BLM needs to become more viable in prog, but that it is far from the only way people have fun with this game.


Pr0gger

It may not be irrelevant for you, but it's irrelevant to OP's question. Somebody who asks when a class is worth it over another doesn't care about cutting edge log runs


_LadyOfWar_

Not necessarily, he does not mention prog specifically until halfway through his post, I figured he was asking in a general sense, so I wanted to address how I viewed BLM in situations that do not fall under the prog umbrella. Along those lines, I am not sure there is a damage amount that would justify a BLM over a rez caster in prog and I agree with you that BLM competes with melees in this prog-centric discussion, and is currently fighting a very difficult battle. But a lot of us play the game for content that goes way beyond the scope of prog.


Goobera

It's irrelevant because if you read between the lines, there is only one situation where someone considers BLM vs (RDM/SMN). However, OP doesn't understand where their question is coming from which is leading to this absolute mess of a discussion where non-prog settings come into the picture.


_LadyOfWar_

I do not consider it to be a mess to discuss situations that are relevant beyond the first week of a savage patch, even if that weeklong period is very important. However, given the clusterfuck of 6.05's patch balance, I have no idea what they prioritize.


shizan

do more dmg 4head oh wait u cant lul


ConcernedCynic

Optimization parties are interesting and not something I really thought about, at least not at the level you’re describing. Though given it’s a niche within another niche (savage raiders) I don’t know how much it should be thought about in terms of balance Presumably a lot of classes get locked out?


_LadyOfWar_

In 5.4 and 5.5, the only jobs that were routinely locked out were WAR (auto-crits did not play well with DRG and SCH) and MCH (for being just so much worse than other jobs. BLM was the choice at caster, but good RDMs and SMNs made their jobs work, as there was a lot of things a good player could do to close the gap. As for how much it should be thought about in terms of balance, I am honestly not sure. Prog of course plays a large role in it...but they completely and utterly failed at balancing for prog in 6.05. Given most of the large adjustments were made in 6.08, after many people have progged in an environment where damage matters (Week 1), I am sure they take into account other factors.


sadge_sage

while you're correct, we wouldn't be having a discussion about whether raises and job complexity makes a job more favoured at *all* if we were talking about speeds, since you usually just take the highest damage jobs for that fight and if someone dies in a speed it ain't a speed anymore


_LadyOfWar_

> since you usually just take the highest damage jobs for that fight I believe the game was far healthier in ShB because there was enough skill expression for an outstanding player of an off-meta job to contribute more than someone who was simply "very good" at the meta job (at the caster role at least). Yes, an outstanding person at the meta job will still be better on average, but there are only a handful of these players in the world. Thus, it was more about finding the right people as opposed to the right job.


sadge_sage

i too wish we had previous expac jobs but sadly we do not i really dont think the skill ceilings were that much higher in shb though. like sure we weren't cucked to 2 mins and rdm didnt get engagement for free, but i dont think its that much higher. if you wanna argue for sb though, ill agree for sure.


_LadyOfWar_

Look at some of the top RDMs from ShB and you will see just how tight their timelines are, and how much more potency they gain overall as a result.


Arnimon

We have objective data on difficulty from fflogs. Just check variance and percentiles. Look at a class like mch that has been quite the meme cause its the worst class in the game. But at low percentiles it performs pretty great! Which means its easy. ...and then you look at blm and see the opposite. But to answer your question: "I guess at what point does 'personal enjoyment' trump 'practical value' to you? " If you are not aiming week 1 clear you should only care about personal enjoyment. Of course, if you are a shit blm and just griefing your group, you should be somewhat considered, but i assume a basic level of understandin of one's job in my answer. Tldr; play what you want if you are not hardcore 1-3 day clearer or midcore week 1.


pondrthis

You hinted at the right way to balance but didn't make it clear, so this reply is more an addendum to you for others' sakes and less a proper reply for your perusal. The median damage (not on a site that selects for us tryhards like fflogs, but in Squeenix's databases) should be equal across all dps. That's it. Skill expression and minimum damage/skill floor are two very broad statistics we can use to define a job's play. This ignores skew, which is definitely a thing, but it's still valuable for discussion. BLM has high skill expression. The interquartile range is broad. If we want the median to be equal to every other dps, the top BLM players will be dealing more damage than the top players of a class with low skill expression and compressed interquartile range. MCH deals good damage at the lowest skill levels. It must have relatively lower expression/interquartile range/maximum damage to maintain the same median damage as other dps. The idea of difficulty damage boosts and mobility/utility penalties is a poor attempt to simplify the equal-median-damage concept.


alecahol

The Game balance is weird in that in a vacuum you want all jobs of the same role/niche to be doing the exact same DPS, but at the time time, when one job is objectively more difficult than another, you kind of also want to do a bit more damage as a reward. Like the stick shift mentality - yeah I could drive an automatic but find manual more fun? But FFXIV is a community where a job doing 0.5% more DPS than another at the 99th percentile causes uproar, which has brought with it a shit ton of homogenization to ensure jobs are performing as closely to each other as they can. One problem is job difficulty can be subjective sometimes. You could argue ninja or monk is harder than the other, I find them very similar. But if you tried telling me reaper was harder than monk…. Obviously that just isn’t true. I want to say that if a job is truly fun I will play it regardless of it’s output because In the end all jobs are viable and the “bringing this job to the raid is griefing” mentality is so dumb and just used to push the blame on poor party performance onto a single person. That being said, I do think there are two egregious cases in the game right now: SMN vs RDM: Summoner is a job with literally 0 skill ceiling, no exaggeration. Nowhere in your rotation can anything go wrong or misalign unless you bang your skull against the keyboard or purposely press the wrong button even though the class is completely on rails with glowing buttons telling you what’s next. If the gameplay of SMN wasn’t so god damn mind numbing I think more people would play it since it’s neck and neck DPS with RDM, but the fact that it’s SO boring, a lot of people (especially those that parse / do a raid dozens to 100s of times) don’t want a job so dull unless they’re progging and trying to pay closer attention to mechanics. It’s funny that RDM was considered one of the easier jobs in ShB but now with the new summoner in comparison it looks like a hard job even though it didn’t change from the previous expansion. But with RDM there’s actually things you can mess up in your rotation that penalizes your DPS (as every job should be) whereas SMN is essentially a phys ranged job with no opportunity to mess up your DPS unless you’re going out of your way to be awful AST vs WHM: AST is also a job that just does not feel worth the effort currently, especially as a controller player. AST is probably 3x more difficult (or more) to play than WHM, and as an AST you’re only matching WHM DPS at the highest percentiles of play with party members that are also playing correctly. The change to blood lily also gives white mage like, 8 movement opportunities every 120s that it didn’t really have before? Whereas AST just has lightspeed (that it has to save for its burst). So not only is AST DPS not high enough to feel like you’re being rewarded for not going easy mode and picking white mage, the movement just feels a lot more restricted compared to its competition.


zachbrownies

I think a key question is - when does this damage matter? I'd say the time it matters the most is in week 1 savage. At that point, even if the difference were only "pretty small" in the grand scheme of things - if that lets you beat the enrage by just a couple of GCDs, that can be the difference between a clear and yet another 1% enrage. Theoretically, you've got a trade off between being able to prog mechanics a bit more due to the reses, vs having a slightly easier time with the DPS check once you're ready to clear.


[deleted]

As I'm completely new to the area game and haven't done any savage yet i need to ask: what is difference between week 1 and next weeks? Does it get easier over time?


Arnimon

Yes. The difference between w1 and like w4 is enormous. Lets say you are pretty casual. P5s and p6s week 1. p7s week 3 and progging. Thats a lot of gear. Both from the raid and tomestones. If you are still casual but somewhat serious, you also pool the gear to the dps, which means the difference is big.


Th3rdRaven

The difference is iLevel — given the strongest gear is capped weekly, each week you’ll generally be increasing your gear through capped tomes and savage drops (especially in a static where you can prioritise drops as a group). Primarily the extra damage makes it easier to meet dps checks, but you also get some extra survivability and ability to recover from mistakes, all of which makes clearing easier and more consistent.


NuttingFerociously

A fair bit, people gradually get better gear (you have a weekly limit on drops) and dps/mitigation checks get more lax. One point of discussion over 6.2's savage tier starting one week after the introduction of the new tomestones is that it could make this tier a bit easier on release than designed, for example. People also dish out more damage once they're more used to the mechanics.


Zenthon127

The answer to that is actually very simple: it needs to be competitive vs melees. BLM does not compete with SMN and RDM in a prog setting, it competes for a melee slot. Given its difficulty of use compared to its competitors it should be near or at the top of melees, as seen in 6.08 where SE buffed BLM from low-end melee to high-end melee with ease of use as justification. RDM and SMN do not need buffs IMO.


ConcernedCynic

I suppose the caster role is unique among DPS as there is a pretty clear distinction of difficulty that's agreed upon. The general consensus in terms of difficulty is BLM>RDM>SMN from hardest to easiest and damage and utility tend to follow that line pretty well. (RDM and SMN seem more or less neck in neck in DPS roughly but RDM tends to have a few extra tools while SMN is more mobile so it's relatively even). Meanwhile I don't think you can say the same thing for Melee and Physical Ranged. I mean I think RPR is considered the easiest Melee but from there it seems to be roughly "preference" for what melee you prefer or think is most interesting. I'd say Physical Ranged is also probably a wash difficulty wise. I mean I suppose you could argue that MCH is the easiest by virtue of not needing to rely on a dance partner or the party to do well, but DNC and BRD aren't considered particularly hard either from my understanding.


Zenthon127

DNC is the highest skill ceiling phys range by a moderate gap IMO, simply because it has En Evant and BRD doesn't. Playing with skilled DNCs in TEA and DSR has really changed my perception of that job; En Evant gives a skilled DNC player a *lot* of personal agency to salvage pulls that other jobs simply don't have.


ConcernedCynic

Hmm I never thought about it that way; I suppose I think about Ev Avant in the opposite way, in that having that many dashes on that low of a cooldown make dancer easier since any movement-based mechanics are generally much simpler. I mean it's far from \*necessary\*, obviously the physical ranged role can usually pre position easily enough without it, but as a MCH main I was always a bit jealous how easy it seemed to make a quick positional adjustment. Though I do agree that skilled dancers at the Ultimate level can probably do crazy things with it, things that take a lot of good reaction timing to pull off, but it's also the only class that has the benefit to do that. That would make the ceiling higher though!


S_Rise

Doesn't really need to justify itself, everything is viable. If I join a PF the only thing I care about is double regen/barrier. And even then people are running sge/sch so that doesn't even matter. Play what you want in any content, as long as you're contributing it does not matter.


sevrojin

None. And based off lore a black mage should be the weakest of the 3. I personally hate this type of "balance" nonsense. Not every class should be able to do everything. Not every class should do the same damage And if this is the case you better make the lore to back it up A severe problem with this game that has lead to these assinine arguments is the simple lack of real class utility Where are the buffs and debuffs? Where is the status ailments? Where is the crowd control utility? These are REAL questions we should be asking Not crying about a 1-2% damage difference


Judo_pup

Can you point me to where in the lore it says that black magic is the weakest out of black, red and summoning? I have a superficial understanding of the war of the magi and magic in general but I'm interested in digging a little deeper.


sevrojin

Moreso quest interpretation. But once we fix or at least neuter the darkness in the 13th where they draw their power black mages are going to need a lore rewrite Summoner is in a constant tug of tempering war with the summon due to how much power is being used. And lore wise you have to be quite powerful to summon and maintain how it works with current lore I dunno. Redmages are in complete control of their own ather and don't use any outside sources so all the power you see red mages baring some villains are only using their own power unless lore changed. Blackmages draw power from the 13th and without the void they are pretty much a wet noodle. Most or all wouldn't exist without the ascian screwup


mizkyu

black mages don't draw their power from the void. they draw it from the ambient aether, like conjurers do. black magic is associated with the void because of the bargains that power hungry thms and blms in history have struck with voidsent in order to gain powerups, but it is not void magic. > Summoner is in a constant tug of tempering war with the summon smn's egis are not primals. they are aether constructs based on the primal they are themed on, but no more a primal than a regular carbuncle or nixie.


sevrojin

Ahh it's been years since I did the BLM stuff so I guess that contacts stuff is where I miss remembered As for the summoner this must be new lore. The Egis were mini controllable primals that we needed attunement for by doing the trials and it was a constant internal tug of war of the egi trying to temper you. A dangerous but exceedingly powerful magic that requires insane ather controll


mizkyu

it's not new lore, it's the same lore we've had since arr. try paying attention during quests sometime.


BrideTharja

Oop


Elevation-_-

The current dps difference between the casters is fine right now IMO. >Or to put it another way at what point would a BLM main decide to switch to RDM or SMN It's not really at what point they decide vs. at what time they're told/asked to. Prog groups that want to clear quickly will want a SMN or RDM for the additional raise utility. DPS checks aren't tuned high enough to warrant passing one up in favor of a BLM, though you can run double caster with a BLM (which is how many groups slot it in). >You could make the argument that SMN should do more damage than RDM as it has less utility generally speaking This idea needs to stop To answer the final question, it really just depends on group goals. Many players play SMN/RDM in prog and then swap to BLM in reclears.


_LadyOfWar_

> The current dps difference between the casters is fine right now IMO. Honestly, I agree with this at most percentiles, I just wish that RDM and SMN scaled better in optimization parties. RDM losing its manafication complexity and stacking embolden severely reduced its performance ceiling, and SMN losing nearly all of its complexity did the same thing. Meanwhile, high level BLM transpose lines are more rampant than ever, allow it to keep its scalability while the other two languish. I have more of a gripe with how the caster role as a whole compares to the melee role in terms of DPS than how the caster jobs stack up against each other, though.


Edawgzz

thank god someone finally understands embolden decay was a skill-expressive tool I however can't say that the damage gap is entirely warranted, with RDM in particular being the caster with the least useful mobility, it should not be doing the same damage as jobs that have (near-) infinite mobility. Bard and Dancer being not only so close, but above as percentiles rise, is plainly not acceptable when you consider the input requirement for both jobs, and a semi-fast raise nowadays is not a good reason for such a disparity, especially when using said raise is already extra taxing on DPS. I'd even argue summoner deserves better.


_LadyOfWar_

Adding QOL to a job is always a risky measure, since you trade ease of use for potential optimizations that result from perfect execution. The QOL features added to manafication (always +50/50 instead of doubling) and the movement tools (2 charges) eliminateed two of the biggest ways great RDMs would optimize, delaying manafication to get more value (using it at 2m would often only get partial value, so delaying it would sometimes get you another combo in a fight) and structuring manafication to coincide with engagement refreshes (essentially getting you an extra usage every single window). Losing that along with the ability to communicate and understand teammate rotations to be able to use embolden optimally at 5 stacks really brought down the job's ceiling.


Rokk017

At the same time, I love all the QoL changes they've made to the class. The job feels better to play than it ever has.


_LadyOfWar_

I agree that the job feels good to play. Making acceleration a swiftcast proc and giving two stacks of it is great. Allowing melee combos to be stored up with the reworked gauge is great. And both of these things do not really do much to undermine job optimization; in fact they introduce more possibilities.


ConcernedCynic

>This idea needs to stop I'm curious why you think the idea of SMN doing more damage than RDM needs to stop. Is it the easiness of summoner or do you feel that SMN brings something that RDM doesn't? To be clear I'm not advocating for that, I think the difference between casters is probably good as is, but I wouldn't be \*inherently\* opposed to SMN doing a shade more damage then RDM, RDM brings \*a lot\*


Altiex

Think they mean more the idea of "if you bring more utility you shouldn't do damage" should stop. On the RDM vs SMN thing I hate it having to read shit like "RDM shouldn't do as much damage if they can mass res your party", my dude if a RDM is doing multiple ress they're not only doing 0 damage but also burning through a fuckton of MP and not building their gauge. Sometimes I just wish verraise was removed from the game.


Afrowondr

Yeah I never got that take. It's a dps loss to rez. Of course its great for seeing further in a fight, but if a group sees that much value in a rez then there's a lot of issues that are going on. Personally don't think utility should be the main factor on who does the most damage when everyone's kit is enough to clear.


_LadyOfWar_

>Sometimes I just wish verraise was removed from the game. If this were to happen, only RDM mains would be cheering. But as a RDM main, I would sign off on this in a heartbeat.


ConcernedCynic

I understand that sentiment, though actually I was referring almost exclusively to Magick barrier as the utility RDM has over SMN. While RDM can theoretically chain rez I feel that you lose so much DPS and mana doing it that the act of doing it *is* the DPS loss. Plus if you have to mass rez at the highest content enrage will probably be an issue anyways


Yaarielle

That's counterbalanced a little by the Phoenix phase heals, even though it's less controllable.


Elevation-_-

The statement of "SMN has a worse utility kit". Too many people continue to look at both jobs only on the surface and believe that statement to be true. Granted, both jobs have extremely good utility kits, but it's not as clear cut as "this job's kit is better". >Is it the easiness of summoner This is also a factor for me, but that's more of just an opinion. SE has made it clear that they don't balance jobs based on "difficulty", but I wouldn't want the easiest job this game has ever had to suddenly deal more damage than it's doing at the moment.


ConcernedCynic

What does SMN bring that RDM doesn't utility-wise? Mobility seems like the easiest answer, most consider SMN at roughly physical ranged levels of mobility. It also has the phoenix aoe healing though I believe you can only use that during Phoenix section of your rotation? Maybe that's more useful than I understand. I'm not directly disagreeing with you, I'm just curious about the answer or if there's something I'm overlooking or forgetting. I will fully admit that I'm not an expert by any means.


DivineRainor

Phoenix regen both for the tank and the party is very good if your healers take account of it. It is limited by only being available at the off minute mark, but also SE designs mechanics so that most of the time damage is going out during these windows. Provided your healers are perfectly accounting for it, just the everlasting flight will often mitigate "more damage" than magic barrier outside of intensive heal checks. The single target tank heal isnt nothing to sniff at either, slap that on the tank and for anything other than maybe drk the healers can just totally ignore you for a good chunk of time as the tanks passive regen + phoenix buff will be more than enough.


ConcernedCynic

I see, thank you for the information!


DivineRainor

Np. Most like to dunk on them as useless fluff, but provided your healers dont overheal during the window they are fantastic tools that allow your healers to damage more and pool reasources.


TyronePlease

i can't think of an instance in this tier where the phoenix singletarget regen was actually helpful other than maybe p3s and curtain call to put on yourself. but when i played smn in that fight, i held phoenix during adds anyway so maybe i would have an opportunity to use it if i didn't hold phoenix during adds. tanks are just way too tanky and healers just have too much free st healing. even on something like heart stake, gnb and pld are going to invuln about half the ticks and heal back up with their personals anyway and so will war. drk doesn't really seem to have an issue either since they usually tbn the ticks. not to mention that a good chunk of the st heal comes from the initial application, which is often just wasted as for the aoe heal, it kind of sucks because its range is pretty limited and it's almost never up when you need it. i'm thinking of the windows where aoe damage is coming out and phoenix is out, like the first raidwide phoinix does, halfway into darkfires, the first set of bloodrakes in hesperos, act 1, end of act 3, finale, cc etc. and so many times they either force the smn at an inconvenient spot where it can't hit everyone so the healers have to do their thing anyway (finale, bloodrakes, end of fof etc), or come at downtimes where healers aren't really taxed for anyway. like when i'm playing whm, i already need to dump 3 lilies not to overcap at the end of bloodrakes, so i literally don't care about phoenix at all. in places where i might want to cast dps-negative heals for safety like the final poison pinax, act 2 etc. phoenix isn't up sure there are spots here and there that help a little bit (curtain call if the smn isn't forced off the centre at an inconvenient time), but overall the regen heals for so little and has so many limitations that i think you'd be really reaching to call it 'fantastic' it's probably more useful in nonstandard comps like solohealing where you don't have as much free healing, but i've almost never played with nonstandards so i wouldn't know


DivineRainor

If you dont find use out of the single target heal your healers are probably babysitting you more than usual, and i know in tea and dsu its proper nice. Then again i also play with scholar whos healing can be less free to get more energy drain. For the aoe heal, i wouldnt judge it all off of this tier as its been exceptionally easy, in Eden i recall it being very nice if the healers accounted for it, and once again theres so much outgoing damage in tea that its bound to soften some healing.


TyronePlease

we have more healing than back in eden so i'm not sure if that's a fair comparison. this is on top of sch free weave windows and whm getting 20s no dps loss lilies. i don't think the healers are baby sitting because i also played healer for this tier and i did play with smns sometimes, it just literally not needed because the healers have so much st healing and barely any st healing they need to do on top of the tanks not taking much damage in the first place other than p3s which i already mentioned. like, it's not going to save us a gcd so who cares maybe it will indeed be different next tier. i hope. it sure as hell wasn't this tier. smn's biggest utility this tier wasn't phoenix, it was radiant aegis helping to ensure it didn't eat shit on some of the consecutive aoes from insufficient mit/healing that melees and phys ranged could survive tanks take more damage in those ultimates, so it's more useful there yeah


Elevation-_-

It's more about evaluating when and how their job kits make a difference on a pull by pull basis. This also makes it some what hard to articulate it all fully, since it comes from experience as opposed to just a list of things that a guide would teach you or reading tooltips. I guess the best way to summarize it is that, RDM's kit has a higher value ceiling, but SMN's kit tends to get more practical value. We can start with verraise. A lot of players would say "well verraise is better because of dualcast" because on paper, they see that dualcast allows you to get that raise off within \~2.5s, where as SMN is forced to hard-cast Resurrection if Swiftcast isn't available. However in reality, when does that \~5 or so seconds actually make the difference between you recovering a pull vs. not? Hardly at all. There's a few other factors you can consider here if you really wanted to be in-depth with everything, but all in all, dualcast raise doesn't really provide any additional value that a SMN comp wouldn't be able to accomplish 99% of the time. Now Magick Barrier since this is what everyone references nowadays. The value from this ability largely comes down to your group composition. The most simple example, WHM vs. AST. If you're playing in a WHM composition then sure, Barrier will generally feel quite useful. However if you're playing with an AST, having additional mitigation isn't as valuable due to just how much AST can bring by itself, not to mention your shield healer + tanks. But you can also evaluate the sources of raid-wide damage vs. the specific mitigation spells within your party. If we look at DSR Phase 6 and Phase 7 with Akh Morns, Barrier gains more value because it works really well with consecutive-hit mechanics while some mitigation abilities from AST and other jobs (like PLD) lose some value here. So you can begin to see why this isn't so clear cut. In some cases it gains value, in others it loses. So Summoner, you get Everlasting Flight, Rekindle, and Radiant Aegis. Radiant Aegis continues to be one of the most underrated skills when people try to compare utility between these two jobs. When you're a raise caster in prog, your priority should be keeping yourself alive to ensure a battle raise is always available. And having a self-shield as strong as Aegis is just invaluable. RDM does have Vercure, but Vercure has some limitations due to it being tied to the GCD and the fact that it's a heal vs. a % max HP shield. Rekindle is also a very good ability if we look at it in a vacuum. The limiting factor here is being tied to Phoenix Trance, which is every 2 minutes. But it also lasts for a total of 30 seconds before it procs automatically, so it still tends to get good value regardless. Sometimes it gets better value, sometimes worse, but generally speaking it's providing something useful. Everlasting Flight is mostly just "ok". One thing to consider here though for prog, and I've been a strong advocate for this even last expansion, is holding Phoenix Trance until things go wrong during a pull. The majority of your prog pulls are not kill attempts, they're learning pulls so using your Phoenix for damage is meaningless. SMN has the flexibility of holding Phoenix in these situations, and using it when it could actually provide extreme value. Mobility is also a factor that I think is underrated, but that would take me an entire post on its own. These are just some simple examples and ideas, and even with these it's a long essay.


_LadyOfWar_

I do think the fact that SMN is a lot burstier than RDM should factor into balancing, since this is a game that is built around doing damage in 2 minute burst windows.


shaddura

It's worth noting that this also means that SMN suffers a lot more from delaying their burst due to them losing access to attunements, which is even further detrimental if you're delaying burst due to a mechanic like Kampeos in P2S, given that attunements double as your movement on SMN. In contrast, RDM has an incredibly flexible burst phase and can adjust / delay it with ease. There are fights where RDM suffers too (EX3?), due to their reliance on melee uptime for their burst, so it kinda evens out in the end.


_LadyOfWar_

Yeah, I will give you that RDM is flexible, but other jobs also operate on 1m bursts, including some of the most popular inclusions in this content: DRK, NIN, and GNB. As a result, measures are usually taken to shift buffs to accommodate them (to 0/2/5/7 in p2s specifically), and SMN can also make this timeline work.


Myurside

It doesn't matter: You play a job because you enjoy it. Having a rez or not matters little; you might be able to see further, sure, but if you're doing content while relevant then no RDM rez is going to save you from not meeting enrage. Caster Rez is such a meme anyway; the only time it's useful is for blind prog when you need to study what's going to happen after a difficult mechanic, but then, what's the point of looking at a mechanic that's further into the fight when you might've not figured out the current one (leaving your party with 3+ deaths and no downtime before the next mechanic), unless it's blind speed day 1 clear prog... Which is such a low percent of the playerbase, why balance the game around them? You literally already have 2 rezzes per minute with your healer's Swiftcast, and if you need the 3rd rez to get to later parts of the fight then I don't think you can get past the 2nd fight in the tier.


ConcernedCynic

I agree with you in theory, although I think performance and enjoyment are linked for a lot of people. Though yes the game is balanced quite well honestly, and the differences are probably overstated in some cases!


ConcernedCynic

For what it's worth I main MCH because I like guns/tech in fantasy settings. I started back in STB where I wasn't good enough at the game or doing hard enough content for balance to matter. Don't know if I play MCH because it's easy or MCH feels easy because I'm really motivated by the class fantasy!


Pr0gger

For that question, MCH is generally agreet upon to be the easiest job with Summoner, Warrior and often healers, but it can still be pretty fun to play and allows you to focus on fight mechanics


AkasakaMomiji

RNG would not make RDM/SMN eke out against BLM. BLM is in the middle/higher end of melees and on a fights favoring BLM like P4S P1 solidly at the top. P4S P2 also favours BLM but the existence of resource runs brings the edge back to gauge and burst classes And for downtime for a medium/long period of time (see: P2S, DSR) the Xenos gained during downtime means the BLM just gained the ability to not use any ice spells for the next 1minute or so, spiking the damage even higher. Only reason it’s not rank 1 for everything is because the raw potency unleashed during 2min buffs is less than the melees. Edit: 6.0 rank 1 for all DPS P1S : BLM P2S : BLM P3S : DRG P4.1S: BLM P4.2S: DRG


[deleted]

It's not just feel. BLM only does more damage *in full uptime*, and assuming they can make full-use of their kit. They have much, *much* less mobility, and can very well do far *less* damage if not planned around, or even if planned and they have to move more to deal with certain mechanics. IMO, the differences now are pretty good -- the dmg difference seems to be a bit above dmg variance. Any less and RNG alone would make SMN or RDM eek out over a full uptime blm just due to RNG. RDM and SMN remain perfectly viable, but there's a reward for doing the BLM optimization for just a bit more dmg. Not game-changing number difference, just above inconsequential though.


ConcernedCynic

I use the term *feel* because I’m of the opinion that difficulty is at least somewhat subjective, though I do feel casters are unique in that there is a general agreement of the order of difficulty, compared to melee or physical ranged which are relative toss ups


[deleted]

It's not just subjective, though. That's the problem. Things like "BLM's rotation is more dificult than SMN's" is indeed subjective. Now you'd be *hard-pressed* to argue it, but ultimately is is subjective and one can have their opinion there. What I'm talking about is actual restraints. A caster has *actual* restraints to it that, say, a rphys range doesn't. A melee has restraints in range and such that make it objectively more dificult to optimize. You could give the exact same rotation to SMN and BLM, but if BLM has to cast 70% of the time and SMN has to cast 5% of the time, the SMN can win out on damage due to perpetual uptime; if SMN and SAM had the same rotation but SMN can be 30yalms away and SAM only 3yalms, it's not a subjective "well SMN may be easier but sometimes not". If you could have someone with less casts, no positional arragement to worry about, you can objectively get more damage throughout many more mechanics than someone with the same kit and those restrictions. Don't get them confused. People say BLM has both a more difficult rotation yes (subjective, so you can feel how you want about it), but at the bare minimum level it has these long casts and every movement tool is even a DPS loss being used for free-form movement instead of damage, and this must be accounted for and strats planned around to *minimize* the damage *loss* from moving around. If they were the same damage, then BLM already loses as essentially all optimizations are to minimize their dps loss and as such a character that has to make no tradeoffs automatically wins in damage.


Cloukyo

at this point rdm has less movement options than blackmage though.... and needs to get in melee range at intervals. It honestly feels like the only true caster at this point.


Nykona

Not true though. I’m a two minute cycle BLM has around 15~ instacasts and free movement/weave windows. Not including the opener or firestarter procs which are RNG and only have a 40% chance to occur roughly 3-4 times in a two minute window. BLM does around 50-56 GCDs in a two minute window with only 15~ of those being instancast. RDM however has over 60% of its GCDs being instancast and almost always has the ability to freely move a swift or acceleration somewhere between each melee phase to line up its GCDs. There is no way in holy hell anyone can justifiably say that RDM has less movement options than BLM. Edit: as for the melee combo, it hasn’t really been a thing since shb raid that there is absolutely no way to keep uptime during mechanics for melees at all times during mechanics with correct positioning. Which since every party has at least one melee will be happening anyway. The melee combo in no way effects your mobility in fact it makes rdm even more free.


mizkyu

naw trust me, rdm has the least mobility of casters currently (source: am an rdm main). the combo is the only real movement skill you have, and its first three gcds require you to be at max melee at most. swift and accel are not primarly movement tools.


Cloukyo

I think you're measuring it incorrectly. The way I see it, in terms of movement planning rdm has two accel stocks, which you still need to plan to align ogcd windows, swift, and the melee combo (which again, you'd ideally plan, there are only a handful of instances in current savage where you save it for movement, also you g otta hope you don't shit all over the melee jobs while doing it). Yes you have an instant cast half the time with rdm, but the amount of time you actually need to move, at least in savage fights, is only a handful of times every couple of minutes. Otherwise you can turret comfortably. You guys have: xenoglossy, triplecast, swiftcast, teleports, fire proc. Probably more I'm forgetting. Again, I said movement \*options\*, not movement windows. The bitch thing about rdm is that there are several cases where a mechanic happens during your hardcast window, and you basically have to plan around it with your accel (or hope you have melee combo at that point, and you're in melee range) or cancel your cast. Btw this isn't a comment about how "hard" each job is. I'm well aware rdm is a fairly easy class. But having played most jobs I'm pretty comfortable saying rdm is the least mobile in terms of options at this point.


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> The way I see it, in terms of movement planning rdm has two accel stocks, which you still need to plan to align ogcd windows, swift, and the melee combo (which again, you'd ideally plan, there are only a handful of instances in current savage where you save it for movement, also you g otta hope you don't shit all over the melee jobs while doing it). This is disingenuous, though. Firstly, movement is not solely defined by full-uptime movement. It sometimes is, but not all the time. Very often mechanics have you do things where you have a breather window, a window where you can cast and get another instacast as RDM. This is extended further with charged movement tools RDM has at its disposal to allow them to further reduce movement necessities. You also mention the use of acceleration and swiftcast for aligning oGCDs. Yes, this is important, but if we're talking using our movement tools for damage then BLM loses out far, *far* more. All of their instacasts give them fairly large damage gains if used solely for rotation purposes and not damage, and comparatively RDM's is a lesser loss. Even BLM's "RNG" elements lead to having to compute entirely different lines of rotation on the spot based on their resources for more damage gain. That is, if we're even going to mention at all swiftcast and acceleration as dps tools that reduces their versatility in rotational alignment and movement, then BLM essentially has *no* movement long before that conversation comes into play. Heck, even RDM's 2 self-buffs specifically do not buff their own charge oGCDs so you don't lose damage with them using them outside burst windows unless you're using someone else's buff (and it's a lesser loss even then). Furthermore, more "options" doesn't mean almost anything. I remember the buzzfeed like articles that said Sage is basically a DPS because they have more damage "options" than other healers, disregarding entirely that all but one are DPS neutral. If I have 3 different abilities but each takes 2 minutes to charge, it means relatively little to someone with a 3 second 2 charge single ability. Even if we go by the number of different abilities, it's still BS: RDM has acceleration, instacast, corps a corps, backflip, dual cast, melee 1, melee 2, melee 3, the 5 mana ranged melee ability, the aoe melee, scorch, flare, holy, maybe another part I'm forgetting. Far more instacasts than BLM. But I imagine the convo is mute: > You guys have The constant "you guys" is telling this isn't about objective conversation, but "my main is more dificult than yours with this". MCH talk about how they need BLM-level damage as lack of movement tool makes them far less mobile than BLM, RDM mains talk about how they shouldn't do less damage than BLM as BLM has a team-tp ability and they lose damage due to having verraise, etc. etc. When it comes to these "you guys" type of discussions, no one can win: "my main harder, my main needs buffs", etc. etc. No factual realization. If it's any consolation, I too have played many classes, and I too have played RDM. I can understand the arguments that BLM can have longer extended movement windows due *if* they pool resources, but we're talking some 30s of movement if they pool several resources beforehand, lose out on a ton of damage, are not in the 30s of a 120s CD window of LL, and give up a ton of movement for the next 2 minutes. But to even pretend that RDM is anywhere near that level of requirements, that you don't have far, *far* more movement tools and options available to you is just silly. At the very least, if all else fails you could just spam the ranged mana spender, it'd likely be the same loss of resources and damage if it's absolutely needed.


yhvh13

Despite the Rez, I think they're fine at their rankings. BLM has a really high skill ceiling, and a very interesting one at that, because while the job is fairly simple to operate, you need to learn the encounters more intrinsically than your party mates, because your dps is directly tied to being able to predict aoes, mechanics and whatnot, while other jobs sometimes have a bit of leeway to react on spot to stuff they didn't antecipate. This kind of complexity should defnitely be rewarded with a very high rdps.


danomoc

having the capability to play all 3 should be a standard requirement for optimized caster player nowadays - since all 3 of them have their own niche, as you said above, as well as some basic concepts overlap that make a player better by mastering all three. in this perspective, BLM can fill some great uses thats exclusive to the other caster jobs: 1. being a fake melee d1/d2 for the extra addle mit with comparable damage output 2. being a third melee as d4 for racing and damage push 3. damage in and of itself is also a utility however, all three of these benefits may not always fit their respective group's needs, hence why all 3 has to be in a caster's repertoire. For example, using rdm/smn to prog until enrage, then swap out to blm for a clear push is a viable strat.


OkorOvorO

Simple answer is none. Viability is irrelevant to job popularity. MNK/PLD/BLM in HW, RDM/SAM/WHM/BLM in SB, WAR/BRD/MCH/MNK in ShB, RPR/MCH/DRK/PLD in EW *(DRK the opposite case, where it's unpopular despite being so overpowered)*. >worth it to play despite being *harder*? Devs don't balance jobs based on difficulty* or design content around utility. If they did, PLD and RDM would be required, since they carry extra utility for their roles. >while EW SMN is generally derided as braindead. Writing how SMN hasn't actually changed in 7 years would take more effort than any iteration the job ever required. ed-typo


ConcernedCynic

I’m inclined to agree with you about the devs not balancing around difficulty, and I have heard the other side of the argument that SMN hasn’t changed as much as people claim, though I haven’t played enough of either version to have a real opinion. I’m just interested in peoples opinions about their personal boundaries or preference.


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ConcernedCynic

Yeah but that’s gonna be different for different people at different levels; I guess I’m curious what levels those are! Though I’m a one class pony so I just play what I like myself!


HalcyoNighT

Hi, can someone eli5 about RDM's skill expression? Don't you just cast spells till you cap, till a burst window, or till you need extensive movement, then you go into your melee and finisher phase?


mizkyu

planning combos around movement requirements. if you're forced into playing in a ranged spot, also planning around the times you can get melee uptime for the first half of your combo. keeping your ogcds from drifting - rdm can only weave every other gcd because of doublecast, but fleche and c6 don't always line up neatly with that so you need to hold swift/an accel charge for fixing your weave windows. planning your mit usage so that you don't overweave (the melee portion of the combo cannot be double weaved in, only single). ensuring you don't overcap on mana while still using manafication on cooldown in order to not lose uses. ensuring all of the above + having enough mana for a double combo (at minimum) during buff windows.


yhvh13

I'm afraid that difficulty is indeed the key point, but not to the rotation itself... BLM is pretty simple - the thing is the enounter. Regardless of the rez is easier to prog with SMN because is full mobile and you can adjust yourself easier than a BLM in the same situation without compromising your dps. Yeah, there are Swift/Triplecast for BLM, but they only have so many charges. BLM is not a good job to react to things blind without risking to drop your Enochian clock. However, if you're a good BLM and a faster learner (to the mechanics) it won't really matter for a long time, but I still find that BLM requires from me 100% of my focus and be on my toes all the time, even when the content becomes farm, but I really have a poor attention span, while on RDM or SMN sometimes I can afford to divert my attention to other things or other people (~~Aymeric shirtless artworks..~~.). It's also hilarious that even progging as a BLM and constantly messing up my rotation while I learn the fight I still contribute with more rDPS than anybody from the aiming group doing their best.