(01-11-2014, 09:00 PM)synaesthetic Wrote: Maybe I'm just so damn good at dodging and most of the melee I've played with sucks at it? Because short of a few people that I know who are really damn good at monk and dragoon, I see lots of monks and dragoons getting flattened.
There are a lot of unskilled players in this game. Â There are also a lot of lazy players in this game. Â Simply because you see a lot of people getting themselves killed doesn't mean they were a) playing appropriately or b) unfairly hampered because of their role within a raid.
Quote:Seems pretty unlikely, because I'm almost certain that if I stopped playing black mage and started playing monk or dragoon, I'd be right there with those people getting flattened.
As in anything else, it takes practice and raid awareness. Â If you can dodge as a Black Mage, you can dodge as a Dragoon.
Quote:On a training dummy, melee should absolutely do more raw DPS than ranged. In an actual encounter, they should be almost exactly the same if all played well and correctly, because melee, despite having higher DPS, will have far lower uptime than ranged.
This is not true. Â In most fights, Melee should have as high if not higher uptime than Ranged simply because they never have to stop. Â Ranged (with the exception of Bard) are constrained by the fact that when they move, they cannot cast anything other than instant spells. Â Melee can continue mashing away at buttons as they move, and the mark of a competent melee player is that they keep DPSing away even while dodging (something that ranged should also be doing as much as possible, I might add).
Quote:That's the "risk" I'm talking about. If your average uptime is lower on actual encounters then your average snapshot DPS should be higher to compensate.
That isn't risk. Â That's compensating for bad play.
Quote:The end result is that everyone does around the same when you take an average across the entire fight (unless the encounter requires some damage dealers to intentionally lower their DPS to deal with mechanics, such as monks using Arm of the Destroyer to keep mini-ADS from using High Voltage).
Except that those players who are actually playing properly are going to be head and shoulders above the ranged because they're actually DPSing correctly.
Quote:Uptime can be shortened by being forced to dodge, or by being flattened by an angry monster and then having to be raised and deal with reduced attributes for 90 seconds.
Moving out of the red lines shouldn't reduce uptime unless it's an AoE in a circle around the boss. Â With that said, Ranged have to dodge, too. Â And Ranged can't keep pew pewing the boss except with instant spells - something I would think a BLM would be very, very aware of, as BLM is shit on any fight with a high degree of movement.
Interestingly enough, Melee are not shit on high movement fights, but I digress.
If a Melee is dying to something, that's poor play on their part if the damage is avoidable. Â If they're dying to unavoidable damage, then their healers need a stern talkign to. Tuning a class around the idea that they're going to be a smear on the floor a certain percentage of the time is, quite frankly, stupid as all hell.
Quote:This is why a raw DPS hierarchy needs to exist. It has to. When you're doing theorycrafting on a training dummy and ranged is beating melee, what do you think is going to happen in a real raid encounter?
A training dummy is never anything like an actual encounter. Â Theorycrafting can't be based around a training dummy (except for basic things like "how much damage does this spell do," "how long is this cast time," "Does Spell Speed lower my cast time at this amount, or at this amount?").
Quote:The hierarchy is based on risk of loss of uptime, whether that loss comes from being squashed by a mob or by avoiding an attack. As a result, the DPS hierarchy should be a scale from "highest DPS, lowest uptime %" to "lowest DPS, highest uptime %."
I've never played in a game where this was the case. Â Again, if the developers are creating multiple encounters where Melee are at a severe disadvantage as compared to ranged, that is encounter design failure. Â This is not a good thing - and you shouldn't tune classes around shitty encounter design.
Quote:So we should see MNK > DRG > BLM > SMN > BRD on training dummies. I think Square is heading in that direction. These latest changes got us a lot closer, by nerfing bard and summoner, both of whom were doing more damage than they should for their uptime, and by buffing monk and dragoon, who were doing less damage than they should for their uptime.
I pray to the gods of gaming that you are incorrect and SE isn't basing their class design on target dummies, because that would be a failure of truly epic proportions.
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