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Zyrusticae · **06-22-2015, 05:17 PM**

(06-22-2015, 05:10 PM)Natalie Mcbeef Wrote: If it doesn't, then so what?

I don't get the outrage. SMN spent all of 2.0 as the sub optimal magical dps after BLM got its buff. It's cool, people still played SMN, life went on.

Maybe MCH just isn't what you want it to be and that's ok. Either way we'll find out over the next few weeks.

The thing is, the difference in power between SMN and BLM in 2.x was still negligable overall.

It wasn't even close to the difference between BRD and any melee DPS job, let alone the difference between MCH and literally any other DPS job. Even DPSing healers can out-DPS us. Off-tanks can out-DPS us. We're so bloody terrible at our jobs that we're literally a wasted slot.

SMN vs BLM, hah! Those guys don't know true suffering.

(06-22-2015, 05:06 PM)Verad Wrote: You seem really upset about this. Don't worry, they'll probably fix it.

Yeah, I know they'll fix it. They haven't (notably) failed us in that regard thus far, at least.

I just don't like denial in the face of facts, or the implication that even the most skilled players have no idea what they're doing until weeks or even months down the line (as though the game were that complicated...).

I'm also quite annoyed because I was REALLY excited to play MCH, but seeing them in this state utterly destroys my motivation to level up the class (and since it was going to be my new main, well...). It's fortunate that there's no content that requires optimal play just yet, and there won't be any until 3.1 releases in July, but the rest of the time I get to run dungeons with the knowledge that my party members would be better off with literally any other DPS class taking my spot. I don't know about you, but that's hardly my idea of 'fun'.

Verad · **06-22-2015, 05:19 PM**

Do you feel ashamed for having chosen an at-present weaker class and a burden on your party, then? Is that the frustration?

Manari · **06-22-2015, 05:28 PM**

I sort of understand. I loved Bard until I finally decided to get serious in early 2.0 and downloaded a parser. I had equal or close gear ilvl and knew exactly how to DPS but I couldn't match or surpass anyone. Apparently that is "working as intended" for Bard because they can give mages some MP back slowly. (Which lowers their DPS even MORE) When I learned that, switched to Monk instead until NIN came out (which I wanted since 1.0 anyway). I never felt that being able to give mages some slightly faster MP regeneration would ever make up for the lower DPS bard has, especially when MP is almost meaningless to BLM and even SCH and SMN for the most part. But that was a long time ago, I'm probably never going back to Bard either way. I'll wait for Ranger!

McBeefâ„¢ · **06-22-2015, 05:32 PM**

I think some of the anger over the bard changes is justified, however it doesn't seem all bad.

Bards had no loss in DPS at all when moving in 2.0, which made them hit the top of the charts in very high movement fights, or portions of fights with constant movement. However to balance it, when standing still, other DPS would surpass them. Obviously their songs and such made up for this to an extent.

I think square is trying to give them the best of both. They can still run around during portions of the fight and do good DPS, but they now can put out more damage when stationary as well. This requires some level of stance dancing, which I think is good.

I mean, tough luck bards, now you actually have to think about when you have time to stand still and when you don't.

Zyrusticae · **06-22-2015, 05:39 PM**

That's all well and good, but the fact remains that BRDs and MCHs get to deal with an entirely different playstyle once they hit level 52+. It's a rather harsh and jarring transition, to be sure.

(06-22-2015, 05:19 PM)Verad Wrote: Do you feel ashamed for having chosen an at-present weaker class and a burden on your party, then? Is that the frustration?

Pretty much. That, and spending the dozens of hours needed to get it to its current level.

Well, it's not wasted, since I'll still be playing it and it will most likely get buffed pretty quick. It's just quite unpleasant, and a rather bizarre sort of oversight considering how good they've been about balance before 3.0. Of course, I am biased as I would gladly have accepted an OP class that got nerfed down the line ala NIN than the opposite.

**Unnamed Mercenary** · **06-22-2015, 05:39 PM**

[[Takes out magitek mod unit]]

Just a small reminder to everyone that the thread is being watched by mods.

Let's try to keep this a discussion and not a rant. There are other threads for that.

If anyone is starting to feel upset of frustrated, I'd recommend a short break from the thread to clear one's mind.

[[Puts away magitek mod unit]]

But in all honesty, I don't really think we're going to know anything "optimal" for a while. The new classes haven't even been out for a week and even for the existing ones, some have had some very large changes made. A parser only spits out numbers. It doesn't take into account RNG or actual gameplay for a variety of players.

Melkire · **06-22-2015, 05:40 PM**

(06-22-2015, 05:28 PM)Manari Wrote: Apparently that is "working as intended" for Bard because they can give mages some MP back slowly.

My understanding of game design is that melee damage dealers should always deal more damage than ranged damage dealers based on risk vs. reward.

A melee character is going to more at risk, given how most MMORPGs heavily feature enemies that have close-range damage skills, AoE or otherwise, that force melee characters to play it safe or risk dying. In return for skillful play that risks death, they come out with dividends. FFXIV:ARR had a perfect example of this in the PGL class and MNK job: you had to occasionally take risks to keep up your most important buff, or else your damage would fall off significantly.

Contrast this with ranged characters. Typically, you have two types of ranged damage dealers: the casters/channelers, and the instant damage types. Casters and channelers are generally designed with a higher DPS ceiling, since they also incur risks. If they don't plan well ahead of time, they have to break their casts/channels, resulting in damage falloff. Ranged instant damage characters, on the other hand, are the safest damage dealers. They are typically mobile, there's never a moment in they cannot deal damage as they have no melee range requirement nor a time requirement. As such, to balance out the fact that they are constantly contributing and the skill floor is much lower, they typically deal less DPS on average.

End result: ranged having less DPS output potential than melee is always a case of "working as intended" unless a game is designed such that risk does not increase with proximity to an enemy or unless extra mobility does not make one class safer than other.

EDIT: I'm not touching Machinist with this post. If it's underpowered, it's underpowered and will eventually be addressed/fixed.

McBeefâ„¢ · **06-22-2015, 05:41 PM**

(06-22-2015, 05:39 PM)Zyrusticae Wrote: That's all well and good, but the fact remains that BRDs and MCHs get to deal with an entirely different playstyle once they hit level 52+. It's a rather harsh and jarring transition, to be sure.

(06-22-2015, 05:19 PM)Verad Wrote: Do you feel ashamed for having chosen an at-present weaker class and a burden on your party, then? Is that the frustration?

Pretty much. That, and spending the dozens of hours needed to get it to its current level.

Well, it's not wasted, since I'll still be playing it and it will most likely get buffed pretty quick. It's just quite unpleasant, and a rather bizarre sort of oversight considering how good they've been about balance before 3.0. Of course, I am biased as I would gladly have accepted an OP class that got nerfed down the line ala NIN than the opposite.

You should take a moment to think of us poor PLDs. :c

I can't just hit 1-2-3 anymore for optimal dps and threat. WHY SQUARE.

WHY HAVE YOU DONE THIS TO US.

BroodingFicus · **06-22-2015, 05:43 PM**

(06-22-2015, 05:28 PM)Manari Wrote: I sort of understand. Â I loved Bard until I finally decided to get serious in early 2.0 and downloaded a parser. Â I had equal or close gear ilvl and knew exactly how to DPS but I couldn't match or surpass anyone. Â Apparently that is "working as intended" for Bard because they can give mages some MP back slowly. Â (Which lowers their DPS even MORE) When I learned that, switched to Monk instead until NIN came out (which I wanted since 1.0 anyway). Â I never felt that being able to give mages some slightly faster MP regeneration would ever make up for the lower DPS bard has, especially when MP is almost meaningless to BLM and even SCH and SMN for the most part. Â But that was a long time ago, I'm probably never going back to Bard either way. Â I'll wait for Ranger!

I'm a bard convert too. XD. Bard was my first class and my only DPS. But yeah pretty much the same sentiment. Even if I played perfectly I didn't feel any real since of accomplishment because the results were so so. I played a tank instead until Ninja released and then switched. Maybe I'll try bard again now that there are changes. I prefer classes that reward you for playing well even if it means the other side of the coin is they fail miserably when played poorly. The stance dancing adds an extra layer of strategy and hopefully gives enough of a DPS increase to make me fell like I'm not shooting things with nerf gun arrows.

Edit: And yeah, they should be below melee dps but I like the idea of forcing them to stay still and take a risk to get a bit more damage in.

Zyrusticae · **06-22-2015, 06:00 PM**

(06-22-2015, 05:40 PM)Melkire Wrote:

Show Content

spoiler'd for length
My understanding of game design is that melee damage dealers should always deal more damage than ranged damage dealers based on risk vs. reward.

A melee character is going to more at risk, given how most MMORPGs heavily feature enemies that have close-range damage skills, AoE or otherwise, that force melee characters to play it safe or risk dying. In return for skillful play that risks death, they come out with dividends. FFXIV:ARR had a perfect example of this in the PGL class and MNK job: you had to occasionally take risks to keep up your most important buff, or else your damage would fall off significantly.

Contrast this with ranged characters. Typically, you have two types of ranged damage dealers: the casters/channelers, and the instant damage types. Casters and channelers are generally designed with a higher DPS ceiling, since they also incur risks. If they don't plan well ahead of time, they have to break their casts/channels, resulting in damage falloff. Ranged instant damage characters, on the other hand, are the safest damage dealers. They are typically mobile, there's never a moment in they cannot deal damage as they have no melee range requirement nor a time requirement. As such, to balance out the fact that they are constantly contributing and the skill floor is much lower, they typically deal less DPS on average.

End result: ranged having less DPS output potential than melee is always a case of "working as intended" unless a game is designed such that risk does not increase with proximity to an enemy or unless extra mobility does not make one class safer than other.

What really annoys me about this sort of 'balancing' is that they can still have the end-result DPS be similar for all the different classes simply accounting for how much downtime each class is expected to have in any given encounter. Having BRD do less target dummy DPS is acceptable as long as there actually is downtime for the classes that do more DPS. I have found, however, that, in actual play, the grand majority of the time players can DPS generally unmolested, with most downtime being of the hard mechanic variety where the boss literally becomes invincible or untargetable, which affects everyone equally.

I have never seen an instance where BRD mobility actually allows them to catch up to the damage of a melee DPS class. Not once. And that just tells me they went too far. If their mobility is that much of a bonus, then there should be at least one fight where they out-damage every other class. But they never do. And that's terrible.

(06-22-2015, 05:41 PM)Natalie Mcbeef Wrote: You should take a moment to think of us poor PLDs. :c

I can't just hit 1-2-3 anymore for optimal dps and threat. WHY SQUARE.

WHY HAVE YOU DONE THIS TO US.

Melkire · **06-22-2015, 06:04 PM**

(06-22-2015, 06:00 PM)Zyrusticae Wrote: I have never seen an instance where BRD mobility actually allows them to catch up to the damage of a melee DPS class. Not once. And that just tells me they went too far. If their mobility is that much of a bonus, then there should be at least one fight where they out-damage every other class. But they never do. And that's terrible.

Mobility isn't supposed to put you on par. A mobile class trades in damage for safety.

On an anecdotal note, I've had BRDs surpass me in damage during instances that either had me losing GL3 at key points in a fight or else during instances where I was not at liberty to take advantage of gains from positional bonuses. Would I catch back up again? Yes, but only once I was at liberty to do so without undue risk.

EDIT: I agree, though, in that ideally all DPS classes should have a similar damage ceiling when played optimally with a tunnel-vision focus on damage-dealing, with slight variations on which class deals more damage depending on their respective specialties.

Caspar · **06-22-2015, 06:23 PM**

If the bard contributed as much damage as the melee classes, you can bet few people would bother with them. A dps who can stand anywhere, deal huge damage, aoe well, and has by far the greatest utility of anyÂ Â class? Why play anything else? Note that isn't conjecture as its already happened before, thus the nerf. You just cannot be superman. If you're bothered by the class's low parse numbers, IMO your priorities are out of whack, sorry. Bard is still essential for its supportive abilities. A return to All Bard FFXIV is not something I'd welcome.

Aaron · **06-22-2015, 06:45 PM**

I was tanking SoF yesterday and this Bard was outdpsing two nin and a drg.

Not sure if melee were shit.... or that bard REALLY knew how to play.

Zyrusticae · **06-22-2015, 07:26 PM**

Bard song and turret aura are their own things and should only penalize you for actively using them, not just having them at all. While you're using them, you're a 'support DPS'. When you're NOT using them, you're just straight DPS.

(06-22-2015, 06:04 PM)Melkire Wrote: Mobility isn't supposed to put you on par. A mobile class trades in damage for safety.

On an anecdotal note, I've had BRDs surpass me in damage during instances that either had me losing GL3 at key points in a fight or else during instances where I was not at liberty to take advantage of gains from positional bonuses. Would I catch back up again? Yes, but only once I was at liberty to do so without undue risk.

EDIT: I agree, though, in that ideally all DPS classes should have a similar damage ceiling when played optimally with a tunnel-vision focus on damage-dealing, with slight variations on which class deals more damage depending on their respective specialties.

I mean, the only point of 'safety' is that you do less damage when you're dead. In the off chance no one ever dies and everyone is playing optimally, what do you REALLY bring to a party if you're doing 10-20% less damage than everyone else?

That being said, I guess I must eat my words because bards were already pretty damn strong even after getting "nerfed". Which, honestly, raises the question of why they felt they needed to introduce a completely different playstyle to force bards to become BLMs (and with two big skills gated behind the stance, they are being forced).

It can't be because they were brought on in most raid parties. With MCH being added, the two would become interchangeable and the slot would just become "pick a ranged support DPS", which is totally fine (assuming good balance). Trying to "fix" what wasn't broken with WM/GB just strikes me as a very strange direction to take.

(06-22-2015, 06:45 PM)Aaron Wrote: I was tanking SoF yesterday and this Bard was outdpsing two nin and a drg.

Not sure if melee were shit.... or that bard REALLY knew how to play.

The melee were shit. lol.

I know that playing as a DRG the only time I get out-DPSed is when a BLM has AoE'd the crap out of the dungeon, because in that case I cannot keep up (though that's probably changed with Flare being nerfed - IIRC I managed to out-DPS a strong one during a recent post-3.0 Syrcus Tower run). Even though MNK and NIN are technically capable of doing higher damage, I rarely (re: never) run into players that skilled in duty finder runs.

Edit: This guy sums up my feelings pretty much exactly:

Quote:54 Machinist here, I'm just a hair away from hanging up my gun, for now. I really like the potential the class has, it's fun when things work, but then there's that time period between cooldowns, where you're just spamming 1 and the proc never comes...And your already poor damage becomes even shittier.
128 ilevel with a 130 gun, my highest crit in a dungeon with Clean Shot, without a cooldown up, was 1184. I've had two WHM friends confirm that their Stone 2 crits harder than that. Gotta work hard to get mediocre damage, they gotta improve the class in a huge way. It's still early access, but I really hope there's a wave of buffs in a hotfix this week, otherwise I'm gonna have to level something else. The doing-shit-damage thing really makes me feel bad for going into dungeons.

Edit #2: LOL

Quote:So I did some tests in game again as well as creating a rough spreadsheet of the first 20 seconds of an opener, and yeah, Wildfire basically does more damage without Gauss Barrel even if you cancel Gauss Barrel after the first Clean Shot. The discrepancies in the opener starting with Gauss Barrel and without were taken from 20 samples, but I guess RNG acts up. And so, it's not worth hard casting Gauss Barrel either.

Here's the spreadsheet with the math done: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1...sp=sharing

): Gauss Barrel is basically useless other than for AoE pulls.

EDIT: Whoops, forgot to extend the GB openers to 20 seconds, GB is worth using only until Clean Shot after all for higher overall DPS in the first 20 seconds but not higher Wildfire damage.

Not mentioned is that every opener assumes you start the fight with 5 stacks of ammunition AND reload is on a 10s cd because you precast it. If you don't start the fight with 5 stacks of ammo GB is literally useless unless you're AoEing.

Great mechanic SE, 10/10 balancing A++

Sounsyy · **06-22-2015, 09:54 PM**

I updated my original post as well, but wanted to post an update on the WAR lvl 58 ability, Equilibrium!

The 1200 potency self heal is affected by current Attack Power, like Second Wind. This is important because it is not written in the skill text! After several rounds of popping Equilibrium with and without Berserk, Equilibrium cast without Berserk (attack power 713) returned 3.0-3.3k HP, while Equilibrium cast with Berserk (attack power 1069) consistently returned between 4.6-5.0k HP. So... another reason to stack STR folks.

GIVE WARS MORE OP!

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