How Would You Balance The Jobs?

DRKs just need to not kill themselves so hard. Biggest complaints when ever I add or think about adding a Drk to a run comes from the healer. Its insane that Drks can't use their best abilities for full duration due to AOE killing em and healers Just not being able to keep up.

It isn't sucky healers or sucky Drks it's just bad designed content on SE's part.

Pimped Drks going all out can give Koga SAMs a reasonable challenge, still won't win, but hey can't have it all.

Why is the benchmark a Mythic-equipped SAM anyway? Can they beat a Tsurumaru SAM or at least come within striking distance?

Yes? Balanced.
No? Not balanced.

In Adoulin content should Tsu sams be able to beat REM Drks 100% BIS?

Yes, imbalance.

Drks CAN'T go all out in any of the new content. Thus a Tsu Sam will win.

Also why shouldn't Mythic Drk match a Mythic Sam?

Edit: to clarify REM Drks losing to Tsu Sam.

It shouldn't take a mythic to beat a Tsu SAM in >RAW< damage. Mythic DDs do beat Tsu SAMs in raw damage but they lose in total damage tremendously when you factor in SAM's SC damage. Tsu SAM should be far below WAR/DRK in raw damage because those jobs don't have the same SC potential, instead Tsu SAM not only beats non mythic WAR/DRK in raw damage, but in SC damage as well(unless there's a mythic involved, in which case they still lose but only when SC damage is factored in.) Raw white damage and WS damage is all DRK and WAR really have and their JAs give them huge boosts with huge penalties yet the benefits don't give them an edge over SAM, as SAM gets huge boosts without penalties(SAM's Hasso/Seigen penalize them for abilities they don't even have naturally and let's be honest, those aren't even that bad of a penalty; compare to Berserk/LR which increases damage you take by a good 20-30% due to increased mob pDIF caps and defense formulas)

I'm talking about balance should be viewed as nonREM DRK vs. nonREM SAM. The ultimate weapons aren't balanced and shouldn't even be discussed in your typical adjustments discussion.

Can an ideal DRK compete with an ideal SAM? If no, how much is the average loss by? How can we close that gap? Should JAs be adjusted? Fudo nerfed? Is it an events issue?

Byrths statement about JA delay *** with alot of jobs and potential DPS is a big point of contention with regards to balance but one I imagine we'll never see fixed. I doubt it'd do much to improve the use of DNC and PUP anyway.

DRK doesn't have the overpowered ridiculous arsenal of abilities and traits that SAMs do.

-Fudo needs a nerf.
-SC damage needs to be scaled back to the way it was. Even with scaling SC damage back to the way it was SAM still has Skillchain Bonus, Hagakure, Sengokiri and all that jazz which is fine, but SCs don't need to be doing 50% damage to weak elements because it to heavily favors SAMs. Keep SC resistence the way it is now(cannot be resisted anymore like it used to be) but keep it capped at 1:1 for a 2 step SC. You want your 30k lights? do a 4 or 5 step light and get rewarded for it. If you do Fudo>Fudo the light SC should be 1:1 with the fudo's damage. And therefore Fudo needs to be scaled back so you can't just mindlessly spam Fudo into Fudo for a free fudo's worth of damage. Reso doesn't chain into Reso, Stardiver doesn't chain into Stardiver, Upheaval doesn't chain into Upheaval, why should SAM's strongest WS chain into it's strongest WS but not the other jobs? It's just unfair and heavily favors SAM.

DRKs and WAR's abilities give them bonuses that make them more suceptible to damage, yet even with those risks, the rewards and benefits those JAs offer for their risk do not put them anywhere near SAM's damage. Meanwhile, SAM can exceed a WAR or DRK's damage with virtually >>NO<< risk. Their JAs don't draw emnity like Souleater/Last Resort do, Hasso and Hagakure don't lower SAM's defense or evasion, Overwhelm is a free 20% bonus to SC damage as long as they are facing the mob(pretty much always, because of their dmg, they usually have hate); compare to Scarlet Delirium which isn't even always active and requires DRKs to take damage to activate, or Restraint which takes time to build up.

SAM/WAR gets all the DA benefits from /WAR(+10%) but also gets a free +15% from Hasso due to their ~60% Zanshin rate, so they have a base DA rate of >25%(not counting gear) +20% WS Damage from front(read:almost always), on top of the strongest WS in the game, with the strongest SC potential and highest TP gain and WS potency/frequency, 45seconds of TP move invulnerability, etc.

I mean to be honest, Tsu is a pretty ridiculous weapon and will be pretty close to Mythic anyways. Tsu Sam should have no problem beating any other job, even if that job has a mythic. Mythic doesn't change Sam, it just makes it a small bit better.

Kinda funny to hear all these complex reasons why SAM is so broken, when those things have been in place since Abyssea lolSAM right up to the Fudo/SC buff. SAM has always been a competitive DD, now it's on top. It also took 2 major nerfs to WAR and MNK, 20 levels worth of scaling, the loss of level correction, massive changes to Fudo, etc, etc. SAM's buffs are due to it not being used for anything for years. Even DRG saw more action in SoA up till now.

It's the same people chanting "SAM sucks, level WAR" that are crying about SAM being OP now... Go figure.

SAM has always been #1 or 2 though. Even in Abyssea, Fudo and a well geared Jinpu were just as competitive as Ukko's.

Not being used for years? Sam was absolutely broken with Yoichi pre-adoulin. Sam was also an amazing DD before the Fudo/SC buff, it was the main DD people used for Yorcia and people were starting to notice that it did/could beat Mnk on the DPS front. This was all before the Fudo, SC, and TP gain buffs.

Nobody minds SAM being #1. It's fine. There HAS to be a #1.

The problem Jassik, is not only is SAM#1, they're #1 by MILES.

But when you see a mythic WAR parsing 160k melee/ws damage and 30k SC damage, and a Tsu SAM parsing 145k melee/ws damage and 110k SC damage, it's frankly absurd.

Their SC damage ALONE comes close to outparsing most DDs.

Yoichi SAM was not absolutely broken, it excelled in one event with ridiculous amounts of buffs. (and 2 relics) It was rightly very good in Yorcia because that zone is tailored to slashing damage. Outside of those situations, SAM went largely unused by most of the playerbase from Scars of Abyssea up till Delve 2/merit BC's. The job itself was competitive, the issue was the "CRIT WS ONRY" and "Reso all teh things" approach to endgame. The job didn't need buffs, the playerbase ignored it, and the result is the OP state the job is in now. I just find it funny how people are constantly talking about how OP Zanhasso is or how SAM's ability to make long SC's is so broken, because it had those when people called it "lolSAM".


I'm quite aware, you missed my point.

Sam should be able to sub sam.

Are we playing the same game? SAM excelled like CRAZY in VW because it wasn't for a solid year or two before they nerved Save TP, so SAM's with Miser's Roll and SAVE TP gear/Atmacites were destroying everything with Shoha spam in Voidwatch. In legion, same deal, SAM's were great, shoha has an attack bonus which helped against high def legion NMs. They were fantastic DDs in Dynamis against ADL too with Misers Roll and stuff. Provenance? Again Miser's Roll and SAM WS damage was top notch.

Everyone used at least 1-2 SAMs to supplement damage in Morimar. You only needed a few monks for Blunt/Magical but Tsu SAMs brought Tojil from 50-25% faster than hundred fists formless MNKs did 100-75%. Not only that but SAM was amazing for Foret as well if they had Mura for Krabatoa, and Dakuwaqa has a slashing weak phase as well. For Ceizak, Mura was good again against Mastop and they could Bow for boss with Yoichi and WS in Mura to overcome the PDT.

SAM's have always been #1 or at least 2 under Ragnawars/Ragnadrks since 2003. For 4-5 years they dominated content with Hagun. Then masa came out, still top notch, now Tsusumaru. SAMs have always had a ridiculously powerful weapon to use, whereas Ridill and KC have obvious drawbacks, those weapons really didn't.

Only way to balance things is to make fudo aoe

The only setups I saw before ilvl (when setup no longer mattered much) was MNK MNK DRG MNK MNK DRK, SAM in place of the DRK if they were very good. After iLVL, any slashing DD could do that, DRK did it better still. Mura was already very niche at that point and incredibly rare, BLU was more common than SAM for Foret, Ceizak pre-iLVL was mostly RNG, after Apex SAM had a very short reign, but people who did Ceizak were usually either getting the win or selling drops, nobody spammed it for plasm. SAM is broken right now, nobody debates that, but you're attributing it to things that aren't new and have a very narrow perspective on the past few years.

Inb4 SAM gets "Auto Regain" this patch, basically a free regain moonshade trait built in, so 1-2tp/tick while engaged. Also remove the directional requirement for Overwhelm. Also they'll give SAM a 5min duration, 5min recast JA stance learned at lv97 that increases WS damage by 25% but reduces their Magic Critical Hit rate by 25%.

It excelled in multiple events with a pretty normal amount of buffs at the time, Yoichi sam was pretty great in general at the time. Outside of Yoichi, Sam was only a small bit behind War/Drk for things like VW and was still regularly brought to these events as a heavy DD (along with Mnk). The difference is, before SOA Sam, Mnk, War, and Drk all tended to be pretty close to each other in DPS. The difference existed, but was so very small and could easily be changed with RMEs. Now the difference between Sam and Mnk/War/Drk is just way too big. It's actually depressing to play War or Drk right now because of how bad they are.

WAR is my main job, guess how many times I've got to play it in recent memory? SAM was further behind WAR and DRK than you make it sound, Rag DRK was MILES ahead of everything else for quite a while. Probably nearly as much ahead as SAM is now.

Not even close, hell War was basically as good as Drk during the VW era especially if you factored in Warcry/Bloodrage. Sam and Mnk were about as far behind right now as Tsurumaru is behind Koga, a few percent at best.

^ This. Only thing DRK had over WAR really was Soul Eater. LR's haste was moot because most of the time was spamming Dusty Wings and WS macros because your WS was giving back 60-70% TP from Save TP builds. Shoha was more consistent than Reso when Berserk wore due to its higher attack bonus and Reso's att penalty. It also wasn't that far behind, if you look at Shoha and Reso's fTPs and WSCs they weren't all that different, and accounting for Overwhelm etc, Reso was not as powerful as it seems unless you're adding in Souleater and Scarlet.

VW is a piss poor example of content for job balance.

lolVW. Invincible zergs. lolAbyssea crits.

Complete shitshow for balance.

Now you're just cherry picking. He was refuting your statement which said:
VW and Provenance were relevant content between Abyssea and Delve II. Just because you deem it as unworthy of balanced content doesn't mean it didn't have an impact on player base perception of job relevance and balance.

The same thing happened for the majority of this game, the difference between the highest of the 4 main DDs and the lowest of the 4 main DDs has almost always been a very small amount. The only time this hasn't been true is Abyssea because of Crit and current Sam.

^ Also original RNGs

It's not cherry picking, SAM was brought to VW because it was a good enough DD to justify bringing it for GKT and JA weaknesses. By that logic, BLM was a top tier DD because you always brought at least 1. Very rarely was SAM the best tool for job, but I have said multiple times that it was a competitive DD and that the jobs were better balanced and that SAM is quite broken right now... You're just missing my point. Most of the things that make SAM top notch right now are not new, and it took a heavy handed buff to Fudo and SC damage for those traits to be recognized in a big way.

And what I'm saying is for SAM to have all the tools it has always had up until now PLUS Fudo and SC buffs has tipped the scale of balance so far over and it's more likely they'll adjust things SAM has always had than reneg things they were just recently given. SAM need to be reevaluated because at this point they have far too many strengths and basically no weaknesses. Every job should have flaws/gaps/weaknesses, but SAM just deals tremendous damage with little to no penalty. By comparison DRK and WAR deal less damage but are at a higher risk due to how their JAs function, they would need to nerf /WAR's Berserk(will hurt MNK, RNG and SAM more than any other job, how 'bout that?) and give DRK and WAR some kind of large WS boost to bring balance in order I think. But then doing that will just alienate DNC/PUP/DRG/BLU even further. It's easier to nerf one job than it is to balance 12 others.

You're going to try to make every building in the skyline be the same height as the tallest building so they're all level? Then you'll have a skyline of the tallest buildings, then content becomes too easy and all jobs are powerhouses and more cans of worms are opened.