FFXIV Patch 6.15: Job balance from a raider’s perspective

Last Updated on: 5th July 2022, 06:57 pm

The most recent Live Letter aired this past week and with it came a number of details about the upcoming main patch, 6.2. As was stated in the Live Letter, most classes will not be receiving many high profile changes aside from Astrologian and Dragoon, and other will primarily be potency tweaks. As it stands now then in FFXIV Patch 6.15, I wanted to look at how the jobs rank damage-wise in the savage tier and talk about the overall job balance right now.

I should also note that by looking at 95th percentiles, I am looking to an extremely high bar of skill that doesn’t completely verge on critical hit farms. Very good players could reach this percentile though simply playing very well. Additionally, all jobs in the game are currently viable and can perform their role adequately, so the real metric of competition generally falls to damage when all other factors are dealt with.

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While parsing damage is against Terms of Service, the data used is merely from a website that collects and ranks available data, and as such I am only using it for reference. Additionally, data from 6.0 will be used instead of FFXIV Patch 6.15, as the only damage changes were slight buffs to Summoner and Machinist and class adjustments which changed the way Samurai and Ninja played to a degree. Most data from 8.0 shows higher highs at the 95th percentile benchmark, and as such I will assume those are higher peaks for the jobs aside from Machinist.

DPS

Since my last rodeo with an article like this near the end of Shadowbringers, the DPS rankings have changed, although new problems present themselves now. As a small refresher, by the end of Shadowbringers, most DPS classes were actually balanced quite well against one another, with all but the Physical Ranged DPS doing reasonably similar damage.

The same is not exactly true here. The phenomenon we now face is a chunk of well balanced classes near the top, a gap, and then a bunch of well balanced classes at the bottom… and Machinist. I should note that the last balance patch has increased Machinist’s max output to move up from about 8.1K to 8.25K, and likely higher when considering current 95ths in the past two weeks are lower than 95ths in 6.0.

All things considered, things are looking fairly good after the initial weirdness of Reaper being very overtuned. All of the melee hover around each other aside from Reaper, which could likely use some small potency adjustments to catch up to its group. Black Mage, too, should likely be buffed so its personal max is top two in the game due to its high difficulty and fight to fight optimization.

My main problem comes with the design around balancing Physical Ranged DPS, which is both inconsistent and outdated. By FFXIV Patch 6.15, Physical Ranged DPS are no longer just the utility DPS that Naoki Yoshida seems to think they are, and certainly don’t justify such a damage penalty below the melees. The top five jobs all cap above 9k raid DPS while the bottom 5 struggle to hit 8.5-8.7k. That’s a pretty reasonable amount of damage for half of the jobs to be missing.

The utility argument holds little weight, as the subset of jobs may have been prime support at one point, but this no longer holds true. Dancer and Bard are support, yes, but if we are to count support actions which aren’t merely indirect buffs to DPS, we have a number of abilities ranging the entire spectrum of DPS classes such as Third Eye, Mantra, Arcane Crest, and Magicked Barrier among other examples. These actions are no longer just stuffed into the Physical Ranged camp, and some classes like Monk with Mantra in addition to Bloodbath and Second Wind role skills end up having more utility than a class like Machinist while also offering nearly a thousand extra DPS for free.

To make a long story short, I think all of the ranged classes, magic and physical should be roughly between where Reaper and Bard are on the chart, still below melee dps to some degree but not undertuned as they are now.

Tanks

Now we can move to where the job balance has been the best it ever has been in FFXIV Patch 6.15, the tanks and healers. While DPS may not accurately reflect their levels of utility, tanks do to a reasonable degree. Dark Knight, for instance, certainly has the lowest overall mitigation among the tanks, but ranks highest in damage numbers, with resident DPS tank Gunbreaker falling shortly behind.

Warrior strikes me as odd, however, as the identity of the job seems to flip flop between HP Tank and DPS Tank. Currently, the job has the lowest damage of the four tanks while likely having the best single target mitigation, though I think the argument could be made that Paladin’s identity and general party utility should have it be the lowest DPS tank instead.

Realistically, my fix would be comparatively simple in just bringing Warrior’s damage to about 5,750 DPS as a nice spot between Paladin and Gunbreaker. Each tank would still have its identity make sense when compared to doing damage while still not allowing any one tank to completely fall off damage wise.

Overall, FFXIV Patch 6.15 looks pretty good for the tanks aside from some possible tweaks to make Paladin, and especially Warrior, more competitive with its contemporaries.

Healers

Healers in FFXIV have had a rough time of it when it comes to balancing, with a trend seemingly popping up every time. Youc an generally count on White Mage to be the worst healer by a notable degree and Scholar to be the best with Astrologian. Perhaps the introduction of the Sage job will help out!

Hmm. Well, admittedly, if one is to look at 6.1 rankings at the same percentile, the healers actually even out quite well. However, this is because White Mage’s damage barely changed while the other three struggle to hit 5.3k DPS as opposed to here where players were pushing up to 5.5-5.7k DPS on their healers. So, how do the healers stand in FFXIV Patch 6.15?

Well, it is alright, I suppose. The trend continues as usual, though this may be the least confident look into the meta when considering the next main patch. Considering the removal of Kaiten, as well as more jobs such as Samurai, Dancer, and Warrior being given guaranteed crits on certain attacks, XIV seems to be moving in a path to slowly erode crit buffs and crit synergy. As such, Scholar’s Chain Strategem may be on the chopping block, or perhaps simply changed to some other kind of buff than criticals.

Obviously, White Mage could use some help in the damage front. As can Sage, whose identity is to be the DPS focused healer. Currently, the combination of Scholar’s tools like optimal Energy Drain usage and Chain Strategem, and Astrologian’s entire raid DPS kit just push a few hundred higher than the healer known for doing damage. Hopefully by tweaking the potencies of the base damage cast or DoT, the gap can be bridged.

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So, how is the job balancing in FFXIV Patch 6.15? Well, it’s pretty good overall, I’d say. The non melee DPS, as well as Warrior, Paladin, Sage, and White Mage need a little help to make these bar graphs look a little more evened out, but no job is unviable to be sure. Players have seen far worse in terms of balancing, and the prior balance patches have been rounding out non melee DPS at least.

Unfortunately, FFXIV Patch 6.15 will not be with us for terribly long, with 6.18 having released today. With 6.2 comes a new raid tier, gearing progression, and certainly potency changes. While it would be silly to assume everything stays the same, if we assume the general shape of the charts will remain true, I think my balancing tidbits still hold true.

Does one need to play Dragoon or Ninja to do great damage in FFXIV Patch 6.15? Not at all! Play whatever you’d like, especially if you believe it can be done well. Still, it is important to look at the balancing for an active game like XIV to keep things looking and feeling good for all players in the end.