An unbalance overlooked for far too long: Ranged damage calulations.

[noodles355]

Ranged DPS should be doing less DPS then melee DPS due to the fact they get the advantage of attacking from afar and thus avoiding much of the aoe damage that melee DPS have to take. Target switching is also faster as a ranged.

Yes, the advantage should be attacking out of AoE range, except with how low the enmity cap is compared to how much damage a DD can do in abyssea nowadays (and to be honest even out of abyssea towards the end of the 75 cap time), it's completely irrelevant. Even with our lower damage we will still cap enmity within 5 minutes in a long fight, and after that every action will gain the mob's attention and move it towards us (the same way as with a capped enmity melee, the mob spins towards him every attack round said melee makes if he keeps his CE capped) except the mob moving is unbenficial to everyone, tanks and/or melee DD, and as stated, if the ranged DD stays in melee range to stop the mob moving he suffers a significant penalty to his damage.

This is a skewed test to make RNG damage look bad, if anything you should compare it to Jishnu's Radiance (which on a good rng deals similar if not way more than Hi on spikes.) You can't compare apples to oranges and expect the oranges to be considered the inferior fruit on the taste test.

Hi has larger FTP, an offhand hit+chance to triple/double attack proc, and higher WSC mods. Heavy Shot is just a plain awful comparison.

The fact that it can x3 and x2 proc is another point in the weakness of ranged attacks, not only do melee get haste (the single biggest factor to damage in the game) it also gets the affects of triple/double attack as a damage possibility on it's WSs, whereas rng and cor get no benefit of double and triple shot on their WS, and also have no easilly accessible mage spell for 15% snapshot like the mage spell for 15% haste.

My damage point on the weakness of /ra was based on a simple mathamatical point, and excluded the fact that ranged and corsair gets boned by the weakness of double/triple shot/snapshot compared to double/triple attack/haste.

Let's pretend ground strike had a 5.00ftp acc with TP and spinning slash had a 3.5ftp and crit with TP. Which would you use in abyssea? With all the crit rate/dmg+ atma, obviously spinning slash. Any math guru from BG could prove how it would be stronger, yet in reality if those 2 WS were ranged WS (which they are, I just compared slug shot to heavy shot) then they both come about about equal. Critical hits add absolutely **** all damage to your normal hit.

Even if you compared a RNG's Jishnu's Radience with an equally geared WAR's Ukko's Fury (Comparison: 1.75+1.00+1.00 ftp, 60%dex WSC VS 2.00+1.00 60%str fsc) which for anyone arguing about the WS comparison earlier in the topic is a much more accurate comparison, then RNG's WS obviously falls behind.

Ranged attacks are weak. And it's only partially because of the lack of haste's affects on ranged attacks, and it's only partially due to a weaker set of WS compared to other jobs. It is mainly because the damage is calulated differently (the STR:VIT function and the cRatio function, among others are calulated differently) and puts it too far in favour of melee jobs for the amount of ammo and the inneffectiveness (with the low hate cap) of distance attacking combined with the low damage.

Ranged attacking is broken. Anyone who was unhappy with my original Blade: Hi vs Heavy Shot comparison should look at Jishnu's Radience vs Ukko's Fury.

J's R VS U's F:
J's R: 144 Base Damage + WSC (60%)
U's F: 131 Base Damage + WSC (60%)
If you concider no double/triple attack procs and assume 100% Accuracy, you're looking at a 3.00ftp WS with a 131DMG weapon vs a 3.75ftp WS with a 144 Base Weapon. They both have the same WSC percentage, yes STR is more convienient that DEX when gearing your WS set, but that alone is not enought to offset a 0.75 higher ftp and a +13DMG weapon, even if the melee WS couldn't double or triple attack, except they can so they pull ahead even more.

There are many enmity-based problems with ranger, but those are not for discussion here, have a peek at the ranger forums if you give a damn. This topis is about the imbalance of the ranged compared to melee damage calulations, which are rediculously unfair. Yes, ranger should pay for it's out-of-AoE-range damage, except as I stated the hate cap is too easy to reach and with no way to llower hate for both rng and cor, the whole attackign out of range thing becomes irrelevant as once you hit the hate cap the enemy will turn to you at every shot or every high-VE job ability.

This is another bump, and I will keep bumbing and discussing this point untill a mod or dev or anyone actually acknologes this topic.
The situation is just like the 2h vs 1h problem from a few years back, the only diference being that sweet all no-one plays ranged attacking jobs and so the problem has never been brought into the limelight. But now that we have this public official FFXI forum, it's time.

Ranger and Corsair both have their own problems, but all of those are in the shadows compared to how weak ranged attacks are and how worthless attacing from a distance is with the low enmity cap. Ranged damage needs a huge fix, ASAP. There's a reason sweet all nobody plays RNG and COR: The dmg is terrible for the price of ammuntition and our DD role could be better filled by a BLM. Cor's have Rolls to fallback on, RNG have sweet EffAy.

[Malamasala]

As long as ranged attacks, you know, deal damage at range, I'm for melee strikes and WS having a higher potential because the player is more at risk the closer proximity they are to a mob and its damaging moves.

These arguments are always just a notch over straw men. Most ranged attackers stand within AOE effect range due to the sweet spots. While they have the OPTION to stay safely away, so does melee with throwing weapons. And what exactly does a melee suffer from being in melee range? damage taken? If you have a healer in the group, then it is not really an issue. It isn't like being a RNG means you never take damage and are different from melee.

I'm all for melee getting 25% slow effect for 10 seconds when they are damaged though. As a kind of mini-weakness so they actually suffer from being melee, instead of this so-called suffering of losing 500 HP before the WHM heals it back up.

[Rambus]

RNG doesnt really need it though, it can pretty much get a pseudo 3 hit with atmas, it gets some of the hottest damage with brew too w/ wildfire. what more does it need.

emp weapons to fix shortcommings with general programing is wrong.

what aobut outside abyssea?

RNG has a problem with range attacks as you get buffed ( like melee hitting delay cap)

snapshot is nice but it is not a fix for that

[Andylynn]

i think the issue will be nul once we move away from abyssea, when you think about it. the majority of monsters are weak to piercing, and rng damage outside is still a force to be reckoned with. whens the last time you've seen a job hit 1500+ in 60s syncs in bhaflau?

i think this problem only exist where crit ws + atmas make the melee DDs on even footing or even better than rng currently is outside.

[Rambus]

i think the issue will be nul once we move away from abyssea, when you think about it. the majority of monsters are weak to piercing, and rng damage outside is still a force to be reckoned with. whens the last time you've seen a job hit 1500+ in 60s syncs in bhaflau?

i think this problem only exist where crit ws + atmas make the melee DDs on even footing or even better than rng currently is outside.

the consern overall damage ( DoT) I know rng can hit hard on ws but so can other jobs.

the tp gain rate on range attacking is slower then melee, why you think rngs been on a stance for a while "to be a good rng means you need KC"

cor is same way, we have to melee tp to get good damage? and not being a RANGEr

[Airenn]

i think the issue will be nul once we move away from abyssea, when you think about it. the majority of monsters are weak to piercing, and rng damage outside is still a force to be reckoned with. whens the last time you've seen a job hit 1500+ in 60s syncs in bhaflau?

i think this problem only exist where crit ws + atmas make the melee DDs on even footing or even better than rng currently is outside.

TV, I agree.

[wish12oz]

i think the issue will be nul once we move away from abyssea, when you think about it. the majority of monsters are weak to piercing, and rng damage outside is still a force to be reckoned with. whens the last time you've seen a job hit 1500+ in 60s syncs in bhaflau?

i think this problem only exist where crit ws + atmas make the melee DDs on even footing or even better than rng currently is outside.

Ranger damage outside abyssea is not a force to be reckoned with, and it hasn't been since 2004. Rangers attack to slow to be competitive with with any other job. I know this whole 'whats good and what is bad' thing is hard for you Tearvalynn but there's no reason to try and tell people ranger is good when it is the job most needing help in the damage department.

[Byrth]

At capped cRatio (2.25), melee swings with a 2H weapon average non-crit pDIF of 2.3 and an average crit pDIF of about 3.
At capped cRatio (3.0), ranged attacks average a non-crit pDIF of a little less than 3 and a crit pDIF of a little less than 3.75.

So if you both have D130 weapons and capped cRatio, Ranger is shooting harder than the 2H weapon is hitting. Increasing the slope in the RNG cRatio to pDIF equation would help Ranger cap cRatio sooner (I suggested 20%, which you let you cap cRatio at 2.5). I see no reason there should be a substantial shot-by-shot difference in cRatios though.

Like, if you both have cRatios of 2.25, so your Ranged Attack = the 2H user's Attack and you're fighting the same monster, the Ranger will have an average normal:Crit pDIF of (~2.25:2.81) and the 2H user will have a normal:Crit pDIF of (~2.3:3). That's not a ground-breaking difference, especially when you consider the level correction advantage Ranger has. You don't have to go up very many levels of target monster before the Ranger is winning in terms of cRatio/average pDIF.



e.g.: Something needs to be fixed. Ranged Attack is pretty worthless at the moment, but the damage formulas are not necessarily to blame. Maybe add better Ranged Attack food or find a bard friend to come sing you Minuets?

[Sparthos]

Biggest fix ranged jobs need are some enmity sheds desperately.

RNG has absolutely no way to dump hate despite the boon of the class being attacking from a distance to avoid dealing with being AOE'd. Any decent Ranger will be pulling hate like a melee except they've moved the mob and put other people in AOE range. Not cool.

Following that, auto-RA would second most important to the class in helping to eliminate the BS human factor of attacks. Lastly, an actual legitimate use for crossbow would be nice. The weapon type has no magian trials (wth?), no Empyreal, no Relic... it's like they abandoned it.

[Hoshi]

Sure minuets help but convenience wins out in the end. Assuming ranger was your only job and you were doing stuff with good friends I guess you'd find yourself on rng... but if you have any other job the person organizing parties is likely to ask you to swap to that since the bard doesn't really want to sing 6 songs every time, or the setup doesn't put a bard in the melee party, or the tank really hates it when the mob moves etc.

We used to bring ranger parties to some things and sam/chaos roll + minuet x2 does increase your damage output quite a bit. It would be nice if velocity shot gave even more ranged attack (or an extra buff for more ratk) although I'm not sure that ranger damage is falling behind melee damage in a properly built ranger party. I still think the biggest problem for a ranger now is that we move the mob when we take hate. Melee don't do this since they stand on the mob. We could probably deal damage more effectively if enmity was readjusted (or were given a job ability that bound the NM to the tank).