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

[noodles355]

There are two problems related with ranged attack damage:
1) The ineffectiveness of a critical hit
2) How the actual damage-per-shot delt does not match the base DMG of the weapon fired.

A very simple example of how much ranged damage suffers in comparison to melee would be comparing two weaponskills: Blade: Hi and Heavy Shot.

Blade: Hi - 4.0FTP 60%AGI WSC. Can critical hit.
Heavy Shot - 3.5FTP 30%AGI WSC. Can critical hit.

Blade: Hi has an offhand hit, effectively giving it 5.0ftp. Thus we can say Blade: Hi has 1.5FTP and 30%AGI WSC over Heavy Shot that makes it stronger.
But on the flip side, Blade: Hi is also done with a 50DMG (roughly) weapon. An equally strong Gun would be performing Heavy Shot with around 160DMG. That's over 3 times higher. On top of that Heavy shot uses fStr2 instead of fStr. Essentially this means for every 1 Base Damage you get from adding Str+ on Blade: Hi, you gain 2 base damage on Heavy Shot. This goes right up to the fStr cap. a Weapon Rank 5 katana will cap fStr at 13. The fStr2 cap on a Weapon Rank 6 Gun caps at 28.

Let's say we're in abyssea with capped fStr and about 220 AGI (80 Base, 50 from cruor buff, 50 from Gnarled Horn, 40 from equipment). The base damage of the two weapon skills will be:
Blade: Hi - 50+13+132 = 195 Base Damage
Heavy Shot - 160+28+66 = 254 Base Damage

Now we're comparing 1.5ftp against 50-60 Base Damage on the weaponskill. I'm in no way saying Heavy Shot should be stronger on paper than Blade: Hi, please don't think that for a second. Blade: Hi also has the other benefits of being a melee weaponskill: Double and Triple Attack. Sadly for Rng and Cor, Double Shot and Triple Shot do not proc on weaponskills.

However the point I'm trying ot make is that if Ranged attacks worked in a similar way to melee attacks then Heavy Shot shouldn't be terribly behind Blade: Hi. But ranged attacks are calulted differently, critical hits add very little damage, and even with the enormous Base Damage on a weapon (Armageddon (85) + Dark Adaman Bullet or Oberon's Bullet: 138 DMG for Cor and 166DMG for Rng) and even with the fact that STR's increase on base damage is double that of a melee weapon, the actual damage per shot we deal is still only on par with much lower DMG melee weapon

With Critical Hit/Dmg atmas, Heavy Shot should be a very strong weapon skill, but it's not. It's very average and even with said Crit Dmg/Rate atmas averages out about equal to Slug Shot, which can't critical hit and is also a very average weaponskill compared to the critical hit melee ones available

A few years ago you made a very significant fix to Two-handed damage calulations. It's about time you made another fix to ranged damage calulations too. This should be looked at regardless of the other problems Ranger or Corsair are faced with. (Rng and Cor issues are not for discussion here)

It is no wonder this has not been brought up seriously before. There are only two ranged attacking jobs, one of which (ranger) is so flawed that only die-hard fans still play it, and who's voice alone has not been enough to shout out for this change. Now there's this outlet for communication with the development team, it's time that this was addressed and the ranged damage calulations were fixed.

The tl;dr:
1) We have enormous DMG weapons compared to melee jobs, a Empyrean Rng has 166DMG Gun. The highest dmg melee empyrean is Drk which has a measly 127DMG. (Lv85 versions). The actual damage-per-shot of a Gun does not reflect this at all.
2) Critical hits add a very insignificant amount of damage compared to a melee critical.

I'm sure you can see the problem face by rangers and corsairs who have to pay gil for their damage (antlion arrows are 20k a stack, dark adaman bullets are 40k a stack, oberon bullets are 80k a stack) just to deal damage that is much weaker than a melee's. Cor at least has a 2nd purpose to make up for their poor damage and high cost - the can buff the parties. Rangers, on the other hand, have nothing. Ranger's only purpose is to deal damage and yet it's damage is so far behind a melee's, whilst having to pay extra gil for ammunition, it's not even funny.

I know I mentioned ranger's pitfalls a few times within the post, but I did not touch any of it's issues apart from that last point, I would ask we please keep this thread on the topic of the ranged damage calulations, and not to do with ranger and corsair's personal issues. You can venture into the ranger or corsair forum to see any of that.

[Tsukino_Kaji]

Why use some of the worst mid range weapon skills as examples? Simply because they both say crit? And marksmanship over archery for that matter?
I don't know what damage you're doing, but I shoot things for over 200 with level 40 arrows and a 95dmg(Non-empyrean.) bow.

[noodles355]

Why use some of the worst mid range weapon skills as examples?

Because the properties of the weaponskill are similar. Damage is all calulated using maths equations. This example negates a lot of the variables that would be present if I compared two completely different WS.

Also Bump because this needs to be adressed. If this wasn't a problem then you would at leats have replies arguing against it. The lack of any replies at all should show that this is a problem but one that's just not well known or advertised enough. The simple fact is not enough people play ranger and corsair. The two-handed weapon adjustment came because a large portion of the player base played 2-handed jobs, a few brought it to the attention of the masses, and then it caught the attention of SE.
This is the same problem - one type of damage is vastly inferior to another. Not only that: the damage is much lower whilst also costing a lot more gil in expendable ammunition. It's completely rediculous just how much an equally geared and skilled ranger falls behind an equally geared and skilled melee DD.

The problem is not enough people play ranger and corsair for this issue to be advertied enough, but that doesn't change the fact it is there, and is significant. Very few people play ranger and corsair because they don't want to have to pay a lot of gil for damage that is worse than a melee's. That in it's self should be reason enough to look at the jobs and change the damage calulations.

You can argue that this is balanced because the benefit of playing RNG or COR is that your damage is from a distance but with how weak in comparison ranged damage is compared to melee, combined with enmity having a cap, combined with rng and cor having no natural enmity lowering ability means that in cases where you need ranged damage you would be better off taking a Blm anyway.

I'm sure there will be people who will reply and say "It's because you suck, my ranged damage is good. I do mroe damage than XYZ". But just because you have done more damage than some random melee doesn't mean this issue isn't there. When the level cap was 75 I have out-damaged melees in a merit party on Brd. Does that mean brd was a great DD? No it meant the other DDs in the party sucked. The same is true here. The only way you can make an accurate comparison of two jobs is by comparing yourself to someone with equal gear and skill. If you did that regularly you would see how far behind ranger falls compared to a melee.

[Kirana]

Noodles is right. Ranged DPS in general has become much lower in comparison to melee with the recent updates, especially inside abyssea. The only case in which ranger can compete with a melee is when using a Gandiva (or possibly armageddon?). Even then, the TP phase DPS is very low compared to melees.

[Mirabelle]

It's gotten so bad I'm looking for axes to Rampage spam in Abyssea. Pink RNG with temperance axe ftw. One day I'll seriously parse it. Certainly I've moved to Evisceration spam on COR for any trash Abyssea mob or NM. For any tough NM with bad AoE I come RDM where a timely paraII land or Stun does more for the fight than my ranged damage.
It was bad for RNG before Abyssea and Abyssea has made it pretty ridiculous.
I second noodles point that ranged calculations are bad currently. There is also no reason any longer for a slug shot acc mod on the WS. It hasn't been a monster WS for quite some time.
Of course the distance penalty is also a major issue for RNG.
I think not only does SE need to retool the formula but also retool enmity and distance issues on ranged attacks.

[deathgod]

theres one thing you left out in ur calculations. if u read the discription blade:hi deals quadruple dmg. read the discription better next time and dont compair hi ro heavy shot compare it to radiance. radiance is crtical also but useally lands for more dmg. i have a nin in my ls that has blade hi(WoE ver.) and we had picked up a radiance rng(WoE also) and compairing thier dmg radiance was rocking everythings world. the rng would one shot all the tp add bats at buhkis. blade hi was runong 2-3k raidiance didnt do below 4k the highest one i saw was 7.6k. they were both pretty well gear. just goes to show you cant compare an emp ws to a non emp ws for things like this. yes i was sad way back in the day when they gimpped the /ra but rng is still and absolute monster when it comes do dmg. i know first hand and have exp with this. the day after the first level increase to 80 i was partying with a relic gkt sam on my rng with selenes bow. we were 75 level sync. now his kaitens were doing around 600-1.5k(max) he was avg 800s. i was spaming slugwinder and was landing between 1.2k-2.8k avg around 2k. now if i were to try to slugwinder spam vs emp nin, sam, caladbolg drk, rng or ukkos fury war theres no way in hell i would be able to keep up with dmg output. u cant just pick a random ws to compare to a emp ws u have to do two emps or else ur wasting time. btw raidiance is threefold attack ammo permitting. chance of critical varies with tp ftp is 3.75 across the board and fdex mod of 60% throw some huge str in there after u hit dex cap and ull be doing insane dmg. btw sam should be able to use the bow.

[noodles355]

The "Deals quadrouple damage" on Blade: Hi's description is accounted for in the comparison. Quadrouple damage in Blade: Hi's case means it has a 4.0 ftp. I will state again that the weapon skill comparison is used for simplicity sake because they have very similar properties, negating a lot of variables.

Even so it is just an example. The point of the post is that ranged damage is calulated differently from melee, is inherently weaker yet also needs gil to be spent on ammunition. This is obviously a problem.

Deathgod your point about the WSes used in the example are incorrect. I did not choose a random WS, I chose a WS with very similar properties to Blade: Hi. Similar high ftp, same WSC mod, same critical property, single hit (excluding offhand/DA/TA procs). If the mechanics behind melee and ranged calulations were equal and fair, Heavy shot would be a very good WS inside abyssea, and should not be too far behind Blade: Hi for an equally geared player. But it's not, it's a weak weaponskill and averages damage for about the same amount as slug shot, which whilst has a higher ftp, can not crit hit, which is essentially the defining feature for a good weaponskill in abyssea.

A Ranger's weapon can have somewhere around a 160DMG rating. That's pretty damn high. On top of that we pay a lot of extra gil for expendable ammunition. Yet with both these things to concider, the damage per shot, and effectiveness of a critical hit, is much lower than it should be. It's time for a fix.

[Seriha]

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. If might not be a favored utility in the seemingly neverending era of zerging, but it's still there. Honestly, I'd put the expense/rarity of ammo consumables as a bigger issue than cherry picking damage between jobs.

[Tsukino_Kaji]

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.

I always take hate on RNG sadly. Lv40 ammo too.

[Seriha]

I always take hate on RNG sadly. Lv40 ammo too.

Which I don't doubt. Especially if fighting piercing weak mobs.

Guess I'd like to see that distanced enmity thing SE yanked just before a recent patch, too.