With all due respect, I'd like to provide a brief history of Beastmaster from a player perspective. This is a long post and may differ from your developer opinion but please give it a read.
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Beastmaster's journey with parties.
BST always had trouble with parties in the beginning. Your pets level would ruin experience gained and that deterred players to invite them. This stigma was furthered by a few players who would charm and release higher level monsters onto parties.
This lead to players classifying it as a solo job. So for veteran BST players we struggled to get to level 75. As you've stated the game has made major changes over the years to remove that EXP penalty, to add Call Beast and other abilities.
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Beastmaster's dance with enmity and backlining.
BST was always a dance of enmity. To melee and draw hate onto yourself to speed up fights or sit back and let the pet do damage. BST is the only pet job that can rest with pet attacking, so there was some design that BST would backline when necessary. Trying to charm an Incredibly Tough monster and lock them in with familiar was an amazing feeling. So while we meleed, we also backlined.
In Nov. 2007 at the beginning of Wings of the Goddess you gave us Snarl. Now we can just dump all of our enmity and pet commands were reduced to the same timers. This made it easier to melee but still risk-oriented so it's a good example of trying to encourage melee.
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Abyssea and Charmer's Merlin...
Next comes the Abyssea era where Charmer's Merlin was introduced. Our melee prowess would be forever locked to this weapon as the -5 seconds to Ready was too valuable even then or now to dismiss.
BST power still remained too low and too stigmatized for players to include in group content. So BST continued to solo, duo or trios but finding a full party of them was very rare.
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The first big Beastmaster update.
In comes the 2015 update where BST ready moves were revamped. There was no increased BST players yet. We continued to solo or lowman content to ourselves. Content became more and more difficult to stand in range. So groups relied on ranged damage in Ark Angel merit BCs and soon after Magic Burst setups.
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The dreaded Beastmaster meta and bandwagoning.
Then came the era of where Sinister Reign, Escha and Omen began. Monsters were too difficult for melee still. Unable to reach accuracy caps and so dangerous. BST became the primary job to play because the pets higher stats was the only reasonably safe and reliable solution.
Then after a period of vitriol from a vocal minority, the very punishing distance nerf was implemented. This changed nothing, it didn't and doesn't increase any risk. As players just lined themselves up and ran in and out between TP moves and spells to use commands.
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The end of Beastmasters in pick-up groups.
Then a series of updates changed everything. Monster evasion was lowered. AoE damage was lowered. Monster combat skills was lowered. Bard gained huge changes to accuracy and attack songs. Players received easy to obtain high combat and defense gear from Ambuscade. Higher JPs became more commonplace.
That's what changed things away from using BST backline only strategy from being commonplace. Power creep on enemies was so high, it took several updates to even the playing field. Jug pet damage without extreme support is lackluster and that same support with SMN, PUP, or melee DD will do far more so the general thought is BST is a solo class again so we party only in pet linkshells.
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No one is disagreeing that BST shouldn't be a frontline job. Our distaste is you can't effectively melee like other frontline jobs.
- You have to stand with the pet at all times. Harder to manage with multiple monsters on your pet's hate list.
- Fencer and Damage Limit is the only native damage traits. Fencer is weak compared to Dual Wield. Damage Limit is something all DD jobs mostly got.
- Charmer's Merlin is a pre-item level weapon and would serve better to just be implemented not tied to weapons.
- The Relic set is focused on outdated Charm.
You want BST to be frontline and have risk and we understand. I guarantee you if you give the master a considerable way to melee, players will do it. I don't think pets need to be rebalanced or penalized as they've fallen way behind damage dealers since 2015.
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Closing Remarks
Alternative ideas to distance penalty:
- Better damage from master through traits and gear.
- Ready recast called at 10 through merits, JP gifts, or armor not weapons.
- Making it so master being in range increases pet survivability to discourage standing back in Pet damage reduction gear. Maybe a WS like Primal Rend can heal the pet as an added effect or provide a shield to the pet.
- Maybe BST can spend some TP on pet maintenance abilities. Similar to the mechanics of waltz and sambas.
There are fun ways to make players use melee and the distance nerf as a veteran BST player is very frustrating. Please consider this.