Giant boss hitboxes and constant mid teleports make melee less fun.

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Originally Posted by rawker

Funny how you didn't catch the sarcasm where I said following the flawed logic of making boss hitboxes massive. But.. have it your way. If you think it's punishment, then there's no point arguing with you. Melee jealous of ranged planting themselves and still wanting the high dps.

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Well I guess you were never merely pretending, you just are

Coupled with loss of positionals its made melee easier and less interesting.

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Originally Posted by ZiraZ

Well I guess you were never merely pretending, you just are

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if you say so. :)

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Originally Posted by Valence

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Some points are in order, since I've seen your points about Physical Ranged before and tend to agree with them.

As you may recall, I've fairly consistently argued in favor for dps parity across all DPS jobs. There is two reasons why I can do this. First, we have nothing to prove; everyone knows that melee has a high skill cap, and that's specifically what attracts competitively-minded people to the role. Second, we're not in competition with you. We're in competition with other melee. If the fight design for the past few expansions hasn't made it abundantly clear that the intended design is 2/2/2/2, then surely the addition of a second melee job in two expansions should have tipped you off. Melee job counts are balanced to have roughly equal numbers to Ranged as a whole, without regard to the subclass split.

What that means to you is that your real competition as a Physical Ranged DPS is and always will be Magical Ranged DPS. Even if the developers were to 'nerf melee to the ground' so to speak, you would gain nothing from that exchange, because you have been always treated as the weaker, more 'support-orientated' counterpart to Caster DPS (even though they offer far more utility with Raise). It's a historical throwback that goes back to ARR, but persists in the developers' minds despite no longer being relevant.

Physical Ranged DPS contributions have always been treated on this subforum as less valuable, simply because Magical Ranged have 'casts' and you do not. You could be double weaving constantly through your opener and maintaining 45-50 APM throughout the fight, and the community still sees that as less skillful than a BLM playing the turn-based version of this game while slamming their forehead on the F4 button at half your APM. Because they have 'casts' and you do not. (Also because BLM is the chosen job of the director and producer, but you can't help that.)

And with the addition of a fourth caster, who do you think that second ranged slot is going to go to if the developers decide to open up two slots to any Ranged in the coming expansion, regardless of subtype? I would expect it, to prevent a bottleneck from forming. If so, it's going to be BLM/PCT + SMN/RDM. We already see a split forming between 'support casters' and 'damage casters'. And the icing on that cake - the casters generally have better movement tools than you do, for all the complaints about 'cast-related immobility'.

This isn't your battle. If I were you, I would be up in arms, but not in here. Good luck, I'll be rooting for you.

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Originally Posted by ZiraZ

Small hitboxes are more fun and wall bosses are boring.
But you need to buff melee even more than they already are to compensate, look at the latest crit dungeon to see how even a little downtime kills the huge melee number advantage that exists in savage raids, but I don't know if the devs are even competent anymore to adjust for things like this without hurting other raid modes.

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Yeah, the main issue with melee downtime is that there's little to no options at range. For instance, spamming Piercing Talon for big DPS losses simply feels bad because it's not engaging.

Casters and healers* have plenty of tools to deal with their main problem, movement, and so can keep their rotation going whereas most melee simply can't. Only NIN and to a lesser extent RPR have some limited tools to deal with it.

*Not all healers are equal. SGE is clearly above when it comes to movement tools compared to the others and especially AST, who is quite immobile outside of 2-min buffs.

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Originally Posted by ZiraZ

The problem is as fights get more complicated you also get mechanics that would be absolutely impossible to ever get uptime if the boss was not a giant hitbox that covers the entire room, Aloalo is full of this and it shows how modern complex mechanics would be a snoozefest in 8 man content for most melee.

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I have been doing Aloalo savage and optimizing my uptime and positionals. There's RNG involved but you can greatly reduce the amount of Piercing Talons (can do the first boss with as little as 0-1) with proper strategies and even then my SMN will always be quite close to me in DPS as evidenced by the aggro list. While not a perfect metric by any means, it is an indication that working so hard towards my uptime barely puts me above or close.

It's also partially an issue of DRG being a buff job that performs better in 8-people content but still. When you factor downtime, the differences between melee and ranged jobs become less pronounced. The "best" jobs for Criterion are the more "selfish" jobs, to no one's surprise.

Buff jobs aren't supposed to perform less well in criterion light parties for the reason that the potency of their performance is multiplied by some hidden number behind. I don't know ultimately how it compares and holds, but it's what the devs stated, and it seems to be a true and real thing as well.

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Originally Posted by Valence

Buff jobs aren't supposed to perform less well in criterion light parties for the reason that the potency of their performance is multiplied by some hidden number behind. I don't know ultimately how it compares and holds, but it's what the devs stated, and it seems to be a true and real thing as well.

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Even with the hidden buff it's a crap-shoot
Some jobs like BLM and MCH are head and shoulders above everyone else, specially for BLM since crit is heaven for them practically designed around triple cast, while things like Bard even when accounting for the biggest hidden buff I mean look at that sheet lmao, they are still a huge joke.
Either way all I was trying to say is the devs better be careful with over-correcting. Melee doing more base damage than range and casters makes sense in a world with downtime (like alalo crit), but not in the current savage tier.

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Originally Posted by Arohk

You guys would be surprised how many people who play a melee job and keep running away from bosses every time they get the smalleest aoe circle under them instead of staying in range and keep attacking.
I see it all the time, it is frustrating to watch.

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Well it is nice to pass the low minimum bar of managing melee uptime, rather than being handed even the barest for free with no skill check so whatsoever. I mean that's the fun of melee for me, figuring out the timings and exact spots to stand in to keep my maximal uptime even while the floor is littered orange.

I don't want to fight a training dummy.

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Originally Posted by Valence

Those arguments constantly trying to justify the damage superiority of melees are so tiresome.

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Having a theoretical superior damage is fine if it's reflected by the gaussian spread of skill level. Ranged should provide a tighter reliable spread while an excellent melee player should be able really push their uptime to the upper quartiles past simple reliability. I don't know if that's at all reflected by fflogs data currently. I doubt it.

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Originally Posted by ZiraZ

Even with the hidden buff it's a crap-shoot
Some jobs like BLM and MCH are head and shoulders above everyone else, specially for BLM since crit is heaven for them practically designed around triple cast, while things like Bard even when accounting for the biggest hidden buff I mean look at that sheet lmao, they are still a huge joke.
Either way all I was trying to say is the devs better be careful with over-correcting. Melee doing more base damage than range and casters makes sense in a world with downtime (like alalo crit), but not in the current savage tier.

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Something curious is how AST provides less damage to the party through this hidden buff than SCH. Plus this damage doesn't go to the buff jobs themselves but the entire party, thus making the "selfish" jobs present even stronger.

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Originally Posted by Aco505

Something curious is how AST provides less damage to the party through this hidden buff than SCH. Plus this damage doesn't go to the buff jobs themselves but the entire party, thus making the "selfish" jobs present even stronger.

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I think that’s because they are only compensating divination vs chain rather than chain vs everything that AST has and in general SCH loses more to a 4 man party with chain than AST does when you factor in that they already consider AST’s AOE damage balanced (even though it’s not)

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Originally Posted by Aco505

Something curious is how AST provides less damage to the party through this hidden buff than SCH. Plus this damage doesn't go to the buff jobs themselves but the entire party, thus making the "selfish" jobs present even stronger.

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Definitely don't look at the amount of parses AST has vs SGE in savage crit
Or DRG/BRD vs MCH/SMN.
It's all fine

AST is just weirdly unbalanced in all AOE situations and while it’s balanced better in savage it has to do way more work for minimal gain over WHM (and still generally loses to SCH who is generally easy to optimise damage on till you are getting to gold parse 0 aetherflow heal levels of optimisation, it’s really only more complex on its healing side and that isn’t saying much)

AST is just a hot mess in everything this expansion and easily the least popular job overall and relative to its peers

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Originally Posted by ZiraZ

Definitely don't look at the amount of parses AST has vs SGE in savage crit
Or DRG/BRD vs MCH/SMN.
It's all fine

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Speaking of, SGE is without a doubt the best Criterion healer. It has higher personal DPS, plenty of mitigation to practically deal with the raid damage without any help, and several movement tools.

I play with a WHM and we need to plan the mitigation of the entire party extremely carefully, to the point where two charges of Divine Benison and Aquaveil can all be needed to be used at the same time for a specific raidwide and missing a single Feint can lead to a death.

In fact, I often require my GNB's HoC because of DRG's lack of personal mitigation.

Going with a SGE would make all this a non-issue although it is fun optimizing and planning the mitigation with a WHM.

Criterion definitely is a type of content that shows the differences and disparities between jobs. However, this should not be taken as a call for homogenization.

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Originally Posted by ZiraZ

Even with the hidden buff it's a crap-shoot
Some jobs like BLM and MCH are head and shoulders above everyone else, specially for BLM since crit is heaven for them practically designed around triple cast, while things like Bard even when accounting for the biggest hidden buff I mean look at that sheet lmao, they are still a huge joke.

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Yes, running through the numbers it seems to be a little undertuned, which doesnt surprise me with SE. After very fast napkin math a BRD would give the healer about +150 dps, the tank about +200, and you and the other dps around +300 (*2) average, which isn't enough to account for the 2k difference that a MCH would bring for example.

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Originally Posted by Aco505

Something curious is how AST provides less damage to the party through this hidden buff than SCH. Plus this damage doesn't go to the buff jobs themselves but the entire party, thus making the "selfish" jobs present even stronger.

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Probably for the same reason that DNC provides half what BRD does even if both jobs in full parties are very similar on the party wide damage buffs (DNC is even a bit ahead). DNC partner's mechanics aren't affected by the size of the party and count for a decent chunk of their buffs, much like AST's card are solo targets and a constant source of buffs that is unaffected by the party size.

Now, if that does compare well in terms of numbers in fine or if those numbers are off, idk.

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Originally Posted by ThorneDynasty

Having a theoretical superior damage is fine if it's reflected by the gaussian spread of skill level. Ranged should provide a tighter reliable spread while an excellent melee player should be able really push their uptime to the upper quartiles past simple reliability. I don't know if that's at all reflected by fflogs data currently. I doubt it.

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No, because it means that one role favors bad players (rphys) and one favors good players (melee). As a rphys afficionado, I do not want to be shoehorned into the "role for bad players", thank you very much.

We can also see how great it's working right now within the caster and rphys roles with the amount of players just going for SMN and DNC (over 50%), because DPS checks don't matter that much, and if they did people would whine because some jobs would become useless. And since everything those days has been baked into encounter difficulty and mechanics and not on the battle system or the job gameplay, then the only thing that matters is the effort one has to pour into playing DDR and solving mechanics.

The only solution would be to bring back uniqueness to the rphys role, that currently has been left as a melee without positionals and a ranged without casts. Those jobs used to have the most demanding rotations and the most demanding support, which they lost. And they still had the ranged tax already anyway, because fuck them rphys amaright?

That's actually not a design point; it's a statistical observation of what would happen if you balanced normally-distributed jobs such that they all had the same mean rDPS value. You can't control the degree of 'spread' directly. That's a byproduct of the best and worst performances on a job in a given fight. You could think of a measure of spread (SD or IQR) as describing how differences in skill translate into performance gaps for players of a particular job. In practice, though, all jobs are right-skewed rather than normally distributed, meaning that there are a lot of people who have no idea what they're doing, and relatively few who are in the know. That's because fight-specific optimizations are not always obvious and you do have to go out of your way to do your research.

A good example of this would be if you added more movement to a fight and then looked at a job that had access to a lot of clever movement tech for maintaining uptime. The average rDPS would probably stay roughly the same, but the spread would increase. And if the tricks were obscure enough, so would the right skew.

Unfortunately, skew and spread are still not metrics of mechanical difficulty, which is always going to be a subjective and controversial topic on its own. All they do is demonstrate the job-specific advantage of 'being in the know'.

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Originally Posted by Valence

No, because it means that one role favors bad players (rphys) and one favors good players (melee). As a rphys afficionado, I do not want to be shoehorned into the "role for bad players", thank you very much.

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That's not what that means. Do we always have to get egos involved like this? Just because you can't push your damage as hard beyond the average as another class, doesn't you can be a good player and perform better than your respective average. I didn't say ranged should just do flat damage completely regardless of skill.

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Originally Posted by ThorneDynasty

That's not what that means. Do we always have to get egos involved like this? Just because you can't push your damage as hard beyond the average as another class, doesn't you can be a good player and perform better than your respective average. I didn't say ranged should just do flat damage completely regardless of skill.

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It still follows a design that pits roles against each other because for some reason we need roles that are harder and roles that are easier.

I don't get why people are so allergic to having an equal spread of difficulty, and playing on skill floors and ceilings instead of going for that crap.

That's intrinsic to the role design, though. You have a category called 'Melee DPS' that cannot hit the boss outside of a set range. You have a category called 'Ranged DPS' that can hit the boss from anywhere. That constraint results in a performance spread, even if you make their damage output identical on average.

If you wanted equivalence on this point as well, you would have to make it such that Ranged DPS cannot hit the target when they are inside of a set distance, at which point they have to start clubbing the boss with their ranged weapons.

I'm not really sure how you're going to be satisfied here. Damage equivalence is one thing, but 'challenge equivalence'? You'll never have consensus.

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Originally Posted by Valence

It still follows a design that pits roles against each other because for some reason we need roles that are harder and roles that are easier.

I don't get why people are so allergic to having an equal spread of difficulty, and playing on skill floors and ceilings instead of going for that crap.

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Because people are allergic to casts, next expansion SMN is gonna unlock the Z axis and float above mechanics, the hitboxes are gonna get bigger and everyone will finally achieve range physical status. Uptime? Planning movement? nah press button that lights up

I went into Neo Exdeath with some friends last night and I was genuinely taken aback by how small his hitbox was, if this was an Endwalker fight, his hitbox would have encompassed half the arena, but for Neo, the hitbox is very contained to the boss itself. I compared it to P8S and the difference is absolutely wild.

Puts into perspective just HOW much they have pivoted in fight design when it comes to boss hitboxes, especially for wall bosses.

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Originally Posted by ZiraZ

Because people are allergic to casts, next expansion SMN is gonna unlock the Z axis and float above mechanics, the hitboxes are gonna get bigger and everyone will finally achieve range physical status. Uptime? Planning movement? nah press button that lights up

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I'm allergic to real casts, that's why I don't play a caster. But I can deal with the occasional cast, or the half cast hybrids from pvp, etc, because it's different, but don't ask me to play rphys like bow mage used to be, or like BLM/RDM.

I'll say it and get out of the closet, I want the great return of full procs on rphys beyond just bard, with more intricate random solutions and priorities to manage. That used to be a big part of rphys and what made the rotations demanding (often causing tunnel vision). I don't get why we're getting half melee simulacrums (DNC) today, or full melee that play at range (MCH).

Casts simplify gameplay more than anything. This game is so scripted that you never have to cancel anything. You just end up replacing mechanical execution with a turn-based game where you move (or teleport, nowadays) to fixed, predetermined points at scripted timestamps.

I don't think Physical Ranged actually needs anything additional to be more complex than Magical Ranged. The relative lack of movement actions outside of DNC is baffling to me, though. It feels like Casters are paradoxically more mobile.

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Originally Posted by Valence

It still follows a design that pits roles against each other because for some reason we need roles that are harder and roles that are easier.

I don't get why people are so allergic to having an equal spread of difficulty, and playing on skill floors and ceilings instead of going for that crap.

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No one is saying there needs to be no difficulty in ranged DPS. But the fact is they will never have the additional challenge of positioning melee has, don't you agree? Let my further simplify this for you:

Let's say because of the positionals and positioning concerns, the a melee does 70% of the average damage and a good one does 130%. Let's say a bad ranged player does 80% vs. 120%. Is a good ranged player now somehow as worthless as a bad one? Obviously not.

I mean, what is the alternative? Just remove positionals and make boss hitboxes even larger, just so that a ranged player doesn't feel inadequate not being able to so express their skill level the same way a melee does? Let's get rid of all casting as well, surely it's "unfair" BLM get to "show off" doing the same or better damage you do despite an additional constraint. Equalize the damage completely, so there's not point at all to bringing melee jobs?

Or maybe you should be instead demanding SE to make your rotations more involved.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

Casts simplify gameplay more than anything. This game is so scripted that you never have to cancel anything. You just end up replacing mechanical execution with a turn-based game where you move (or teleport, nowadays) to fixed, predetermined points at scripted timestamps.

I don't think Physical Ranged actually needs anything additional to be more complex than Magical Ranged. The relative lack of movement actions outside of DNC is baffling to me, though. It feels like Casters are paradoxically more mobile.

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I'm a big fan of turn based tactical games, and maybe it's just me, but this ain't it. I hate casters with a burning passion. Starting a cast only to get it interrupted by mechanics happens to me. Maybe it doesn't happen to you, but it does to me, and I hate it. It makes me have to plan ahead and know the fight script, which boils down to learn DDR/guitar hero even more and that's not what I find interesting. This is furthest from tactical turn based that I can think of. It's just learning a script.

I like choices on the spot, I like decisions and agency during a fight. A cast being interrupted by a mechanic or something happening is already too late to adjust most of the time, you need to cancel it, make a note in your mind to adjust next run, which kinda works in savage considering you're gonna pull hundred of times and do the same thing again and again and again, but even when I actually have to do that on rphys itself, like delaying songs, holding on some cooldowns, etc, already frustrates me because I need to not forget about doing it every time, so if you multiply this by a thousand little moments due to casting? No thanks. I hate it. That's why I don't play caster, but good for you if that's your jam.

It's also the opposite reason why I don't play melee, I don't like action games with positionals. I like priorities and tactical choices. I like rng.

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Originally Posted by ThorneDynasty

No one is saying there needs to be no difficulty in ranged DPS. But the fact is they will never have the additional challenge of positioning melee has, don't you agree? Let my further simplify this for you:

Let's say because of the positionals and positioning concerns, the a melee does 70% of the average damage and a good one does 130%. Let's say a bad ranged player does 80% vs. 120%. Is a good ranged player now somehow as worthless as a bad one? Obviously not.

I mean, what is the alternative? Just remove positionals and make boss hitboxes even larger, just so that a ranged player doesn't feel inadequate not being able to so express their skill level the same way a melee does? Let's get rid of all casting as well, surely it's "unfair" BLM get to "show off" doing the same or better damage you do despite an additional constraint. Equalize the damage completely, so there's not point at all to bringing melee jobs?

Or maybe you should be instead demanding SE to make your rotations more involved.

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You know, if the only way you have found to start your post is with "let me further simplify this for you", it's already gone to a bad start...

Alternatives have been suggested already, I don't feel the need to repeat myself over it. I think at this point this has gone down the road of disingenuity because some people are actually not open to something specific to rphys that brings up complexity or difficulty, because they just like the current state of things where they can crap on the role and have it do less damage.

Everything OP mentioned but also...

I really do not like the visual of punching the air. I don't expect to have the visual of weapons hitting the enemy, but "close enough" and not say 30 feet away does a lot to sell it as a battle and not something more abstract that is presented as such.

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Originally Posted by Valence

Alternatives have been suggested already, I don't feel the need to repeat myself over it. I think at this point this has gone down the road of disingenuity because some people are actually not open to something specific to rphys that brings up complexity or difficulty, because they just like the current state of things where they can crap on the role and have it do less damage.

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Wasn't SB MCH one of the least played jobs ever? I don't think most people want complex rphys, in fact I think the rphys community at large despises complex rotations, I barely played back then but I do remember the never ending bitching about wildfire ping and bullets among other things, there is also zero mention by the devs about any rework so this is what you're gonna get for a while.
Also everything Thorne said is sound, but remember your competition here is "casters" not melee and this is a melee thread.

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Originally Posted by Valence

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When I'm saying that it's turn-based, I don't mean in a clever sense. I'm talking pre-ATB era turn-based Final Fantasy where you get to grab a coffee before deciding on your next action.

I know that Casters have trained you for years to believe that your gameplay is less skilled than theirs, but it really isn't. Everything in this game is scripted. There are no on-the-fly tactics or strategy. You will know fights on a GCD by GCD basis by the time you are done.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

When I'm saying that it's turn-based, I don't mean in a clever sense. I'm talking pre-ATB era turn-based Final Fantasy where you get to grab a coffee before deciding on your next action.

I know that Casters have trained you for years to believe that your gameplay is less skilled than theirs, but it really isn't. Everything in this game is scripted. There are no on-the-fly tactics or strategy. You will know fights on a GCD by GCD basis by the time you are done.

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None of the classes in this game are hard, they are all pretty easy and have pretty low APM, they've placed all the difficulty into the bosses themselves, but basically every mechanic in the game is move and stand in X spot before you explode, now move and stand in Y spot before you explode.

When every mechanic is movement based, which type of class do you think would have more difficulty maintaining their rotation while doing said mechanics?
Yes you can learn the fight by heart eventually but which classes would have more to consider when planning the fight out?
Those that can just run around non-stop while doing their rotation or those who have to preemptively move into safe spots every mechanic to not diminish their DPS?

Context is always important. BLM has played at half the APM of other jobs since at least Heavensward. That means for every one action you perform, another player is executing two.

Movement mechanics affect everyone. Boss movement specifically affects tanks and melee. This is doubly apparent when you add in positional gameplay, because the smallest changes can change boss orientation without altering their position. People specifically seek out melee because they're looking for that additional layer of gameplay detail and depth.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

Context is always important. BLM has played at half the APM of other jobs since at least Heavensward. That means for every one action you perform, another player is executing two.

Movement mechanics affect everyone. Boss movement specifically affects tanks and melee. This is doubly apparent when you add in positional gameplay, because the smallest changes can change boss orientation without altering their position. People specifically seek out melee because they're looking for that additional layer of gameplay detail and depth.

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FFXIV has notoriously low APM in general, it was a whole point of contention how slow the GCD was when it released compared to other MMOs.
Movement mechanics affect everyone of course, but melee and physical ranged inherently can attack while moving, and casters can not except for limited use and DPS loss abilities.

I always found it funny when melee compared missing a positional to a caster straight up not casting cause they have to move for a mechanic, a tenfold difference in potency loss.
Endwalker was extremely generous to melee the entire expansion, massive hit boxes, less positionals to hit, dragoon got an extra free true north, bosses become untargetable any time a melee might be out of range.

Anyways, dunno why I'm trying to convince someone who thinks casters have more mobility than physical ranged dps, seems pretty fruitless knowing that.

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Originally Posted by ZiraZ

Wasn't SB MCH one of the least played jobs ever? I don't think most people want complex rphys, in fact I think the rphys community at large despises complex rotations, I barely played back then but I do remember the never ending bitching about wildfire ping and bullets among other things, there is also zero mention by the devs about any rework so this is what you're gonna get for a while.
Also everything Thorne said is sound, but remember your competition here is "casters" not melee and this is a melee thread.

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It wasn't just because it was complex (it wasn't really, just extremely stringent in its rotation) SB MCH was extremely counter-intuitive in how it played and people who enjoyed MCH in HW weren't happy about the changes, it went from a fairly flexible job to being the least flexible and having quirks that made it unpopular.

For example, when SB MCH first came out, the levelling process was miserable, you had absolutely no way to manage your heat until 60+, it should also be noted that until they patched it, overheating was a dps loss, so it wasn't even clear how the fuck anyone was even meant to play it. It was compared unfavorably to Bard's much more well received rework. There was also the dreaded ping issues, because using Flamethrower to go into overheat felt awful and could screw you over if the server wasn't on your side, there was also the heated actions changing back to unheated, if you pressed a heated action just as your heated actions changed back to unheated, it would cancel your cast, because fuck you. Even when they buffed it to be really powerful in the latter end of SB, people still didn't want to deal with it. Many (myself included) felt that it was just too fiddly and clumsy to enjoy.

There are people who liked it, which is fine, but it wasn't popular with new players due to how unintuitive it was and older players who enjoyed MCH in HW also rejected it for changing too much, it was a job that didn't appeal to many, hence why it had to be reworked.

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Originally Posted by ZiraZ

Wasn't SB MCH one of the least played jobs ever? I don't think most people want complex rphys, in fact I think the rphys community at large despises complex rotations, I barely played back then but I do remember the never ending bitching about wildfire ping and bullets among other things, there is also zero mention by the devs about any rework so this is what you're gonna get for a while.
Also everything Thorne said is sound, but remember your competition here is "casters" not melee and this is a melee thread.

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SB MCH was at the bottom with SB MNK yes. Although there was also a few other reasons that could explain why, like how jank everything was. In comparison, HW MCH was more difficulty (in fact probably one of if not the most difficult job we have ever had) and yet a lot of people played it, even if suboptimally in casual content. It was also meta in savage past a point in spite of suffering from a dramatic ranged tax already (offset by an insane 10% damage gain from dragoon synergies), so it inflated its numbers.

I haven't done any survey asking to rphys mains what they want tbh. I only talk for myself. But if rphys players just want more summoner and dancer, then I guess it's just a mirror of what the community is willing to take at large anyway. If we don't want more intricate rotations, we could also work on fleshing out a more interesting crowd control system where rphys would be the prime dedicated role to it.

Melees had actually been competing with us for a while now, even if the last safeguard against it has been encounter mechanics and the devs emergency buffing the role without any fail a bit after the start of ShB and EW, when the damage gap went over 10% easily and which tended to nullify the 1% party bonus that is the only thing currently justifying our existence. Triple melee was viable at the start of ShB and it was even more viable at the start of EW due to hitbox size. People just don't do it when possible because most melee don't want to deal with disconnects, and it also lowers their parses due to that missing 1% ironically.

And we're indeed competing with non BLM casters somewhat, but the party bonus prevents anything dire to happen, unlike in ShB when casters were closer to melee in terms of output besides RDM (that was still way ahead of us). The fact that BLM is also flexed between ranged and melee spots in serious groups is also pretty telling, and also brings in another point people don't often talk about: if your ranged jobs do output as much damage as your melee jobs, then you could technically fill up 3 ranged 1 melee and relegate melees to the 1% party damage bonus again, which would turn everything upside down, but it goes to show how bad the core design of balance is in the current system. Ranged jobs and melee jobs need specific niches to fill, and the current system only allocates for pure damage considerations. With only one axis that matters, then trying to differentiate dps roles is a total nonsense to begin with.

Point is, we're constantly being threatened by both other dps roles and the only thing that makes our existence legitimate is a measly 1% party bonus. If people want rphys to continue being more of SMN and DNC so that it continues to justify such a balance nightmare, then I don't know what to tell them and i'll go back to play pvp where the ability kits are 100 times more engaging with 4 times less buttons.

Sorry for the derailment I guess, I reacted to the mention of ranged physical originally.

Yeah, I wouldn't voluntarily participate in a triple melee setup. Even if you made it optimal from a numbers perspective, it would feel awful to play.

I think the long term solution to the Ranged problem is to give all jobs DPS parity and treat Ranged as its own dedicated two slot category.

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Originally Posted by kayll

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Actually, in-combat movement actions are surprisingly lacking on Physical Ranged, because it's assumed that they will simply 'walk' while everyone else teleports around. It was especially bad before Arms Length was added on to Physical Ranged in Shadowbringers, because they had no real way to negate a knockback.

I'm actually amazed that MCH doesn't have rocket boots or a grappling hook yet, or that Bard hasn't devised some form of Swift Song to zoom across the arena. At this rate, I think Healers will all have movement actions and BLM will have a third on demand teleport well before Physical Ranged have theirs.

It's a bit baffling that you are unable to find a way to cast during mechanics while on RDM, of all things, given that Dualcast is the central job mechanic.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

Actually, in-combat movement actions are surprisingly lacking on Physical Ranged, because it's assumed that they will simply 'walk' while everyone else teleports around. It was especially bad before Arms Length was added on to Physical Ranged in Shadowbringers, because they had no real way to negate a knockback.

I'm actually amazed that MCH doesn't have rocket boots or a grappling hook yet, or that Bard hasn't devised some form of Swift Song to zoom across the arena. At this rate, I think Healers will all have movement actions and BLM will have a third on demand teleport well before Physical Ranged have theirs.

It's a bit baffling that you are unable to find a way to cast during mechanics while on RDM, of all things, given that Dualcast is the central job mechanic.

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Why do you need movement buttons when the freedom to walk 100% of the time is inherent to your class and is more than enough to do every mechanic?
Do you just want a new shiny but pointless button or what? Did you die to a mechanic that you saw a BLM live because Aetherial Manipulation and hold a grudge ever since or something?
Somethings clearly cooked your brain and I'm curious of what

Are you implying that Dualcast makes RDM more mobile than a physical ranged? How exactly do you think Daulcast works, how do you proc Dualcast in the first place?

I'm not really sure what you're so upset about. You were the one who was complaining about your struggles to manage two second casts while doing standard fight mechanics.

I was merely commenting on how ubiquitous movement abilities are now, and yes, I do think that every job should have them regardless of role. It opens up the doors for more interesting optimization and fight design.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

It opens up the doors for more interesting optimization and fight design.

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Not really, they are never gonna design fights and mechanics around movement abilities, it would be a nightmare, it all has to be designed and be solvable around default running speed not even sprint, and there is nothing to optimize about phys ranged, they are already optimized out the gate, style points is not optimization. Never in my life have I seen a Dancer utilize En Avant in any meaningful way that wasn't just a crutch for their own mistakes.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

I'm not really sure what you're so upset about. You were the one who was complaining about your struggles to manage two second casts while doing standard fight mechanics.

I was merely commenting on how ubiquitous movement abilities are now, and yes, I do think that every job should have them regardless of role. It opens up the doors for more interesting optimization and fight design.

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No complaints about that here ,I don't mind working on the fights to figure out where I need to put what spells to not drop DPS cause of forced movement, that is enjoyable to me.
But pretending that melee and physical ranged are doing that an equal amount or even more compared to casters seems silly.
Then you talk about wanting interesting optimization while discrediting basic casting optimization, the whole point of my original reply was pointing out that casters have more to consider than physical ranged while doing their rotation while handling boss mechanics just cause of the games design.

Also not sure how much more interesting making mechanics that require movement abilities would be, you go from "move here before you explode" to "move here slightly faster before you explode", yep...totally such an interesting improvement to the fight mechanics...

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Originally Posted by SalamanderIX

I really do not like the visual of punching the air. I don't expect to have the visual of weapons hitting the enemy, but "close enough" and not say 30 feet away does a lot to sell it as a battle and not something more abstract that is presented as such.

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You know I hadn't considered this but after reading your post I did a few fights and now I can't unsee it. It does look quite silly.

I had a kinda cursed thought where the melees get split into two soft categories: flankers, and assassins. Flankers only have to keep track of certain skills with flank positionals, and assassins only have keep track of skills with rear postionals.