Do you think that Picto needs a nerf?

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Originally Posted by Carighan

Goal:

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Frankly I think Motifs in uptime need to be able to be painted faster. Give a purpose to White/Black Paint and have it so Holy and Meteor provide a unique but stacking buff that each reduce cast time / recast of Motifs by 25%. "Prepping the canvas" so to speak.

With this you're able to safely siphon away potency from Motifs and reallocate it as necessary into the filler combo without worrying about hitting their full uptime too badly. It does not make downtime painting better, but makes uptime painting less penalized.

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

If the motifs generated resources within the aetherhue combos that would reduce a lot of the flexibility of the job because it would basically be required to say always paint a creature part before moving into a reversed combo

MCH could benefit from PCT’s design honestly if the tools had more stacks (now that drill drift as a skill check is dead) and more internal interaction similar to how every muse plays into the optimal starry window

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You could still store a crapload of holy/comets like you can right now, but I do see your point. Perhaps you could have an already existing ability giving you some of those for free especially to help with the start of the fight, or after specific shenanigans or downtime. Either way, perhaps it's not good, perhaps it is, but I still do think that is the way to make it fit into the mold, else they can also well... make every job in the game behave like PCT with strong downtime tools (and probably trivialize every already existing encounter ever in the process). But I do believe that having some parts of a toolkit, especially important ones that are strong like motifs, not interacting with the rest of the kit, is... not great. I've seen it on MCH and even on MCH some of them somewhat do with battery (which is bland and boring but they do).

Or you know, just kick over the whole battle system and start from scratch but that's 8.0 talk and it's not gonna happen anyway.

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Originally Posted by Ggwppino

The PCT, whether you want it or not, has to slidecast every single spell and the fights are not so friendly for stationing.

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And melees should do their positionals and keep uptime, which can be quite risky for both you and your party with current content design. So yeah, all risks considered, melees shouldn't do less than casters.

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Originally Posted by VerySadDRG

And melees should do their positionals and keep uptime, which can be quite risky for both you and your party with current content design. So yeah, all risks considered, melees shouldn't do less than casters.

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When was the last time the game truly made a mechanic that wasn’t explicitly designed around the correct solution necessitating 4 people in melee range and 4 people at a distance………junction shiva?

If a strategy doesn’t take risks introducing melee uptime then you can’t claim melee uptime is a skill expression that necessitates higher damage

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

When was the last time the game truly made a mechanic that wasn’t explicitly designed around the correct solution necessitating 4 people in melee range and 4 people at a distance………junction shiva?

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Good luck having full uptime as a melee in M3S or M4S mate.

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Originally Posted by VerySadDRG

Good luck having full uptime as a melee in M3S or M4S mate.

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The AVERAGE melee in M4 has EIGHT. 8 GCD’s of downtime

Of those 8 about 3-4 are non actionable downtime anyway

4-8 GCD’s of actionable downtime is functionally full uptime for the purposes of comparing them to casters that spend 50+% of their time casting

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Originally Posted by Kabooa

Frankly I think Motifs in uptime need to be able to be painted faster. Give a purpose to White/Black Paint and have it so Holy and Meteor provide a unique but stacking buff that each reduce cast time / recast of Motifs by 25%. "Prepping the canvas" so to speak.

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Conceptually interesting, but IMO:

* Too big a rework for something as "simple" as a potency nerf goal.
* It's good design to have separate mobility tools that aren't used rotationally.

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

The AVERAGE melee in M4 has EIGHT. 8 GCD’s of downtime

Of those 8 about 3-4 are non actionable downtime anyway

4-8 GCD’s of actionable downtime is functionally full uptime for the purposes of comparing them to casters that spend 50+% of their time casting

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That's news to me. So, losing up to 1 Wyrmwind usage and screwing up my burst by losing GCD alignment because I can't get some of those GCDs is fine then. Multiple Chaotic Spring ticks? Pfft, screw 'em as well, lol.

At the same time the only caster that can possibly lose some uptime is RDM. And, what a surprise, its damage isn't that big either.

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

As opposed to right now where the melee render all but PCT irrelevant

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Except they do not. Caster balance is awful, nobody is going to deny that. However, that is entirely separate problem from melee.

If you were to buff Red Mage to deal melee level damage, you now have a job without any uptime restrictions, 10% party mitigation and both an on demand heal and raise. In what world is that remotely comparable to the current landscape, one where Red Mage was chosen over melee in FRU prog on more than a few teams despite it's awful damage? I'm all for buffing the casters but the person I quoted went to the opposite extreme. Right now running RDM/SMN and Pictro is perfectly fine in a prog setting. If RDM is pushing SAM/DRG/NIN levels, you'd be actively trolling to not have it because they offer nowhere close to the utility and flexibility.

Axe Magicek Barrier, Vercure and Verraise then we can talk about Red Mage doing melee damage. Although, there's still the uptime discrepancy.

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Originally Posted by ForteNightshade

Except they do not. Caster balance is awful, nobody is going to deny that. However, that is entirely separate problem from melee.

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And in fact, it's a way to balance the casters, where all of them prefer to play PCT (because it's fun, because it offers maximum damage consistently)

In your imagination, unconsciously, when you think of a balanced party you think of 2 melee, 1 caster and 1 pranged. And throughout Endwalker was objectively the best thing to have, given the 6-8% difference between melee and the others.
Well a balanced party is 1 melee, 1 caster, 1 pranged and a free spot.

If the RDM did the same damage as the melee, the melee would still have their space, but it would allow the RDM to compete much more easily at the caster spot because it will do considerable damage plus its versatily and could compete for the free spot.

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Originally Posted by ForteNightshade

Except they do not. Caster balance is awful, nobody is going to deny that. However, that is entirely separate problem from melee.

If you were to buff Red Mage to deal melee level damage, you now have a job without any uptime restrictions, 10% party mitigation and both an on demand heal and raise. In what world is that remotely comparable to the current landscape, one where Red Mage was chosen over melee in FRU prog on more than a few teams despite it's awful damage? I'm all for buffing the casters but the person I quoted went to the opposite extreme. Right now running RDM/SMN and Pictro is perfectly fine in a prog setting. If RDM is pushing SAM/DRG/NIN levels, you'd be actively trolling to not have it because they offer nowhere close to the utility and flexibility.

Axe Magicek Barrier, Vercure and Verraise then we can talk about Red Mage doing melee damage. Although, there's still the uptime discrepancy.

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So why is melee uptime a consideration but casting cast times aren’t. People seem so quick to forget that casters have to…….you know cast. Mechanics these days rarely force melee out of melee range but mechanics love casters running marathons around the arena to solve mechanics. Does “I can’t hit the boss when I’m not next to them” mean literally anything when you know every mechanic they made will allow you to solve it with 4 people next to the boss

Where is the compensation for caster uptime

When was the last time we got a mechanic that felt like it was designed around a turrety caster and not a melee

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

Mechanics these days rarely force melee out of melee range

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Please play as melee in current savage tier, because you clearly have no clue what you're talking about.

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Originally Posted by VerySadDRG

Please play as melee in current savage tier, because you clearly have no clue what you're talking about.

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And again I’ll say being pushed away for half a GCD doesn’t count

When was the last time we had a mechanic line junction shiva or light rampart (the original) where you actively had to design a unique strat that was 4* as dangerous and twice as hard just to allow your melees to have decent uptime that wasn’t always implemented. The full uptime light rampart strat was a monster compared to the standard but if you wanted to fight for uptime you actively did it. Now every mechanic is either solved with 100% uptime or 100% enforced downtime

Being pushed out for half a GCD because of a chariot or being shoved to the other arena where you couldn’t even hit the boss anyway doesn’t count as the type of actual downtime that used to bend strategies around it

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

So why is melee uptime a consideration but casting cast times aren’t. People seem so quick to forget that casters have to…….you know cast.

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I think it's because only Red Mage and Pictomancer really cast anything at all. Summoner is 3 casted spells per cycle and usually only 2, Black Mage is near-100%-instant or 100%-instant depending on how you want to do it.

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Originally Posted by Carighan

I think it's because only Red Mage and Pictomancer really cast anything at all. Summoner is 3 casted spells per cycle and usually only 2, Black Mage is near-100%-instant or 100%-instant depending on how you want to do it.

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Playing instant blm is not so worth a dps.
Of course, if one has to choose between life or changing the rotation to have everything instant and not die, I'm fine with it (Rotation not at all trivial however). But that's like telling the melee to detach from the boss and attack him with ranged attack for no valid reason.
Even though the BLM has received a lot of movement, almost making it unrecognizable in some ways, it still suffers from micro-movements that need to be optimised.

The smn is not a caster, it's fine where it is, no comment.

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

Now every mechanic is either solved with 100% uptime or 100% enforced downtime

Being pushed out for half a GCD because of a chariot or being shoved to the other arena where you couldn’t even hit the boss anyway doesn’t count as the type of actual downtime that used to bend strategies around it

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I hope you'll try to stay on platform in 1st phase of M4S. Spoiler: you'll die in 2 hits without extra heals and mit (especially DRGs and VPRs, for they don't have any mitigation tools). And to make things worse, you drift your GCD alignment, you lose usage of some OGCDs, you lose autos, you lose dot ticks, so you're punished for that "100 enforced downtime" and not getting any type of compensation, while casters are completely safe and do everything as usual.

And that half of GCD can cost you either whole usage of it in burst window, or can cost you stuff like Bhavacakra that generates from GCDs. Casters, on the other hand, have means to deal with suff like that with either slidecasts, personal instacasts or a swiftcast.

I would understand that type of discussion during 6.x, where you had to try really hard to lose uptime, but it isn't the case rn.

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Originally Posted by VerySadDRG

I hope you'll try to stay on platform in 1st phase of M4S. Spoiler: you'll die in 2 hits without extra heals and mit (especially DRGs and VPRs, for they don't have any mitigation tools). And to make things worse, you drift your GCD alignment, you lose usage of some OGCDs, you lose autos, you lose dot ticks, so you're punished for that "100 enforced downtime" and not getting any type of compensation, while casters are completely safe and do everything as usual.

And that half of GCD can cost you either whole usage of it in burst window, or can cost you stuff like Bhavacakra that generates from GCDs. Casters, on the other hand, have means to deal with suff like that with either slidecasts, personal instacasts or a swiftcast.

I would understand that type of discussion during 6.x, where you had to try really hard to lose uptime, but it isn't the case rn.

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Yes about the single example of enforced downtime and one that punishes you with resource mismanagement. A fair point. Does it justify the 5-10% extra damage the melees do over the non PCT ranged players. You tell me

Then think of all the times that you are forced to move alot or you watch the ranged players have to move a lot. Thats their downtime. Is the amount of time the casters are forced to move when they don’t particularly want to not on average greater than the amount of time the melees are forced away from the boss

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

Yes about the single example of enforced downtime and one that punishes you with resource mismanagement. A fair point. Does it justify the 5-10% extra damage the melees do over the non PCT ranged players. You tell me

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No, I like the idea of casters and melees doing approximately the same damage and think it sould work that way, because both of them have to deal with their fair share of problems (and would love to see RDM do a bit better than it does now, because it has to deal with casts, uptime and RNG on top of that).

Well, except for SMN, it deserves to sit there with phys ranged, lol.

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Originally Posted by VerySadDRG

No, I like the idea of casters and melees doing approximately the same damage and think it sould work that way, because both of them have to deal with their fair share of problems (and would love to see RDM do a bit better than it does now, because it has to deal with casts, uptime and RNG on top of that).

Well, except for SMN, it deserves to sit there with phys ranged, lol.

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Then you and I are in agreement, I was pushing back against the idea that melee should do MORE purely based on uptime considerations

I have zero problem with the 3 casters and the 6 melee doing roughly equitable damage

'Phys ranged' being used in a derogatory way again. Please give BRD, and MCH, and the 4th phys ranged walking casts they do in PVP, so they can be treated like real jobs -- like a real role.

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Originally Posted by mallleable

'Phys ranged' being used in a derogatory way again. Please give BRD, and MCH like they do in PVP, and the 4th phys ranged walking casts so they can be treated like real jobs -- like a real role.

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I mean I’ll take anything that makes ‘phys ranged’ a valued and worthwhile role and not a literal slur against other jobs lol.

I can’t understand how the devs completely ignored the effect something like Pictomancer has on physical ranged anyway.
Like, they seriously didn’t realize how this raid-buff using super mobile dps with an easy to approach ‘rotation’ and defensive utility might cause problems for the overall vastly inferior phys ranged? lol

Frankly I don’t think the LB changes or 1% stat bonus come anywhere close to compensating how generally inferior phys ranged feel to Pictomancer (and casters in general lol). If anything they were just lazy changes to enforce a balanced composition without ever having to approach the actual balancing problems

short answer :

YES

long answer :

There is no viable option to w/o nerfing it.

Buff everything else ? Then you'll just create even more power creep from not so old content (savage and ultimate), making this ultimate even more easy in dps check.

touch nothing and wait for 8.0 ? Well yeah but there is jobs that suffer from this position (and oh boy how the caster jobs are a mess right now).

CBU just created their own nightmare of balance.

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Originally Posted by CalvinDescoles

short answer :

YES

long answer :

There is no viable option to w/o nerfing it.

Buff everything else ? Then you'll just create even more power creep from not so old content (savage and ultimate), making this ultimate even more easy in dps check.

touch nothing and wait for 8.0 ? Well yeah but there is jobs that suffer from this position (and oh boy how the caster jobs are a mess right now).

CBU just created their own nightmare of balance.

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I feel they should remove PCT from Dawntrail and reintroduce it with 8.0 when all Jobs can get their own uniqueness as they claim we will get.

Though I really hate if BLM becomes more and more an instant cast caster. As the defeats the whole point of the role of CASTER. They really should stop adding movement requirements to raid boss encounters and add something caster and ranged can deal with instead etc. I'm pretty sick of Mario karting tbh xD

I am dreading what will happen to Chaotic 24man. As PCT will just be thee most viable job possibly negating the use of Limit Break even.

How fatalistic you are.
Last expansion the casters had to suffer a smn which was a cheat, de facto giving the caster spot to a pranged. With a BLM that suffered throughout the expansion from damage adjustments in order to gain a minimum of appeal that it did not receive, and a rdm that was ignored throughout the expansion for being extremly less worth to carry than the smn.
At least the PCT is a damn caster.

Given PCT's heavy burst focus would maybe giving the entire 2 minute meta a good toning down be good for it? Not just Starry Muse, but across the board.

It's still insane to me they didn't adjust the strength of buffs like AST's Divination after extending them to 20s.

@ Kabooa

The motif cast times and GCD time being temporarily reduced from using the PCT's uptime casting does sound like an interesting idea to combine with reducing the opener burst a bit. Although I wouldn't place it on Holy / Comet to reduce the motif casts. Maybe finishing the "subtractive combo" grants a one or two stack buff for the muse casts to be adjusted to the standard 1.5s cast and 2.5s GCD? Zero Spell Speed for those numbers, of course.

It is also possible for the other class cooldowns to be checked as well. Looking at the latest cDPS graph, PCT was just one of the classes who got some benefit from the high downtimes. DRG, NIN and possibly SAM appears to be performing better in these scenarios too with high damage in their burst cooldowns.

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Originally Posted by Tigore

@ Kabooa

The motif cast times and GCD time being temporarily reduced from using the PCT's uptime casting does sound like an interesting idea to combine with reducing the opener burst a bit. Although I wouldn't place it on Holy / Comet to reduce the motif casts. Maybe finishing the "subtractive combo" grants a one or two stack buff for the muse casts to be adjusted to the standard 1.5s cast and 2.5s GCD? Zero Spell Speed for those numbers, of course.

It is also possible for the other class cooldowns to be checked as well. Looking at the latest cDPS graph, PCT was just one of the classes who got some benefit from the high downtimes. DRG, NIN and possibly SAM appears to be performing better in these scenarios too with high damage in their burst cooldowns.

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The last thing PCT needs is to cast less

If anything you could nerf it by extending all its casts

Keep the weave windows (making the GCD longer) but every spells cast time should basically be its current recast time (so normal goes to 2.5/3.5, subtractive goes to 3.3/4.3 and motifs go to 4/5)

I think the person I was responding to was concerned about the full uptime casting DPS. So far, it's a weakness PCT has and some posters are also discussing about reducing their burst DPS reward.

It's hard for me to say if the fights with full uptime would cause PCT to plummet too much once we do nerf them. I am expecting to keep it as a slight weakness for them as long as they aren't completely hosed with fights they are weaker with. If it already would be only a slight weakness after the nerfs, we may be able to disregard this suggestion then.

Maybe PCT can take a page from how Dual Cast works, and make it so that Swift Casted Motifs do not grant Muses like how Swift Casted spells do no grant Dual Cast. You would need to hard cast every Motif to get a Muse. It might not completely get rid of the playstyle, but it will make a lot harder.

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Originally Posted by CalvinDescoles

CBU just created their own nightmare of balance.

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Not really a nightmare. It's simply that they refuse to nerf PCT and their constant double down on 120s meta.
CBU3 just straight up walked in dog poop because they refused to strafe around said dog poop just to avoid hurting someone's feelings.

And that's basically just a classic CBU3 story, picking the most unhealthy choices just to avoid hurting feelings.

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Originally Posted by CKNovel

Not really a nightmare. It's simply that they refuse to nerf PCT and their constant double down on 120s meta.
CBU3 just straight up walked in dog poop because they refused to strafe around said dog poop just to avoid hurting someone's feelings.

And that's basically just a classic CBU3 story, picking the most unhealthy choices just to avoid hurting feelings.

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It’s not really so simple. For example nobody here can come to a consensus on how to nerf it. People seem to broadly agree on two points

1) it needs a nerf
2) don’t change it’s gameplay identity

Which presents a problem as PCT’s gameplay identity is why it’s unbalanced. So how would you do a nerf in this case. What are you aiming for with a nerf. Are you aiming for ultimate balance. What level of savage balance is worth ultimate balance and vice versa

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

Which presents a problem as PCT’s gameplay identity is why it’s unbalanced.

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No? You only say this because it's too strong in an area. Because if this were actually a valid argument, then we'd always have this problem with buffing Black Mage "You can't buff Black Mage without removing its gameplay identity, but that is why it's too weak". But that's somehow never an argument against buffs.

JUST

NERF

POTENCIES

Don't let perfect be the enemy of good. Picto needs a nerf. Ideally without changing much of its gameplay. Nerf potencies. Done. Could there be smarter solutions? Maybe. Would those take more than 15 seconds of a single developer's time changing a bunch of numbers in a database? For sure. Is that worth delaying a fix to this problem? Heck no!

You can even be all fancy and only nerf potencies of muses and CD skills, and more the longer the CD is, to curb burst potency and downtime gain more than general use. But that's already Advanced-Nerfing, and frankly not even necessary in a first pass. Picto is ahead by 6%, right? Cut all potencies by 6%. Done.

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Originally Posted by Carighan

No? You only say this because it's too strong in an area. Because if this were actually a valid argument, then we'd always have this problem with buffing Black Mage "You can't buff Black Mage without removing its gameplay identity, but that is why it's too weak". But that's somehow never an argument against buffs.

JUST

NERF

POTENCIES

Don't let perfect be the enemy of good. Picto needs a nerf. Ideally without changing much of its gameplay. Nerf potencies. Done. Could there be smarter solutions? Maybe. Would those take more than 15 seconds of a single developer's time changing a bunch of numbers in a database? For sure. Is that worth delaying a fix to this problem? Heck no!

You can even be all fancy and only nerf potencies of muses and CD skills, and more the longer the CD is, to curb burst potency and downtime gain more than general use. But that's already Advanced-Nerfing, and frankly not even necessary in a first pass. Picto is ahead by 6%, right? Cut all potencies by 6%. Done.

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You misunderstand, I’m not saying it’s gameplay identity is being overpowered, I’m saying it’s gameplay identity is the way its motifs system work which is why it’s unbalanced in ultimate

Is the “6% nerf” something that would balance it in savage and ultimate? How do the different profiles change the amount of this theoretical nerf

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

Is the “6% nerf” something that would balance it in savage and ultimate? How do the different profiles change the amount of this theoretical nerf

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That's my key point though: Screw figuring that out, save the perfection for later. Don't let perfect be the enemy of good.

It's okay if Picto ends up 2% strong in Ults and 2% weak in Savages. That's better than 8% strong and 4% strong, respectively.

Since the nerf is mechanically trivial (go to database, select for all picto damage potencies, do x*0.94 on all of them, update the DB), time exists to figure out better solutions later.

I mean, we can theorycraft as much as we want, but am I the only one who thinks we’ve probably completely missed the chance to adjust Pictomancer this expansion? SE is a small indie dev team struggling to make content on time (lol), somehow I get the feeling we’re stuck with this until 8.0 (like so many other absolutely awful decisions)

Even Mr.Happy has made a video explaining the something has to be done about PCT at this point. It's way too powerful in all content. Specially visible in FRU.

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

You misunderstand, I’m not saying it’s gameplay identity is being overpowered, I’m saying it’s gameplay identity is the way its motifs system work which is why it’s unbalanced in ultimate

Is the “6% nerf” something that would balance it in savage and ultimate? How do the different profiles change the amount of this theoretical nerf

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The motif system's at the heart of the job and it's also an incredibly good fit for content with downtime. I like that it has that identity. Imo a job shining in specific scenarios is good (much like how VPR can handle disengaging far better than any other melee), but it's a little bit a problem because that scenario's all over the hardest content in the game.

I think allowing DoTs to continue to give damage while the boss is untargetable again could help (and return some of the DoTs they removed).

Otherwise somehow prevent players from acting during some phase changes (which I believe FRU's phase 2 intermission does by freezing the party and final phase change does with a cutscene) and/or add/buff resource generation skills on the other jobs that fall behind at those points.

Maybe nerfing everything but its motifs would let it keep its identity, but would that fix the balancing problems?

They knew PCT would ruin their new ultimate balance. The only thing they could come up with was LB generation limits.

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Originally Posted by Ggwppino

In your imagination, unconsciously, when you think of a balanced party you think of 2 melee, 1 caster and 1 pranged. And throughout Endwalker was objectively the best thing to have, given the 6-8% difference between melee and the others.
Well a balanced party is 1 melee, 1 caster, 1 pranged and a free spot.

If the RDM did the same damage as the melee, the melee would still have their space, but it would allow the RDM to compete much more easily at the caster spot because it will do considerable damage plus its versatily and could compete for the free spot.

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No, I'm thinking about what you conveniently ignored in my response: the fact Red Mage has vastly superior utility to every single melee, thus buffing it to deal comparable damage wouldn't allow it to simply compete for the free spot but guarantee it. You'd be downright griefing your team to bring two melee with your buffed up version of Red Mage.

Once again, Red Mage brings 10% party wide mitigation, a raid buff, position flexibility and on demand healing and a raise. Literally nothing the melee have can compete with that. What you're asking for isn't a "well balanced party" but turning Red Mage into, ironically, the best job in the game alongside Picto.

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

So why is melee uptime a consideration but casting cast times aren’t. People seem so quick to forget that casters have to…….you know cast. Mechanics these days rarely force melee out of melee range but mechanics love casters running marathons around the arena to solve mechanics. Does “I can’t hit the boss when I’m not next to them” mean literally anything when you know every mechanic they made will allow you to solve it with 4 people next to the boss

Where is the compensation for caster uptime

When was the last time we got a mechanic that felt like it was designed around a turrety caster and not a melee

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Didn't you just say: "The AVERAGE melee in M4 has EIGHT. 8 GCD’s of downtime"

There is not a single fight in the last two expansions combined where you're losing an "average" of 8 GCDs due to miscasts. You're not even losing half that. At the balance threshold (85-90%), casters are hard pressed to lose any casts whatsoever. I didn't forget. It's simply not nearly as big an issue for them as fights like say, E8 were. Even M4 is worse for melee by far than casters. And that's even by your own admission. If you're losing casts in M4. I'm sorry mate, that's on you.

Just for specifics, we can basically ignore Black Mage and Summoner in this discussion because neither one of them struggles whatsoever with mobility. That leaves Picto taking a very small loss having to use Holy in White, which exist solely as a movement tool and literally nothing else. And then Red Mage which does have to put in the most effort but between Acceleration, Swiftcast and duel casting, it does fine enough.

None of this considers the benefit of safer strats because it's typically easier to spread five people away from the boss than four locked on it, being able to preposition outside of melee range or simply not having to worry about greeding in melee range. A double caster comp is almost always superior assuming equal damage. As for a mechanic designed around a "turrety caster." Find me a caster that can't move while turreting first.

Put bluntly, Casters don't have an uptime problem.

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Originally Posted by ForteNightshade

No, I'm thinking about what you conveniently ignored in my response: the fact Red Mage has vastly superior utility to every single melee, thus buffing it to deal comparable damage wouldn't allow it to simply compete for the free spot but guarantee it. You'd be downright griefing your team to bring two melee with your buffed up version of Red Mage.
Once again, Red Mage brings 10% party wide mitigation, a raid buff, position flexibility and on demand healing and a raise. Literally nothing the melee have can compete with that. What you're asking for isn't a "well balanced party" but turning Red Mage into, ironically, the best job in the game alongside Picto.

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Well, yes, so? After an entire expansion of taking cocks because of smn, and after this one which is taking cocks anyway, perhaps the time has come to push this class a little.
Then you're basically saying: that if this is done, that's it, the static and PF will close the doors to the melees for the free slot because it's either RDM or nothing?.

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Didn't you just say: "The AVERAGE melee in M4 has EIGHT. 8 GCD’s of downtime"

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And yet, and yet, the logs show how this downtime ultimately doesn't weigh that much on performance. However, remaining firmly above the pranged and the RDM.

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Put bluntly, Casters don't have an uptime problem.

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If melee has uptime problems it's because basically either a strategy to follow as a robot hasn't been studied yet, or the fight doesn't allow it, it's not like you can invent much.
A caster must always weigh their resources to achieve movement. but unlike melee, which once the strategy is ready, you just have to follow it and inevitably find yourself next to the boss, the caster has to think and vary his rotation, even arriving at compromises for damage/movement /strategy.