Ranged Physical DPS Preferences

Hi all! I just wanted to get an idea for how everyone feels when it comes to Physical Ranged DPS. Despite the fact that it needs more potency, in my opinion, I still absolutely love this category of DPS. I have gotten all my gear to 470 or close and I'm at that stage where I need to break into some Savage content to proceed any further, but it's been very difficult to find any sort of groups. So being that I have a gear set for all 3 that is usable on them all, and I have fun with them all,.. which one do you see as most viable in Savage? which one will be more accepted? Machinist seems the best single target DPS with almost nothing else to bring. Dancer feels like moderate DPS with some nice rDPS enhancements while Bard brings moderate DPS and multiple good utility. thanks!

they're all fine in savage, though i think mch and brd are ahead of dnc imo. i dont know much about the numbers but im guessing brd will probably be the more desirable job with all the party buffing it's got back.

i've been raiding this tier almost exclusively mch and idk what i honestly want for it in the future, barring obligatory potency buffs. Think i would either like it to have quite a bit more damage than the other 2 ranged while keeping its utility low, or just gimme back dismantle, refresh, something. Maybe it's intentional or something but i always feel like im in the middle of the pack in my raid's dps. I keep hearing about the ping issues, but either it's blown out of proportion as an excuse not to play the job or me being in central NA is pretty good to me.

In the current state of balance, these jobs are a bit lower but for instance my team has triple ranged (BRD and DNC/MCH, plus me as SMN) and we are doing just fine.
Whenever I'm doing PF for EXT stuff, I tend to see more bards, I think the job has always been quite popular even if ShB questionably changed it around. But there are always ranged physical DPS around, I don't see them actively kept out from the raid scene.

So in the end, pick the one you prefer as they are equally viable in high end content :). Let's hope 5.2 adjustments are a step in the right direction!

No job is bad enough off that a group will turn you down (unless it's a serious speedrun group, in which players are expected to learn all the jobs in their role). People might look at you a little sideways for running Red Mage versus the other casters (hence the upcoming buffs), but even that is still more than fine and capable of clearing content without issue.

Technically, Dancer is the strongest ranged in optimized groups / with a top-rate partner, while Machinist is better when that's not the case. Bard is a bit lost right now, kind of sitting in second or third no matter the situation. Their one strength - sustained multi-target damage on spread enemies - happens to be relevant to the first two phases of Ultimate though, so they're stronger there.

One of the things Ultimate has done is given the groups that would normally spend odd patches speedrunning something else to do. Because of that, we haven't seen the 3.5-style warping of the savage speedrun charts into i.e. double caster / triple melee that you might expect.

Even though SE dealt with LB cheese, it doesn't look like competitive speedrunning as an activity has particularly recovered. So we may not see the kind of scenario (dummies identifying the speedrun comp and taking it way too far) that leads to mass exclusion from PFs and the like, and in turn the ranged role may not see the buffs they theoretically ought to get.

I see a lot of Bards despite them not being statistically on top of the pile. I think they just feel fast and fluid to play, without a lot to memorize due to the proc-based nature of the job.

BRD is the safest I'd say. DNC requires going into melee range often and MCH burst windows are less forgiving if you need to cut them short due to jumps.