Patch 5.10 Current state of physical range jobs' balance is unfair.

Both unfair and frustrating to players who mained in aiming gears. It basically makes someone who put all weekly resources (tomestones, tokens, etc) to gear up BRD/MCH/DNC into feeling like trash because of how small our damage contribution really is. I initially decided that I would like to main MCH with BRD/DNC to play around in Shadowbringers, but now the job feels obsolete to the point it's ruining the experience for me. Feels like I played a role that drag the whole party down. I wish I can refund my aiming gears.

It feels like whatever song or dance raid buff I give to the entire party doesn't actually boost the party to push over phases. What's worse is that I actually regret not giving my weekly gears to my SAM. It doesn't matter how well I can play physical range jobs because one melee/caster job's dps can replace not only my personal dps but also my buffs. I now sitting with 3 DPS jobs that are currently bottom tier, I don't know if I should continue to upgrade aiming gear, and I am slowly losing drive to play.

I don't know what game you're playing, but in the average content as a MCH I out-DPS everyone I encounter. And I seriously doubt SE would make specific jobs impossible to clear content with.

While the physical ranged could use a very slight buff, they aren’t bad. If your group is relying on you to push damage, then it sounds more like a problem with the group as opposed to you or the role.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Doozer

I don't know what game you're playing, but in the average content as a MCH I out-DPS everyone I encounter. And I seriously doubt SE would make specific jobs impossible to clear content with.

---

I don't know what game you're playing but average content would mean Leveling Dungeon. Endgame normal content would be normal raid where DPS doesn't matter. DPS only matters in savage and ultimate content.

MCH is the best of the worst, like the best competitor among kids.
BRD is shining against multiple targets.
DNC is shining against multiple targets aswell but performs better than the BRD against a lone target.
I should almost includes RDM because it's so low here and can easily be replaced with the extremely mobile/high damage SMN.

It's not fair, indeed, to be so far behind the SMN (1K DPS behind for the MCH on a lone target), a job as mobile as a ranged but with extra support.

MCH could have a very slight buff, the only thing, in my opinion would be to halve Wildfire's cooldown, that would be around 400-500 dps increase. I would love to see a small buff on Bio Blaster, it's our only alternative for AoE but is a very small gain against 2 targets. Half of Alexander Ultimate is against 2 targets.
BRD and DNC needs a straight potency buff, the dot nerf was not a nerf for the BRD overrall but balancing for its rDPS. However, it was absolutely not needed.

There is one reason as to why you should bring a ranged DPS in your group.
Is it the mobility? Hell no.
Is it the refresh, palisade, dismantle, tp song? That's gone.
Is it the Tactician/Troubadour/Samba? Unmend salutes you, despite the Cooldown reduction, mitigation is never the reason.
Is it for its DPS? They're at the bottoms.

It's the 1% stats brought to the group because you exist. That's the whole reason why you should always have a ranged DPS.
The ranged DPS spot is forced upon groups, that's the only reason why you should get a ranged and that's why it feels unfair. Obviously a ranged should never reach the same damages as a melee for obvious reasons, but we're so shitty SE forces people to get a ranged DPS.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by CKNovel

I don't know what game you're playing but average content would mean Leveling Dungeon. Endgame normal content would be normal raid where DPS doesn't matter. DPS only matters in savage and ultimate content.

MCH is the best of the worst, like the best competitor among kids.
BRD is shining against multiple targets.
DNC is shining against multiple targets aswell but performs better than the BRD against a lone target.
I should almost includes RDM because it's so low here and can easily be replaced with the extremely mobile/high damage SMN.

It's not fair, indeed, to be so far behind the SMN (1K DPS behind for the MCH on a lone target), a job as mobile as a ranged but with extra support.

MCH could have a very slight buff, the only thing, in my opinion would be to halve Wildfire's cooldown, that would be around 400-500 dps increase. I would love to see a small buff on Bio Blaster, it's our only alternative for AoE but is a very small gain against 2 targets. Half of Alexander Ultimate is against 2 targets.
BRD and DNC needs a straight potency buff, the dot nerf was not a nerf for the BRD overrall but balancing for its rDPS. However, it was absolutely not needed.

There is one reason as to why you should bring a ranged DPS in your group.
Is it the mobility? Hell no.
Is it the refresh, palisade, dismantle, tp song? That's gone.
Is it the Tactician/Troubadour/Samba? Unmend salutes you, despite the Cooldown reduction, mitigation is never the reason.
Is it for its DPS? They're at the bottoms.

It's the 1% stats brought to the group because you exist. That's the whole reason why you should always have a ranged DPS.
The ranged DPS spot is forced upon groups, that's the only reason why you should get a ranged and that's why it feels unfair. Obviously a ranged should never reach the same damages as a melee for obvious reasons, but we're so shitty SE forces people to get a ranged DPS.

---

but you have to see, the moment the physical ranged come into the range of but 300 dps to the top every single group would instantly drop all their melees aswell as casters to run with 4 physical ranged so we cant have that.

World first groups would do it (which is totally terrible and WAY worse than bringing a single physical ranged for the buff and never in a 100 years a second one, they would never still at least bring 1 caster+1melee for the buffs+lb) and every single not progress group would of course do the same.

I mean, Statics struggling to recruit of course would also pass up that one totally awesome and chill melee that does better then the rest of the group because it doesn't fit into their 4 phys ranged meta just as partyfinder would never in a 100 years take a caster because it offers a 1% buff and they don't really give a flying fuck if the mechanics are handled by a caster or a phys ranged, just how much dps is done at the end of it, never ever would this happen.

and taking a melee ? get real, melee lb is for sissys, and uptime strats are incredibly demanding on the group, most of the time you even have to think for 5 seconds which 2 spots for a mechanic are closest to the boss, no way in hell people will ever do this if its not worth at least 5% dps .

if not for melees dragging everyone down the all ranged meta would just allways split up and dance around the arena like ninjas, i mean who needs to split up stack markers or maybe stay in generally the same location to get hit by healing or because its the only place from which to safely do mechanics anyways ? with 4 ranged you could do such fun things as do black smokers 5 meters farther away from the tank, or just drop half the arena full with the panto puddle marks, its way easier if everyone just runs around like a headless chicken instead of moving in a group.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Akiudo

Snip

---

My healers would kill me if I did not stacked at max melee or close enough for their heals. That's also the irony, the ability to attack from very far is in fact a problem for aoe healing.
90% of the time, ranged are at melee ranged for stars, PLD wings, defensive buff and else. So no, 4 ranged would not run like headless chicken.
Of course I never pointed out that rangeds DPS should do the same damage as melees, there should be a 500 DPS gap maximum, because it's what you're loosing if you fail all your positionnals as a DRG. And let's get real, if you're hitting the boss frontside all the time, you ask to be replaced for a ranged DPS.

We need to get real, ranged tax exist to avoid the 1 melee scenario. But currently it's way too high, especially with the existence of the unbalanced SMN.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by CKNovel

My healers would kill me if I did not stacked at max melee or close enough for their heals. That's also the irony, the ability to attack from very far is in fact a problem for aoe healing.
90% of the time, ranged are at melee ranged for stars, PLD wings, defensive buff and else. So no, 4 ranged would not run like headless chicken.
Of course I never pointed out that rangeds DPS should do the same damage as melees, there should be a 500 DPS gap maximum, because it's what you're loosing if you fail all your positionnals as a DRG. And let's get real, if you're hitting the boss frontside all the time, you ask to be replaced for a ranged DPS.

We need to get real, ranged tax exist to avoid the 1 melee scenario. But currently it's way too high, especially with the existence of the unbalanced SMN.

---

gotta admit, i thought my sarcasm was strong enough, reading your post i'm not sure that is actually true, though that may aswell be on my reading comprehension here.

though i might also add to your comment just as a little cherry on top that even taking 1 melee invalidates most "uptime strat" concerns, because thats the literally latest point at which a group will do them either way, and the difference between 1 and 2 melees at this point can be boiled down to "do we put 1 person in the circle/square closest to the boss or 2 people in the 2 closest circles/squares. if this is different in any place that would potentially be ultimate but in that case so what ? these groups are gonna take whats best anyways, as long as 1 per role is set and the last spot is generally "free" thats perfectly fine. (and half the fight is designed incredibly friendly to bard and this group still took 2 casters, not 2 physicals)

This tier is practically bad about not utilizing the mobility aspect of Range DPS but Stormblood had several examples where free mobility was, indeed, an advantage. Godka, M/F and Final all come to mind as non-melee freely fights. Likewise, it's easy to say people do uptime strats. Go ask around how many statics, let alone PF, did uptime Hello, World. You'll find out very quickly few did because it was far tighter. People would be even less inclined if there was only one melee since why adjust a strat around a single player.

Now that isn't to say the Range DPS shouldn't be buff. They absolutely should, though I'd actually prefer they bring back utility in lieu of pigeon holing yet another role into the same "selfish, not as selfish, 'support'" dynamic they've been doing. But there should always be a decent enough gap between the Range and Melee. Just not 1,000.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by ForteNightshade

This tier is practically bad about not utilizing the mobility aspect of Range DPS but Stormblood had several examples where free mobility was, indeed, an advantage. Godka, M/F and Final all come to mind as non-melee freely fights. Likewise, it's easy to say people do uptime strats. Go ask around how many statics, let alone PF, did uptime Hello, World. You'll find out very quickly few did because it was far tighter. People would be even less inclined if there was only one melee since why adjust a strat around a single player.

Now that isn't to say the Range DPS shouldn't be buff. They absolutely should, though I'd actually prefer they bring back utility in lieu of pigeon holing yet another role into the same "selfish, not as selfish, 'support'" dynamic they've been doing. But there should always be a decent enough gap between the Range and Melee. Just not 1,000.

---

the point wasn't if you had to adjust a strategy around one player, my point was that with very few exceptions it makes no difference if you do adjust it for 1 or for 2 players.

the moment you got 1 player you will want to do it unless its a really really sucky thing to do. this one player you WILL want, you would even want him when at the absolute top end dps between physical ranged and melee was identical because again 1% buff+melee lb, so if you do the uptime strat for 1 player it will barring a few exceptions not put extra pressure on you for doing it for 2 players, which is completly besides the point there really isn't much reason to encourage double melee any more than it is to encourage double caster or double physical ranged so with "1 space taken, doesn't really matter how sucky they design the fight" there really doesn't need any sort of big gap for melees unless literally every fight sucks for melee. melees having a harder time to reach the same numbers on certain fights and alternatively falling behind while still pulling ahead on a more static fight is not an imbalance, it is proof that certain classes excel in certain situations.(and by the logic that uptime strats are so bad they would also need to be above the casters as they at least generally don't require much group adjustments)

You're overreacting. A serious static will still bring 1 physical ranged DPS. It won't ever bring 2, though. And this is probably SE intention.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Akiudo

the point wasn't if you had to adjust a strategy around one player, my point was that with very few exceptions it makes no difference if you do adjust it for 1 or for 2 players.

the moment you got 1 player you will want to do it unless its a really really sucky thing to do. this one player you WILL want, you would even want him when at the absolute top end dps between physical ranged and melee was identical because again 1% buff+melee lb, so if you do the uptime strat for 1 player it will barring a few exceptions not put extra pressure on you for doing it for 2 players, which is completly besides the point there really isn't much reason to encourage double melee any more than it is to encourage double caster or double physical ranged so with "1 space taken, doesn't really matter how sucky they design the fight" there really doesn't need any sort of big gap for melees unless literally every fight sucks for melee. melees having a harder time to reach the same numbers on certain fights and alternatively falling behind while still pulling ahead on a more static fight is not an imbalance, it is proof that certain classes excel in certain situations.(and by the logic that uptime strats are so bad they would also need to be above the casters as they at least generally don't require much group adjustments)

---

If you're adjusting for two players, it naturally will have higher results which encourages a different strategy. When it's only a single job, people will be far less likely to bother. Once again, look at any fight in previous tiers that were not melee friendly or involved taking higher damage for uptime. A lot of people wouldn't accommodate since it doesn't benefit them enough to matter.

In fact, lets look at Ultimate. Bard is so strong in TEA at the moment, it's already better to bring three range and drop a melee. If the range were buffed to the point of dealing comparable damage to the melee, they'd be straight up better to the point the 1% may not be enough to keep even one of them, let alone two. This is where the issue lies. While they may not utilize mobility as often as some Range players would prefer, when they do, it's a distinct advantage the melee do not have. Even if it doesn't lead to you dealing more damage individually, you're allowing the melee to stay on the boss whereas they would otherwise be forced to disengage. For example sake, lets say Bard did 100~ less than Dragoon in the aforementioned Alex raid. It isn't now just excelling, it's rendered Dragoon completely worthless. The sheer downtime and lost positionals would make their damage gap huge.

But lets move away from Ultimate because Final Omega is another example. You weren't bringing a Dragoon to that fight because it was powerful. You brought it because it made Bard into a monster. Were Piercing not a thing back in Stormblood, you wouldn't have brought one. And if Machinist were pulling Samurai numbers... you probably wouldn't bring a melee to O12S, period. The 1% would be made up through not having any downtime loses.

This also doesn't cover Tactician, Samba and Troubadour are much better than Feint.

Simply put, by moving the Range to equal the damage melee deal. They now have an advantage with zero drawbacks. No catered strategies, no positionals, nothing. They're now just better. As I've said numerous times, the current gap, is indeed, too wide. But there need to be one.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by ForteNightshade

If you're adjusting for two players, it naturally will have higher results which encourages a different strategy. When it's only a single job, people will be far less likely to bother. Once again, look at any fight in previous tiers that were not melee friendly or involved taking higher damage for uptime. A lot of people wouldn't accommodate since it doesn't benefit them enough to matter.

---

if its easy people will accomodate, if its hard they won't , you telling me you really think people wouldn't bother for a 1% buff+~1% percent for having the melee lb ? (yes, there are fights where you would probably use a ranged lb, but generally melee lb is the most universal by far) what is true is that if it costs the melee 200 dps if the group just doesn't bother with uptime strats than maybe that may happen, people would not bother with uptime strats (again, if they are hard) but what would that really do ? you would still take 1 melee and if uptime strats fall into the realm of "okay, not really complicated" like they do now you would do them for half a melee even, if they are more like "damn, thats hard" you would have to take a look at how hard it is, and what it offers you if you do it, both of these are true, however the solution to have the melees stronger on a level they will break even if you simply don't bother, to pre grab your own sentence, :they now have an advantage (higher potential if the group can be bothered) with zero drawbacks (even if the group doesnt give a f... they will break even)

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by ForteNightshade

In fact, lets look at Ultimate. Bard is so strong in TEA at the moment, it's already better to bring three range and drop a melee.

---

first things first, yes, bard is so powerfull that the world first group, and having checked only 5 other logs it at least seems like only the world first group did take 2 casters, bow down to the power of bard indeed, its a terrible world where 3 ranged (not 3 or even 2 physical ranged, 3 ranged in total) ever be a viable option over 2 melee). Also bard is only powerfull because it gets way more out of having a constant 2 targets than most other classes, one could easily buff bards single target capabilitys while keeping or even nerfing its 2 target aoe potential

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by ForteNightshade

If the range were buffed to the point of dealing comparable damage to the melee, they'd be straight up better to the point the 1% may not be enough to keep even one of them, let alone two. This is where the issue lies. While they may not utilize mobility as often as some Range players would prefer, when they do, it's a distinct advantage the melee do not have. Even if it doesn't lead to you dealing more damage individually, you're allowing the melee to stay on the boss whereas they would otherwise be forced to disengage. For example sake, lets say Bard did 100~ less than Dragoon in the aforementioned Alex raid. It isn't now just excelling, it's rendered Dragoon completely worthless. The sheer downtime and lost positionals would make their damage gap huge.

---

pray tell which mechanic forces more then 2 dps players to disengage in a way having a second phys ranged allows the 3rd (or 4th) player to keep uptime that wouldn't be handled just aswell with any phys ranged/caster combo ?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by ForteNightshade

But lets move away from Ultimate because Final Omega is another example. You weren't bringing a Dragoon to that fight because it was powerful. You brought it because it made Bard into a monster. Were Piercing not a thing back in Stormblood, you wouldn't have brought one. And if Machinist were pulling Samurai numbers... you probably wouldn't bring a melee to O12S, period. The 1% would be made up through not having any downtime loses.

---

"you brought dragoon because it buffed bard" yea well so ? i'm not saying you are wrong in that, but that only means bard in stormblood was op (potentially i would rather say the crit synergy meta was op, but thats a different discussion), that may very well be true, i just don't see what it adds to the discussion, bard in stormblood had a lot more going for it than just damage. also in your own example funnily enough you would have brought a dragoon to buff the "samurai numbers" pulling mch but thats also the point, dragoon was balanced around buffing 1 physical ranged while physical ranged where worthwhile on their own, that let to people realizing if you take 2 physical ranged the group dps reaches unexpected heights (which currently fflogs would actually attribute to the dragoon, you are basically arguing that dragoon got to strong by buffing the physical ranged).

also lets act like there where only 2 fights in the game, for simplicitys sake if nothing else. no one in their right mind expects any physical ranged to pull ahead of blackmage on voidwalker, but what you offer with "o12s was soooo melee unfriendly" is only the most extreme counter point, if samurai where equal in some "general movement level" fight to mch than that would end in samurai indeed falling behind in a melee unfriendly fight, it would however just as much mean a fight like voidwalker would still favor the melee. only saying "oh, but what if theres a melee unfriendly fight like o12s" is like the physical ranged complaining about the dps gap on voidwalker instead of the "all fights" metric

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by ForteNightshade

This also doesn't cover Tactician, Samba and Troubadour are much better than Feint.

---

and mantra (yes the current 10% mantra) is better than natures minne, can we please nerf monk ? i'll give you that feint is definitely the short end of the stick as far as damage reduce cooldowns go but if we go down that route than where is the caster penalty for addle being better than feint ? because it is, the whole reason feint sucks is that it doesn't work on most stuff (all the stuff addle does work on) also as they don't stack the value of a second tactician etc is strongly diminished, yes there are obviously situations where you can get use out of it more than once every 2 minutes but most of the time theres the one time you want 3 or 4 different kinds of damage reduce skills stacked (in which situation a second tactician etc. would be worthless) or you want to split up damage reduce skills for several mechanics in a row (think quietus) but in that situation you will rotate through the group cooldowns in a way that works anyway, best a second tactician would offer you their would be that you can completly overcompensate 1 or 2 aoes that go off. which isn't nearly as usefull as it may look as it pretty much doesn't matter if someone is down to 10 or 20% as long as the person is still standing and gets his dose of cure 3s before the next attack happens. mind you i'm all for changing feint, i dunno make it 5% on everything with 60 second cd or whatever.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by ForteNightshade

Simply put, by moving the Range to equal the damage melee deal. They now have an advantage with zero drawbacks. No catered strategies, no positionals, nothing. They're now just better. As I've said numerous times, the current gap, is indeed, too wide. But there need to be one.

---

and as we are still talking actual fights, not training dummies that still isn't true. again, i know its only the 3rd time i say this but "catered strategies" you at least WANT to do for the first melee allready, you can't attribute something you do anyways as a drawback of taking a second melee, its a drawback of taking any melee but taking that one square encourages you with a 1% mainstat buff aswell as melee lb (and in that case it really is a 1% buff, not a "if we deduct the damage the phys ranged does less than a caster then we as a group still gained 0,1% dps, horray"), right now people are taking physical ranged with them to in the end have 100 group dps extra compared to taking a second caster, while they do uptime strats for their melees. the notion that people would refuse to do "easy" uptime strats for anything in the range of 700-900 dps is just silly, saying "but they won't do them for the harder fights" just means that this should be the fights where the physical ranged in fact shine and excel while fights like voidwalker are the fights where the melees should hold some lead which would than average out while looking at the all fights metric.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Akiudo

if its easy people will accomodate, if its hard they won't , you telling me you really think people wouldn't bother for a 1% buff+~1% percent for having the melee lb ? (yes, there are fights where you would probably use a ranged lb, but generally melee lb is the most universal by far) what is true is that if it costs the melee 200 dps if the group just doesn't bother with uptime strats than maybe that may happen, people would not bother with uptime strats (again, if they are hard) but what would that really do ? you would still take 1 melee and if uptime strats fall into the realm of "okay, not really complicated" like they do now you would do them for half a melee even, if they are more like "damn, thats hard" you would have to take a look at how hard it is, and what it offers you if you do it, both of these are true, however the solution to have the melees stronger on a level they will break even if you simply don't bother, to pre grab your own sentence, :they now have an advantage (higher potential if the group can be bothered) with zero drawbacks (even if the group doesnt give a f... they will break even)

---

Thank you for proving my point? The examples I gave you are fights where uptime meant more work for the rest of the group. With only one player, you're now having to convince seven others to accommodate one. Not to mention, some uptime strategies require additional healing; O10S comes to mind. Two melee can compensate for that loss due to their innate higher damage output. That wouldn't necessarily be true for one. And melee lost far more than 200 DPS in O12S. There's a reason Ninja and Dragoon were dead last in that fight. As for the LB, you aren't factoring in just how significant a buff this would be to the range. We're talking over 1,000 rDPS added to all three of them. Considering TEA Bard already catches up to the melee, giving them an extra 1,000+ rDPS would make them vastly superior. Would it be enough to knock melee out entirely? It's certainly be up for debate. What would happen is that fourth slot is always Caster or Range. So you've essentially shifted the problem of always taking two melee to never taking two melee. If the idea is to open that slot up to more variety, this isn't how you accomplish that.

Quote:

---

first things first, yes, bard is so powerfull that the world first group, and having checked only 5 other logs it at least seems like only the world first group did take 2 casters, bow down to the power of bard indeed, its a terrible world where 3 ranged (not 3 or even 2 physical ranged, 3 ranged in total) ever be a viable option over 2 melee). Also bard is only powerfull because it gets way more out of having a constant 2 targets than most other classes, one could easily buff bards single target capabilitys while keeping or even nerfing its 2 target aoe potential

---

Yes, because we all know this game easily lets you gear a second role and everyone can switch roles without any difficulty. People had no way of knowing how strong Bard and Summoner were going to be until they actually got in the content. And asking your melee player who may not even play a range to suddenly swap isn't going to have good results. Now if the range saw a 1,000+ buff come 5.2 to match the melee, you'd see a very different trend. As for viability. They already are. What you're asking for is such an enormous buff to three jobs that would make taking two melee a straight up liability.

Quote:

---

pray tell which mechanic forces more then 2 dps players to disengage in a way having a second phys ranged allows the 3rd (or 4th) player to keep uptime that wouldn't be handled just aswell with any phys ranged/caster combo ?

---

Hello, World? The uptime strat requires much more precision, puts more stress healing and the melee lack any way to help mitigate the damage. All of phase two TEA is forced melee downtime and positional loses at varying points. The only melee somewhat able to mitigate this is Monk due to Riddle of Earth. That's just two more recent example. I'll be the first to admit, Eden doesn't do much of anything to utilize mobility. But that's more an issue with their encounter design this tier.

Quote:

---

"you brought dragoon because it buffed bard" yea well so ? i'm not saying you are wrong in that, but that only means bard in stormblood was op (potentially i would rather say the crit synergy meta was op, but thats a different discussion), that may very well be true, i just don't see what it adds to the discussion, bard in stormblood had a lot more going for it than just damage. also in your own example funnily enough you would have brought a dragoon to buff the "samurai numbers" pulling mch but thats also the point, dragoon was balanced around buffing 1 physical ranged while physical ranged where worthwhile on their own, that let to people realizing if you take 2 physical ranged the group dps reaches unexpected heights (which currently fflogs would actually attribute to the dragoon, you are basically arguing that dragoon got to strong by buffing the physical ranged).


also lets act like there where only 2 fights in the game, for simplicitys sake if nothing else. no one in their right mind expects any physical ranged to pull ahead of blackmage on voidwalker, but what you offer with "o12s was soooo melee unfriendly" is only the most extreme counter point, if samurai where equal in some "general movement level" fight to mch than that would end in samurai indeed falling behind in a melee unfriendly fight, it would however just as much mean a fight like voidwalker would still favor the melee. only saying "oh, but what if theres a melee unfriendly fight like o12s" is like the physical ranged complaining about the dps gap on voidwalker instead of the "all fights" metric

---

Yet you want a 1,000+ buff to Bard. How wouldn't that lead to it being overpowered again? At least against the melee. What it adds is a prime example of a fight not being melee friendly leading to wipe gap in damage between said melee and the range. Dragoon was never balanced around buffing the range. The dev team outright acknowledged they didn't consider Dragoon at all when factoring Bard and Machinist's damage. Which is what caused them so many problems with piercing. You also kind of defeated your argument because, once again, this whole point is supposedly about the fourth DPS slot being open to variation. Stormblood Dragoon was almost mandatory. No self-respecting Range player wanted to play without one and reee'd very loudly about it.

The difference between a non-melee friendly fight and something like Voidwalker in this hypothetical is the range would always come out ahead. For simplicity sake, lets say both Machinist and Samurai did 16,000. In a uptime fight like Voidwalker... they'd both parse even. In a fight like O12S, Machinist's damage would remain unchanged but Samurai would fall behind. Basically, only one role is ever at a disadvantage. This is precisely why the Range cannot have entirely free mobility and to equal damage. A slight buff to push the gap closer would make the Range more competitive but not straight up superior in downtime heavy fights.

Quote:

---

and mantra (yes the current 10% mantra) is better than natures minne, can we please nerf monk ? i'll give you that feint is definitely the short end of the stick as far as damage reduce cooldowns go but if we go down that route than where is the caster penalty for addle being better than feint ? because it is, the whole reason feint sucks is that it doesn't work on most stuff (all the stuff addle does work on) also as they don't stack the value of a second tactician etc is strongly diminished, yes there are obviously situations where you can get use out of it more than once every 2 minutes but most of the time theres the one time you want 3 or 4 different kinds of damage reduce skills stacked (in which situation a second tactician etc. would be worthless) or you want to split up damage reduce skills for several mechanics in a row (think quietus) but in that situation you will rotate through the group cooldowns in a way that works anyway, best a second tactician would offer you their would be that you can completly overcompensate 1 or 2 aoes that go off. which isn't nearly as usefull as it may look as it pretty much doesn't matter if someone is down to 10 or 20% as long as the person is still standing and gets his dose of cure 3s before the next attack happens. mind you i'm all for changing feint, i dunno make it 5% on everything with 60 second cd or whatever.

---

Mantra is an outlier given it's the only melee unique utility that isn't damage related. It really should have been axed but that's another topic. And you're really underselling how valuable two Addles or 10% shields are. That's an extra free mitigation. In a scenario where the Range match the melee in damage, why wouldn't you want more utility with no trade off? This tier of Savage doesn't make the best use of it given how... low damaging some of the fights are. But free mitigation is free.

Quote:

---

and as we are still talking actual fights, not training dummies that still isn't true. again, i know its only the 3rd time i say this but "catered strategies" you at least WANT to do for the first melee allready, you can't attribute something you do anyways as a drawback of taking a second melee, its a drawback of taking any melee but taking that one square encourages you with a 1% mainstat buff aswell as melee lb (and in that case it really is a 1% buff, not a "if we deduct the damage the phys ranged does less than a caster then we as a group still gained 0,1% dps, horray"), right now people are taking physical ranged with them to in the end have 100 group dps extra compared to taking a second caster, while they do uptime strats for their melees. the notion that people would refuse to do "easy" uptime strats for anything in the range of 700-900 dps is just silly, saying "but they won't do them for the harder fights" just means that this should be the fights where the physical ranged in fact shine and excel while fights like voidwalker are the fights where the melees should hold some lead which would than average out while looking at the all fights metric.

---

How isn't it true? The aforementioned Machinist matching Samurai and Black Mage damage has no cast bar and no uptime requirement. They can hop around like a mad fool and won't hamper themselves at all. Regardless, you aren't reading what I'm saying. With only one melee, it becomes less encouraging to bother with uptime strategies or catering since it's only one player benefiting now. With two, the loss is doubled. So it's that much more noticeable. Now obviously groups will still optimize at the higher levels but considering how few people do uptime strategies now with two melee. What makes you think they'd be accommodating with one in a scenario where Dragoon and Bard deal the same damage? As for your example? Where did I remotely apply people wouldn't do uptime for a 900 damage loss? Not only is that pulled from nowhere, it's comically extreme. Granted, in TEA, that would be roughly around how much better your hypothetical Bard would be over Dragoon. And that's even with uptime strats.

What it boils down to is free mobility is still an advantage with the trade off being less damage. That trade off is too one-sided at the moment, especially given how this Savage tier made little use of mobility. But that's an encounter design issue.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by CKNovel

I don't know what game you're playing but average content would mean Leveling Dungeon. Endgame normal content would be normal raid where DPS doesn't matter. DPS only matters in savage and ultimate content.

---

Clearly there was a miscommunication. When I said 'average' content, I meant everything from trials, dungeons, alliance raids, and normal raids. Everything except savage and ultimate. Not just 'leveling dungeon'. How is that considered the only 'average content'?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by ForteNightshade

snip

---

really cant be bothered to multi quote if you basically only ever answer half the point i make while ignoring the other half so again, Bard being op is the reason they went 1 bard+2 casters ? you're gonna have a hard time convincing me of that. and btw, if you do look at the actual TEA logs bard is still a good 900 dps behind the top (completly ignoring summoner here) even after the first two phases are basically doing everything possible to bend over backwards to bards advantage and thats allready including "all of phase 2 being forced melee downtime" .

btw i allready stated that you could easily buff bards single target while keeping his 2 target capabilitys the same or even nerfing them, bard is only strong at 2 targets because reportoire can procc for every dot and you can exchange burst shot/refulgant arrow for quick nock, nerf quick nock by 20, make it so every dot can only procc reportoire once (get checked on server time so cant be that hard to do), maybe make it so the dots only do 90% if they are one 2 targets and 80% on 3 upwards (all dots, thats assuming the game cant differentiate between when the dots where applied, otherwise just use the general aoe falloff), in exchange give bard something like bane and change quick nock from that stupid cone to a "real" aoe so you can actually hit 8 enemies when there are 8 congrats, you now nerfed bard 2 mob capability while doing nothing for its single target so you can get to buffing that.

on square "forgetting" to put piercing in the damage equation for bards on mch, if they really said that than that is on square, i still don't see how i defeated my own point here, i flat out admitted that stormblood phys ranged may very well have been overpowered, just that stormblood phys ranged not only had melee damage levels (and they had, if you included the buffs they offered), they also had WAY better support than they have now at the same time, i still don't see what phys ranged being overpowered in stormblood if they offer the most damage AND have things like dismantle and refresh have to do with keeping their damage lower than ever AFTER taking away nearly all their support (real support, not group dps buffs)

also why say that if they were equal in voidwalker, having "the same damage" the ranged would dominate in other fights ? no one ever asked for that, no one ever said "i want the physical ranged to beat out melees on a training dummy", no one ever asked for equality on voidwalker so why bring it up ?. what people ask for is if say a normal fight, which is not voidwalker as that is mostly a training dummy the gap between the phys ranged and the melee is 300 dps closer than it is on voidwalker than give the melee that 300 dps on voidwalker so on a "normal" fight they end up equal, even though the melee would have been higher if there was no downtime or missed positional do to mechanics or whatever., this would simply mean that on a more extreme fight as far as melee friendliness is concerned the phys ranged would pull ahead, yes, but it would also leave them below in extremly melee friendly fights while meeting at around the same in a "average" fight., also while you should balance around the top that doesnt mean the literal top 1 player of every class, you balance around the 90-95% range and with that still have room for a melee to be actually 300 dps ahead on a 99 parse compared to a physical ranged 99 parse because the 99 parse trys where the ones where the melee actually didn't have to deal with any downtime or whatever because the fight just worked out nicely or the group really went the extra mile. (and yes, literally every class gains around 200-300 dps on the physical ranged going from 95-99 parses for that very reason)

and for the record, the 700-900 dps is the encouragement square offers you to take ONE melee, if you want to do uptime strats or not, there is zero reason to encourage a second melee any more than a second caster or physical ranged, you got 4 slots and a buff clearly designed to make you take one of each role, so 1/1/1+last slot free, all i ever said is having a second melee is with few exceptions not worse than having one, and you will have one. will there be few exceptions where having 2 actually is worse than having one ? sure, that would be the fights were uptime tactics actually are enough extra work you won't just do them anyways and may simply skip on them when you only take one melee, that would also be exactly the fight where the phys ranged could actually shine in exchange for falling behind in fights like voidwalker. lastly, the whole "they can hop around and wont hamper themselves" argument is again balancing around class difficulty, not group effort which is "bad" for several reasons not the least being subjectivity aswell as the question where to draw the line, unless you wanna argue that all melee are equally hard as each other aswell as the casters.

Just butting in for a second, people don't bring dupe jobs because one dupe job will hamper lb generation and lb is super valuable in Ultimate.

Also worth noting that with the level of mobility SMN has it might as well be phys ranged, so yeah 2 casters but in playstyle it was 1 caster 2 ranged 1 melee.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Doozer

Clearly there was a miscommunication. When I said 'average' content, I meant everything from trials, dungeons, alliance raids, and normal raids. Everything except savage and ultimate. Not just 'leveling dungeon'. How is that considered the only 'average content'?

---

Not the subject here but if you exclude savage and ultimate, you fall in the context where DPS doesn't matter and people barely try to push numbers.
Leveling dungeon and normal trials would be average as they have no enrage and near impossible to fail with people knowing the basics.

Alliance raid are mechanically harder but it stops here, there's really nothing difficult as long as you pay half attention to what's going on and can't technically loose.

As for TEA discussion:
There's currently one (or two if it was done) clear with MCH
BRD and DNC are popular for reasons I can't list because I can only assume those.

For BRD, I would say that the healing buff really helps the MT on the slaps the tanks take, but also works better as a "proc based" job and not resource based such as the MCH. I'm not exactly sure about the DNC, though, maybe because it works crazy well with the top DPS, SMN/MNK/BLM/SAM ?
I'm honestly convinced that MCH is not the most popular as it's harder to prog with it due to the lack of support.

Also, even on multiple targets, BRD will still be outshined, DNC will never reach a MNK numbers on TEA two first phase. The gap is simply too large.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by SaberMaxwell

Also worth noting that with the level of mobility SMN has it might as well be phys ranged, so yeah 2 casters but in playstyle it was 1 caster 2 ranged 1 melee.

---

^^^^^^^^^^^^^

The problem isn't that ranged sit where they're at, it's that there's no reason they shouldn't be equal to Summoner, -but if they were that causes problems elsewhere-.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by CKNovel

Not the subject here but if you exclude savage and ultimate, you fall in the context where DPS doesn't matter and people barely try to push numbers.
Leveling dungeon and normal trials would be average as they have no enrage and near impossible to fail with people knowing the basics.

Alliance raid are mechanically harder but it stops here, there's really nothing difficult as long as you pay half attention to what's going on and can't technically loose.

As for TEA discussion:
There's currently one (or two if it was done) clear with MCH
BRD and DNC are popular for reasons I can't list because I can only assume those.

For BRD, I would say that the healing buff really helps the MT on the slaps the tanks take, but also works better as a "proc based" job and not resource based such as the MCH. I'm not exactly sure about the DNC, though, maybe because it works crazy well with the top DPS, SMN/MNK/BLM/SAM ?
I'm honestly convinced that MCH is not the most popular as it's harder to prog with it due to the lack of support.

Also, even on multiple targets, BRD will still be outshined, DNC will never reach a MNK numbers on TEA two first phase. The gap is simply too large.

---

brd (i assume dancer for the same reason, no idea really) is popular because its gain form having 2 enemies is gigantic compared to most other classes,

going form 1 to 2 enemies you gain
the capability to multidot, both dots are strong enough on their own to be our strongest skills sans apex arrow
extra reportoire proccs do to having more dots up (extra pitch perfect/blodletter proccs)
more apex arrows, which also hits multiple targets even though its a single target finisher (also do to more reportoire proccs as thats what fills the apex arrow gauge)
you can change blodletter (150 potency, 15 second cooldown) with bloodletter (130 potency, so 260 at 2 targets, shared cooldown with bloodletter)
you can exchange our filler from burst shot/refulgant arrow (dunno, 265~ potency? feel free to do the math, 230+35% chance for a procc allowing you a 330 attack instead once) with quick nock (150 potencyx2 so 300 potency total+30% chance for a reset of rain of death (so an extra 260 potency) on every quick knock.)

Basically our very literal filler skill gets a boost of 120~ potency when we change from 1 targets to 2 targets aswell as extra proccs for our reportoire skills and extra chances to dot which offer even more potency

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Kabooa

^^^^^^^^^^^^^

The problem isn't that ranged sit where they're at, it's that there's no reason they shouldn't be equal to Summoner, -but if they were that causes problems elsewhere-.

---

Summoner is overtuned, so that's enough of a reason right there.

My only issue with the balance is the current difference between the highs and the lows. In the end, DPS occupy the 'DPS' role, no matter if they are ranged phys/magical or melee. There is no support role (even though I REALLY wish there was), so balance between the DPS jobs can't be just in a vacum of the individual sub roles of it. I can accept a melee or a caster being 100 or 200 ahead of a physical ranged in rDPS when both jobs are played at the same level. What I can't accept though is when Job Choice trumps personal skill. When I drop a 99% on Bard and am getting out DPS'ed by a 50% Samurai, I'm no longer of the belief that the balance between jobs is fine. I have played both jobs in a raid setting. Their is no massive difference in difficulty between the two, both have their own difficulties and issues with optimization, and both have their easy points. I get the 1% role bonus "supposedly" makes up for that, but that is hollow to someone giving full effort and taking the time to learn their job to perfection.

The moment mediocrity is more rewarding then excellence, balance has failed.

Again, I prefer DNC is buffed in little baby steps, or not buffed at all. I disagree about MCH being 'bottom tier'. I've never played that job to the levels that matter, but I've seen them in action. BRD seems to be back in that "We're experimenting with BRD" phase again >_> <_<.

Please no more double range Meta, we had that for 3 versions of the game already.

as a machinist i just want my flamethrower to be amazing.

long cooldown
have to channel
can't move or the channel ends

like if somehow a machinist can get the full duration it should be amazing damage.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Renkei

Please no more double range Meta, we had that for 3 versions of the game already.

---

We've also had nearly 5 of 6+ years of this game being absolutely ruled by the melee dual combo of Dragoon and Ninja, yet no one seems to complain about how long Dragoon has been meta. Also the only time that dual ranged was the actual hard set meta was right when the game launched for one patch and 3.4 to 3.5.

Also the whole concept of "Dual **** meta is bad" is a terrible way to look at balance. The current way the game is built, you will always at one point have a dual meta, hell if anything dual melee has been THE meta since day one and has never once been challenged. Now that the 1% role bonus enforces every role to be present, you will always have one of each role, and with three roles for four spots, one is going to be double up on. It's just regularly accepted by the community that it should be the melee, even though fight design has no longer required the old standard of '2 melee, 1 caster, 1 ranged' comp since Heavensward.

There is nothing wrong with the meta being dual ranged, or dual melee, or even dual caster. Hell the first Ultimate clear was with a double caster comp. So the concern for that is one, not needed and two, really ridiculous when average melee players are giving more to their teams then then the best ranged players.

Maybe BRD could get some single target damage buffs but otherwise the ranged are perfect balance right now. Ranged should always do less damage than other jobs. That's just a thing. To make sure people bring us we hold the 1% party bonus hostage, which is significant. I think that's a good way to force people to bring roles without making all jobs do the same damage, because that makes it a lot easier to balance. Instead of balancing BRD/DNC/MCH against all the other DPS jobs they only have to balance them between those 3.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Rika007

We've also had nearly 5 of 6+ years of this game being absolutely ruled by the melee dual combo of Dragoon and Ninja, yet no one seems to complain about how long Dragoon has been meta. Also the only time that dual ranged was the actual hard set meta was right when the game launched for one patch and 3.4 to 3.5.

Also the whole concept of "Dual **** meta is bad" is a terrible way to look at balance. The current way the game is built, you will always at one point have a dual meta, hell if anything dual melee has been THE meta since day one and has never once been challenged. Now that the 1% role bonus enforces every role to be present, you will always have one of each role, and with three roles for four spots, one is going to be double up on. It's just regularly accepted by the community that it should be the melee, even though fight design has no longer required the old standard of '2 melee, 1 caster, 1 ranged' comp since Heavensward.

There is nothing wrong with the meta being dual ranged, or dual melee, or even dual caster. Hell the first Ultimate clear was with a double caster comp. So the concern for that is one, not needed and two, really ridiculous when average melee players are giving more to their teams then then the best ranged players.

---

People complained all the time about DRG being meta. People hated that they were automatically brought because they were the only job with a piercing debuff.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Vulcann

as a machinist i just want my flamethrower to be amazing.

long cooldown
have to channel
can't move or the channel ends

like if somehow a machinist can get the full duration it should be amazing damage.

---

Flamethrower is really a letdown of a skill... I'd rather have it on a 180s recharge time and make it hit like a truck.

Bumping up this thread to talk about Ultimate.

Summoner is completely broken, no nerf for Ultimate was easily predictable that the job would be insane, almost required.
Bard and Dancer are still low but performs much better, the gap isn't as big as before.

But you know what I'm going to talk about, the Machinist.

SE, if you don't want to balance this job or straight up don't care about it, please officially announce it.
Not enough adds to deal enough damages with AoEs, Bio Blaster is barely worth on 2 target. 20 potency bonus, yay.

MCH is so underwhelming in TEA and it's the hardest content, the fact that they put 2 targets on more than half on the fight really helped. BRD, DNC and MCH can all tackle the mechanics...
But BRD is so above against two targets, so much it puts it near the SMN and has Minne's Nature to help the healer to deal with the 35k attacks.

MCH is the best of the worst jobs until you had a second target and it deals less damage than the utility jobs.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by CKNovel

Bumping up this thread to talk about Ultimate.

Summoner is completely broken, no nerf for Ultimate was easily predictable that the job would be insane, almost required.
Bard and Dancer are still low but performs much better, the gap isn't as big as before.

But you know what I'm going to talk about, the Machinist.

SE, if you don't want to balance this job or straight up don't care about it, please officially announce it.
Not enough adds to deal enough damages with AoEs, Bio Blaster is barely worth on 2 target. 20 potency bonus, yay.

MCH is so underwhelming in TEA and it's the hardest content, the fact that they put 2 targets on more than half on the fight really helped. BRD, DNC and MCH can all tackle the mechanics...
But BRD is so above against two targets, so much it puts it near the SMN and has Minne's Nature to help the healer to deal with the 35k attacks.

MCH is the best of the worst jobs until you had a second target and it deals less damage than the utility jobs.

---

considering its very doubtfull the next raid tier will be full of fights (or even have any fight at all) with 2 adds for half the fight i would say the fact that bard and to a lesser extent dancer get more out of this than mch is more like a consolation price... not that i disagree with what yu're saying, mch in this case goes from best of the worst to simply worst yes, but as its doubtfull there will be any big changes until 5.2 at least we should really look more towards the future, and in that future that gap between all physical ranges and the rest thats still there in fact hasn't closed by even one centimeter.

what i mean to say with this is not "oh, just live with being the absolute worst in one piece of content" but "lets be real here, mch wouldn't be any better than it currently is if it was just a single target fight, just that the other 2 physical ranged would suck even harder than mch does right now" , the role as a whole needs a serious buff, the fact that the "strongest" of the physical ranged is still so very obviously weaker than the rest even in whats the most mechanic heavy fight off the addon should be prove enough of that.

the fact that brd and dancer actually overtake mch there doesn't really change that they are generally weaker than mch, for that to be the case having a fight with a similiar add dynamic would at least need to be something that can be assumed will happen in half the fights, and going back the last 3 raid tiers its more likely to happen exactly never again, mch is the strongest physical ranged unless the fight is catering to the strengths of the other 2 to a almost comical degree, and it still sucks... compared to every other class

Something to remember is that in TEA, the situations where you have 2-target scenarios all occur very early in the easy parts of the fight. This is different from ucob where the sole multitarget scenario (adds) occurs late in the fight in a situation with higher stakes.

Jobs like smn/brd being strong in p1 and p2 of TEA isn't a huge deal because those are easy phases that most groups are gonna prog past quickly (and their dps checks aren't even that high anyway). Wiping in ucob adds because your group had mch + rdm instead of brd + smn was a super feelsbad situation, wiping for the same reason in the brute justice/cruise chaser phase is more like "Eh, we'll be farming this phase in a couple of days anyway".

And also, when you get to perfect alex, the only phase in TEA where there is a somewhat serious dps check, machinist suddenly gains an advantage because unlike bard, its job design allows it to hoard resources and enter the phase with full heat and battery. If you look up peoples' performances in TEA and select only the end portion of the graph that covers the perfect alex phase, I think you'll find that mch still has an rdps advantage over the other ranged for this reason.

Jobs with the ability to 'flex' and disjoint their resources like this have advantages that jobs with more straightforward rotations don't have, and this is one of them. I agree the ranged role as a whole needs a lot of help, but I wouldn't be so quick to count machinist out of the running in TEA compared to the other ranged.

It's why I'm not too worried about summoner being 'broken' in TEA too, because it's not. Jobs like bard or summoner may look higher overall, but only because a lot of that damage is literally padding on irrelevant phases. Now that I've cleared the fight myself, I can confidently say good black mages have nothing to fear from summoners. Compared to past ultimates (especially ucob), they have never designed a fight as raise-unfriendly as this one. If they want to marginalize raise, clearly they can do it if they want to. The vast majority of the time if someone dies it's a wipe whether you have a raise or not, which just leaves dps where blm is still #1.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Myon88

Jobs like smn/brd being strong in p1 and p2 of TEA isn't a huge deal because those are easy phases that most groups are gonna prog past quickly (and their dps checks aren't even that high anyway).

---

Your argument is true if, and only if, Summoner was lagging behind in single target fights as well.

It is not.

Thus your argument is invalid. BLM is, because of all the jobs being buffed, no longer the DPS king. It's behind all the melee, and behind summoner on every single target fight, including fights it should have the movement completely mastered on.

You're wrong on two counts.

BLM is still #1 rdps in single target scenarios, if you're not seeing that, you're not looking at the data properly.

Even if you bought into the argument that summoner was trouncing blm in dps, why's that an issue? They don't play the same role in raids at all. Blms aren't worried about healers doing more damage, because you aren't gonna replace a healer with a blm. Likewise, no sane group will replace their rez caster with a blm when they can replace a melee for it instead (see: TEA groups now including the one that got world first).

The 'rez caster' role is basically its own exclusive slot that only red mage and summoner compete over. If there is one job that has a legitimate right to complain about summoner, it's red mage and whether verraise is a fair trade off for their lower dps. And frankly I am all for red mage seeing buffs. They - and the ranged, as can be seen from this thread - need a little bit more help if they're to catch up to the rest of the jobs right now.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Myon88

You're wrong on two counts.

---

We must be looking at different datasets. Looks like Samurai and Monk are shoulder to shoulder if not higher, Summoner winning out here and there, for Void, Levi, and Titan. Not counting TEA and Eden Prime, since you stipulated single target.

In Summoner's current state, Dancer and Bard should be even, Machinist should be higher.

Yes, you might be neglecting to include pre-5.1 performances, or looking too far down the leaderboard - at the 95th instead of the 99th percentile level for instance. Blm continues to monopolize the top ranks on voidwalker, leviathan, and titan so I fail to see the issue here w.r.t summoner.

I am seeing a smattering of monks and samurais among the sea of purple in the top ranks, they're not #1 like blm, but they're respectably close. This is an interesting development because blm and the 4 melees belong in the same bloc and compete over the same raid spots. As I've said, it's all about blm vs the 4 melees, not blm vs rdm/smn.

And well, I'm not a melee dps expert so I'm not qualified to pass judgment on this state of affairs. How does the burden of having to hardcast as blm stack up against the melee constraints the melee jobs have? Who knows, not me that's for sure. They've all certainly enjoyed waving those around as justification for their output vs the ranged, so it's nice to see them pitted against each other for a change. I look forward to seeing the blms and sams duke it out and try to justify their slice of the pie.

This is a little off topic, but after reading some comments it came to mind and I don't really think it's worth making a new thread for: why do bard's songs affect its DPS output? (Or Phys. ranged DPS in general have so low DPS?) For bards, their songs don't affect them either in party or solo. To me (who knows nothing of stats, mind you), it seems a little weird that they would "punish" bard's DPS for having songs that only affects others by giving them lower DPS. Intuitively, shouldn't they have the same DPS rate as any other class seeing as their songs don't enhance their own DPS output? (Sorry if this is a "dumb" question)

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by MOZZYSTAR

This is a little off topic, but after reading some comments it came to mind and I don't really think it's worth making a new thread for: why do bard's songs affect its DPS output? (Or Phys. ranged DPS in general have so low DPS?) For bards, their songs don't affect them either in party or solo. To me (who knows nothing of stats, mind you), it seems a little weird that they would "punish" bard's DPS for having songs that only affects others by giving them lower DPS. Intuitively, shouldn't they have the same DPS rate as any other class seeing as their songs don't enhance their own DPS output? (Sorry if this is a "dumb" question)

---

Because the game is balanced around 8 man raid content. If bard can do 13k dps and songs bring 1k dps to the party, mch need to do 14k dps in that case. Self buffs do not count as utility.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Sunako

Because the game is balanced around 8 man raid content. If bard can do 13k dps and songs bring 1k dps to the party, mch need to do 14k dps in that case.

---

But MCH does, in itself, more than Bard does between all its personal damage and raid contribution in 8-mans combined...

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

But MCH does, in itself, more than Bard does between all its personal damage and raid contribution in 8-mans combined...

---

which just shows that bard is undertuned compared to mch, the point sunako was explaining still stands as far as explaining what was asked is concerned.