What's wrong with Ranged Physical identity?

I have been a ranged physical player for a lot of years, raiding at high level on various jobs, notably machinist and bard, and I have to admit that since Shadowbringers, the role has gotten so stripped of its identity and actual party role that I find it depressing, thinking about all what we lost.

Our lower damage output used to be less of an issue for the very reason that we were actual supports back then, needed in every competent raid for party resource management, like MP and TP regeneration, and we also offered the strongest party mitigation utilities (like old Troubadour).

In ShB every party resource management was scrapped out of the game, pure and simple. No more MP management other than at the individual level. No more mana song, no more foe's requiem raid buff that actually used MP (that was a creative design, why was it trashed??).

Other roles also started to see appear a lot of mitigation tools of their own (which isn't a bad thing, don't get me wrong, it's good to have plenty so fights can actually be designed around those more, and require more from parties to mitigate). The problem is, rPhys roles didn't. Technically today, a Red Mage brings more party mitigation than any rPhys job besides Dancer: Troubadour/Tactician/Samba are not even comparable to Magick Barrier AND Addle combined. They are not even comparable to everything that every tank brings (their party wide(s) AND reprisal). Even healers have comparable tools now.

Again, I actually like all those mitigation tools. But rPhys has lost its unique identity when it comes to this as well. We're now left at the bottom of the raid DPS ladder by quite a margin (remember in early ShB when it was so dire that a triple melee comp was actually performing better by offsetting the party bonus completely?), and we don't even have anything else left for us to take comfort in: no more party resource management, and everybody and their mothers bringing similar or better raid wide mitigation.

So, I ask the dev team, if they ever read, what are we still good for? The biggest party raid buffs in the game, which is true except for machinist? Why would it still matter, since even with those we still bring less total damage from ourselves and what we bring to the party anyway?

What do you intend to do for 7.0?

I do think phys. ranged lost a chunk of its identity when the party resource buffs went away. But there is still the mitigation, the high personal damage of MCH, and the damage buffs of BRD and DNC.

I think a foundational problem of the role, however... was, bluntly, the introduction of DNC. In particular, the introduction of DNC without a distinct niche.

So now we are in this situation where we have 2 buffers competing to be the better buffer. And then MCH, although it outdamages all other phys ranged and all casters except BLM on personal damage, doesn't do so well on raid damage - which is what the current storm of complaints is about. People want MCH to have not just the high personal damage but high raid damage as well.

But doing so will put either DNC or BRD in a very bad spot. They already have bad personal damage, but if their raid damage falls behind too, now you'll have a new job no one wants (I mean this is exactly what happened to BRD last expac. Yes, the "MCH has been terrible for 4 years" people are full of ship/revising history).

Our identity is to be a 1% party composition buff. In the announcement today the development team showed they clearly think that's fine and have no intention to do anything about this, if you really want to see changes to physical ranged then we all need to collectively quit playing the role and tell them clearly on the forums why we're quitting it. Feedback isn't enough because they read it and decided we're wrong, vote with your in-game job choice and tell others.

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Originally Posted by Risvertasashi

I do think phys. ranged lost a chunk of its identity when the party resource buffs went away. But there is still the mitigation, the high personal damage of MCH, and the damage buffs of BRD and DNC.

I think a foundational problem of the role, however... was, bluntly, the introduction of DNC. In particular, the introduction of DNC without a distinct niche.

So now we are in this situation where we have 2 buffers competing to be the better buffer. And then MCH, although it outdamages all other phys ranged and all casters except BLM on personal damage, doesn't do so well on raid damage - which is what the current storm of complaints is about. People want MCH to have not just the high personal damage but high raid damage as well.

But doing so will put either DNC or BRD in a very bad spot. They already have bad personal damage, but if their raid damage falls behind too, now you'll have a new job no one wants (I mean this is exactly what happened to BRD last expac. Yes, the "MCH has been terrible for 4 years" people are full of ship/revising history).

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Everybody and their moms have mitigation now. RDM provides more than us. I like that the game has more of it, but it's far from a defining feature of rPhys anymore. Quite the opposite in fact, we're barely average with it: tanks and healers do it better now, and some other dps as well.

I don't find DNC and BRD competing with each other at all. They both are big raid buffers, especially since EW introduced for BRD what it lacked in SHB (and still lacks at lvl80), which is raid buffs, by adding Radiant Finale, and what it introduced for DNC, mostly damaging abilities (Tilana, Starfall Dance etc). DNC, in fact, has the exact same niche as BRD right now, which it didn't in ShB when they removed a lot of buffs from BRD and people actually complained. They now both offer a very similar experience, similar party role with buffs, and similar job mechanics and bursts, although all of this in a different flavor, and I find this actually successful, unlike for poor MCH on the side.

All melees except SAM also buff, albeit in a lower fashion, and they don't compete more with each other, they just offer different flavors of it. I find the argument a bit weird to be honest.

MCH has been terrible for 1 year now (in EW), when it comes to raid performance. It's been ok in ShB within its role. But my problem is with identity, less with balance, and MCH has literally none. If you give me the argument that its selfish nature is part of its identity, then please allow me laugh a bit first, then reply that within the rPhys identity, it has literally none, and even contradicts what little is left of the role. New MCH has been an eyesore on literally every level since its rework, and it seems nobody knows at SE whatever they want of the job anymore.

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Originally Posted by Valence

I don't find DNC and BRD competing with each other at all.

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Originally Posted by Valence

But my problem is with identity, less with balance, and MCH has literally none.

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You really don't see the irony here? lol.

We've been in this exact same spot, but with brd or dnc taking their turns on the "worst job" carousel instead. (And they didn't even have the high personal DPS that MCH does).

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Originally Posted by Valence

If you give me the argument that its selfish nature is part of its identity, then please allow me laugh a bit first, then reply that within the rPhys identity, it has literally none, and even contradicts what little is left of the role.

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Laugh all you like, that's how SE tends to balance. It's why BLM tends to be the best within casters. And why SAM and MNK tend to be the best within melees.

But your fundamental complaint isn't so different from mine. We both agree there are identity issues, at least.

No, I'm afraid I don't see the irony here? Or do you think that all melees but SAM compete with each other on identity? They're all dps, and they all have a small raid buff. I explained why I think they don't, but feel free not to read what I wrote, or not believing it...

The irony is that this argument has been going on for years and years, just with a different fill in the blank - instead of machinist, it was bard. Or dancer.

After all, if you think this MCH situation is bad - why would you bring a job that has both terrible personal damage, but then the buffs don't even make up for it vs machinist? or vs (insert bard or dancer, whichever isn't the "worst" at the moment). I'd still trace it back to identity issues, but bard and dancer are not above it all, not even slightly. Though if you only play MCH and only become aware of the issues when MCH isn't favored... Well, so it goes.

Anyways. SE probably will cave to pressure eventually and buff MCH. Then we're back in the same situation as above, as we were before endwalker. So the carousel keeps on turning ~

From HW to SB, it was simple.
You support the raid, you're a parangon of support, you get cool mitigation tools, you recharges others battery, every melee job loved you, every caster job loved you.
You provide rDPS and... What's that, out of stamina? Worry not, my boys, I will shower you with TP and MP.

Then ShB happened
You are a melee DPS but you have 1 role action disguised as an ability. It's a 180s mitigation, you are useless to the party and deal low damage.
But don't worry, if you're in the team you bring 1% main stats to the group! Is it because of something you do? No, it's just because Papa Yoshida told us to bring you along.

One patch later the mitigation went to 120s.

Then EW happened
All ranged barely got anything, DNC somehow got a reworked Improvisation.
BRD got coda and must press Apex arrow twice.
DNC got its melee proc removed and replaced with new buttons, must also press Technical step twice.
MCH got a boring chain saw and a cool cutscene involving Quintus.

All ranged got a trait that changes Tacticians/Troubadour/Samba cooldown to 90s.

Between 5.0 and 6.2, ranged used to feel like melee DPS but with 22 extra yalms of range.
Since 6.2, melees feels like ranged but without the tax.

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Originally Posted by CKNovel

MCH got a boring chain saw and a cool cutscene involving Quintus.

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This one's specifically a kick in the groin because it isn't Chainsaw, the skill a lot of people were requesting. It's Chain Saw, a chain of saws. I feel so cheated.

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Originally Posted by VentVanitas

This one's specifically a kick in the groin because it isn't Chainsaw, the skill a lot of people were requesting. It's Chain Saw, a chain of saws. I feel so cheated.

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Do you know what truly grinds my gear?
They probably didn't added the chainsaw because of melee uptime like RDM.
And we're in EW complaining that melee have too much uptime!

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Originally Posted by CKNovel

From HW to SB, it was simple.
You support the raid, you're a parangon of support, you get cool mitigation tools, you recharges others battery, every melee job loved you, every caster job loved you.
You provide rDPS and... What's that, out of stamina? Worry not, my boys, I will shower you with TP and MP.

Then ShB happened
You are a melee DPS but you have 1 role action disguised as an ability. It's a 180s mitigation, you are useless to the party and deal low damage.
But don't worry, if you're in the team you bring 1% main stats to the group! Is it because of something you do? No, it's just because Papa Yoshida told us to bring you along.

One patch later the mitigation went to 120s.

Then EW happened
All ranged barely got anything, DNC somehow got a reworked Improvisation.
BRD got coda and must press Apex arrow twice.
DNC got its melee proc removed and replaced with new buttons, must also press Technical step twice.
MCH got a boring chain saw and a cool cutscene involving Quintus.

All ranged got a trait that changes Tacticians/Troubadour/Samba cooldown to 90s.

Between 5.0 and 6.2, ranged used to feel like melee DPS but with 22 extra yalms of range.
Since 6.2, melees feels like ranged but without the tax.

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Pretty much, although i'm still crossing my fingers for BRD and DNC that at least havent melee-ified with a bland basic combo.... yet.

Is mch a garbage job... no, I wouldn't main it if it was. But it is objectively the job that is the worst position in utility, performance, etc and has been for quite sometime. Some people don't see a problem with the job, but from what I've seen about 90% of the player base on forums and social media agree that the job is not where it should be comparitively to the others. It has issues that have been ongoing since hw/sb that have been consistently ignored by devs. The blame has been put onto player skill, players connections and equipment. But in my opinion, if such a large number of players are experiencing the same issue. It's not the player but the way the job is designed.

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Originally Posted by Risvertasashi

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MCH players don't want their rDPS to be so high it effectively makes BRD or DNC obsolete. I'm pretty sure people just want it to be more tightly tuned so that its overall damage can somewhat be more on par with the continually increasing gains BRD and DNC will get from both gear and the performance of their party or partners, which has effectively been the case for years to the point MCH is almost never preferred to bring in the only context in which any of this balance matters. To be honest, I am perfectly fine with the idea that DNC and BRD perform how they do in the best of parties, but it does not make sense for MCH to be how it is with how things have been tuned for a long while. I do understand that this is a delicate thing to get right, but doing anything by now is better than doing nothing.

MCH has very little to help itself or the party buff-wise, has what is effectively a role action for mitigation, and...nothing else. I would also argue that outside of getting to move while doing its rotation (which doesn't matter in any more difficult content since you need to be in particular places at particular times no matter your role, AND melee uptime is a joke) that it actually has some of the worst mobility in the game. All that is on top of doing the least damage in the game at any level where it matters. Is it somehow supposed to be surprising people are becoming more and more vocal about this? Is it revisionist history to point out a consistent trend for years that's now becoming even more extremely apparent as a job goes almost entirely ignored except for insistence from Yoshi P that it's fine?

Anyway, I would agree that this is very much not just a MCH issue and is something that will have to be addressed role-wide for phys ranged as far as a re-examination of both their identities and their numbers. I know they can't fix this mess so quickly as people would like, but feedback has been there for quite a while, and them dropping the ball repeatedly on this is becoming increasingly more disappointing.

When we look at the casters... SMN and RDM are a hot topic on job balance as well, as they're lagging behind BLM by a large margin. That said, while I think most of us are in agreement that easy job should not equate to bad performance, I think many players are content with the prospect of BLM being the highest DPS due to how challenging it is to play correctly, especially during prog. SMN and RDM shouldn't be as far behind as they are, but BLM being the selfish DPS that stands a few steps ahead due to being so complex seems fair.

So wouldn't it make more sense if this were the case for MCH? And I never played HW or SB MCH, but wasn't that also a fairly complex job before the ShB rework?

Gonna quote myself:

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Originally Posted by SaberMaxwell

For the purposes of discussing damage rankings in rDPS, talking about damage buffs (which DNC brings far more of than RDM, by the way) is a bit of a non-starter since those are factored into a job's rDPS ranking in the first place.

Curing Waltz is an off-global cooldown heal that can hit 600 potency on one group or 300 potency on two groups during a spread mechanic. What's more, it's available once per minute. Is it amazing? No, but Vercure is a single target 350 potency heal that's on the global cooldown. That means that, yes you can spam it, but to use it means you're not doing damage--if healers avoid using GCD heals at all costs as part of their gameplay, with far more potent GCD heals and AoE GCD heals, why would a RDM's vercure be particularly valued? Especially compared to Curing Waltz. If you can dismiss CW's situational usefulness, you can dismiss Vercure's in the same breath is the point here.

Shield Samba is best compared to Addle since they're both the role action even if SS is for some reason allowed to remain its own thing while every other role has their action identity stripped away, but I digress. Every 90 seconds, DNC can reduce all incoming damage for 15 seconds, while Red Mage can reduce magic damage by 10% and physical damage by 5% for 10 seconds. This makes SS better by default but for a few foibles; SS cannot be used during a dance and although Addle cannot be used during a cast Red Mage can get to a phase where it can addle far more quickly than a DNC can get to using SS. In a scenario where cooldowns are planned, thus maximized however, this is a non-factor because the window to use these abilities will be found or made.

Though not directly comparable, DNC's 2 minute mitigation is Improv which Magick Barrier does beat out handily. Improv is much harder to find openings for, although if you wanted to be cheeky and just flash Improv as an oGCD you'd drop a 5% HP barrier on the party which can be helpful. Kind of like how AST sometimes used to (still does?) flash Collective Unconscious. I don't know if Improv's regen lasts after the flash, however, but if it can, hey 100 pot regen for 5 ticks so why not. If not, eh. EDIT: My DNC just got back to me; the regen lasts, but the barrier requires the press of Improvised Finish which makes trying to weave it janky to do. MB provides a Magic Damage reduction of 10% (important to remember, it does nothing for physical damage) and a 5% healing action strength increase.

So all that said, what you really want to say is "RDM should do less DPS than DNC because it can spam raise." Which...it can, with caveats. To dualcast a raise costs 5 seconds; 2.5 for the prepcast, and although instant, verraise does still roll the GCD. 5 seconds with one of those actions being an attack with a 1.8s cast time is definitely an advantage, but it isn't exactly "grab the whole party up instantly." To swiftcast a raise costs 2.5 seconds, by contrast, so Red Mage's big strength is being able to get two raises out in 7.5 seconds compared to anyone else getting one raise out in 7.5 seconds without swift. That is, however, once per minute just like everyone else's swiftcast. That's not to mention that roughly every 40-60 seconds, Red Mage is locked in a melee combo that they lose a ridiculous amount of damage to drop for a raise--that doesn't matter in prog though does it? Unless you're going for a kill against a very tight enrage, in which case the Red Mage not only would not raise--they should not.

This tier, I have been out-sped to the raise by my healers practically every single time unless I saw the death coming and pre-empted it with, not a dualcast raise, but a swiftcast raise. The times they would have needed me to raise most, ie during burst windows, I was paradoxically not able to stop to raise due to the immense loss of damage that would have caused.

The point of my anecdote is: boy is raise a hard utility to quantify. Depending who you ask, it's worthless even in prog or it's God's Gift to FFXIV. As it is, another poster already pointed out that RDM has been straight dropped in later fights of this tier because it just cannot keep up; SMN offers the same basic safety net, but on top of that is insanely mobile and does more damage than some physical ranged. This is why my stance is "restrict verraise to a 1 minute cooldown or remove raise from casters entirely" and I am admittedly a bit of a hardliner on "If you want the fantasy of resurrecting, healing, and carrying your party, go play a healer not a DPS" which plenty of the flavor people disagree with me heavily on.

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I don't know where this idea that Magick Barrier is God's gift to mitigation comes from but it is awfully convenient to throw under the bus I guess.

Dancer is also a broken job and it will keep throwing a wrench in the balancing.

It synergize with the melee funneling and synergize with the overpowered state of melees.
On top of that, it scale excessively well with SAM and the 120s burst meta.

This broken state mainly comes from the fact that DNC performance will depends on the dance partner job.
And that DNC is balanced as if its dance partner was the worst choice possible.

Dancer partner is not a sustainable mechanic if it can be exploited this way.
Utility is multiple steps above other ranged.
120s burst design makes it benefits from downtime.
Dancer ridiculous AoEs makes the jobs naturally benefits from multiple targets.

In itself, it's not broken. But in the current context of raiding, it is broken.

"Physical ranged DPS attack foes from a distance. They excel at inflicting sustained damage, and also provide support for companions."

I think this statement would apply to Dancer, due to the sheer amount of Both damage buffs and utility it provides, apart from the "sustained damage"
Bard it somewhat applies too, its non-damaging utility outside the 10% shield is a bit questionable in most cases, but it providing a lot of different party buffs is pretty good, Also I'm no bard main but it does seem like a sustained Job.
Machnist uhh? no? machinist support is nothing lol, it's the worst performing out of all three (including raid buffs obviously).

What I changed:
A big focus on giving Machinist non raid buff utility maybe give it some defensives and a flat potency buff, It shouldn't really provide raid buffs as I think it should still be considered a "selfish" dps for the most part, The "ranged tax" should be cut down (at least) for both phys ranged and casters.
maybe buff bards "other" support options to be a lot less situational, Bard isn't really a big issue unlike machnist as it actually performs pretty alright. but I won't like to see a bit more love care put into bard and the "support" aspect of Ranged.

I'm not a big phys ranged player never took one to savage/ext never likely will, but I wanna see their damaging and support aspects especially on machinist tuned more and more, ranged tax is too much.

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Originally Posted by VentVanitas

This one's specifically a kick in the groin because it isn't Chainsaw, the skill a lot of people were requesting. It's Chain Saw, a chain of saws. I feel so cheated.

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Imagine if mch got a single target flamethrower (perhaps with some OGCD's to spam during it) in a melee chainsaw
that would've been sick