what can be done to improve the phys ranged situation?

2 raid tiers now i have been unable to find a phys ranged player or anybody that wanted to play phys ranged and i have had a double caster comp. i could see that there were a few points (specifically p3s and p4s p1) that lacking the 1% bonus hobbled us, but more gear helped us push through it. i'm a melee main and have no interest in playing it, so, what could be done to make playing phys ranged not blow chunks? (and i'm not referring to encounter design giving more uptime and having humongous hitboxes which hey i welcome and maybe they should increase phys ranged numbers)

It was really that hard to find one? Just advertise for a MCH.

They seemed to agree they should revisit the ranged damage tax in the next patch so we should just see what happens then.

Ranged really that rare? As a DNC main this shook me... :eek:

our dancer asked to swap to smn 3/4ths way through progging 7s because he wasn't having fun with it

How? Make hitboxes small again. Done.

that doesn't make phys ranged any more fun to play. i feel like we're reaching a situation like how healers felt (and might still feel) in shb

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Originally Posted by grinkdaboy

that doesn't make phys ranged any more fun to play. i feel like we're reaching a situation like how healers felt (and might still feel) in shb

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But range phys have more than 2 buttons in their rotation so how does that work?

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Originally Posted by Ashpd

How? Make hitboxes small again. Done.

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Ranged is in bad shape, let's punish melee for it.

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Originally Posted by grinkdaboy

that doesn't make phys ranged any more fun to play. i feel like we're reaching a situation like how healers felt (and might still feel) in shb

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Fun to play? I find Machinist a lot of fun. I don't main DPS but when I play them MCH is one of the ones I play a lot. I don't think fun is the issue on MCH at least.

It's hard to say on a DNC, I don't play them much, maybe it's fun if you get to use En Avant a lot? :D

I haven't played BRD a lot since Stormblood, but it was my main DPS then and I don't believe it's changed a lot since then. Subtle interactions have changed such as Sidewinder not being affected by dots, Refulgent Arrow being procced by Barrage, the rotation not being affected by crits and not needing to apply dots to help proc Rain of Death aoe. All of that is pretty minor.

Bard is great if you like a technical class that monitors a lot of things such as dots, song expires, pitch perfect stacks, the soul voice gauge, working towards Radiant Finale and using the most useful songs to fit the fight such as when aoe will be needed. But I have a feeling a lot of people will gravitate toward the others which are simpler than that.

give them back their support aspect?

BRD was at its apex in terms of job design back in Stormblood. Shadowbringers job changes ruined it, along with most of the other jobs. What a crappy expansion.

MCH rework....its like they saw the complaints of SB MCH being too punishing and just decided to remove all the fun out of the job (they did the same with SMN in EW too. dreading this 7.0 AST and DRG rework honestly). and as a slap in the face, despite no support abilities other than Tactician, it does less dmg than melee on top of still being almost unplayable at moderate ping.

making the hitboxes smaller just punishes melee for no reason. either give them more dmg, or their support abilities back.

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Originally Posted by Tlachtga

give them back their support aspect?

BRD was at its apex in terms of job design back in Stormblood. Shadowbringers job changes ruined it, along with most of the other jobs. What a crappy expansion.

MCH rework....its like they saw the complaints of SB MCH being too punishing and just decided to remove all the fun out of the job (they did the same with SMN in EW too. dreading this 7.0 AST and DRG rework honestly). and as a slap in the face, despite no support abilities other than Tactician, it does less dmg than melee on top of still being almost unplayable at moderate ping.

making the hitboxes smaller just punishes melee for no reason. either give them more dmg, or their support abilities back.

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/\ this...

As a bard, I have to adjust for other DPS (since I can attack walking, I have to prioritize others to position themselves), keep an eye on DOTs, not lose my music, do the boss mechanics and definitely not die (have you ever tried dying right after starting a song? You'll destroy your rotation for the rest of the fight), to give less DPS than a class that presses 3 buttons in sequence.

Don't get me wrong, I would hate for them to take away more skills from the bard and leave him with only 3 buttons, but I don't feel much difference in my buffs, and my damage is lower no matter how much I master this class. So much so that if I die in any mechanic, I'm the last priority to receive a ress among all other DPS, even if it makes me lose my DOTs on the boss, and completely misaligns the songs.

Want to fix the bard? Return its utility as support, or increase the damage it does. Also, make it less punitive when you misalign a song, either through death or missclicking. Simply if you're a bard and you miss, you have no turning back in the entire fight.

Give automaton queen raid buffs everytime it's being summon.

I started DNC a while back and I find it really fun to play. But then again, I'm fun first kind of guy, not what's most effective.

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Originally Posted by TheMightyMollusk

Ranged is in bad shape, let's punish melee for it.

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Melee's was fine from 2.0 till now. Game don't need so big hitboxes.

They already mentioned range for 6.28, likely just minor potency stuff.

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Originally Posted by grinkdaboy

our dancer asked to swap to smn 3/4ths way through progging 7s because he wasn't having fun with it

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I LOVE that fight as DNC. Nobody is far away from your dancing when it's time to do it, there's very little heavy button presses during movement (it's far easier than other raid fights for that), and the fight is really straightforward. The only hard part is of course, Harvest. <_<

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

It's hard to say on a DNC, I don't play them much, maybe it's fun if you get to use En Avant a lot? :D

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En Avant is a trap. Yes I was able to do some clutch things with it when my old static was progging Eden but you really don't want to rely on it. Better to learn the right way to do the fight.

I've always been a mostly melee main and play some RDM+SMN on the side. As for why I don't normally play phys ranged, I think it has to do with the way they play. I don't like jobs where I have to worry about dots so obviously bard is off the table for me. I actually don't mind dancer but it just feels a little too slow most the time so I get bored. Machinist I actually do enjoy but 1.well, we know how machinist has been doing ever since dancer was introduced so even if I wanted to swap to machinist I would just be asked to go dancer in most groups and 2.I play on controller and can't for the life of me find a way to make their burst comfortable to do. I've tried a few different layouts and can't find one that feels natural. (which is saying a lot when I play NIN on controller and have to press every button ever during trick/mug)

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Originally Posted by Adamantini

/\ this...

As a bard, I have to adjust for other DPS (since I can attack walking, I have to prioritize others to position themselves), keep an eye on DOTs, not lose my music, do the boss mechanics and definitely not die (have you ever tried dying right after starting a song? You'll destroy your rotation for the rest of the fight), to give less DPS than a class that presses 3 buttons in sequence.

Don't get me wrong, I would hate for them to take away more skills from the bard and leave him with only 3 buttons, but I don't feel much difference in my buffs, and my damage is lower no matter how much I master this class. So much so that if I die in any mechanic, I'm the last priority to receive a ress among all other DPS, even if it makes me lose my DOTs on the boss, and completely misaligns the songs.

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I know this is probably going to be a really bad take... but why don't we remove the cooldown on the songs? :T

I'm serious.

You can make the songs last their normal 45 seconds as they do now, with all the optimization that goes into them (3, 15, 3 iirc?). But rather than putting the button on cooldown, it's just a button that starts the song. That way if you die, you can either play it again or change to whichever song you'd be playing. To minimize the effects dying has on BRD, because it does make the class ludicrously strict.

I'd like to think that there IS an incentive with Coda to not spam the same song or two songs and disregard one. But it may be possible with a bit of fine-tuning if it does become an issue?

I dislike chance proc jobs. Main reason I don’t play ranged.

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Originally Posted by Midareyukki

I know this is probably going to be a really bad take... but why don't we remove the cooldown on the songs? :T

I'm serious.

You can make the songs last their normal 45 seconds as they do now, with all the optimization that goes into them (3, 15, 3 iirc?). But rather than putting the button on cooldown, it's just a button that starts the song. That way if you die, you can either play it again or change to whichever song you'd be playing. To minimize the effects dying has on BRD, because it does make the class ludicrously strict.

I'd like to think that there IS an incentive with Coda to not spam the same song or two songs and disregard one. But it may be possible with a bit of fine-tuning if it does become an issue?

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Maybe if we need to play a song for a bit to proc the Coda. Otherwise, personally, I'd only hit Army's Paeon long enough for the Coda and otherwise never touch it. It has the lamest Repertoire effect.

It's almost as though simplifying the Prange to essentially be Baby's First DPS alongside neutering their damage output and support characteristics has backfired tremendously.

How do they fix this? Throw Bard in a time machine going back to Stormblood and start over from there. It used to be the most popular DPS in the entire game. Now it's among the least. From there, give all three of them actual damage and bring back support abilities like Dismantle, Refresh, Foe's and Palisade. All of this would go a long way to making people enjoy the Prange again.

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Originally Posted by GeminiReed

En Avant is a trap. Yes I was able to do some clutch things with it when my old static was progging Eden but you really don't want to rely on it. Better to learn the right way to do the fight.

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Movement skills have always been a trap. Elusive Jump, Repelling Shot, Displacement, En Evante...all are purposefully designed to fool you into moving to your death. Amazing moves outside of raid. in raid...you don't use them for a reason, it WILL kill you.

More of a utility than a trap. They require planning to use properly, rather than just hitting it and praying. It's not actively detrimental like, say, Freecure.

As someone who plays a lot of Bard despite the fact it doesn't perform well, my primary gripes with the job boil down to less damage than the melee jobs who have (arguably) less demanding rotations and the fact that generally speaking a raid or group or whatever isn't going to miss my songs and would rather just bring in yet another melee or even a caster. The buffs a Bard provides just feel too inconsequential to even bother with bringing one along. Realistically a party isn't going to notice a 3% increase to direct hit, or a 2% increase to critical. Why Wanderer's and Army's just isn't a flat 5% to direct hit and critical will always baffle me. I can get Mage's only being 1% damage increase, seeing as Dancer can give a constant 5% just to one member of the party, but the other two? Is there any (valid) reason for Bard to offer so little direct and critical hit when Dancer can also give both at the same time to a Dance Partner on a 120 second cool down?

This brings me to my second gripe: Bard still suffers from having Dancer in the game. A Bard's buffs and utility got neutered as soon as Square decided to add a new primary support class in the game. There are a myriad of other things a Bard could buff. Mage's could offer a boost to Determination instead of just damage done, and this would have the side effect of affecting a healer's healing output instead of just more damage. Wanderer's could offer a 2% increase to a primary stat. If Blizzard can figure out a way to make a buff or a food item that says, "Increase primary attribute by X% amount" and have the primary attribute be increased no matter what class receives that buff, surely its not too hard for Square to implement something similar. Army's could offer a boost like 2%-3% decreased damage taken. If they want to keep Dancer as the more offensive support fine, but don't also slap Bards with the exact same buffs but at lesser values just because a Bard's buffs affect more players, especially since those buffs are tuned so low that parties would simply rather take another melee and a Dancer who'll supercharge said melee better than a Bard ever will.

Finally, Sidewinder feels bad because its nothing but another button for damage and a strangely long cool down. I would prefer Sidewinder to just be removed entirely, but honestly at this point I would take the potencies for Sidewinger and Refulgent Arrow being swapped. It feels really bad using such a boring weapon skill in conjunction with Barrage, but this combo happens anyway because Sidewinder is our hardest hitting attack outside Apex Arrow and Blast Arrow.

At the end of the day, I guess those of us who play physical ranged will just have to wait and see what exactly they end up doing when they supposedly go to look at the "Ranged Tax". More likely than not its going to be nothing but very tiny potency buffs that aren't going to do much of anything, but I guess something is better than nothing at all at this point.

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Originally Posted by TheMightyMollusk

Ranged is in bad shape, let's punish melee for it.

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Punish? As a melee main I'd love nothing more than small hitboxes again. Having to greed for uptime is the one thing that makes melee interesting to play.
These days hitboxes are so big I feel like I'm playing phys. range.

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Originally Posted by Memoranda

my primary gripes with the job boil down to less damage than the melee jobs who have (arguably) less demanding rotations

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this is a big aspect many overlook, or just go "duh, you can move totally freely, phys ranged are all easy" while never having actively played one (or at least bard for that matter).

i'll admit i haven't played melee in ages, but i've tanked, i've healed, i've played caster (at least 2 of each of these roles in a raid setting in the last 18 months), none of those came close to the stress i felt on bard.

if i want to optimize my dps on redmage i try to get in an extra cast in a situation where its hard to do so and the second i manage that i gain 40-50 dps.

optimizing dps on bard ? changing up my song rotation, pooling blodletter stacks, making sure i cut my dots as closely as possible while risking for them to fall of completly and costing me 3 times the dps i can ever gain by perfecting it, permanently watch out for proccs so i don't miss one by reacting too late and than theres refulgant arrow and barrage optimization aswell. not even saying bard is hard, but bard is a class that tends to die a death of a thousand cuts when it comes to optimizing it (and dying is brutal as heck depending on where you are in your rotation, not a bard exclusive problem but its definitely one of the classes that get hit the hardest by it).

the procc gameplay honestly takes an enourmos toll on me compared to other classes with a more static rotation. i can raid 4 hours on healer or caster without issues, but 2 hours on bard and i get headaches because the amount of concentration it takes me to optimize the class simply put is exhausting.

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Originally Posted by Akiudo

this is a big aspect many overlook, or just go "duh, you can move totally freely, phys ranged are all easy" while never having actively played one (or at least bard for that matter).

i'll admit i haven't played melee in ages, but i've tanked, i've healed, i've played caster (at least 2 of each of these roles in a raid setting in the last 18 months), none of those came close to the stress i felt on bard.

if i want to optimize my dps on redmage i try to get in an extra cast in a situation where its hard to do so and the second i manage that i gain 40-50 dps.

optimizing dps on bard ? changing up my song rotation, pooling blodletter stacks, making sure i cut my dots as closely as possible while risking for them to fall of completly and costing me 3 times the dps i can ever gain by perfecting it, permanently watch out for proccs so i don't miss one by reacting too late and than theres refulgant arrow and barrage optimization aswell. not even saying bard is hard, but bard is a class that tends to die a death of a thousand cuts when it comes to optimizing it (and dying is brutal as heck depending on where you are in your rotation, not a bard exclusive problem but its definitely one of the classes that get hit the hardest by it).

the procc gameplay honestly takes an enourmos toll on me compared to other classes with a more static rotation. i can raid 4 hours on healer or caster without issues, but 2 hours on bard and i get headaches because the amount of concentration it takes me to optimize the class simply put is exhausting.

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See, and I just personally like the satisfaction of playing Bard well and optimizing it as well as is physically possible. It feels really good to hit all my procs and keep an eye on DoT uptime (even if I do kind of find the DoTs in general to be an ancient relic of how the Bard used to be) and correctly managing my songs and their Repertoire stacks.

That good feeling dissipates when I realize that I'm contributing less than a player who's really optimized whatever melee job they're currently on. This is especially true for Ninja, who arguably has a rotation every bit as strict as a Bard does yet aren't saddled with the ranged and support tax ensuring their DPS is barely above Dancer, who is also the support job that provides more meaningful support than the Bard actually does. Like, I'm not asking for Bards to be doing Samurai or Black Mage levels of damage. But there is also no valid reason for them to be at the very bottom of the barrel just because they have a bit of utility and are ranged. The same kind of applies to Dancer, although with how much a Dancer can supercharge a single player I do feel that Dancer itself shouldn't be anywhere other than towards the bottom of the charts.

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Originally Posted by Memoranda

snip

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oh totally, i love playing bard, i just don't think its as easy as people make it out to be, in fact i find it harder than a lot of other classes. and yes, dealing shitty damage (and having no meaningfull support while at it) most certainly contributes to people not liking to play bard.

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Originally Posted by ForteNightshade

It's almost as though simplifying the Prange to essentially be Baby's First DPS alongside neutering their damage output and support characteristics has backfired tremendously.

How do they fix this? Throw Bard in a time machine going back to Stormblood and start over from there. It used to be the most popular DPS in the entire game. Now it's among the least. From there, give all three of them actual damage and bring back support abilities like Dismantle, Refresh, Foe's and Palisade. All of this would go a long way to making people enjoy the Prange again.

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honestly there's a few jobs they should do this for. Astrologian and Scholar come to mind. I miss SB SAM's flexibility too.

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Originally Posted by Tlachtga

honestly there's a few jobs they should do this for. Astrologian and Scholar come to mind. I miss SB SAM's flexibility too.

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Gonna be honest, I still don't see why AST needs changes. SCH yes, and they even admitted "They don't know what more they can do for SCH." But AST...seriously, what is actually the problem people have with it? SCH has overall clunkiness, moves fighting each other, a useless fairy gauge (why is this only for a single move?), still being tied to AF meaning we're punished the hardest when we die, etc etc.

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Originally Posted by RyuDragnier

Gonna be honest, I still don't see why AST needs changes. SCH yes, and they even admitted "They don't know what more they can do for SCH." But AST...seriously, what is actually the problem people have with it? SCH has overall clunkiness, moves fighting each other, a useless fairie gauge (why is this only for a single move?), still being tied to AF meaning we're punished the hardest when we die, etc etc.

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The gauge is still useful as a way to limit how much of the regen we can use and to motivate us to build it up before using it. If it just had a simple cooldown it would be a lot more dumbed down and people don't seem to have liked other things being dumbed down. Energy Drain is not very useful in an aoe situation because it only affects one target, but it motivates you to use something to build your faerie gauge for an upcoming pull that benefits from it.

AST is pretty good and the biggest problem people have expressed is the amount of buttons, but if it has that problem then it's with the heals because the cards are a part of it and shouldn't keep being truncated the way they have. If there was one change I would want for AST personally it's just to revert it to Shadowbringers where you work toward Divination and put useless cards into Lord/Lady.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

The gauge is still useful as a way to limit how much of the regen we can use and to motivate us to build it up before using it. If it just had a simple cooldown it would be a lot more dumbed down and people don't seem to have liked other things being dumbed down. Energy Drain is not very useful in an aoe situation because it only affects one target, but it motivates you to use something to build your faerie gauge for an upcoming pull that benefits from it.

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My problem is that if we're going to have that gauge, it shouldn't be just a single move. it should be multiple moves, and IMO it should be replacing AF completely (which is really outdated at this point), with the gauge filled every time the fairy heals. With Fey Blessing, Fey Illumination, and Whispering Dawn giving large chunks, of course.

It used to be shared with Fey Blessing, but it doesn't seem like it is anymore. I'm not sure how I feel about it replacing Aether Flow. I like Aether Flow.

I don't know how it could be separated in the lore either because one is referring to your personal aether stores and the other is referring to the aether you have channeled into the faerie so that it can heal more. They could simply rename the faerie gauge to Aether Flow, but having all my heals disrupt Fey Union and drain the gauge would be annoying and make my healing significantly worse. It would probably cause me to let the tank die in some of the worst pulls where I already burn through all of my heals, such as leveling and expansion release dungeons.

Remove Reprisal, Addle and Feint, reduce the cd of Shield Samba/Troubadour/Tactician to 60s and increase phys ranged dps.

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Originally Posted by grinkdaboy

2 raid tiers now i have been unable to find a phys ranged player or anybody that wanted to play phys ranged and i have had a double caster comp. i could see that there were a few points (specifically p3s and p4s p1) that lacking the 1% bonus hobbled us, but more gear helped us push through it. i'm a melee main and have no interest in playing it, so, what could be done to make playing phys ranged not blow chunks? (and i'm not referring to encounter design giving more uptime and having humongous hitboxes which hey i welcome and maybe they should increase phys ranged numbers)

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Almost all parties have a phys rdps as Dancer. Im one of those players, so not sure where your problem is at.

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Originally Posted by Reinha

Remove Reprisal, Addle and Feint, reduce the cd of Shield Samba/Troubadour/Tactician to 60s and increase phys ranged dps.

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Imagine reducing mitigations on such hard content .. this surely cant go wrong.. (glad you're not on charge).

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

It used to be shared with Fey Blessing, but it doesn't seem like it is anymore. I'm not sure how I feel about it replacing Aether Flow. I like Aether Flow.

I don't know how it could be separated in the lore either because one is referring to your personal aether stores and the other is referring to the aether you have channeled into the faerie so that it can heal more. They could simply rename the faerie gauge to Aether Flow, but having all my heals disrupt Fey Union and drain the gauge would be annoying and make my healing significantly worse. It would probably cause me to let the tank die in some of the worst pulls where I already burn through all of my heals, such as leveling and expansion release dungeons.

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My idea would basically replace how a few skills work, including Fey Union and Dissipation. Fey Union would still focus target the fairy on a single person for a stronger heal, but it doesn't remove gauge. She also will not target anybody else with Embrace (she can still do her AoE heals) during the time Fey Union is active, so you're basically sacrificing her random "heal everybody" for a focused "heal this person" for about 15-20 seconds.

MCH needs to be designed as the "greedy" DPS they are.

SAM is more DPS than Monk/DRG because it offers next to no utility
BLM is more DPS than RDM/SMN because it offers next to no utility
MCH is at the bottom of the DPS with BRD / DNC because. . . reasons?

MCH should be up there with SAM/BLM IMHO

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Originally Posted by RyuDragnier

Gonna be honest, I still don't see why AST needs changes. SCH yes, and they even admitted "They don't know what more they can do for SCH." But AST...seriously, what is actually the problem people have with it? SCH has overall clunkiness, moves fighting each other, a useless fairy gauge (why is this only for a single move?), still being tied to AF meaning we're punished the hardest when we die, etc etc.

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AST is up there among the worst designed jobs in the game right now in my opinion.

People fool themselves into thinking it's fine because it heals a lot and has lots of buttons and buttons are good.

If you want Bard to be a utility dps then please give us more generally useful utility skill or at least create encounters where you can use those skills. Nature's Minne is pretty useless unless you have a SCH in your group and Wardens Paen is useless in any harder content as there are no debuffs to clean anyway.
Please bring back Pallisade or Refresh.