They forgot Ranged Physical is a role in the game

They literally forgot. Not a single line about any changes in the jobguide 7.1 adjustment explanations.

"Ranged Physical"? You mean Gunbreaker, yes?!

Phys ranged are always the "You will get nothing and like it" role too the devs lol. Dancer didnt even get to exist in Shadowbringers with Gunbreaker being smeared over every square inch of the game.

Still i guess if were the "This is fine." role, We wont get any large, broken nerfs nobody asked for nor were needed etc. Silver linings etc.

Melee is the new Phys Ranged. Look at how massive the boss hitboxes are.

I mean you could say the same about melee, tank and healer (caster sort-of have an excuse because at least they're somewhat meaningfully differentiated from each other, even if virtually nobody except Red Mage casts). The jobs are all highly sanded off, healers just spam their filler nuke while tanks passively keep aggro and resist most damage, too. As far as design goes, they might have remembered the jobs exist, but they sure forgot what role people would want to play.

is SMN a physical range job?

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Originally Posted by BabyYoda

is SMN a physical range job?

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For all practical purposes, yes. Since from a player perspective, "physical ranged" just means "near 100% mobility and also not a melee job". Though with the amount of ranged attacks on say Monks now and the amount of melee uptime from modern hitboxes, even that line is starting to blur significantly.

But yeah from that perspective Summoner is def a PRanged job, and Black Mage and Pictomancer sometimes feel like they're starting to be one, too. At this rate it'll only be Red Mages that have any signficiant amount of actual casts left in their damage rotations in 1-2 expansions, everything else is all-instant-all-the-time. :P

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Originally Posted by BabyYoda

is SMN a physical range job?

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No it's better, as it offers similar uptime and mobility, and way better and valuable party support in the form of healing and raises.

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Originally Posted by Valence

No it's better, as it offers similar uptime and mobility, and way better and valuable party support in the form of healing and raises.

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You have very little control over when that healing happens so I'm not sure about that being very valuable honestly.

Anyway, didn't notice they just didn't include this. Phys-ranged in a nutshell. Get the feeling they all sigh heavily in unison whenever it comes to making any adjustment to them. Would explain why Tilana hasn't been changed yet.

I'm sure that having that much party wide healing every minute removes most concerns about control to be honest.

It's completely unnecessary to give something like that to a DPS and half the time has no value because either no damage is going out, or you have more than enough to not need it. At least RDM can proc a dualcast off of their heal in downtime.

Not a big deal, yet can't help but think they could've given SMN more damage buttons to press rather than a heal that's very situational at best.

If it's situational then it's because healers (and tanks) already have way too much healing. If they don't, then it's actually great. There is always some form of damage to be healed even if it happens 10s after instead of instantly. If I'm playing DNC and want to instantly use Waltz, I can, but I can also wait 10s to do it for the same result unless more damage comes up, and then it's still a win either for Waltz or SMN healing. The real concern is whether this is actually needed to alleviate healing, or not, and I already know the answer.

This is exactly like dismantle. Dismantle used to be stellar in HW/SB because it wasn't already drowning in a sea of mitigators, but now everybody and their mothers have some. It's hardly impressive.

That was my point, yes. Curing Waltz has the same issue but with the added problem that you have to be stacked up for full effect which more and more often these days, we are not due to mechanics.

I consider those kinds of constraints actually good. Much like the limited range on healing before they demolished that too for 6.4 because yoshida forbids that people need to use their brains to position themselves properly and play around hurdles. If you remove stacking on Waltz, you essentially remove skill expression and any thought process behind using this skill optimally. Either way, all I'm saying is that mitigation on rphys is lost in a see of mitigation coming from everyone else, and healing is not required (even though Waltz is actually godly, just not needed). If healing was needed, even SMN could shine, even if not every 60s ever.

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Originally Posted by Valence

I consider those kinds of constraints actually good. Much like the limited range on healing before they demolished that too for 6.4 because yoshida forbids that people need to use their brains to position themselves properly and play around hurdles. If you remove stacking on Waltz, you essentially remove skill expression and any thought process behind using this skill optimally. Either way, all I'm saying is that mitigation on rphys is lost in a see of mitigation coming from everyone else, and healing is not required (even though Waltz is actually godly, just not needed). If healing was needed, even SMN could shine, even if not every 60s ever.

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Of all the forms of homogenization in the game, the mitigation homogenization is one of the weaker ones to bring up. But on the trash heap that is homogenization, it's truly icing. What I'd do to see Stormblood-era fight design to come back, and fight design like the more experimental Coils.

Hell, on the topic of the massive range increases on abilities, all the devs did was make the arenas massive and ruined caster gameplay by forcing nonstop jog-a-thons across gigantic maps in response to trying to destress healers by making it easier to heal with larger aoes. What was intended as QoL just accelerated homogenization in a different way. One of these days, the devs might realize they've painted themselves into an extremely tiny corner, and the solution is to dehomogenize fight mechanics design to make things that primarily target and challenge individual roles instead of all of them equally. It'd be nice to see rphys have mechanics like the original turn 7 cyclops again, only to then get a rest for an extended period of time while mechanics that specifically challenge other roles, like melee, happen. Only to cycle with things that are tough to solve for anyone with cast bars.

But, rphys get forgotten because the rphys tax is meaningless but still present, casters get turned into rphys, melee get coddled and do the most damage because every mechanic is designed to not be hard to them, and tanks all do the exact same tanking gameplay across all classes while healers all heal so functionally identically, they may as well be the same class for all practical purposes now.

Game truly is a mess.

Or they could give BRD, MCH, and maybe the future phys ranged walking casts like they have now in PVP, and bump up their firepower from there. Why change 10 dps jobs when you can just make changes to 2-?

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Originally Posted by Taranok

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Stormblood fight design was the basis for what we have now, with choreographed dance sequences following fixed timestamps and self-positioning bosses. It's a byproduct of a game-breaking mob movement glitch that had a fair bit of attention in late Heavensward.

Renauds weren't actually a Physical Ranged mechanic, when playing optimally. A lot of groups were using a SCH bait by the time Savage Second Coil rolled out. It's the same idea as the Gobwalker in A2S. It's generally more efficient to offload responsibility to supports wherever possible.

The primary issue with Physical Ranged is that it has been classically framed as a 'support DPS role' in a game that doesn't value support gameplay. And in the process of standardizing everything, Casters offer greater support functionality and more DPS while playing at a lower APM. People have retroactively tried to justify caster superiority based off of 'job difficulty', but casts always come at the expense of APM and mechanical difficulty. And the end result of these complaints is that SE has taken it to further simplify that fake 'cast-induced difficulty'. The only reason that there's finally a conversation around this is because PCT just exposed these gross discrepancies for all to see.

The solution to making Physical Ranged valued is to stop treating the role as inferior to Damage Casters. All ranged jobs offer varying degrees of utility. They all should do competitive damage. Eliminate the 'damage tiers' within ranged jobs, and you will have resolved the issue.

The SCH dealing with renalds in T7 or the PLD dealing with whatever it was called In O11 or the off tank dealing with the gorilla in A5 is all because they allow the supports to take the DPS role when they can easily code it as not working that way. It really wouldn’t be hard to make it so the renald can only be kited by a DPS. Or the O11 cheese strat goes through PLD’s invuln, they manage this already with UWU ifrit awakening where it’s handled by the ranged because there is nobody else in that phase who has the time and room to handle it

Mechanics can be assigned to be handled by phys ranged superior movement but they’ve got to stop allowing them to be cheesed by dumping them on the supports

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Originally Posted by Lyth

The primary issue with Physical Ranged is that it has been classically framed as a 'support DPS role' in a game that doesn't value support gameplay. And in the process of standardizing everything, Casters offer greater support functionality and more DPS while playing at a lower APM. People have retroactively tried to justify caster superiority based off of 'job difficulty', but casts always come at the expense of APM and mechanical difficulty. And the end result of these complaints is that SE has taken it to further simplify that fake 'cast-induced difficulty'. The only reason that there's finally a conversation around this is because PCT just exposed these gross discrepancies for all to see.

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Once again if this was a PCT problem why was I complaining about it in EW

What free movement? This is a game with incredibly scripted dance routines. Do you think Physical Ranged is running around randomly in circles between mechanics?

In Endwalker, the idea of a Damage Caster existing on a completely different tier from rest of the ranged jobs was just a job-specific quirk of BLM. Now that PCT also occupies the same DPS category while having an overabundance of utility, movement tools, and instant casts (the like of which would make a SMN blush), people are starting to question why that differential treatment exists within ranged jobs.

It isn't just the phys ranged that does Eruption baits in UWU, the magical ranged has to do them as well. So the ranged mechanic in the ultimate was designed to be resolved by any magical ranged dps, as well as magical ranged were given the tools to resolve that mechanic. Phys ranged design -- or lack of design, is for a game that does not exist.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

What free movement? This is a game with incredibly scripted dance routines. Do you think Physical Ranged is running around randomly in circles between mechanics?

In Endwalker, the idea of a Damage Caster existing on a completely different tier from rest of the ranged jobs was just a job-specific quirk of BLM. Now that PCT also occupies the same DPS category while having an overabundance of utility, movement tools, and instant casts (the like of which would make a SMN blush), people are starting to question why that differential treatment exists within ranged jobs.

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Again since when has PCT been the catalyst for this

People have been complaining about problems with the physical ranged discrepancy since melees have been playing pseudo physical ranged for 3 expansions now

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

Again since when has PCT been the catalyst for this

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That's just Lyth, basically she's a bit Cato the Elder and everything has to be about Pictos. :P

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Originally Posted by mallleable

Phys ranged design -- or lack of design, is for a game that does not exist.

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This 'free movement' concept that Casters keep extolling as if it's a 'Physical Ranged identity' is actually backhanded slight. Why do you do less damage than Casters? Because 'free movement'. You should be excited to do ranged kiting mechanics. It's not because you're the only one capable of doing such mechanics, though. It's the fact that everyone else's uptime is more important than yours.

And the fact that comparisons of other jobs to 'Physical Ranged' is being used as a derogatory term should cue you in to what people's real views about your role are.

I like the walking casts idea, and I appreciate how your ideas give new skill opportunities to demonstrate equivalence between Physical and Magical Ranged. But let's flip this idea on its head. Casts intrinsically come at the expense of APM. Timed movements come at the expense of reduced mechanical complexity. Difficulty in one area comes as a direct consequence of simplification in another.

Why is what you do considered anywhere less 'skilled' than someone playing at half your APM, especially in an era where the Swiftcast cooldown is reduced and most casts are instant? You don't have to prove that you deserve parity. You deserve parity. And if SE wants players to keep playing the role, then they're going to have to offer a lot more than just a 1% passive raid buff.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

Because 'free movement'. You should be excited to do ranged kiting mechanics.

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As shocking as it is to imagine some of us actually like to be the one to do this type of mechanic. There were times I requested to be the one to bait the renald because I liked being the ranged player who was taking active part in performing a mechanic

In the nicest way possible your entire post reads like “I can’t imagine anyone wanting to be anything but a melee”, some of us see more complexity in casts than raw APM for the sake of it (VPR says hi who somehow manages to make SMN blush with how simple it is despite having the highest APM in the game). Planning out long casts and organising movement is a more fun method of skill expression than APM to us. I don’t want as many free casts as I’m given. Right now to me the fights and the jobs by extension feel like they are designed to be anti caster but rather than fix this they are just removing casts from the casters, I don’t want that

Physical ranged should be given mechanics that pertain to their strengths; not be shoved down together with the casters for the sake of it

And if we are asking for parity give us parity with the melee, if casters and phys ranged are doing the same damage they should be doing the same damage as the melee

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Originally Posted by Lyth

This 'free movement' concept that Casters keep extolling as if it's a 'Physical Ranged identity' is actually backhanded slight. Why do you do less damage than Casters? Because 'free movement'. You should be excited to do ranged kiting mechanics. It's not because you're the only one capable of doing such mechanics, though. It's the fact that everyone else's uptime is more important than yours.

And the fact that comparisons of other jobs to 'Physical Ranged' is being used as a derogatory term should cue you in to what people's real views about your role are.

I like the walking casts idea, and I appreciate how your ideas give new skill opportunities to demonstrate equivalence between Physical and Magical Ranged. But let's flip this idea on its head. Casts intrinsically come at the expense of APM. Timed movements come at the expense of reduced mechanical complexity. Difficulty in one area comes as a direct consequence of simplification in another.

Why is what you do considered anywhere less 'skilled' than someone playing at half your APM, especially in an era where the Swiftcast cooldown is reduced and most casts are instant? You don't have to prove that you deserve parity. You deserve parity. And if SE wants players to keep playing the role, then they're going to have to offer a lot more than just a 1% passive raid buff.

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Tell me about it. I think the whole concept of a 'noob' class or role is toxic, and outdated which is not to be mistaken for beginner friendly design. I actually don't think phy ranged APM would even take that big of a hit even with walking casts if they're implemented well -- in fact, I think it could further enforce the 'aiming' playstyle as players would have to look for the openings in their rotation created by instant weapon skills to fit in those double weaves.

Changing encounters to bring back rphys specific mechanics is good but won't solve the issue on its own. Rphys will never truly be rphys without a battle system that actually cares about different metrics.

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Originally Posted by mallleable

Or they could give BRD, MCH, and maybe the future phys ranged walking casts like they have now in PVP, and bump up their firepower from there. Why change 10 dps jobs when you can just make changes to 2-?

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Instead of turning casters into rphys, we'll turn rphys into casters.
Either way, with that kind of ideas, we're sure to see both roles finally meet each other somewhere in the middle at some point, and finally merged into the big "ranged" family. How dreary. But that's probably what would make the most sense in the current model without serious changes I'll give you that.

Or instead of making the entire role ‘melee but with slightly longer attack ranges’ they could actually focus on the one unique thing the phys ranged role is actually supposed to bring; party support.

We’re never going to see physical ranged have equalised dps to caster/melee because 2.0 release Coils already happened and the devs were not happy about the Bard stacking lol. So personally I don’t see much value in begging for higher personal dps when we know it’s not going to happen anyway.

They could make an actual effort to clean up the vastly homogenised ‘party support ability’ mechanic in ffxiv, centralise them on phys ranged, distribute smaller scale support to certain caster/melee, add support abilities that are actually interesting and valuable and not just 1000 different versions of ‘increases damage dealt’. Thus reinforcing the intended position the role is supposed to take in the party.

Wanting ‘more personal dps on phys ranged’ is just chasing the dragon if you ask me. Either they equalise with caster/melee and threaten to straight delete those roles, they equalise with caster and have to fight each other for party spots (which caster will likely win because Raise and Pictomancer). Or they increase our damage but at such a small value it doesn’t change how phys ranged actually perform relative to other jobs and thus has literally achieved nothing lol.

There really isn’t any ‘phys ranged get more dps’ option that doesn’t just cause issues. Well…unless they deleted all phys ranged support and utility entirely. But then, sometimes I wonder if that’s not what people actually want lol…

I wanted to play a phys range but actually do damage so I picked up SMN and PCT

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Originally Posted by Connor

Or instead of making the entire role ‘melee but with slightly longer attack ranges’ they could actually focus on the one unique thing the phys ranged role is actually supposed to bring; party support.

We’re never going to see physical ranged have equalised dps to caster/melee because 2.0 release Coils already happened and the devs were not happy about the Bard stacking lol. So personally I don’t see much value in begging for higher personal dps when we know it’s not going to happen anyway.

They could make an actual effort to clean up the vastly homogenised ‘party support ability’ mechanic in ffxiv, centralise them on phys ranged, distribute smaller scale support to certain caster/melee, add support abilities that are actually interesting and valuable and not just 1000 different versions of ‘increases damage dealt’. Thus reinforcing the intended position the role is supposed to take in the party.

Wanting ‘more personal dps on phys ranged’ is just chasing the dragon if you ask me. Either they equalise with caster/melee and threaten to straight delete those roles, they equalise with caster and have to fight each other for party spots (which caster will likely win because Raise and Pictomancer). Or they increase our damage but at such a small value it doesn’t change how phys ranged actually perform relative to other jobs and thus has literally achieved nothing lol.

There really isn’t any ‘phys ranged get more dps’ option that doesn’t just cause issues. Well…unless they deleted all phys ranged support and utility entirely. But then, sometimes I wonder if that’s not what people actually want lol…

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I genuinely don't understand this mindset. it just seems so defeatist. Every phys ranged's party mit was just buffed, and is arguably the strongest, and most flexible of all the DPS. And yet the role continues to struggle. So instead of nerfing 10 other jobs, just change how 2 or 3 other jobs play (as a MNK enjoyer, you can pry Mantra, and Riddle of Earth from my cold, dead, and bloodied knuckles). Healers are already being encroached upon, and concentrating all the DPS utility onto phys ranged is a surefire why of just replacing healers with phys ranged. It's better that it's spread out.

So just give phys ranged some kind of aiming mechanic so they have better control over their damage output, and balance them against the other roles -- y'know, coz like they're DPS or something. MCH should be balanced against SAM, BLM, and VPR as a non buffing job, and BRD should be balanced against like MNK, and PCT as buffing jobs with utility, and no rez. It's not hard to imagine.

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Originally Posted by BabyYoda

is SMN a physical range job?

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It's a better one.

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Originally Posted by mallleable

I genuinely don't understand this mindset. it just seems so defeatist. Every phys ranged's party mit was just buffed, and is arguably the strongest, and most flexible of all the DPS. And yet the role continues to struggle. So instead of nerfing 10 other jobs, just change how 2 or 3 other jobs play (as a MNK enjoyer, you can pry Mantra, and Riddle of Earth from my cold, dead, and bloodied knuckles). Healers are already being encroached upon, and concentrating all the DPS utility onto phys ranged is a surefire why of just replacing healers with phys ranged. It's better that it's spread out.

So just give phys ranged some kind of aiming mechanic so they have better control over their damage output, and balance them against the other roles -- y'know, coz like they're DPS or something. MCH should be balanced against SAM, BLM, and VPR as a non buffing job, and BRD should be balanced against like MNK, and PCT as buffing jobs with utility, and no rez. It's not hard to imagine.

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I said it somewhere else but this is just 2 incompatible mindsets clashing with each other. Yours is probably the more correct one when it comes to the current battle model, but ours stems from the fact that we do not like the current battle model and rphys was a way to continue playing pve without caring about uptime bullshit because what we used to enjoy in the game wasn't about DDR and uptime bullshit. Sure, that thing isn't here anymore, but at least we still don't have to deal with half the new model.

If it takes damage out of rphys and leaves it in the dumpster like it is right now, selfishly, all I can say is that I still prefer this because I can continue ignoring half of the current pve bullshit the game has been about since SB/SHB. But your vision or Lyth's is probably the best within the current system.

And to be frank, even when it comes to casters and melees, the mobility of other roles has been sanded down enough to accommodate for that endlessly increasing uptime/DRR crap so all roles are slowly but surely starting to merge together anyway.

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Originally Posted by mallleable

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Ok I’m sorry but this entire post isn’t making sense lol.

Firstly, how is making physical ranged do literally the one unique thing they’re advertise to offer…going to invalidate healers ?!That’s a whole other role honey, they don’t compete for spots.
You…you know physical ranged can’t heal right? You honestly think Curing Waltz is going to invalidate healers and have every single one replaced with a Dancer? Bards and Machinists are literally incapable of restoring party HP. You know Summoners and Paladins can already do that right? But that’s totally cool, as long as it’s not a phys ranged…wouldn’t want those Poets to think they’re anything other than mega archers delivering death and destruction.

If removing the ‘increases damage dealt by %’ or ‘reduces damage taken’ from most dps (who don’t even need them) and focusing them on phys ranged (to give it an actual unique contribution) is going to invalidate healers then the game has far, far, far, faaaar bigger issues than role responsibility.

As for the last part, MCH balanced against SAM/BLM is absolutely hilarious. That totally won’t invalidate casters or melee, but if we give phys ranged support the poor healers won’t be able to do their utility skills that they barely have anyway!!!! Either it’s below other dps and literally inferior or they make it equal/surpassing and it literally breaks game balance. There is literally no way for them to make phys ranged ‘equal dps to other roles’ without completely breaking the role system. Again, they tried already at 2.0 release , 4X Bard stacks were not appreciated by Yoshi-P. Pretty sure they would rather delete the phys ranged role than have a repeat of that, so somehow I don’t see any of the role ever getting higher in the dps ranks.

Increasing phys ranged dps output drastically enough to move their ranking is effectively impossible for them to ever do, so basically their choices are either to develop the role into having a unique niche (i.e party support) and adjust other jobs/roles as necessary…or just leave it as a worthless role and delete phys ranged or something. Boosting their dps will solve absolutely nothing except bringing every non-phys ranged to the forums to scream and wail about why the two ‘easy mode support jobs’ are doing the same dps as all the other pure damage classes. Unless they had their entire support kit gutted and deleted and retooled the entire role into pure dps that is, which again I’m pretty sure most phys ranged players are hinting towards anyway…..

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Originally Posted by Connor

Or instead of making the entire role ‘melee but with slightly longer attack ranges’ they could actually focus on the one unique thing the phys ranged role is actually supposed to bring; party support.

We’re never going to see physical ranged have equalised dps to caster/melee because 2.0 release Coils already happened and the devs were not happy about the Bard stacking lol. So personally I don’t see much value in begging for higher personal dps when we know it’s not going to happen anyway.

They could make an actual effort to clean up the vastly homogenised ‘party support ability’ mechanic in ffxiv, centralise them on phys ranged, distribute smaller scale support to certain caster/melee, add support abilities that are actually interesting and valuable and not just 1000 different versions of ‘increases damage dealt’. Thus reinforcing the intended position the role is supposed to take in the party.

Wanting ‘more personal dps on phys ranged’ is just chasing the dragon if you ask me. Either they equalise with caster/melee and threaten to straight delete those roles, they equalise with caster and have to fight each other for party spots (which caster will likely win because Raise and Pictomancer). Or they increase our damage but at such a small value it doesn’t change how phys ranged actually perform relative to other jobs and thus has literally achieved nothing lol.

There really isn’t any ‘phys ranged get more dps’ option that doesn’t just cause issues. Well…unless they deleted all phys ranged support and utility entirely. But then, sometimes I wonder if that’s not what people actually want lol…

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The primary goal is this: Maximize damage, subject to a set of support constraints.

In many games, this is a balanced proposition because survival can be unpredictable. In PvE environments, you can design variable damage (i.e. critical hits), randomized mechanics, and recover from unexpected deaths. In PvP, this is always the case because human opponents are intrinsically unpredictable (that's why Healers are often the carry role in PvP games). The end result is that having excess support functionality always has value if you want to consistently clear.

FFXIV's PvE design was very strongly influenced by a speedrun mindset from its early days in ARR/Heavensward, which informed the fight design from Stormblood onwards. Critical hit variance working against you on a pull? Reset. Didn't get the correct Balance procs? Reset. The end result was feedback from raiders that drove a push towards very consistent pulls with very little true variability (I still can't believe that certain influential people argued that Critical Hit procs were unfair in Stormblood). But without that unpredictability, support functionality loses its value and the focus shifts strongly in favor of DPS. You don't need that extra security. Maximize damage, subject to a set of support constraints. The minimal amount of support actions to clear, in order to facilitate the maximum DPS.

In this highly predictable, DPS-orientated environment, it is untenable for Physical Ranged to be a 'party support' role. Supports themselves are scrambling to demonstrate value that they just don't have. Tanks are taking on healing functionality to demonstrate value. Healers are looking to swap off to damage roles where they'll be better valued. You can argue that the game is in need of a direction change, but we've been locked into this strictly choreographed, predictable fight design since Stormblood.

And let's face it: Magical Ranged have you beat on support functionality anyways, and they offer more damage to boot. Raise is the most powerful support action that you can have. And you even have Damage Casters with defensive actions that can challenge Physical Ranged on the support domain.

I think mallleable has the right of it. Physical Ranged needs to be able to hold its own in DPS if it's going to retain players, barring a massive design shift in this game that is unlikely to happen in this point in its life cycle. Convincing your Magical Ranged colleagues of that equivalence is a different story, though.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

I think mallleable has the right of it. Physical Ranged needs to be able to hold its own in DPS if it's going to retain players, barring a massive design shift in this game that is unlikely to happen in this point in its life cycle. Convincing your Magical Ranged colleagues of that equivalence is a different story, though.

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It’s ‘untenable’ for the ‘dps role that provides support’ to..*checks notes* provide ‘support’…yet somehow it’s entirely tenable that all physical ranged dps can have their dps equalised with caster and melee and that totally won’t affect the game balance in any way. Right . Have fun convincing the developers of that

Magical Ranged is the 'DPS role that provides support'. But more importantly, they also do more damage than Physical Ranged while providing superior support functionality. Unfortunately, Physical Ranged has nothing on them except for a 1% passive cheerleader buff. Well, that's 'support', I guess.

I don't need to convince the developers of anything. My preferred role is a high value one, and if it wasn't, then I wouldn't be playing this game. I'm just here to present the bigger picture around retaining players in their preferred roles for the continued health of the game in the long term. Every job should be able to provide high value, and every job should allow good players to demonstrate skill on the upper end. Otherwise, why bother adding new jobs?

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Originally Posted by Connor

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I'm mostly confused about how you say it's impossible to make changes or certain ideas are impossible. Like did they launch the job designer's work stations into orbit -- is that why it's impossible? Does the job editing software crash whenever they try to make any changes to phys ranged? The walking cast mechanic is right there in game right now, and they even survived the big 7.1 pvp job update when other job mechanics didn't. By making phys ranged on par with magical ranged, they automatically become comparable to melee because magical ranged are allowed to do that if they don't have a rez. It's the rez that keeps half the magical ranged dps so low. And respectfully, have you ever played any shooter games? Have you ever watched any action movies or TV shows? Your claims that ranged/marksman/firearm job fantasies don't exists outside of support are also confusing.

As for concentrating almost all DPS party utility onto phys ranged, let's actually see what that looks like.

BRD
Nature's Minne
Troubadour
The Warden's Paean
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Arcane Crest (from RPR) > Call and Responce
rez (from SMN) > Catharsis
Vercure (from RDM) > Curing Harmony

MCH
Dismantle
Tactician
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Phoenix regen / excog (from SMN) > Dispenser
Magicked Barrier (from RDM) > Amplifier
Tempra Coat (from PCT) > Adaptive Shield
rez (just to round things out) > Defibrillator

DNC
Waltz
Samba
Improv
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Riddle of Earth (from MNK) > Break a Leg
Mantra (from MNK) > Inspire
Verraise (from RDM) > Encore

(copy, and paste this table out of context into the healer strike thread to give them a fright!)

I tried to evenly redistribute the utility across the phys ranged, and even renamed them to fit each job. And now we can see how squirrely things look, and how blurry the line between healers, and these new phys ranged has become. At a certain point you gotta ask: are you trying to reinvent healers? On top of that, now we gotta make room on phys ranged hot bars for these new utility actions. Which specific damage actions or mechanics do you think players are willing to part with to make room for these actions?

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Originally Posted by Connor

It’s ‘untenable’ for the ‘dps role that provides support’ to..*checks notes* provide ‘support’…yet somehow it’s entirely tenable that all physical ranged dps can have their dps equalised with caster and melee and that totally won’t affect the game balance in any way. Right . Have fun convincing the developers of that

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What Lyth and mallleable mean is that equalized dps would have to come with a complete transformation of rphys in order to bring it on par under a general ranged umbrella where there is little difference between them and casters. If doing more dps to retain value in the current DDR/damage model is a correct assessment, I also fear that the role is going to actually lose its players to make room for new ones. Much like MCH or SMN lost its players to make room for new ones.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

And let's face it: Magical Ranged have you beat on support functionality anyways, and they offer more damage to boot. Raise is the most powerful support action that you can have. And you even have Damage Casters with defensive actions that can challenge Physical Ranged on the support domain.

I think mallleable has the right of it. Physical Ranged needs to be able to hold its own in DPS if it's going to retain players, barring a massive design shift in this game that is unlikely to happen in this point in its life cycle. Convincing your Magical Ranged colleagues of that equivalence is a different story, though.

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This isn’t fair for 2 reasons

1) here you are overinflating how useful casters are on the support by conflating 2 vastly different casters in the same sentence. “They have raise and they also have ones that do huge amounts of damage”. That’s a pointless statement because the game in the modern form is explicitly designed to try and make you not want to run double caster. You either get raise or you get PCT, if you take both you lose a melee and nullify PCT’s higher damage advantage anyway. You yourself have even expressed very strong desire to want to avoid double caster comps so it’s a little unfair that you are now using them as an example of advantages that the casters have over the physical ranged. The only valid point here is that SMN while classed as a caster should not be as easy as it is while retaining raise

2) casters (particularly PCT, BLM and RDM) if they do oppose equi-damage between them and the phys ranged do so for the same reason you oppose equi-damage with between the melees and the physical ranged; that being having an extra job consideration (casting or melee ranged) doesn’t play into an offered advantage because everyone does the same damage. If you support equalising damage amongst the ranged jobs you should also support equalising damage amongst the ranged AND melee roles otherwise your “support for the plight of the physical ranged” just reads like a veiled attempt for an excuse to nerf pictomancer

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

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For the damage disadvantage that Physical Ranged have relative to Damage Casters, they might as well have access to raise. The difference is that your SMN main brings raise for prog and swaps out for PCT when you're clear ready without any significant re-gearing. If double Magical Ranged is strongly feasible, then double Physical Ranged should be equally feasible. Let people bring whatever pair of ranged jobs that they like.

I have no idea what you're talking about regarding damage parity. I have always argued in favor of it, because I know that a fair and balanced playing field favors skilled players (and that's why you are determinedly resistant to it). Ideally, melee will be tuned slightly higher under pure target dummy conditions, but fight design will make it a toss up between melee and ranged, with a variety of melee and ranged jobs pulling out on top based off of variations in uptime. They really need to stop making wall bosses, it's not even an interesting gimmick. Either way, fights are designed off of a 2/2/2/2 principle. This has nothing to do with melee, and has everything to do with Magical Ranged completely dominating Physical Ranged in their respective category.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

For the damage disadvantage that Physical Ranged have relative to Damage Casters, they might as well have access to raise. The difference is that your SMN main brings raise for prog and swaps out for PCT when you're clear ready without any significant re-gearing. If double Magical Ranged is strongly feasible, then double Physical Ranged should be equally feasible. Let people bring whatever pair of ranged jobs that they like.

I have no idea what you're talking about regarding damage parity. I have always argued in favor of it, because I know that a fair and balanced playing field favors skilled players (and that's why you are determinedly resistant to it). Ideally, melee will be tuned slightly higher under pure target dummy conditions, but fight design will make it a toss up between melee and ranged, with a variety of melee and ranged jobs pulling out on top based off of variations in uptime. They really need to stop making wall bosses, it's not even an interesting gimmick. Either way, fights are designed off of a 2/2/2/2 principle. This has nothing to do with melee, and has everything to do with Magical Ranged completely dominating Physical Ranged in their respective category.

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“I have always argued in favour of damage parity”

“Ideally melee should be tuned a little higher in dummy conditions”

See this, this right here is just a tiny little microcosm of how internally inconsistent your arguments become when you try to argue both sides of casters unfairly dominating the phys ranged but also somehow believe the melees should stand above by default. This is relevant to physical ranged because you’ve straight up argued in the past that damage parity is to the melee’s detriment but never to the casters. Caster is just as distinctive a role from phys ranged as melee is, you can’t just ignore that as a concept. As a whole people who have concerns around uptime will always oppose parity from those who don’t and casters and melee both share that problem

I don’t oppose parity in damage because I’m unskilled (that backhand was just pointlessly rude) I oppose it because melee and casters have uptime concerns the physical ranged lack. HOWEVER before you quote that sentence and stop right there I don’t like the current design either, like I said my desire to fix the physical ranged involves giving them mechanics only they can do because they play to their advantages. I’ve never had a problem playing a role that does less damage if I feel like I’m uniquely contributing to the party on other fronts (hell it’s the entire foundation that non damage buffers like 11 BRD are built on)

I don’t want everyone shoved down further into grey slop because they refuse to innovate fight design to the physical ranged benefit but if I had to go that route then I’d rather they go back to ShB balancing of 2/2/1/1/1/x where you can bring any fourth member even a second physical ranged because you prefer mechanical consistency over raw damage. The phys ranged don’t do enough damage in the current design that’s a universal problem but nor is it a problem entirely derived from the casters