Ranged and Caster : Should they create one single Role ?

The game consists of five roles, each providing a 1% main stat bonus when forming a team of four or eight players.

The issue I see right now is—why do we have five roles when standard team compositions are limited to four or eight players? And beyond that, role balance only truly matters in a handful of content types: Criterion, Savage, Ultimate, and to some extent Extreme.

I understand that balancing ranged and caster jobs can be tricky (wink wink PCT/BLM), but wouldn’t it make more sense to merge them into a single "Ranged" role, assuming all jobs were balanced equally? This would create a healthier distribution between magical and physical ranged jobs, offering more flexibility in team compositions (e.g., two magical, two physical), and better mirroring the Tank/Healer structure (Melee Support / Ranged Support).

In my mind, this would simplify things for both players and developers.

So… why not?

Because casters and physical ranged have completely different balancing decisions

This idea that there should be 2/2/2/2 is new, prior to recently the composition was broadly 2/2/1/1/1/x where x could be any of the DPS roles.

Making them one role when they are functionally distinct doesn’t really add anything to them while being a balancing nightmare as they have different considerations

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

Because casters and physical ranged have completely different balancing decisions

This idea that there should be 2/2/2/2 is new, prior to recently the composition was broadly 2/2/1/1/1/x where x could be any of the DPS roles.

Making them one role when they are functionally distinct doesn’t really add anything to them while being a balancing nightmare as they have different considerations

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As if balancing casters wasn’t already a complete nightmare right now. And let’s be real, the idea of a 2/2/2/2 composition isn’t exactly new (Stormblood, anyone?). Players have always found ways to adapt, even when dev-intended strats were built around that setup. And yeah, I get it—balance was one of my own arguments.

But honestly, I fail to see any truly "distinct function" between casters and physical ranged. Unless, of course, you're referring to the oh-so-distinct ability to raise, which is already a major balancing headache for the caster role.

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Originally Posted by CalvinDescoles

Like caster as a role was not an actual nightmare of balancing right now. And the idea of 2/2/2/2 is really not that new (Stormblood...) it is just that people had always find a way when the strat intended by the devs was based on a 2/2/2/2. And i get it the balancing was one of my argument.


But sorry i don't see any "distinct function" between caster and phys ranged. Unless you are talking about the "distinct functionnality" of raising that is ALREADY bringing "balancing nightmare" in the caster role :)

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Caster as a role is a nightmare because the devs overtax raise. I’m not sure how fusing it with ranged is going to fix that problem. Either they fuse the roles and leave it as is which basically just means that PCT and BLM eat the physical ranged lunch as much as they eat the rezz casters lunch but the physical ranged don’t even have raise to make them prog viable. On the other hand casters have casts, make all equal and you’ve basically made the damage casters completely pointless and RDM at least partially too difficult for its justification over SMN

The difference is casting

As much as the devs like to design fights like everyone is a melee casters needing to cast is a distinct consideration around fight design. If you fused the roles and stopped actually considering casting you’ve basically just stealth killed casters, if you still keep the consideration alive you e achieved nothing by fusing the roles

At this point sure because they seem to not really want casters actually casting anymore.

Though my personal opinion no they should just make casters and ranged stand out more from one another.

No. This will only homogenize even further, and push either casters to drop every pretense at casting to accommodate rphys (and SMN), or push rphys into cast times (I'll go play caster if I want to cast, thank you very much).
Please stop using the sandpaper.

Edit: actually please do it, so that every party starts banning rphys because it's not carried by the 1% party role bonus anymore. I'll laugh my ass off when this happens.

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

Caster as a role is a nightmare because the devs overtax raise. I’m not sure how fusing it with ranged is going to fix that problem. Either they fuse the roles and leave it as is which basically just means that PCT and BLM eat the physical ranged lunch as much as they eat the rezz casters lunch but the physical ranged don’t even have raise to make them prog viable. On the other hand casters have casts, make all equal and you’ve basically made the damage casters completely pointless and RDM at least partially too difficult for its justification over SMN

The difference is casting

As much as the devs like to design fights like everyone is a melee casters needing to cast is a distinct consideration around fight design. If you fused the roles and stopped actually considering casting you’ve basically just stealth killed casters, if you still keep the consideration alive you e achieved nothing by fusing the roles

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They've already stealth-killed casters. The devs have done the polar opposite of what happened in HW. The devs couldn't balance rphys in HW, so they gave them cast bars to treat them like casters. Now they can't balance casters in EW+ because every fight is so obscenely mobile, so they've removed cast bars from casters. This is painfully obvious when you take a fight like TEA and look at the raw distance traveled and time spent traveling during uptime mechanics and then look at almost literally any EW or DT fight. They're all marathons across the arena now. Even the reworked ARR dungeons have gained ridiculous amounts of movement.

And, as any caster main should know, movement is direct anathema to good caster design and gameplay when you design your casters around their primary gimmick being self-roots. This isn't GW2 where casting slows you down slightly but you have full movement.

The major problem is that the devs homogenized encounter design, and they've yet to learn the lesson that was first set in motion in 2.1: That when encounters are homogenized and pushed to an extreme, class design is forced to meet the encounters and lose the ability to actually have real differences between them. And it all started with Twintania straight up deleting warriors, with the devs giving warrior's rampart on inner beast and sentinel lite on vengeance.

Yes or no, they should remove the 1% buff from ranged and instead redistribute it to tank+healer+melee+ranged/magic at 1.25%

I would advocate for the two being the same role, but it's more about ranged being "compelled" rather than a real choice, players are made to play them in raids because players want that buff. Not as much because people desire to play ranged physical, or the jobs in that category being so good. Without realistic player data to back it, Square won't see what's wrong with Bard, Machinist, or Dancer. Their changes are primarily driven by play-rate as a metric after all. Why does Monk get changed with every expansion? Low play-rate. Why has Black Mage been gutted? lowest play-rate caster. Why is Warrior always buffed every patch? Highest play-rate tank.

No********

No. Fix phys ranged design instead.

Solving identity and class style issues by homogenizing 2 entire roles together is far from what I would like to see, even if the developers already classify casters and phys range as effectively 1 category. The feedback I would like to give them is to separate and distinguish the roles further.

They should merge both categories of ranged jobs. Is it really correct to use the term 'caster' anymore?

No I don't want them to merge the role, even if the meaning is basically the same. Because then instead of 3 or 4 jobs in a role that are being homogenized it will be 7 or 8. Even if it is to no avail I would rather still push for uniqueness in job design and move away from homogenization.