Dps roles identity

What identity do the 3 sub roles of dps( physical ranged, magical ranged and melee) have in today's climate?

Certain jobs feel worse as a result of being confined to their role like machinist.

The melee role gets the special treatment of being priority pick in the flex slot and since stormblood the only time I've seen a non melee picked for it was when picto was at peak power and people went double caster. Team comp diversity feels hampered by this neglected and pointless subrole balancing. Melees and casters have gotten so many mobility tools that phys ranged being taxed for mobility feels outdated. Can we just make all dps actually feel like dps or make the support dps like dancer feel more like supports? Because right now it feels like some jobs are larping as both and failing in both departments.

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Originally Posted by Reginald_Cain

What identity do the 3 sub roles of dps( physical ranged, magical ranged and melee) have in today's climate?

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None, but if you think about it there's a reason these have traditionally not even existed. That is, we had 6 classic CRPG roles (Tank, Healer, Buffer, Debuffer, Control, Damage), a few games including very influentially WoW folded the middle three into the other ones reducing it to the "trinity" that we know nowadays. And while most MMOs have always made an informal distinction between melee, caster and non-casting ranged, this has never existed as a big thing.

Now if SQEX were willing, they cold do something like other games have traditionally done to differentiate this:

* Melees deal superior damage, but are ~constantly exposed to extra damage from 360° cleaves and PBAoE attacks that aren't telegraphed or aren't realistically avoidable. They have higher passive defense stats and more defensive options as a result but they will also frequently have to disconnect from melee range for short~extended amounts of time, losing uptime, dropping their effective damage output massively to achieve balance, even though they're superior on a target dummy.
* Next are casters, who also deal superior damage but usually less so than the melees. However as they lack the ability to deal any (or virtually any) damage while moving, any boss ability forcing movement drops their DPS to effectively 0, much like a melee disconnecting.
* Last are the non-casting ranged, who provide the baseline. Like ~all DPS in FFXIV here, they are expected to fully keep their rotation going at all times without any noticable dips.

The thing is, other MMOs also have far less involved boss encounters, so they're free to do this kind of balance. In the current raid design of FFXIV it would be impossible. Assume for a moment that none of the 4 casters had any movement tools. No Triplecast, no instant cast spells, no nothing. All long casts, 2.5s or longer. Imagine how high the per-spell damage would need to be to make this balanced against current encounters, since you'd only get 3-5 in 10 spells off. And then imagine how broken this'd be in fights where they can stand still due to fight mechanics. Which is also kinda the cool thing, but it'd be... not really doable well in the current fight design. Same for melee, hitboxes would need to be much smaller, PBAoE much more frequent, melees would need to lose much of their mobility toolkit to facilitate constant loss of uptime.

Don't get me wrong, I like this kind of design. But it'd also be a massive change to all encounters that takes as much away from them as the classes gain.

Meele is meele. Making highest dmg for the risk of beeing hitted more.

Caster are caster. Making a bit more dmg, because they can not cast, when they move.

Ranger are doing less dmg. But can do it all the time.

What else of a identity does you need? Does they even need something like that (never think in that way, i want to play the weapon or the role, nothing more, nothing less).

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Originally Posted by Keichi

What else of a identity does you need? Does they even need something like that (never think in that way, i want to play the weapon or the role, nothing more, nothing less).

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Yeah I mean, FFXIV more or less removed the identity of melee and caster, so of course we usually do not think like this. They don't deal higher target dummy damage any more, and they also aren't in particular danger or GCD-loss-from-movement any more. That was kinda my point.

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Originally Posted by Keichi

Meele is meele. Making highest dmg for the risk of beeing hitted more.

Caster are caster. Making a bit more dmg, because they can not cast, when they move.

Ranger are doing less dmg. But can do it all the time.

What else of a identity does you need? Does they even need something like that (never think in that way, i want to play the weapon or the role, nothing more, nothing less).

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Within those roles, individual jobs can express their role's identity differently.

Example:
MCH: Brings the highest personal damage in the phys range group but offers minimal utility.
DNC: Mostly utility, least amount of personal damage. Their dance partner is supposed to make up for that damage loss.
BRD: A healthy middle ground between MCH and DNC. Does more personal damage than DNC but their utility isn't as strong.

All are supposed to have a very similar damage output in the end, so that all three are viable to bring in a party and it's up to the players which one they'd rather choose.

Personally I think they should just make a support role. Mash all the other DPS into just DPS.

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Originally Posted by Shistar

All are supposed to have a very similar damage output in the end, so that all three are viable to bring in a party and it's up to the players which one they'd rather choose.

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Unless the party really sucks, MCH eats the dust as damage buffs scale much better. But if because of this they overtune MCH, then the opposite effect happens.

At least it's viable.

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Originally Posted by Shistar

MCH: Brings the highest personal damage in the phys range group but offers minimal utility.
DNC: Mostly utility, least amount of personal damage. Their dance partner is supposed to make up for that damage loss.
BRD: A healthy middle ground between MCH and DNC. Does more personal damage than DNC but their utility isn't as strong.

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Its important to note that 'utility' basicly means bonus damage. Personal damage is therefor generaly going to be lacking against a well aligned burst.

MCH in the current state only works well in content where burst windows are less important, or significantly hindered. So usualy extremes. It can work in single target boss fights do a decent degree, but thats only if the boss does disrupt burst windows, as the mch due to having a burst thats significantly longer than a burst window, can keep doing higher damage during that. Any burst delay benefits the mch.

It might be dull, but a damage buff makes balancing easier since it introduces a team wide aspect instead of entirely solo. Alignment is still a skill. And even for selfish jobs like for example a BLM, aligning burst in that window is still critical.

But do note, a 10% buff added on top of 5 other 10% buffs for its duration effectively gives the team 0.8 extra players worth of damage. This damage is what the mch in theory should compensate acros the entire 2mins. And while it doesnt sound extreme, at just 0.0066 of extra player value per second, or a 0.66% damage boost passively. It comes with the effect that this entire 2mins isnt allowed any downtime.

But the key here is, most buffs are more than 10%, and at 15% buffs this gets closer to 1.25% more damage needed.

Its a mess to balance, as the further this deviates, the more base damage the mch should get, making it relatively overpowered for lower end content. And if anything is bad for balance, its when you are required to balance for both, while both require completely diferent balancing. A raid buff fixes this. It doesnt matter if its 8s delayed. As even partial overlap, or just delaying the burst can do quite a bit here. Thats a skill aspect to perform team wide.

The only advantage this game has is that most mid tier content doesnt realy face enrages often, so extra mch damage isnt going to matter much. Which at least does enable some gracefullness. But we still have average/sub average savage groups vs top tier teams. And this is where we have the mess now. In very suboptimal skilled teams, mch can compensate, but the current savage tier just isnt as graceful. Which means any game in which mch shows he does well, is a game which indicated the team didnt. This needs fixing as thats an unhealthy state.

Hot take but i think red mage suffers a lot being forced as a caster, as it's weird that a magic sword mage only really uses its sword 5% of the time, but because of role restrictions it has to be designed that way. (similar to how no healer can be melee).

I think the strict Melee, Caster, ranged format limits design you've also seen the caster role become closer and closer to physical ranged due to fight design, Phys ranged are also kind of having the identity of "dps but not really?" because they can't deal similar damage levels to melee or "non rez" caster roles, nor do they offer that much utility to be justified as a more supportive based role.

Melee likely has it most best but even then the sheer amount of bland designs and similar burst window rotations (just like tank roles) also come into play, the "positional" aspect is pretty much removed. Theirs also no real melee who stands out in my opinion as they're all very samey.

I think DPS as a whole is in the best position compared to other roles but they're still struggling from poor job design.

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Originally Posted by Keichi

Meele is meele. Making highest dmg for the risk of beeing hitted more.

Caster are caster. Making a bit more dmg, because they can not cast, when they move.

Ranger are doing less dmg. But can do it all the time.

What else of a identity does you need? Does they even need something like that (never think in that way, i want to play the weapon or the role, nothing more, nothing less).

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First off casters have on average had lower damage than melee for 3 expansions with black mage being the only real exception sometimes.

Second they don't even have to cast that much anymore except for red mage. The fact red mage switched from the easiest caster to hardest caster without any major changes shows how hard the devs have been at work reducing long casts.

Summoner went from hardest caster in stormblood with piano style gameplay to what is effectively a phys ranged with 3 cast.
Samurai cast more than most casters these days.

The giant hit boxes in endwalker and dawntrail have rendered phys ranged mobility a mute advantage when melee's have near full uptime and and power ranged nukes.

These identities you've listed are outdated and feel better off being deleted in favor of all dps feeling like dps. At least in some of our opinions. You can and may disagree

People (and the devs) always forget that BRD and MCH, while having an easier time with no uptime issues, also have a harder time with actual movement (mobility) with no gap closers or teleports of any sort, which in the current heavy DDR model that's only getting more and more slanted toward that kind of gameplay over time, means that this tends to leave them with zero margin for error, most notably figuring something out too late, unlike other roles that can just recover from that kind of issue. For some mechanics on those jobs, you need to be on point especially in hard content.

The DPS role, as a whole, doesn't have an identity because dealing damage is simply the default thing you do when you have nothing better to be doing. Admittedly, much of the problem at this level is that encounter mechanics leave tanks and healers with too much time on their hands that they can devote to dealing damage.

The DPS sub-roles don't have an identity because encounter mechanics simply don't care to value them. The sub-roles limp along only because of the 1% party bonus and forced-spread mechanics.

I think roles should follow simple, and broad architypes.

Melee DPS = Fighters
Magical Ranged = Mages
Physical Ranged = Marksmen

(Yeah, I know 'fighters' can encompass some tank responsibilities in other games, but I think tanks should fulfill the 'Vanguard' role.)

Individual job gameplay, and now we should also consider potential quest dynamics should be able to point towards these architypes. We can now ask questions like what does it mean for the hero (the player) to be a mage? Or how do we make BRD a better marksman?

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Originally Posted by Valence

People (and the devs) always forget that BRD and MCH, while having an easier time with no uptime issues, also have a harder time with actual movement (mobility) with no gap closers or teleports of any sort, which in the current heavy DDR model that's only getting more and more slanted toward that kind of gameplay over time, means that this tends to leave them with zero margin for error, most notably figuring something out too late, unlike other roles that can just recover from that kind of issue. For some mechanics on those jobs, you need to be on point especially in hard content.

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Now that you mentioned, that's really true. BRD does have a leap back, but it's as unreliable as trying to use RDM's displacement to jump back into a correct spot. It's ironic how BLM's Aetherial Manipulation is one of the best movement resources in the game if you have somebody reliable to teleport to. And in a ridiculously low recast time at that.

Also, idk if it's intentional but En Avant does have a slight animation delay that no other dash has, and that may mess you up if you decide to time it right on top of the second.

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Originally Posted by Raikai

Now that you mentioned, that's really true. BRD does have a leap back, but it's as unreliable as trying to use RDM's displacement to jump back into a correct spot. It's ironic how BLM's Aetherial Manipulation is one of the best movement resources in the game if you have somebody reliable to teleport to. And in a ridiculously low recast time at that.

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BLM has always be a babies-first-job design for movement mechanics, even before the rework - which is also why it factually changed so little about how and when you press which button. Triplecast instant cast spells but still normal swiftcast on top? Sure. Teleport to other players but also back to your circle? Of course. Redraw the circle? Yeah throw that on top, sure. Self-shield but also a whole bloody sequence-reset button for your cycle. Sure that's the equivalent of a tank self-resurrecting after having already died but yeah sure, let's give BLMs that, too.

For supposedly always being the "omg I'm so tough to play"-caster, they sure got all the tools that remove difficulty consistantly, including a barrage of instant-cast abilities and modifiers that'd make a physical ranged DPS blush at times.

And the delays are a universal problem, not only because they differ per ability (consider the delay in TBN vs the other short CDs for tanks!), but also because other games have netcode. I mean, netcode that isn't a joke an old network dev played at SQEX's expense and now nobody knows how to fix it. It's ridiculous we get this delay on ~everything just because they're unwilling to fix it, the same delay also forced bad class design because everything has to be "slow GCDs + oGCD weaving", a design so limited and so outdated it reminds me of being back in EQ1 at times. I guess I ought to be happy I don't need to sit down and open the spellbook to regenerate mana mid-fight?