Can we please stop giving melee bad stigma?

[Viridiana]

This is pretty much the reason why. Anything a melee can do a ranged can do without the necessary and complex dancing around the boss. Also have to take into account things like when bosses target a random player other than the tank for an AoE. If that target is a healer or a ranged they need to move to avoid it and maybe one other person as well. If a melee is the target then ALL melee and most likely the tank have to stop pretty much everything they're doing and run to avoid it. Also there's no positioning requirements for ranged to deal damage at max potential unlike melee that perpetually have to move from behind the mob to the flank and vice versa to be at max potential. Every MMO battles this problem, there's no real way to avoid it. Why bring 4 melee and their flaws when 4 ranged can do the same damage if not more and be safer about it as well.

Wait, that doesn't make any sense. It might almost make sense if by "ranged" you specifically mean "BRD," but it doesn't make sense as soon as you include casters. First, it's extremely rare that something targeting the melee dps will also be targeting the tank. Second, melee dps can still dps while dodging, so there's minimal to no loss of dps when they dodge. And that's not even counting the fact that different melee players might be at different parts of their rotation, and thus you might only even see one of them being targeted at a time.

Now, what you're not factoring in for ranged players is that they often have an area they have to stack in. Which means anything targeting one of them is just as likely to target several of them as it is in the melee scenario. This wouldn't be an issue, but it interrupts casting for BLM and SMN. Granted, it's fine for BRD, but I refuse to join a party with 4 BRDs.

As for your assertion that "anything a melee can do a ranged can do without dancing around the boss," no. . .just no. Let me see a BLM or SMN maintain their rotation while dodging. And if you think ranged can maintain optimal dps while dodging, good luck finding four bards who can outdamage competent MNKs and DRGs.

[xEscaflownex]

As for your assertion that "anything a melee can do a ranged can do without dancing around the boss," no. . .just no. Let me see a BLM or SMN maintain their rotation while dodging. And if you think ranged can maintain optimal dps while dodging, good luck finding four bards who can outdamage competent MNKs and DRGs.

Is this a joke? In the what, 4 or 5 months I have been playing, no MNK or DRG has EVER outdamaged my BRD/BLM/SMN on ANY fight, even with ilvl advantages (my ranged all being i86 at the moment, vs i90 MNKs/DRGs). I consider party lucky if they land a MNK or DRG who even comes close to even with LB added to their DMG.

In my experienced a bad ranged beats a bad melee, a good melee beats a bad to average ranged, but no MNK/DRG comes close to a Good Ranged, never seen it happen.

[Ricdeau]

Is this a joke? In the what, 4 or 5 months I have been playing, no MNK or DRG has EVER outdamaged my BRD/BLM/SMN on ANY fight, even with ilvl advantages (my ranged all being i86 at the moment, vs i90 MNKs/DRGs). I consider party lucky if they land a MNK or DRG who even comes close to even with LB added to their DMG.

In my experienced a bad ranged beats a bad melee, a good melee beats a bad to average ranged, but no MNK/DRG comes close to a Good Ranged, never seen it happen.

Sounds like you've never played with any melee that's even remotely good then.

Edit -- I've been sitting here thinking, I tend to try to elaborate when I so strongly disagree with a statement, but I've come at quite a loss on this one. So I'll just ask what fights are you using as the basis for your statement? Even with asking that there's very few fights that are so melee unfriendly or AOE heavy that they can't be at top or at the very least near the top.

[xEscaflownex]

Sounds like you've never played with any melee that's even remotely good then.

Edit -- I've been sitting here thinking, I tend to try to elaborate when I so strongly disagree with a statement, but I've come at quite a loss on this one. So I'll just ask what fights are you using as the basis for your statement? Even with asking that there's very few fights that are so melee unfriendly or AOE heavy that they can't be at top or at the very least near the top.

And I counter with, Sounds like you've never played with any ranged that's even remotely good then.

Every fight in the game, from low level content up to and through T5. And I'm quite certain ive played with "good" melee's lol, I can see the DPS difference between my Coil Group/FC Melees vs the random server melee population (my Coil/FC members being much more capable), let alone the general disparity between high damaging melees and low damaging ones in PUGs. Regardless, pretty much all I do these days is spam EX primals after doing T1-5 Mondays, I parse everything, and as I have said, no melee DPS have ever outdamaged me, or any other good ranged DPS ive seen in any fight, be it Sastasha, Twintania, or anything in between.

*BTW, I don't hate melee DPS at all lol, I don't mind having them in a group (I do get slightly annoyed/sad face when there are 2 or more in a group - if for no other reason that the odds of more than one of them being decent are astronomically low). I'm also not saying that good melee DPS cant do decent damage, but being top? not in any fight currently in game. There is no fight where a melee can have 100% uptime (parsers track this btw), whether it be for 5 seconds to dodge eruptions, or an extended period of time, like dodging bomb batters and etc. On average, active time in parsers shows ranged at 96% plus (accounting for bosses jumping etc), vs melees generally 10% or more less.

If a melee could get the same active time on a mob that ranged do, then I'm sure they would be king, with all the enhancement they receive intended to make up for this disparity in uptime on targets. However, this is not the case, and as far as I've seen the buffs to their potency and such just does not over come this downtime.

There is such a stigma towards melee DPS because the truth is, there are many more bad ones then there are good, and its painfully obvious when one is bad, because not using their rotations properly, in addition to downtime = terrible deeps, which goes back to the ranged being the "safe" choice, a shitty ranged still has way more uptime and will thus do more dmg than a shitty melee.



I only posted because of the guy saying "Good luck finding any bards that can out DPS a MNK or DRG" ...when im my experience its the complete opposite

[Ricdeau]

snip

Then you would be in the minority in your experiences. Melee can top DPS in most fights currently in the game. I think we can both agree that player ability is the biggest factor here, but if we're just considering people that are playing their class to it's fullest or close to then melee can most certainly top many end game encounters. It's just a flat out silly claim. I'm not saying that one side or the other completely trounces the other since there's many factors at play, but saying that melee can't top any fight currently in the game. We'll just have to agree to disagree on that.

[xEscaflownex]

Then you would be in the minority in your experiences. Melee can top DPS in most fights currently in the game. I think we can both agree that player ability is the biggest factor here, but if we're just considering people that are playing their class to it's fullest or close to then melee can most certainly top many end game encounters. It's just a flat out silly claim. I'm not saying that one side or the other completely trounces the other since there's many factors at play, but saying that melee can't top any fight currently in the game. We'll just have to agree to disagree on that.

Indeed we will, or we could all arrange some temporary server xfers and party together for a few fights =P

[Ricdeau]

Indeed we will, or we could all arrange some temporary server xfers and party together for a few fights =P

If there wasn't a huge penalty to that, I'd transfer over.

[PriyaJugulataris]

...

You do realize Yoshi-P did say the summoner is still top ST damage right?
SMN/Monks usually top the charts atm but it's all around silly.
Melee population has a higher learning curve, and also a moderate amount of bad players which make for a higher percentage of bad melee.
Hell, I prefer having one melee and one blm/summoner/bard for fights because of such.
But it depends on content. Titan EX? idgaf. Ifrit EX? idgaf. Garuda Ex? if the everyone can change their strategy idgaf.
Just find good players, make friends with them, and run with your friends.

[NoctisUmbra]

You do realize Yoshi-P did say the summoner is still top ST damage right?

I'd like to see where Yoshi P said this. Then I will look at it and laugh.

SMN is most definitely not top single target DPS. It excels when there are multiple targets because it then has the ability to use DoTs on more than one target instead of spamming Ruin, making for an effective DPS increase.

MNK and DRG are kings of single target DPS by a significant margin when comparing DPS caps. How much this translates to content depends highly on player skill, and given content.

[Ricdeau]

You do realize Yoshi-P did say the summoner is still top ST damage right?
SMN/Monks usually top the charts atm but it's all around silly.
Melee population has a higher learning curve, and also a moderate amount of bad players which make for a higher percentage of bad melee.
Hell, I prefer having one melee and one blm/summoner/bard for fights because of such.
But it depends on content. Titan EX? idgaf. Ifrit EX? idgaf. Garuda Ex? if the everyone can change their strategy idgaf.
Just find good players, make friends with them, and run with your friends.

I wasn't trying to say that ranged was incapable of topping DPS. I was pointing out that melee are easily capable of it on most content contrary to what was said by xEscaflownex. Specific content does have a baring on what class excels, but the statement that melee can't top any current content is just mind boggling.