Why is there a noticeable gap between Casters and Melees?

[Spayd]

I Think the gap in dps from a Melee and a Ranged dps comes from what they are able to do where Ranged usually wreck in Aoe damage and where melee is purely done for Single Target. Yes melees have AoE moves, but get easily Outshined by BRD, SMN, BLM and even SCH. So to me, it is only normal that they wreck shit up on single target, since that's their focus.

Considering the fact that ranged dps can do a considerable amount of DPS on Single Target While being able to burn the s*** out of adds is an enough reason for me to have melee dps being top dps on ST.

[Tex_Mex]

I Think the gap in dps from a Melee and a Ranged dps comes from what they are able to do where Ranged usually wreck in Aoe damage and where melee is purely done for Single Target. Yes melees have AoE moves, but get easily Outshined by BRD, SMN, BLM and even SCH.

Though this may be true in other MMO's it is not true for FFXIV. DRG AoE easily rivals that of SMN and is significantly better than BRD. Nothing gets even close to BLM though.

Melee get more single target DPS than ranged because they have to be in close, not because of AoE tradeoffs. And just because a class is ranged does not automatically make it a strong AoE class. I would actually consider BRD the 2nd lowest AoE DPS class in the game, only ahead of MNK.

BLM>SMN=DRG>NIN>BRD>MNK in terms of AoE DPS.

Basically, in this game AoE tradeoff for single target damage only actually affects one class, and that is MNK. All other classes have good AoE DPS with BLM being the strongest.