Quote Originally Posted by Leonus View Post
Coil as a whole? Or just final coil? people could have done COB and SCOB without a melee (or just one for a specific situstion). If ranged dps could match melee dps output, most groups for raiding would opt to have no melee or just one for LB like a lot of groups did for COB. It wasn't until SCOB that some groups brought more than one Mdps and it started to become balanced between 2 rdps/1 mdps and 2 mdps/2 caster dps groups.
Let's not forget that back during first coil, there were only two melee classes to choose from, and one was bottom tier. Dragoon deservedly got their buff.

But you're also ignoring the fact that most of first coil was melee-unfriendly, hence the prevalence of BLM/SMN/BRD comps (which also maximized Foe's damage). Mechanics like Rot on T2 (if you did it legitimately), clockwork soldiers' physical resistance on T4, and dreadnaughts on Twintania pretty much favored ranged heavy groups.

Since then however, starting really from Titan Ex and on, more encounters have favored melee over ranged. Reason for that? High movement fights hurt BLM's and SMN's uptime more than any melee job. Take for example the Nerve Gas mechanic on T11. This is a big hit to DPS for BLM and SMN, but a marginal hit for all melee. If it weren't for the Gravity Ball in phase 2, there would be no reason whatsoever to take any caster here. Even on standstill fights melee are beating ranged by a good 50 DPS margin, so heavy movement fights are now just widening the gap even more.

Ideally, ranged and melee should be doing as close to the same amount of DPS on a standstill fight/target dummy. That should be Square's goal for balance. Not, "melee should do more because they have it tougher," or "SMN's should do more single target than BLM because they have AOE."