Why are Melee and ranged DPS roles mostly support and not focused on damage?

[Deceptus]

Why does it seem like melee and ranged magic DPS roles are lacking?

Tank role abilities decrease damage, increase healing, manage aggro etc.

Heal role abilities increase healing, allow for swift cast, sure they have some terrible abilities in Break and Cleric Stance only being 5%.

Bards and Machinist roles make sense. They've always been support and the roles reflect that accordingly.

However Ranged Magic has absolutely nothing that increases their damage, and neither do melee dps. These "Role Abilities" don't fit their role at all.

Crutch and Arms length are probably barely ever used. Feint's CD is way too much for a 10s ability.

Break is useless for ranged, as is Drain (it doesn't heal enough). Erase doesn't work on enfeebles, just dots. Addle is as bad as Feint for the same reasons. Apocatastasis is tough to time, because you never really know what attacks are physical or magic even if something looks like and appears to be magic.

A basic aoe move would help for melee dps when you're synced down and don't have any aoe at all (DRG don't get their spammable until level 40 and ninja don't until 42)

[Silver-Strider]

Idk about you but I rather like Feint, Addle, Apocatastasis and Erase in general; just need their CD to be slightly shorter is all.

Break, Drain, Arm length, and Clutch though are really, REALLY bad and need to be replaced entirely. Replace drain with a Second Wind effect for casters. Break can just be flat out removed for a spammmable AoE like Blizzard 2 was, with an equivalent skill for Melee as well to replace either Arm or Clutch and those 2 should just be condensed into a single skill.

[Wintersandman]

Replace drain with a Second Wind effect for casters.

I really like Drain as RDM. Dual Casting Drain before Veracure is nice and i use it frequently for the Yokai Event but i see it going by the wayside once I am done farming medals.

[Connor]

I don\\'t play melee so I can\\'t comment on them.

However, I feel like for casters this issue arises from the fact that the role skill abilities they have don\\'t often fit with the job.
For example, Apocatastasis and Addle don\\'t feel out of place at all as a Summoner or Red Mage. But on a Black Mage, not so much. The same goes for Drain.
For a Red Mage who has Vercure, or a Summoner who has a tank pet and Physick, it feels very out-of-place.
As a Black Mage with no other means of recovering your own HP, though, it may feel indispensable in solo content (despite healing too little to be worthwhile).


And of course, as with all role skill pools, there are some abilities that are functionally useless, for casters Break is the biggest offender, as is Drain due to the low potency and healing it offers (for comparison, a Summoner\\'s Ruin spell is 80 potency, whilst Drain is 50 potency I think)

[Rawrz]

Why does it seem like melee and ranged magic DPS roles are lacking?

Tank role abilities decrease damage, increase healing, manage aggro etc.

Heal role abilities increase healing, allow for swift cast, sure they have some terrible abilities in Break and Cleric Stance only being 5%.

Bards and Machinist roles make sense. They've always been support and the roles reflect that accordingly.

However Ranged Magic has absolutely nothing that increases their damage, and neither do melee dps. These "Role Abilities" don't fit their role at all.

Crutch and Arms length are probably barely ever used. Feint's CD is way too much for a 10s ability.

Break is useless for ranged, as is Drain (it doesn't heal enough). Erase doesn't work on enfeebles, just dots. Addle is as bad as Feint for the same reasons. Apocatastasis is tough to time, because you never really know what attacks are physical or magic even if something looks like and appears to be magic.

A basic aoe move would help for melee dps when you're synced down and don't have any aoe at all (DRG don't get their spammable until level 40 and ninja don't until 42)

The moment DPS classes get role abilities that increase damage, those abilities become necesarry over even the best support skills. Could you imagine someone not bringing IR, b4b or raging with crss classes? Thy would be bad.

And of course, as with all role skill pools, there are some abilities that are functionally useless, for casters Break is the biggest offender, as is Drain due to the low potency and healing it offers (for comparison, a Summoner\\'s Ruin spell is 80 potency, whilst Drain is 50 potency I think)

Drain is 80. Ruin is 100 with a proc attached.

[Kabooa]

Because anything that increases damage would be straight up mandatory.

[Connor]

Drain is 80. Ruin is 100 with a proc attached.

I see, not sure where I got the potencies I stated from then. I'd like to think my point about Drain still stands; there isn't much use for an 80 potency heal when you can use Ruin III (or IV with procs) and just end the encounter.

I agree that adding damage buffs to role skills would result in them being considered mandatory, which would just limit the amount of support abilities you could take. I think a better way to solve the OP's issue would be to make each ability available through role skills equally viable (or at least close) in party content.

[Deceptus]

Because anything that increases damage would be straight up mandatory.

Provoke and Swiftcast are considered mandatory on tanks and healers. Generally Rampart and Largesse are as well.

[Kabooa]

Provoke and Swiftcast are considered mandatory on tanks and healers. Generally Rampart and Largesse are as well.

Imagine how quickly that dynamic shifts if you move Internal Release, Blood for Blood, Raging Strikes, and Leylines into the Role Menu, any role menu (Tank, melee, ranged, caster, or healer)

Would you argue any of those would be considered 'optional'?

[KDSilver]

Every dps classes have skills and rotation to increase their damages.
They don't need to it on the role action system.

But they all increase their damages in different ways.
That's why there not a unique skill in that system.

There's nothing else to understand, here's the answer to your question.