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

[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.