Opinions on Positionals

[Jonnycbad]

I thought the concept was Melee did more DPS than ranged because they have positionals and are in range of most mechanics, meanwhile ranged would deal less DPS but have mroe raid buff support and be able to ignore positionals and not be targeted by as many mechanics.

In practice, DRG and NIN are on the bottom end of DPS, and BRD and MCH do higher DPS, weird, right? I hope moving forward in 5.0, they stress the concept of meleeing being stronger than ranged, since ranged can often times have 100% uptime, and melee can't (big fists/Long Needle Kyrios, Umbral Smash, etc). They originally addressed this in HW with Gun Mage and Bow Mage mechanics to root physical ranged in place similar to casters, but with SB we saw the return of highly mobile BRD and MCH and their damage is very high. Even if their base DPS isn't high against a dummy, their end-result DPS is higher simply because they can DPS while dropping puddles out of range, or when a boss leaps to the other side of the arena, or drops an AoE around its center which melee need run out to avoid (Middy's Azure Wings), but they ranged DPS can dodge those while also dealing with mechanics easily.

[Phoenicia]

I thought the concept was Melee did more DPS than ranged because they have positionals and are in range of most mechanics, meanwhile ranged would deal less DPS but have mroe raid buff support and be able to ignore positionals and not be targeted by as many mechanics.

The BRD and MCH doing more DPS than melee isn't so much because of 100% up-time (as a good melee WILL have ~100% uptime) but to how they are balanced. MCH and BRD are meant do be completely viable in any setup are balanced to be so. When DRG enters the mix they just shoot up thanks to pierce debuff and raid buff that caters to the heavy burst-reliance nature of BRD and MCH.