Ranged DPS role is about to be excluded from all content

[ForteNightshade]

As it is ranged dps will always do less damage since they don't suffer the same restrictions as other dps jobs.

Melee need to mind their position and can't afford to move as they want since they need to stick close to the target to keep their dps up.
Caster dps have casting time and have to be stationary when they don't have any instant cast to make a move so it's more planning or they lose dps.
Ranged dps can be wherever they want and be constantly on the move and not lose any dps at all. That mobility and convenience is what lower their dps.

If you're looking at a farm party where you know all the dps and caster dps will perform their job perfectly and knows the fight enough that you're sure there'll be no problem, sure having a ranged in a party will be a negligible dps loss. In other situation a ranged dps will always have an easier time pulling solid numbers, even if things go wrong or the party is still new to the fight. And that's because of the convenience of the job.

Now I'll agree that the argument had more weight when they could also replenish ressources such as mp and tp.
But if you want them to have a dps closer to what melees do, ranged will need a new trade-off to make up for it, which would be totally fine. Something like a perfect distance mechanic, where you've got to stay at a certain range of the monster to hit harder on all of your skills, something on your hud would tell you when you're at that range. And they could add a role skill that would be like true north and make it so you can bypass that for 10 seconds when you have to.

A 50% Black Mage is pulling better numbers than a 95% Bard, Machinist, Dancer, Red Mage and Summoner. This means a near perfect player in those respective jobs is still weaker (or on par) with an average Black Mage. At the 95 percentile, Black Mage has a staggering 1,500 rDPS lead against all five of the aforementioned jobs. What this means is by bringing one of the meta jobs, you can afford more mistakes whereas the non-meta jobs may lead to a wipe should players make the equivalent mistakes. Again, it's one thing to argue Range need a mobility tax. I agree with that. But it shouldn't be so lopsided it may actually be better to take three melee DPS even if it means one has to disengage for a couple GCDs.

[Sigiria]

A 50% Black Mage is pulling better numbers than a 95% Bard, Machinist, Dancer, Red Mage and Summoner. This means a near perfect player in those respective jobs is still weaker (or on par) with an average Black Mage. At the 95 percentile, Black Mage has a staggering 1,500 rDPS lead against all five of the aforementioned jobs. What this means is by bringing one of the meta jobs, you can afford more mistakes whereas the non-meta jobs may lead to a wipe should players make the equivalent mistakes. Again, it's one thing to argue Range need a mobility tax. I agree with that. But it shouldn't be so lopsided it may actually be better to take three melee DPS even if it means one has to disengage for a couple GCDs.

I don't disagree with that, I'm just trying to see it from a developper's persepective.
Most of the parses come from people that are clearing or trying to clear savages and extremes, which is why you won't see that huge of a difference between percentiles since a lot of the people there have at least some basic notions of how to play their job right (within that setting it's still a big difference though.)

But as they stated before, people playing through the savage and extreme are not the majority of the playerbase and the way they seem to balance stuff is on a larger scale than just the people that do this type content. For them a 1000 dps gape might not be such a difference if they think it won't prevent people to clear with a decent gear.

That's why I'd rather they shift the mobility/raise tax from the dps output to something else. Reward people for taking the extra steps required for their jobs, Monk and Black mage deserve their dps. Thing is, other jobs should also have mechanics that an average player can butcher and still have a correct dps in lower difficulty content. While players making the effort to deal with these mechanics perfectly should have a dps on par with the other top ones.

[ForteNightshade]

But as they stated before, people playing through the savage and extreme are not the majority of the playerbase and the way they seem to balance stuff is on a larger scale than just the people that do this type content. For them a 1000 dps gape might not be such a difference if they think it won't prevent people to clear with a decent gear.

You may be right in saying that is their approach. Unfortunately, it's an incredibly shortsighted and flawed approach. When it comes to job balance, the only content they should be focusing on is Savage and Ultimate. Why? Because only those pieces of content push the jobs to their capacity. Dungeons are a complete joke. Back in Stormblood, I ran 70 dungeons without a Healer. That's how piss easy they are. You don't balance around content that barely requires a pulse. This is the exact same problem they had with Piercing. Yoshida outright acknowledged they never considered Dragoon when balancing Bard which led to Bard utter dominance throughout all of Stormblood—to the point if you did like Machinist, you were going to struggle finding a group at the Savage level.

And therein lies the issue. We've already seen more and more people either refuse to recruit certain jobs or lock them out of PF. If you're a Red Mage main. You better be parsing at an orange level or you're going to struggle finding a group. Not to mention, it feels pretty bad knowing that if you, a physical range or non-Black Mage caster, played at other job. Your party would have much higher success on any Savage fight in the game.

[CKNovel]

Is there a need for this ranged tax? Yes, for sure else why anyone would play Melee jobs?
But is there any Melee loosing 1K to 1.5K DPS for dealing with mechanics? If yes I have very bad news for you...

That ranged tax was relevant in Stormblood as ranged had very usefull tools such as Refresh, Tactician, Requiem/Hypercharge, Dismantle... Rest in peace sweet prince.
I never played healer during raid but it basically allowed them to DPS without fearing for their MP. Indirectly, it was rDPS but I can't say how much. Back then, the DPS difference was about... 8, 9% between ranged and the top DPS? The idea is that it was not as much as today and that now we don't have that utility to support this low DPS.

ShB ranged DPS are taxed like if Refresh and Dismantle/Songs, Hypercharge/Requiem&Crit buff were still a thing.

The remaining arguments are the damage reduction buff (Tactician, Samba, Song) and the mobility. Honestly I don't see how 10% reduction every 180 seconds would cost more than Dismantle and it was 10% every 60 seconds. Ranged shouldn't reach BLM/MNK DPS for sure but a perfect ranged should not be rewarded with a 50th BLM/MNK DPS. The tax exist so casters and melees may exist.

But I don't see positionnals/casting/melee range being such a pain that it costs you 1k DPS. If that's the case, you may need to improve.

For 2 years MCH was unfun and unplayable.
Now the job is fixed with flashy animations but is shooting spaghettis.
Our comp is MNK/RDM/DNC/MCH, why do we need to push harder simply because we want to play the jobs we love? We intend to tackle Ultimate but how tight the DPS checks will be?

I just want to have fun and feel usefull to my team, SE. Complexify the rangeds rotation, bring back utility, just give us something so I don't feel like a weight! I don't play perfectly, but even if I was, I would perform better on a Black mage and it's extremely disheartening to see the ranged role in such a state.

[ForteNightshade]

How do triple melee work on E2S tower mechanics tho? Sure it is not a huge dps loss and tanks are doing less damage than SB so losing tank gcds is not a huge issue, but I can't see how you do that without at least some loss.

Admittedly, I forgot about towers. Still, you could have the tank lose a couple GCDs unless PLD has Holy Spirit ready there. As you said, tank DPS just isn't that high.