Ranged DPS role is about to be excluded from all content

[Zyneste]

I think the Physical Ranged is the only role that is actually somewhat balanced.

They share the core role identity of Mobility + defensive support via Trouba/Samba/Tact. Their RDPS + PDPS VS RDPS + PDPS is balanced. The additional defensive support they have is weak, but strong enough to use to sway tight spots. MCH/DNC/BRD can and should have the lowest DPS or near the lowest, but they can't be so far of an outlier, that a higher DPS class can replace them even after considering losing the ranged party role bonus. The lower DPS classes need pushed up.

Melee and Caster should intermingle with SMN/RDM being at the bottom portion, but all be within a reasonable amount of damage. Ranged should be just behind them. The role party bonus should be able to push a ranged into the range slot no questions. This means that either the role bonus needs to be increased to compensate to overwhelmingly encourage a standard comp, or the DPS disparity between all classes needs to get much smaller.

[ForteNightshade]

I feel like you're disregarding that 1. Most players aren't hardcore players and the game won't survive off the small number of hardcore player subs alone thus Square must have balance feel appealing to casual players as well. 2. The ease of play advantage ranged dps have vs. other melee and even casters. I'm sorry, but being able to attack from almost any distance while being optimal in output is going to cost you ceiling dps. Maybe stop playing with people who would rather kick you off their teams than have a 1% less higher damage ceiling (if all things go well with extra melees or whatever).

Honestly, I don't think that's normal behavior and is more telling of who certain people hang around. I personally have 0 qualms with a player of any class if they are really good at playing that class while knowing all the mechanics very well in a fight. I think if the game was balanced around such limited focuses, the majority of the playerbase would end up less satisfied with the game, and sorry, just because you feel that you are a more hardcore player doesn't entitle your preferences to a a greater degree of consideration than even the most casual of pleebs you'd likely hate to even be associated with. Square is making some adjustments to some classes, and I think that's good, but I think it's clear they do not want to only balance classes around the desires of 1337 hardcore gamers™ either... Which is probably also good.

... you do realize this is worse[ for casual players, yes? The damage discrepancy is so high right now a Black Mage could literally jump off after phase one of Titan and still beat every single job outside of the melee. All the melee could do the same. A perfect Dancer or Red Mage will straight up lose to an above average Monk. In fact, lets look at how insane the numbers are.

Summoner is currently the highest ranked job in the "weaker" category on Titan, pulling in 13,436 at 99%. Monk at just 60% is pulling 13,515. Black Mage at that same level is at 13,312. That means a stellar Summoner with near perfect logs is weaker than an average Monk and barely beating an average Black Mage or Dragoon. Now think about that in a pug setting, where you have no idea the caliber of player you'll get. If you insist on bringing a Black Mage, said Black Mage doesn't even need to be good; just average, and they're already better than every other Range or Caster DPS in the game. Do you really think that's good for a casual or midcore setting?

[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.

[dinnertime]

Whew, was almost scared that actually did anything!

Welcome to the bench, buddy.

Actually...I just decided to go back to BLM. :/

[Connor]

At the very least I was expecting some kind of potency increases for Dancer and Red Mage, and was disappointed to see that they didn’t get anything.

Not sure about ranged DPS as a whole, I feel like Bard and Machinist are probably ‘working as intended’ so part of me wouldn’t be surprised if they go untouched the rest of the expansion (which would kinda suck for Bard because I don’t find it fun to play anymore). Dancer does feel like it lags behind the others though, it’s really fun to play but I think there’s just too much of a difference in its overall DPS (rDPS?) to make it feel worthwhile. Being at the ‘bottom’ is fine because someone has to be there, but that doesn’t mean that you should feel a lot weaker than everyone else by being there.

Also, I don’t know how much ranged DPS are currently represented in endgame content but I’d imagine that they’re not largely unrepresented because they’ve always been an extremely popular role. I mean, until now Bard has almost always been one of the most popular jobs in the entire game, including at the highest level of difficulty. Which obviously was like 90% because they were a compulsory job, but I think their popularity would have had them just as high in numbers even if none of the utility that made it required existed.

It’s less the case now, but the ranged DPS popular is still very large. Which unfortunately means that in the devs eyes, there are no issues on the job needing addressed. I really hope they do look at the ranged role as a whole though, because I agree that right now it feels like the role is ‘the role that does less damage than casters but you can jump while you attack’.

I’d argue though that at this point in the game the mobility argument is weaker because casters all have way more mobility than they did to begin with. The mobility of ranged DPS is honestly more of a novelty to me at this point, like Ninja’s increased running speed

Basically while I totally agree that the ranged DPS role as a whole right now just feels ‘meh’, but worried that the developers aren’t going to take this feedback seriously
they could just give all the ranged DPS more support abilities aka more Bard songs sorry but I can’t help myself lol

[HyoMinPark]

The role party bonus should be able to push a ranged into the range slot no questions. This means that either the role bonus needs to be increased to compensate to overwhelmingly encourage a standard comp, or the DPS disparity between all classes needs to get much smaller.

I would personally go for the latter—increasing the role party bonus is lazy, in my opinion; and it doesn’t really address the issue with the physical ranged being so far behind the other DPS in terms of damage. It just sort of...sweeps the problem under the rug and ignores it, and I can’t really agree with that. Which is why I am against just buffing the party bonus and not addressing the damage discrepancies.

[Hussain]

SE need to realize something which is that the 1% main stat boost will never save us as long as the gap is this big. triple melee>bringing a physical ranged now
saying it's "fine" for melees to outdps physical ranged by +1.5k is insane and saying "physical ranged shouldn't be locked out" is going against what you're implying , having a +1k gap means physical ranged will be locked out cause the 1% boost is roughly ~700 dps. so why bring a p ranged when you can bring 3 melees or double blms? and before you say LB regen , yeah double blm> the 1% from p ranged + the LB regen potential depending on the fight
can't wait for 5.1 without any changes again

[kajv95]

Actually...I just decided to go back to BLM. :/

That's fair, I'm inclined to do the same. It's what my gut feeling tells me to do when I'm playing any of the jobs I've typically enjoyed the last few years.

I'll keep your book warm for your return. When do I need to feed the carbuncles?

[JowyAtreides]

... you do realize this is worse[ for casual players, yes? The damage discrepancy is so high right now a Black Mage could literally jump off after phase one of Titan and still beat every single job outside of the melee. All the melee could do the same. A perfect Dancer or Red Mage will straight up lose to an above average Monk. In fact, lets look at how insane the numbers are.

Summoner is currently the highest ranked job in the "weaker" category on Titan, pulling in 13,436 at 99%. Monk at just 60% is pulling 13,515. Black Mage at that same level is at 13,312. That means a stellar Summoner with near perfect logs is weaker than an average Monk and barely beating an average Black Mage or Dragoon. Now think about that in a pug setting, where you have no idea the caliber of player you'll get. If you insist on bringing a Black Mage, said Black Mage doesn't even need to be good; just average, and they're already better than every other Range or Caster DPS in the game. Do you really think that's good for a casual or midcore setting?

Casual players don't notice nor care about subtle differences which result in a clear vs enrage scenario. The content casual players run very rarely scrutinize each and every class and obstruct roles from participating simply because the majority of it is ran through duty finder. I'm yet to see someone leave an expert roulette or normal level raid because they had a bard/red mage combo in the party.

The concerns are perfectly valid for extreme, savage and presumably ultimate content, although we're led to believe that classes are periodically adjusted to balance for the current endgame and that any team composition should be good enough to clear. Yes some more easily than others but in a time where people also complain about how easy the game is, why not embrace a challenge?

The problem we have in this game, is that people are judged solely on their dps, but if content can be cleared and you play with friends, who does the biggest dps shouldn't be a problem.

[dinnertime]

That's fair, I'm inclined to do the same. It's what my gut feeling tells me to do when I'm playing any of the jobs I've typically enjoyed the last few years.

I'll keep your book warm for your return. When do I need to feed the carbuncles?

I'll still play the job whenever I feel like it so the carbuncles will be fine. I just need a little break from the madness of the balancing right now.

The 5.1 changes for the bottom 5 better be great...