Ranged DPS role is about to be excluded from all content

[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.

[HyoMinPark]

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?

Your problem is thinking that balance should occur in a dungeon setting. That is not—and never should be—where jobs are balanced. They should be balanced around higher levels of play, so that one can assess the limits each job can reach and observe the discrepancies that arise there. Only by doing that can they address them at the higher levels of play. And this wouldn’t negatively impact the lower levels of play. Conversely, balancing jobs around dungeon content—where you can get by doing the bare minimum—would cause severe issues at the higher levels.

Embrace the challenge of bringing weaker/struggling jobs? I don’t really consider it any sort of challenge to bring these jobs into a party. It almost borders on griefing your team, in my opinion. Consider the casters: it’s inherently better to bring a BLM over SMN/RDM because BLMs are so far ahead of the other two—we’re talking ~1,500 DPS ahead. Even with the battle raises, BLMs are downright better. It doesn’t feel good for RDM and SMN mains to know that their jobs are that far behind another caster. Likewise, with the physical ranged, it doesn’t feel good to know that literally every other job save for SMN and RDM (whom are also struggling) are stomping all over you, and that it would be more useful to bring a third melee or a second BLM as opposed to a job from your role.

As I said before, I shouldn’t feel as if my team would be better off with me rolling a melee job or BLM. I should feel as if I can pull my weight on my preferred job without worrying about costing them. I may not be the best DNC, but I’m fairly competent—and I still feel weak and just bad.

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.

If you have this mindset of “as long as we clear, everything is fine”, that’s fine. But some of us don’t like feeling like we’re weak or a hinderance to our party. Some of us don’t raid with the mindset of “well, we cleared so everything is gucci”. Try to understand the opposing mindset instead of just thinking your mindset will suit us all. For me, “we cleared” isn’t enough when I know my group could clear easier if I were playing a different job right now, despite my skill on DNC.

My group aren’t going to ask me to swap jobs—but that’s the static collectively agreeing with allowing me to stay on a job I prefer as opposed to one that would be more useful. However, that doesn’t change how I feel. Nor does it change how people in Party Finder can and will react to the physical ranged falling behind. I’ve already seen DNCs being locked out and criticized for its low damage—and it just makes you kind of feel like crap. Inb4 we start saying to just ignore what the others think: this isn’t easy to do when you start getting locked out of content, or trashed for playing a “subpar job”. It has happened to jobs before when they weren’t doing so hot.