Ranged DPS role is about to be excluded from all content

[Yandere-chan]

... 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?

I stated that I think it's good that Square is adjusting classes. I don't think it would be good however to make make ranged DPS at 100% optimal performance the same as melee or casters at 100% optimal performance (under ideal situations). I think things are at a reasonable middle ground when Ranged DPS generally performs better in fights that are both highly mobile and impossible to have high uptime for melee. I think there could be better balancing between utility vs. personal dps as well.

The point of contention I have is that it's far easier to perform optimally with less restrictions, range being an important one, in which ranged dps can highly bypass it. Caster is in the middle because casters generally have more movement restrictions than ranged dps. Classes shouldn't be balanced around all of them doing 100% damage potential in all fights because it would just leave melee as the most shafted, casters as the second most, and ranged dps would then be just be better overall at that point (there is also considerations of output vs. class complexity that can play into avg results too among each role specifically).

I also do have to consider the flaw in logs. There isn't any real control group. You may just happen to have a lot of poorer performing players or poorer performing groups that make worse relative use of certain classes or certain utilities, or you may have an unproportionate number of classes having support buffs stacked upon them, making differences seem far more exaggerated than what they actually are. Wanting Square to balance around random log results isn't a good way to go about things at all. I do think there are some balance issues recognized though and we are seeing changes, thus why I said I think it's good Square is making some adjustments.