Ranged DPS role is about to be excluded from all content

[Akiudo]

Quibble all you want, it doesn't change the fact a half-sleeping monk which has mobility and group buffs easily beats an alert BLM that is rooted to the spot and loses ~10k damage every time they take a step.

Let me guess: MNK main?

wrong guess, would say nice try but not really. But yes the monk has group buffs, which for the record are allready included in this dps comparison which is the exact reason why it is in fact above blackmage. your argument at this point literally is blackmage does like 50 dps more than monk but monk buffs the group for 400 dps AND has group Buffs. is monk "op" ? yes in the sense that its the strongest job right now, but don't double dip on the group buffs, the buffs are the reason why the damage is so freaking high, it is not "too much damage AND buffs" its "too much damage Because of buffs"

[Miralyth]

This "ranged tax" makes sense in other franchises (WoW comes to mind - where blizz had always over-punished melee) , but Square is very, very good at pressuring ranged in this game.

Yeah, agreed. e.g. For MCH, wildfire comes up a fraction of a second before one of the eyes goes off in E2S. Depending on your sks, you might have to delay it. This kind of stuff is all over the game. Not to mention the extra distance you frequently have to run to accommodate the rest of your group for mechanics (E1S, E3S have lots of good examples). There's a lot of moving ahead of time and then getting back fast for AoE heals, more so than the healers/casters at times.

[plasmacutter]

Yeah, agreed. e.g. For MCH, wildfire comes up a fraction of a second before one of the eyes goes off in E2S. Depending on your sks, you might have to delay it. This kind of stuff is all over the game. Not to mention the extra distance you frequently have to run to accommodate the rest of your group for mechanics (E1S, E3S have lots of good examples). There's a lot of moving ahead of time and then getting back fast for AoE heals, more so than the healers/casters at times.

At the end of the day they balance around the ~60% mark for player efficiency (barring deaths) for this reason (with intentional creeping gear inflation pushing that to the 40% mark).

This entire discussion comes down to psychology:
Nobody likes the creeping realization they have to chug meth to do what a half-sleeping person can on a different class.. at least not without bringing utility that makes a visible difference to them (like ver-raise! the champion of learning parties!)

[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.

[Layla-chan]

Honestly it is easy for SE to at least return the old range DPS's back to relevance: bring back their old raid buffs.

Return bard's Foe Requiem and 2% crit on songs, and return machinists' raid turret/robot buffs and their other utilities. Then increase Dancer's raid dps accordingly. It also gives then the raid DPS their identity.

EDIT: Woops, CKNovel basically said the same thing, so yeah I approve of their message!

[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.

[Janhyua]

Grants Brotherhood and Meditative Brotherhood to all nearby party members.
Brotherhood Effect: Increases physical damage dealt by 5%.
Meditative Brotherhood Effect: 30% chance you open a chakra when party members under this effect execute a weaponskill
Duration: 15s

Nerf it to this

Grants "Meditative Brotherhood" to all nearby party members.
Brotherhood Effect: Increases own physical damage dealt by 5%.
Meditative Brotherhood Effect: Increases HP recovery via healing actions by 20% for self and nearby party members and 30% chance you open a chakra when party members under this effect execute a weaponskill
Duration: 15s

Delete Mantra

[Myon88]

At the end of the day they balance around the ~60% mark for player efficiency (barring deaths) for this reason (with intentional creeping gear inflation pushing that to the 40% mark).

I surmised as much that this was the case. The ranged tax basically exists to balance ranged players against average melee and caster (mostly blm) players who lose uptime constantly, say, the assumption that an equivalent melee/blm only has 70% uptime. The problem with this is actual good players on those jobs get 99% uptime in reality since fights are so easy, so the ranged tax loses relevance at high levels of skill. What this means is that,

1. If you play ranged, you basically have an artificial ceiling where even the best ranged player in the world will produce numbers no better than a 60-70th percentile melee. You're being punished because other people out there play badly, there's no way for you to overcome your tax through skill.

2. Conversely, if you're a melee/blm and perform better than this baseline, you are rewarded for your effort because you will produce dps that is literally overtuned.

It has really chilling implications for the health of these roles if that's indeed how they balance them, because who would insult themselves by playing a ranged in that case? Since we have limited jobs now, may as well slap a few labels on the other jobs to differentiate them more. Ranged and rdm can have the 'beginner job' label, and the melees and blm can be called 'expert jobs'. That's essentially how they're being tuned after all, so why not just make it official.

[Wavaryen]

To me this is just proof we need to get rid of dps buffing groups stuff, and balance all the classes best they can be. So you can bring the play style you enjoy. but I'm sure people will cry about that for some strange reason.

[Drayos]

Tbh it might be time to give up on the RDM dream haha.

Haha don’t know if I have it in me to level another job up though haha