Shifting the taxes

[Jonnycbad]

They tried taxing ranged in HW by giving them a buff that increased their damage by 20% but turned their weapon skills from an instant cast into a cast-times 1.5s cast/2.5s recast (allowing them to at least move between casts). This was unpopular because it ruined the fluidity and freedom that came with playing a Ranged vs playing a caster. They reversed this in 4.0, which again made jobs like BRD very strong, as they not only had 100% uptime compared to melee, but they also had powerful DPS to boot.

If they implemented a range thing, you'd need to make some kinda UI change to indicate range/distance and that might not be received well. Maybe a function where they can't use their skills AT ALL in melee range (the button is disabled just like melees who are OUT of range).

[Akiudo]

They tried taxing ranged in HW by giving them a buff that increased their damage by 20% but turned their weapon skills from an instant cast into a cast-times 1.5s cast/2.5s recast (allowing them to at least move between casts). This was unpopular because it ruined the fluidity and freedom that came with playing a Ranged vs playing a caster. They reversed this in 4.0, which again made jobs like BRD very strong, as they not only had 100% uptime compared to melee, but they also had powerful DPS to boot.

to be fair, while machinist was never that popular i read relativly little complains about gauß barrel, there where problems but it wasn't the cast times, on bard this was indeed different but that was because wanderer was just hastily slapped on (played both during heavensward, you could just feel how mch was build around gauß while bard was like "so mch has cast time, bard needs cast times too, lets slap on some shit") Also personal dps during stormblood was closer than it is now AND they had more/better buffs, like there has to be a middle ground between "does 6-7% less dps and has great buffs" and "does 10% less dps and has average buffs"

[ReiMakoto]

They tried taxing ranged in HW by giving them a buff that increased their damage by 20% but turned their weapon skills from an instant cast into a cast-times 1.5s cast/2.5s recast (allowing them to at least move between casts). This was unpopular because it ruined the fluidity and freedom that came with playing a Ranged vs playing a caster. They reversed this in 4.0, which again made jobs like BRD very strong, as they not only had 100% uptime compared to melee, but they also had powerful DPS to boot.

If they implemented a range thing, you'd need to make some kinda UI change to indicate range/distance and that might not be received well. Maybe a function where they can't use their skills AT ALL in melee range (the button is disabled just like melees who are OUT of range).

I don't think many complained about MCH's cast bars, because you could stack movement options using ammo to give you a lot of time to move adding an extra layer of complexity to the job, imo they should have stuck with the casts on mch anyway