Shifting the taxes

[Sigiria]

Alright, so since it's coming up a lot how about trying to find another way to tax jobs that have a raise or other advantages.

Unlike jobs with support, of which the gain of their buffs are easier to quantify. It's harder to really judge how much is provided by some jobs other advantages and thus balance them more fairly.

Like every mmos have shown, the jobs providing the higher dps to a party will always be favored in the end. And there's an obvious reasoning behind it. Sure the advantages of some jobs might make an encounter easier, but at the end of the day it's just a convenience that can be ignored with a good enough group, in that sense people will always ask people to step up their game rather than go a slower/safer route.
Because on the other hand, more dps will always be useful, unlike advantages that will be more situational.

For example, even if you don't have to raise during a fight, then you're still paying the dps tax for having a raise.

Same deal for the jobs with mobility. If you can arrange for a blm to move as little as possible and for melees to keep in range, they'll get a higher dps reward for it, but ranged were never given that option to have to do something extra for more dps.

Which bring me to my point, wouldn't it be easier to balance and quantify the gain from advantages of a job, by shifting the tax.

I offered that example in anothe topic but they could make it so ranged dps have to keep being at a certain range from their target to do maximum damage and bring their dps to the level of melees. Having them being not too far or too close to their target would be a decent trade off to the positionnal and close proximity requirements of melees.

For the raise instead on taxing people for having it, tax them for using it. Either by applying a damage debuff on the caster raising someone or by making it cost 5000mp or making the dps' raise impossible to instant cast even with swiftcast.
That way it's there if they have to use it but don't get punished just for having it.

[Atamis]

I was thinking the same. mana cost doesn't need to be factored as its usually a moot resource in fights, but other creative ways could be employed. Red Mage, for example, could have a White Mana cost or it gives them 20 whenever its used, thereby hampering their black mana gain, likewise for rez it could jump the guage by 50 and drain black.
Taking it off swiftcast would be another excellent way as hardcasting it often takes multiple attempts depending on the fight.
As for summoner it could coat mana in addition to an aetherflow making it both cost and not be readily available. Summoner heal is already worthless past lv 50 so it truly doesn't need taxed. 1% health regen probably owes ME some back 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"

[Miralyth]

No.

As a ranged main, I'm strongly against a "dead zone" for physical ranged. It's not fun and defeats one of the main purposes of being ranged. I would straight up abandon the jobs if this happened, like when they had cast times in HW.

I have no issue with being 100-200 dps behind my respective colleagues (SAM/BLM for MCH, for example) to make up for the mobility advantage. The panic people have that no one would bring anything but ranged if their DPS were too close is a myth. The meta will still be the jobs with the best dps for the situation, and people will still follow the meta. Not to mention the loss of role buffs and LB. The developers just need to accept that mobility isn't the profound impact they feel it is.

Edit: Bard and, in a few cases, Machinist weren't so strong because they had mobility, it was because they had decent damage, strong buffs, refresh (which casters didn't have) and synergized way too well with dragoon. BRD+MCH was not a meta for the full expansion, SMN & BLM overtook MCH once they had higher rDPS and not even because it was significantly higher (in the case of SMN). If casters had refresh and strong buffs and synergized with some job that gave them 10% damage, it would have been casters instead of aiming jobs.

It had nothing to do with mobility and everything to do with buff synergy and utility.

[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

[Ryaz]

The problem with the ranged cast times was it was a MCH mechanic that just didn't work well on BRD. MCH was designed around it, so procs and the ammo still kept you quite mobile and you could keep the casting down to a minimum. With BRD it was just slapped on without taking the rest of the class design into account, which made it extremely clunky.

[Anienai]

Give Machinist b-rez with one of their many trinkets. They can cast a radio controlled small robot (rez cast bar) Defibrillo 5000 or something.

[Katie_Kitty]

Give Machinist b-rez with one of their many trinkets. They can cast a radio controlled small robot (rez cast bar) Defibrillo 5000 or something.

Might as well at this point, hey, just give everyone but melee a rez so the devs can continue to justify melee dominance for the rest of eternity and solidify the 2 melee 2 BLM meta. Yay.

[Dogempire]

No.

As a ranged main, I'm strongly against a "dead zone" for physical ranged. It's not fun and defeats one of the main purposes of being ranged. I would straight up abandon the jobs if this happened, like when they had cast times in HW.

I have no issue with being 100-200 dps behind my respective colleagues (SAM/BLM for MCH, for example) to make up for the mobility advantage. The panic people have that no one would bring anything but ranged if their DPS were too close is a myth. The meta will still be the jobs with the best dps for the situation, and people will still follow the meta. Not to mention the loss of role buffs and LB. The developers just need to accept that mobility isn't the profound impact they feel it is.

Edit: Bard and, in a few cases, Machinist weren't so strong because they had mobility, it was because they had decent damage, strong buffs, refresh (which casters didn't have) and synergized way too well with dragoon. BRD+MCH was not a meta for the full expansion, SMN & BLM overtook MCH once they had higher rDPS and not even because it was significantly higher (in the case of SMN). If casters had refresh and strong buffs and synergized with some job that gave them 10% damage, it would have been casters instead of aiming jobs.

It had nothing to do with mobility and everything to do with buff synergy and utility.

Except ranged isn't 100-200 dps behind sam and blm, it's over 1000 damage behind samurai and black mage. If you're only a couple hundred dps behind your colleagues, either your colleagues suck or you're some god tier ranged player for being able to keep up with black mage dps.