Patch 5.10 Current state of physical range jobs' balance is unfair.

[Akiudo]

If you're adjusting for two players, it naturally will have higher results which encourages a different strategy. When it's only a single job, people will be far less likely to bother. Once again, look at any fight in previous tiers that were not melee friendly or involved taking higher damage for uptime. A lot of people wouldn't accommodate since it doesn't benefit them enough to matter.

if its easy people will accomodate, if its hard they won't , you telling me you really think people wouldn't bother for a 1% buff+~1% percent for having the melee lb ? (yes, there are fights where you would probably use a ranged lb, but generally melee lb is the most universal by far) what is true is that if it costs the melee 200 dps if the group just doesn't bother with uptime strats than maybe that may happen, people would not bother with uptime strats (again, if they are hard) but what would that really do ? you would still take 1 melee and if uptime strats fall into the realm of "okay, not really complicated" like they do now you would do them for half a melee even, if they are more like "damn, thats hard" you would have to take a look at how hard it is, and what it offers you if you do it, both of these are true, however the solution to have the melees stronger on a level they will break even if you simply don't bother, to pre grab your own sentence, :they now have an advantage (higher potential if the group can be bothered) with zero drawbacks (even if the group doesnt give a f... they will break even)

In fact, lets look at Ultimate. Bard is so strong in TEA at the moment, it's already better to bring three range and drop a melee.

first things first, yes, bard is so powerfull that the world first group, and having checked only 5 other logs it at least seems like only the world first group did take 2 casters, bow down to the power of bard indeed, its a terrible world where 3 ranged (not 3 or even 2 physical ranged, 3 ranged in total) ever be a viable option over 2 melee). Also bard is only powerfull because it gets way more out of having a constant 2 targets than most other classes, one could easily buff bards single target capabilitys while keeping or even nerfing its 2 target aoe potential

If the range were buffed to the point of dealing comparable damage to the melee, they'd be straight up better to the point the 1% may not be enough to keep even one of them, let alone two. This is where the issue lies. While they may not utilize mobility as often as some Range players would prefer, when they do, it's a distinct advantage the melee do not have. Even if it doesn't lead to you dealing more damage individually, you're allowing the melee to stay on the boss whereas they would otherwise be forced to disengage. For example sake, lets say Bard did 100~ less than Dragoon in the aforementioned Alex raid. It isn't now just excelling, it's rendered Dragoon completely worthless. The sheer downtime and lost positionals would make their damage gap huge.

pray tell which mechanic forces more then 2 dps players to disengage in a way having a second phys ranged allows the 3rd (or 4th) player to keep uptime that wouldn't be handled just aswell with any phys ranged/caster combo ?

But lets move away from Ultimate because Final Omega is another example. You weren't bringing a Dragoon to that fight because it was powerful. You brought it because it made Bard into a monster. Were Piercing not a thing back in Stormblood, you wouldn't have brought one. And if Machinist were pulling Samurai numbers... you probably wouldn't bring a melee to O12S, period. The 1% would be made up through not having any downtime loses.

"you brought dragoon because it buffed bard" yea well so ? i'm not saying you are wrong in that, but that only means bard in stormblood was op (potentially i would rather say the crit synergy meta was op, but thats a different discussion), that may very well be true, i just don't see what it adds to the discussion, bard in stormblood had a lot more going for it than just damage. also in your own example funnily enough you would have brought a dragoon to buff the "samurai numbers" pulling mch but thats also the point, dragoon was balanced around buffing 1 physical ranged while physical ranged where worthwhile on their own, that let to people realizing if you take 2 physical ranged the group dps reaches unexpected heights (which currently fflogs would actually attribute to the dragoon, you are basically arguing that dragoon got to strong by buffing the physical ranged).

also lets act like there where only 2 fights in the game, for simplicitys sake if nothing else. no one in their right mind expects any physical ranged to pull ahead of blackmage on voidwalker, but what you offer with "o12s was soooo melee unfriendly" is only the most extreme counter point, if samurai where equal in some "general movement level" fight to mch than that would end in samurai indeed falling behind in a melee unfriendly fight, it would however just as much mean a fight like voidwalker would still favor the melee. only saying "oh, but what if theres a melee unfriendly fight like o12s" is like the physical ranged complaining about the dps gap on voidwalker instead of the "all fights" metric

This also doesn't cover Tactician, Samba and Troubadour are much better than Feint.

and mantra (yes the current 10% mantra) is better than natures minne, can we please nerf monk ? i'll give you that feint is definitely the short end of the stick as far as damage reduce cooldowns go but if we go down that route than where is the caster penalty for addle being better than feint ? because it is, the whole reason feint sucks is that it doesn't work on most stuff (all the stuff addle does work on) also as they don't stack the value of a second tactician etc is strongly diminished, yes there are obviously situations where you can get use out of it more than once every 2 minutes but most of the time theres the one time you want 3 or 4 different kinds of damage reduce skills stacked (in which situation a second tactician etc. would be worthless) or you want to split up damage reduce skills for several mechanics in a row (think quietus) but in that situation you will rotate through the group cooldowns in a way that works anyway, best a second tactician would offer you their would be that you can completly overcompensate 1 or 2 aoes that go off. which isn't nearly as usefull as it may look as it pretty much doesn't matter if someone is down to 10 or 20% as long as the person is still standing and gets his dose of cure 3s before the next attack happens. mind you i'm all for changing feint, i dunno make it 5% on everything with 60 second cd or whatever.

Simply put, by moving the Range to equal the damage melee deal. They now have an advantage with zero drawbacks. No catered strategies, no positionals, nothing. They're now just better. As I've said numerous times, the current gap, is indeed, too wide. But there need to be one.

and as we are still talking actual fights, not training dummies that still isn't true. again, i know its only the 3rd time i say this but "catered strategies" you at least WANT to do for the first melee allready, you can't attribute something you do anyways as a drawback of taking a second melee, its a drawback of taking any melee but taking that one square encourages you with a 1% mainstat buff aswell as melee lb (and in that case it really is a 1% buff, not a "if we deduct the damage the phys ranged does less than a caster then we as a group still gained 0,1% dps, horray"), right now people are taking physical ranged with them to in the end have 100 group dps extra compared to taking a second caster, while they do uptime strats for their melees. the notion that people would refuse to do "easy" uptime strats for anything in the range of 700-900 dps is just silly, saying "but they won't do them for the harder fights" just means that this should be the fights where the physical ranged in fact shine and excel while fights like voidwalker are the fights where the melees should hold some lead which would than average out while looking at the all fights metric.