Quote Originally Posted by Akiudo View Post
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)
Thank you for proving my point? The examples I gave you are fights where uptime meant more work for the rest of the group. With only one player, you're now having to convince seven others to accommodate one. Not to mention, some uptime strategies require additional healing; O10S comes to mind. Two melee can compensate for that loss due to their innate higher damage output. That wouldn't necessarily be true for one. And melee lost far more than 200 DPS in O12S. There's a reason Ninja and Dragoon were dead last in that fight. As for the LB, you aren't factoring in just how significant a buff this would be to the range. We're talking over 1,000 rDPS added to all three of them. Considering TEA Bard already catches up to the melee, giving them an extra 1,000+ rDPS would make them vastly superior. Would it be enough to knock melee out entirely? It's certainly be up for debate. What would happen is that fourth slot is always Caster or Range. So you've essentially shifted the problem of always taking two melee to never taking two melee. If the idea is to open that slot up to more variety, this isn't how you accomplish that.

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
Yes, because we all know this game easily lets you gear a second role and everyone can switch roles without any difficulty. People had no way of knowing how strong Bard and Summoner were going to be until they actually got in the content. And asking your melee player who may not even play a range to suddenly swap isn't going to have good results. Now if the range saw a 1,000+ buff come 5.2 to match the melee, you'd see a very different trend. As for viability. They already are. What you're asking for is such an enormous buff to three jobs that would make taking two melee a straight up liability.

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 ?
Hello, World? The uptime strat requires much more precision, puts more stress healing and the melee lack any way to help mitigate the damage. All of phase two TEA is forced melee downtime and positional loses at varying points. The only melee somewhat able to mitigate this is Monk due to Riddle of Earth. That's just two more recent example. I'll be the first to admit, Eden doesn't do much of anything to utilize mobility. But that's more an issue with their encounter design this tier.

"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
Yet you want a 1,000+ buff to Bard. How wouldn't that lead to it being overpowered again? At least against the melee. What it adds is a prime example of a fight not being melee friendly leading to wipe gap in damage between said melee and the range. Dragoon was never balanced around buffing the range. The dev team outright acknowledged they didn't consider Dragoon at all when factoring Bard and Machinist's damage. Which is what caused them so many problems with piercing. You also kind of defeated your argument because, once again, this whole point is supposedly about the fourth DPS slot being open to variation. Stormblood Dragoon was almost mandatory. No self-respecting Range player wanted to play without one and reee'd very loudly about it.

The difference between a non-melee friendly fight and something like Voidwalker in this hypothetical is the range would always come out ahead. For simplicity sake, lets say both Machinist and Samurai did 16,000. In a uptime fight like Voidwalker... they'd both parse even. In a fight like O12S, Machinist's damage would remain unchanged but Samurai would fall behind. Basically, only one role is ever at a disadvantage. This is precisely why the Range cannot have entirely free mobility and to equal damage. A slight buff to push the gap closer would make the Range more competitive but not straight up superior in downtime heavy fights.

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.
Mantra is an outlier given it's the only melee unique utility that isn't damage related. It really should have been axed but that's another topic. And you're really underselling how valuable two Addles or 10% shields are. That's an extra free mitigation. In a scenario where the Range match the melee in damage, why wouldn't you want more utility with no trade off? This tier of Savage doesn't make the best use of it given how... low damaging some of the fights are. But free mitigation is free.

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.
How isn't it true? The aforementioned Machinist matching Samurai and Black Mage damage has no cast bar and no uptime requirement. They can hop around like a mad fool and won't hamper themselves at all. Regardless, you aren't reading what I'm saying. With only one melee, it becomes less encouraging to bother with uptime strategies or catering since it's only one player benefiting now. With two, the loss is doubled. So it's that much more noticeable. Now obviously groups will still optimize at the higher levels but considering how few people do uptime strategies now with two melee. What makes you think they'd be accommodating with one in a scenario where Dragoon and Bard deal the same damage? As for your example? Where did I remotely apply people wouldn't do uptime for a 900 damage loss? Not only is that pulled from nowhere, it's comically extreme. Granted, in TEA, that would be roughly around how much better your hypothetical Bard would be over Dragoon. And that's even with uptime strats.

What it boils down to is free mobility is still an advantage with the trade off being less damage. That trade off is too one-sided at the moment, especially given how this Savage tier made little use of mobility. But that's an encounter design issue.