Everyone's talking about smn buffs. But what about mch

[Akiudo]

snip

as i really don't intend to beat a dead horse until it revives itself just to run away i will only say i appreciate that you at least took the time to answer my question, even if it was in a rather personal way by stating that from your position it is simply the value you would indeed put on free movement while admitting this might or might not be on you instead of acting like you simply know better by default. In a just as personal way i'm gearing my smn(which i completly leveled as scholar) at the moment, not to be overpowered, but to get him up to close my bards gear level and see just what i can get out of that, who knows, maybe after 2 weeks of summoner i will start complaining just how hard it is, and how great free movement feels ? on the other hand i may just get pissed at square for dealing 1000 dps more on a class i've played for half a month compared to a class i've played for over a year, we'll see. this isn't meant as a slight to anyone, i just believe its helpfull to try out the other side to get a better understanding of it.

[BloodRubyXII]

Other jobs also have that same spike in damage. That's why it's better to compare the upper parses from people who have best in slot gear so that the gear discrepancy is at a minimum.

Either way, the facts right now are that ranged are still miles behind despite their buffs. They needed around 8-10% before 5.1 to be within 500dps of the melee. Which is a good spot i think. The devs slacked on the buffs though and i'm unsure exactly why they are so scared to buff them higher. Maybe at the lower percentiles having mobility is a benefit but at the top end everyone's mobility and uptime is near enough the same and planned around. Regardless however, ranged (and rdm) still need to be brought up more. A small mobility tax is warranted yes, but it shouldn't be as detrimental as it. I'm still unsure how SMN escaped the rez tax and gained nearly 1.5k from buffs in 5.1 but all they could offer to the others low parsing jobs were between 500-800 dps. The balancing these devs do in this game is so inconsistent at times.

Ye well when it's piss easy to play and you have full uptime and the fact it has an extremely low skill cap to the point where no-one can even pretend like they're good at optimizing MCH, the damage represents that.

And SMN will get nerfed it's pretty obvious.

[Karshan]

as i really don't intend to beat a dead horse until it revives itself just to run away i will only say i appreciate that you at least took the time to answer my question, even if it was in a rather personal way by stating that from your position it is simply the value you would indeed put on free movement while admitting this might or might not be on you instead of acting like you simply know better by default. In a just as personal way i'm gearing my smn(which i completly leveled as scholar) at the moment, not to be overpowered, but to get him up to close my bards gear level and see just what i can get out of that, who knows, maybe after 2 weeks of summoner i will start complaining just how hard it is, and how great free movement feels ? on the other hand i may just get pissed at square for dealing 1000 dps more on a class i've played for half a month compared to a class i've played for over a year, we'll see. this isn't meant as a slight to anyone, i just believe its helpfull to try out the other side to get a better understanding of it.

It's exactly that feeling actually. It's pissing me off that there are some classes that you just pick and you deal more with it within 2 days than you were with a class for 4 months, just by the design and shitty balance. That should not happen.

But now I understand better Kabooa, and indeed it was just a question about how much people value mobility. Kabooa, you put it at 5%, I value it less, because in a fight you know (which is where you parse, and also which represents several months while prog is only 2-3 weeks) I find mobility to be irrelevant : you've worked your way around uptime with any class for a long time at this point.

But that, I can agree may not be shared by everyone (although I think this is quite a valid argument)
Put it like this : it is harder to learn a fight in BLM than as MCH, so BLM looks bad first 2 weeks, but then range pay a toll that's not needed anymore for several months for it. BLM in a mastered fight w8 just rolls over it, while the mch is still hindered. Just like RDM with verraise (ps : just get rid of the raise already and boost rdm dmg plz SE).

So I'm not saying there is an absolute right or wrong, just what I just want to avoid is : I really love class X, but it's 1k behind so it's a liability.
How we achieve avoiding that is where we can argue, but I honestly feel having it only 300 and not 1k behind helps a great deal in resolving that matter.

[Kabooa]

So I'm not saying there is an absolute right or wrong, just what I just want to avoid is : I really love class X, but it's 1k behind so it's a liability

I understand that. No one likes feeling like an anchor.

To be quite honest, if Gauss Rifle came back(Maybe a universal "Sniping" mechanic ranged worked around), I'd personally be fine with the gap being quite tiny.

[Akiudo]

I understand that. No one likes feeling like an anchor.

To be quite honest, if Gauss Rifle came back(Maybe a universal "Sniping" mechanic ranged worked around), I'd personally be fine with the gap being quite tiny.

see, no offense meant with that but thats exactly why i say people overestimate "free" movement, cause as much as gauß barrel was some form of restriction, you hardly felt its existence at all (and yes, i played mch in raid content while it was current even if just as a secondary class), on the other hand the original wanderers menuett was a clunky mess and probably felt worse than pre patch summoner ever could have, yet for someone with no experience on the jobs in question these skills on paper would have sounded quite similiar. what may please never be argued for (you didn't, but i allready saw that suggestion floating around) is some "mandatory minimum range" for the ranged, thats something that on paper sounds similiar to the max range melee have but in practice would be a lot worse do to healing/damage reduce cooldowns/stack mechanics aswell as general fight setup.

[Kabooa]

see, no offense meant with that but thats exactly why i say people overestimate "free" movement, cause as much as gauß barrel was some form of restriction, you hardly felt its existence at all (and yes, i played mch in raid content while it was current even if just as a secondary class), on the other hand the original wanderers menuett was a clunky mess and probably felt worse than pre patch summoner ever could have, yet for someone with no experience on the jobs in question these skills on paper would have sounded quite similiar. what may please never be argued for (you didn't, but i allready saw that suggestion floating around) is some "mandatory minimum range" for the ranged, thats something that on paper sounds similiar to the max range melee have but in practice would be a lot worse do to healing/damage reduce cooldowns/stack mechanics aswell as general fight setup.

Yeah, I heard Wanderers was quite terrible by comparison.

Gauss barrel for me was something at the time I didn't work with much. Machinist was a sidelined job as I had other things to play and try out at the time, but the idea of working around it appealed to me.

My "Ranged" repitoire at the time was largely old school Hunter from World of Warcraft and Sniper from SWToR. High Level Gauss Barrel play that I saw involved moment to moment On/off switching (Or at least, what I assumed high level play was - The ole viewership at the time wasn't quite as robust as it is now) and largely resembled how Hunter and Sniper played. Mobile, lesser options, and then immobile, stronger options when you hit your safe zone. Not quite a caster, not quite free movement.

So not "Gauss Barrel" as it was, but the idea that "Gauss barrel" represented. Some options, particularly the harder hitting ones, just aren't always available. The "Aimed Shot" is a class fantasy I enjoyed that FF14 doesn't quite offer at this time anymore.

[Akiudo]

Yeah, I heard Wanderers was quite terrible by comparison.

Gauss barrel for me was something at the time I didn't work with much. Machinist was a sidelined job as I had other things to play and try out at the time, but the idea of working around it appealed to me.

My "Ranged" repitoire at the time was largely old school Hunter from World of Warcraft and Sniper from SWToR. High Level Gauss Barrel play that I saw involved moment to moment On/off switching (Or at least, what I assumed high level play was - The ole viewership at the time wasn't quite as robust as it is now) and largely resembled how Hunter and Sniper played. Mobile, lesser options, and then immobile, stronger options when you hit your safe zone. Not quite a caster, not quite free movement.

So not "Gauss Barrel" as it was, but the idea that "Gauss barrel" represented. Some options, particularly the harder hitting ones, just aren't always available. The "Aimed Shot" is a class fantasy I enjoyed that FF14 doesn't quite offer at this time anymore.

without going into the rest the "on/off" switching was probably the least enjoyable part for me, and also probably not done for the reason you think though feel free to correct me on that, yes you could switch it off for moment of heavy movement if you had no control about it at the time, but that was more akin to a summoner throwing its hands in the air and simply replacing every ruin 3 with a ruin 2 for 3 global cooldowns because for god knows what reason it just didn't work out any other way that try. the reason it was mostly done was because the moment you had no ogcd's for the next x seconds to use it was actually a (rather small) damage gain to take advantage of the extra auto attacks and i know quite a few that simply let it stay on because switching it on/off every few seconds well, it just felt "off" so to speak.

[Adventica6]

Mch is the best ranged but ranged suck compared to melee and casters so...just because you get a medal for the special Olympics doesn't mean you're good.

At first I was under the impression that the recent buffs made a difference but as I played longer I started to discover it was pretty much nothing.

So back to my smn which does double the dmg with double the utility.

Balance in this game is hilarious.

[Valence]

To be honest, just introduce a mechanic/constraint specific to ranged physical jobs, or make their rotation way more complicated if we really have to come to that. SE stated they stopped balancing jobs around difficulty in early SB liveletters, but it's obviously a lie. Among the 3 ranged physical jobs, two of them are totally braindead (DNC and MCH), and even if you don't play optimally you'll still deal a decent amount of damage. I'm not gonna pretend that BRD is complicated as well though.

So give us a real challenge to optimize well during fights, like casters and melees have to do, and delete that damn ranged mobility tax already.

[Akiudo]

To be honest, just introduce a mechanic/constraint specific to ranged physical jobs, or make their rotation way more complicated if we really have to come to that. SE stated they stopped balancing jobs around difficulty in early SB liveletters, but it's obviously a lie. Among the 3 ranged physical jobs, two of them are totally braindead (DNC and MCH), and even if you don't play optimally you'll still deal a decent amount of damage. I'm not gonna pretend that BRD is complicated as well though.

So give us a real challenge to optimize well during fights, like casters and melees have to do, and delete that damn ranged mobility tax already.

problem as i see it at least is what that really would mean or how that would work,

making their rotation way more complicated ? lets be real here, half the classes in the game are pretty braindead and nearly no one goes "oh ninja absolutely needs to outdps monk because its harder" or whatever, don't want to disregard the idea, but i'm pretty sure one could make say bard watch 10 timers and 5 proccs at once and people would still argue that free movement is too big an advantage because the best players in the world could make use of it.

also looking at the dps delta the physical ranged really only fair a bit better than the melees. in fact the difference in damage delta between the physical ranged and melee is smaller than the difference between melee/caster and no one argues melee should be below casters because they are "easier"

2) a set Minimum range may sound similiar on paper to the max melee range but in practice it would be a desaster, staying in heal range ? stack markers ? moments where everyone has to stay in a single corner together with the boss ? with melee at least you generally CAN compensate this situations, but how would having a minimum range work with things like stack markers for the full group or say the gaols during titan uplift ? even assuming mechanics going forward were in a way done were you could either do a melee OR a ranged strat that would still only punish the group while offering nothing in return, completly aside the fact that you would basically allways take the melee variant because thats generally the one where everyone stacks (easier on healing and shielding) and any kind of tactic completly ignoring the melees in favor of ranged would 95% also fuck over the offtank.

which leaves us with 3) the return of the castbars. that one while technically possible would be a trainwreck waiting to happen, can't speak for current mch or dancer, but bard as is simply does not work with castbars, not even talking damage, it simply plays worse than things like start of shadowbringers smn or mnk ever could, i mean why do people think bowmage got removed ? Surely not because simply slapping castbars on a class designed without them in mind worked out great. Mch's original design worked quite well as you could see it was designed around gauß barrel but bard ? and that was with 2 classes, 1 designed around cast bars. nowadays they would either need to rework 3 classes to feel good playing with castbars (lets not even talk about how dancer would feel thematically having cast bars) or having not 1 bowmage but 3.