SE needs to be more creative when balancing party damage utility classes.

[QooEr]

you guys catastrophize this
ranged dps still have peloton. its not needed but when used people appreciate it
back when casters had mana shift it was also appreciated even if it wasnt a damage buff

and if people think 'if its not damage we dont need it" its because fights end by bringing boss hp to 0... by doing damage

what kind of support do you even want or suggest instead? what combat content do you even do that doesnt require you doing damage?

[Vulcann]

you guys catastrophize this
ranged dps still have peloton. its not needed but when used people appreciate it
back when casters had mana shift it was also appreciated even if it wasnt a damage buff

and if people think 'if its not damage we dont need it" its because fights end by bringing boss hp to 0... by doing damage

what kind of support do you even want or suggest instead? what combat content do you even do that doesnt require you doing damage?

i can't even ... with some of you people. yes this is exactly what we people are saying. we want content where people emote at the mob and it dies ... that exactly what we are saying. geez are you people really that stupid?

alright read this next part really slow. no one is saying to remove damage or not do damage. now be a good raider and go through the ACTUAL arguments that people have made now that you have hopefully read that extremely slow.

[MerlinCross]

So, your solution is to hasten exactly what you're treating as the worst outcome.

It's about as... ingenious(?) as throwing yourself off a cliff before someone else can toss you, except without any metagame advantage.

I’d compare it to not fighting the man that is determined to run that brick wall over there. Or the person that that always says “You know I shouldn’t really order X...” and you’re just done remind-fighting them about it.

If the community wants and cares for nothing but damage, and will decry anything that removes focus on damage, might as well get it over with.

So cater to that desire, and let them see if they enjoy their demand pushed to the conclusion. I’ll be off the train before then.

you guys catastrophize this
ranged dps still have peloton. its not needed but when used people appreciate it
back when casters had mana shift it was also appreciated even if it wasnt a damage buff

and if people think 'if its not damage we dont need it" its because fights end by bringing boss hp to 0... by doing damage

what kind of support do you even want or suggest instead? what combat content do you even do that doesnt require you doing damage?

Peloton is out of combat support. If that the bar we might as well stop talking.

As for what sort of support, well you named what I thought was a pretty decent one. Mana Shift the other Mage DPS as you’re entering your MP regen/get back state, The hard to make a song last longer, on the healer to help with a revive, heck make it so it worked on DRK. Each example seems to be a little boost that could reward clever play and timing, without tipping it into being required.

Why didn’t I see it used though. A combination of “This fight doesn’t need it” and “Lowers how many damaging spells I get off so not using it”. Oh, okay.

[RekkaT]

Mana Shift was utilized however. back in stormblood extending Foe's was very helpful indeed

[Shurrikhan]

I’d compare it to not fighting the man that is determined to run that brick wall over there. Or the person that that always says “You know I shouldn’t really order X...” and you’re just done remind-fighting them about it.

If the community wants and cares for nothing but damage, and will decry anything that removes focus on damage, might as well get it over with.

You're forgetting, though, that we're caught between that man and that wall. Not diverting him now means we, too, will be slammed into the wall.

The community wants and cares for nothing but damage only insofar as the game gives nothing to look forward to but damage. You could point out, rightly, that shifting the long-term goal won't change that -- whether it be a race to X healing dealt to the encounter target or damage absorbed for it -- but that's avoiding the point. The point isn't which output is made the only real and impactful difference, but that some output has been placed on a pedestal that shadows every else, by the game's designs.

The community only follows the path set before it. There's inertia, certainly -- which is why there was a brief period during which people didn't treat damage optimization regardless of role as mere common sense -- and we'd likely fight that briefly if short-term goals were given larger and more varied impacts or if their checks carried longer-term consequences on more than just a single output (presently, damage). (The closest we have to that last bit as vulnerability, but it exists purely for skill check rather than as a weight around which to make tactical choices.) With that, gameplay would change bit by bit, and the community bit by bit in following, to optimize around whatever the game newly allows.

Changes are not all equal. Changing the game to a featureless damage-grind is not the same thing as making good on earlier promises (or implications thereof) whereby healing and tanking can feel as substantial, or better, than each has at its previous best.

We can't change where we are right now in the game; what's optimal is optimal and deserves to be expected. We can only try to adjust what will be optimal in the future.

If the "dps obsessed" train of thought (to the point that it would, in the future, even ignore what is optimal in favor of what is familiar, streamlined, and approaching metaphorical brain-death) is rapidly becoming unstoppable, then stop it now before it reaches that point. We're all on the tracks, and merely relabeling or accepting a problem doesn't make it go away.

[Connor]

I’d love to see Bard at least get of the songs we’re missing like Foe Requiem and Voice of Valor (regen song from bard quests, I guess we aren’t good enough singers to get it lol).

I’d also love to see more role skills for ranged to support with, maybe abilities like Palisade and Feint/Addle. I get that party support can’t exist for balance though, so I won’t advocate the return of abilities like Refresh that make ranged a guaranteed take. But then, adding any new Bard songs makes it a guaranteed take too, so it’s kinda difficult to see them adding any more support to the job overall.

I mean, they’ve made it pretty clear now that the physical ranged role is no longer associated with support but with mobility and high damage upkeep. At that point though you have to wonder why the role even exists at all as a subsection of DPS; if it’s DPS is its main focus then how can it compete with melee? And how can ‘high DPS but also utility’ compete with the likes of Summoner and Red Mage with raise? I mean, reducing damage taken once every 120 seconds isn’t much help to the dead. And for the love of god can we please get a useful effect for the Warden’s Paean lol, we’ve been waiting around 3 years and it’s still a generally useless Esuna. Dancer has healing capabilities, but I don’t think they could keep up with Vercure and Everlasting Flight is AoE. There’s also Devotion and Embolden in the place of Battle Voice / Devilment (not that I’m going to make claims about which ones generate the best dps, just talking in terms of similar function).

Like, isn’t a role kind of redundant when it’s draw is ‘less DPS than melee, less utility than casters, but you can jump while you attack’? What purpose does being able to run around like a headless chicken serve?

Playing any ranged (*cough*especiallybard*cough*) feels like going into a party and saying ‘Hey, I can’t hurt anything like those other guys up front, or help as much as these guys in back, I don’t really have anything to help the green cross guys and there’s nothing I can really do for those blue shield people. But it’s all, ok because I can run around and jump and still attack!’

Like if they’re so desperate for ranged to be an essentially pure DPS role couldn’t they at least give them good damage lol. But then if they do it’s like, ‘well why be a caster?’, so they’re kinda at a point where they can’t tip the scales in either direction.

If you ask me, I’d say ranged physical jobs would feel much more worthwhile if they were actually about being support oriented DPS. The ones at the bottom of the DPS ranking, but who help the party out when needed. I mean, surely it’d be easier to balance long-term between ‘high damage melee ‘decent damage with some utility caster’ and ‘low damage but high utility’?. Maybe not even providing proper ‘support’ abilities, but something ‘helpful’ at least. There are four DPS slots in most content anyway, so that’s one for each type plus a free spot for any of the three, plus it means that they’d be able to focus on balance within the roles rather than between them. In 4-man content you can’t bring all three DPS subsections with only 2 slots anyway so I can’t imagine it’d cause any major issues.

I mean, generally I feel like 4.0 already did this well; every type of DPS felt like it brought something special and not just a worse ‘something’ than the others lol. Of course there were balancing issues like Refresh needing deleted, but couldn’t they just have removed that and kept the rest the same?

[lulunami]

The problem is that players love melee jobs too much. Bard type jobs basically got nerfed so melee DPS jobs can look good. In 4.x, you wanted just a DRG as the only melee because of piercing debuff for ranger jobs. Rangers had MP/TP song and self-buffs and party buff synergy. BRD had the highest rDPS in 4.x. Then you take BRD, MCH, and a magic caster or BRD and 2 magic casters to fill out the rest of the party.

In 5.x, you now take 1 melee, 1 magic caster, 1 ranger, and 1 other DPS job of your choice. The 1% party role buff is too strong to ignore. In a way you are still forced to take a ranger job but not necessarily for its own kit unfortunately.

[Shurrikhan]

The problem is that players love melee jobs too much. In 4.x, you wanted just a DRG as the only melee because of piercing debuff for ranger jobs. Rangers had MP/TP song and self-buffs and party buff synergy. BRD had the highest rDPS in 4.x. Then you take BRD, MCH, and a magic caster or BRD and 2 magic casters to fill out the rest of the party.

Is that why there are fewer Melee jobs than non-Melee? Is that why all Ranged originally outperformed Melee for rDPS in 2.0, double Bard merely dropped from overpowered to competitive throughout ARR, and HW and SB both fell into a Bard/MCH metacomp?

Bard is, at present, weak. Weaker, in fact, than MCH and DNC. It's basically just the inverse of SB, where Bard ruled. But to say that melee is being over-loved just we're taking more than a single melee is an obvious double-standard when, as you just mentioned, only one melee was meta-obligatory in the last two expansions (three, even, if your BLM was good enough) and BRD/MCH/DRG/Flex or SMN/BLM ruled the last. Bard isn't weak because melee is over-loved; it's weak because the devs have been overly fearful of the multiplicity of raid buffs, especially where attached to a previously S-rank job.

Had they just not bundled the rDPS with so many compensatory nerfs to Bard's own damage, we'd be fine. Had they given Bard more than a trifle of rDPS bonus, it'd be fine. They just haven't yet. That's a tuning issue, not a broad comment on the state of melee vs. non-melee jobs.

Magical Ranged and Physical Ranged are not distinct enough from each other to be considered as each deserving a third of the DPS pie, so to speak. There are simply 4 Melee and 6 Ranged. Why should we be shocked that we're favoring 50/50, as has been the dev's explicit intent many a time now (e.g. during the LB generation changes, which checked only by Melee/Non-Melee/Tank/Healer), rather than 1 Melee, 1 Physical Ranged, 1 Magical Ranged, and Any?

[Karshan]

Magical Ranged and Physical Ranged are not distinct enough from each other to be considered as each deserving a third of the DPS pie, so to speak. There are simply 4 Melee and 6 Ranged. Why should we be shocked that we're favoring 50/50, as has been the dev's explicit intent many a time now (e.g. during the LB generation changes, which checked only by Melee/Non-Melee/Tank/Healer), rather than 1 Melee, 1 Physical Ranged, 1 Magical Ranged, and Any?

You said it yourself, there are 4 melee and 6 range, so giving melee 50% of the spots all the time to melee takes 10% from range ?
Because (strawman argument incoming but hey, it illustrates a bit more) if you were to have 10 people playing each 1 job, only 2 melees would warm the bench when 4 range would ?

Because in the end it's not about who gets picked, it's about who sees the spots never available in PF. In a roster people don't really care if not hardacore. PFs are the matter, they mimic meta and trends like hell so...Only thing keeping them in check is people being also impatient, so they don't role lock as much as before, or lift the block after waiting 20 mins.

This expansion, not only did balance not favor range jobs, it added one in the lot. So if you keep 2 / 2 as an absolute rule, since 5.0 you have more people battling for the same number of spots than before AND being less desirable because they are not doing very well DPS wise (except BLM, and SMN but only very recently). I think you can see why these people might get a little upset and start questionning "hey I was told I lost utility to grab DPS, I'm not seeing it, mind explaining SE ?"

I'd be ok for a rigorous 50/50, if 6.0 brought 2 new melee jobs (at least 1).

Melee are not overloved by the devs, that I can agree upon (when you see the state of NIN, MNK and SAM before 5.05, seems like they're more bothered by it), but they are so by the pfs. And since we're not playing with the devs...

To be more on topic : I also agree that the specific comp NIN / DRG / MCH / BRD needed to die, and it did (that's a really good point for Shadowbringers), but they did so by directly killing nin (before 5.1) and having brd and mch lose a lot of interest. It's the synergy between those 4 that needed to die, not raid utility...

[Shurrikhan]

Because in the end it's not about who gets picked, it's about who sees the spots never available in PF.

My point, though, was that that comes down to job-specific tuning, not any broad design goals about role balance. The developer's intent is irrelevant to PF's preferences; only the actual tuning (e.g. what the developers make optimal, however contrary to their intent) matters.

The community will be outright wrong at some times -- such as in late SB when refusing to believe that Bard, BLM, DRG, post-bandaid-buff MCH, and even MNK, RDM, and SMN in a favoring composition could each outperform NIN rDPS just because that job had been such a convenient mainstay commodity -- but for the most part, and now, it's following the data closely. Most melee and one magical ranged are overtuned. Or, inversely, one magical and all of the physical ranged are undertuned (one more so than the other two).

The longer the devs allows those imbalances to last, the greater inertia the changes will fight in PFs when they finally do bring the underperforming jobs up to balance. One would think this would make these changes urgent. They are. One might then suspect that the devs simply find the current balance in keeping with their current design goals. But that would be simultaneously overly cynical of the dev team while overestimating their speed in balancing jobs.

If this state was the intent, it'd be unprecedented; mobility, raises, and the whole slew have never had a tax to rDPS except in flukes which were then patched out.
As it would be unprecedented, it would likely come with communication denoting that change to criteria to punish mobility.
If they wanted that communication to have any weight, it would come from someone other than Yoshida himself -- whose communication in regard to combat has only ever pandered to the most vocal factions of play, while often contradicting the realities of play -- or at least with some backing from one of the devs responsible for the game's combat and job tuning.

But I don't think we've had that. We've yet to see someone who actually informed of these decisions, let alone commands their specifics, tell us that the game is intended to be Melee/PhysRang/MagRang/Any. We've yet to hear that roles are meant to be taken in proportion to their roster size, though we've seen designs and explanations behind them that point solely to a Melee/Non-melee distinction. We've yet to hear that Ranged being undertuned is specifically because of a mobility tax except in offhand comments from Yoshida. We've heard that Raise tax would be a thing, but only from Yoshida, and yet the caster less negatively affected by casting Raise than RDM is now generally the top rDPS job in the game. None of the broad reasons we can attach to these issues actually prove out. That leaves only the simplest: the jobs aren't all as well-tuned as they could be (and ought to be).