Advice...

[Akiudo]

LOL sounds like basically, play for fun not for DPS and if you want to make an impact as DPS, don't play either one,.. go play Black Mage, Summoner or ANY melee dps, and I'm leary of summoner because it's WAY overtuned and overpowered for having rez and heals and is likely to get nerfed or at least needs a good pummeling with a nerf bat..and I'm just not even vaguely interested in any sort of melee DPS...

As a side note.. I'm sincerely saddened by the imbalance in DPS this expansion.. I wonder what they been smoking at SE lately..

that was kinda my point, if you would ask brd or mch than i would tell you right now mch on average is 500-600~ dps ahead of bard, (ultimate notwithstanding, but thats for VERY fight specific reasons and considering you "had to ask" in the first place i'm assuming ultimate isn't on the table at least right now) while smn is a good 1000 dps above redmage, at the end of the day any static will want one physical ranged even though the reasons for it are pretty damn bad (and damage wise even in the best case potentially a loss) so think about it like this

if you play mch and your static takes a summoner for the second ranged position (perfect scenario) you will have, given equal skill levels between the players 1500 group dps more compared to you playing redmage and your group filling the ranged slot with a bard (worst case) wihile the rezz is still on the table do to summoner, that is a huge difference

[Vendalwind]

Dps balance is actual better than it has been for a long time. Smn sam and mnk may be a bit overtuned. Brd dnc slightly under. But the gap is actually pretty close. The numbers look scarier when you can say: "1000 dps difference" but percent wise the gaps are actually smaller than they have been in heavensward or stormblood iirc (now anyways not right at 5.0 release)

[Seabhacgra]

Dps balance is actual better than it has been for a long time. Smn sam and mnk may be a bit overtuned. Brd dnc slightly under. But the gap is actually pretty close. The numbers look scarier when you can say: "1000 dps difference" but percent wise the gaps are actually smaller than they have been in heavensward or stormblood iirc (now anyways not right at 5.0 release)

When an entire DPS class, Ranged Physical, is only taken for the token 1%, there's a problem,...

[Vendalwind]

When an entire DPS class, Ranged Physical, is only taken for the token 1%, there's a problem,...

That is an incorrect statement. For multiple reasons.

Easiest reason. If the 1 % didnt exist at all. If the duplicate LB penalty didn't exist the best team right now would just be 4 summoners. Thereby following that premise and your premise the logic suggests that you only take any class other than summoner because of the 1% and/or to avoid the lb penalty. Since we know that's not how things work we therefore know the premises are wrong. I.C. ranged physical is NOT only taken for the token 1%

People take the class because its fun. Because it works well with the other classes on the team. Because it makes fights easier in ways external to dmg, and myriad other reasons.

If bard or mch was within 100 rDPS of the best contributor and the bonus didn't exist. No one would bother with the difficulties of caster or melee uptime strats.

I play the weakest melee class right now. Why don't I play SAM or MNK? simple. MNKs gameplay is too simple minus the irritating minutia needed for perfection. and SAM bores me. or in other words. Simply because I like NIN.

The balance is the best its ever been by key point that right now NO ONE will get mad at you for whatever class you play. Some people might be happy to see a SMN or a SAM. But no one is gonna get pissy with you for playing NIN, or BRD, or RDM. and in fact in ultimate currently BRD outshines any other phs ranged. and the ONLY one who entirely leaves the dps pack is SMN.

Balance could still use tweaking. I would love to see a buff for BRD, MCH, and DNC. and NIN as well. I would also love to see a slight SAM nerf and SMN nerf. But if they don't happen. Big whoop im still enjoying the game and personally out performing most of them anyways. But to complain about the minutia when it's currently the best its ever been is stupid

[Akiudo]

Easiest reason. If the 1 % didnt exist at all. If the duplicate LB penalty didn't exist the best team right now would just be 4 summoners. Thereby following that premise and your premise the logic suggests that you only take any class other than summoner because of the 1% and/or to avoid the lb penalty. Since we know that's not how things work we therefore know the premises are wrong. I.C. ranged physical is NOT only taken for the token 1%

the whole point of the lb penalty is in fact to discourage exactly what you are describing, taking unusual setups and especially double classes which is exactly why taking double classes get penalized, in the same way the 1% buff is an incentive to take at least 1 per role, these (de)buffs are in the game to counteract exactly what you are describing would never happen if they wouldn't exist.

People take the class because its fun. Because it works well with the other classes on the team. Because it makes fights easier in ways external to dmg, and myriad other reasons.

in what way does taking a bard make it easier on the group than taking say a redmage ? if you say "troubadour" i raise (pun intendet) you a rezz, if you say "free movement" than again, in what way does this make it easier on the group ? the group doesnt care if its "easier" for the bard to play some movement mechanic, just that a)it gets done, and b) how much dps the class offers after doing it. all casters are perfectly capable of fullfilling criteria "a" with ease while domination the physical ranged in dps.

If bard or mch was within 100 rDPS of the best contributor and the bonus didn't exist. No one would bother with the difficulties of caster or melee uptime strats.

melee uptime strats that may be true (but still gets overblown), however as the bonus does exist (and its a completly different question if the bonus should exist at all/if the bonus should actually elevate the group dps or just be enough so dps stays about the same when taking a weaker dps class) this issue gets mitigated quite heavily, if phys ranged+melee did the exact same damage you would still take 1 melee for the buff.

the real question is would you take a second, at this point fight design would come in and how hard uptime strats are, if not doing them cost your one melee 500 dps while being of easy-medium level complexity to do it you would allready be doing them either way and most likely a second melee wouldn't add another layer of difficulty to performing them, if they were simply to hard to do/costing to little for not doing them thats in the end a fight design question and just means fights should be more varied in that regard playing to different classes strengths.

on the "difficulties of casters" again, what difficultys does taking a caster pose for the group ? not for the caster, the group. If it does pose difficulty for the caster okay, lets humor that thought, why play caster than ? oh yea, lets take your very own next words...

I play the weakest melee class right now. Why don't I play SAM or MNK? simple. MNKs gameplay is too simple minus the irritating minutia needed for perfection. and SAM bores me. or in other words. Simply because I like NIN.

that exact reasoning can be applied to playing a caster, you play a caster instead of a physical ranged because you like the gameplay, you simply feel better going Explooooooosion instead of sending arrow after arrow into your enemy, YOU like the "challenge", you want the 300 extra dps you can get at the absolute top (thats the funny part, whenever someone says "phys ranged are x below casters/melee" they generally take somewhere in the 75-95 ranged, all casters/melee gain another 150-300 dps on the physical ranged just going from 95-99 and literally no one argues against that gap because everyone understands that this is needed as the absolute top gap otherwise phys ranged would dominate in the moment of slightest movement).

also, to go back to your original point on why you play nin, good on you ? no one ever denied you that, but you yourself said

Balance could still use tweaking. I would love to see a buff for BRD, MCH, and DNC. and NIN as well. I would also love to see a slight SAM nerf and SMN nerf. But if they don't happen. Big whoop im still enjoying the game and personally out performing most of them anyways. But to complain about the minutia when it's currently the best its ever been is stupid

the difference between nin and samurai (the highest melee) is HALF as big as the difference between bard and nin, not bard and the top, bard and the class you think is too weak,if only slightly, your "big whoop, i'm still outperforming them" is exactly the point, all you need to do is be slightly better than your competition, than you are top, like you being a 85% player while the rest is on the 75% level. to outperform literally anyone on a physical ranged is close to impossible no matter the fight unless the other guys suck so hard it isn't funny, the only "non physical ranged" realistically reachable is redmage, and that one is undertuned (yes, summoner is also simply overtuned but that doesn't mean redmage couldn't use another 400 dps on top of bringing summoner 300 down)

The balance is the best its ever been by key point that right now NO ONE will get mad at you for whatever class you play. Some people might be happy to see a SMN or a SAM. But no one is gonna get pissy with you for playing NIN, or BRD, or RDM. and in fact in ultimate currently BRD outshines any other phs ranged. and the ONLY one who entirely leaves the dps pack is SMN.

BRD outshnines the other physical ranged in ultimate for extremly fight specific reasons which are not likely (read, we didn't have something like this in 3 years or so) to translate into any other fight, and while i'm even in the boat of "find ways to nerf bards 2 target potency while getting up their single target power" even if its ultimate you should balance classes around an average of fights, not one in particular , otherwise you may aswell balance smn on e1s data alone for example.



i raid with pf, exclusively with party finder, yes people very much will get mad with you, and even if they do take you and are willing to make it work, mentallity wise whenever an average brd joins the thought process for everyone is "oh well, lets give it a try or two, but if its tight lets just replace him" whereas if a barely green summoner/Samurai joins its like "oh well, its a Smn/Sam, yea they suck ass but so what, they still do more than another phys ranged would offer.

Groups are happy when they get an average summoner and sigh when they get an average redmage, they may not kick you (and exclusions very much do happen allready) but as someone who does this shit with a different set of people every week let me tell you, yes people do get "mad" at you for playing the "wrong" class and the mentality very much is "take at least 2 ranges for mechanics. don't give a damn if you take take a second melee or an extra smn/blackmage,both work. never take a second physical ranged unless you are allready looking for half and hour and people start to get restless. if you absolutely have to take a second physical ranged make sure s/he is good, if you got 2 barely green physical ranged you don't need to pull". and yes, bad/average physical ranged get booted WAY faster than a bad top tier class.

the very best you may get out of getting a bard or whatever is a "oh well, at least hes a good bard" while bad bards get the boot half the time if they weren't excluded beforehand, the worst feelings a summoner will give the group are "well, at least he's a summoner" while "yeay, that guy is so great, we can die 5 times and still make it" is the top end.

[Zerathor]

in what way does taking a bard make it easier on the group than taking say a redmage ? if you say "troubadour" i raise (pun intendet) you a rezz, if you say "free movement" than again, in what way does this make it easier on the group ? the group doesnt care if its "easier" for the bard to play some movement mechanic, just that a)it gets done, and b) how much dps the class offers after doing it. all casters are perfectly capable of fullfilling criteria "a" with ease while domination the physical ranged in dps.

Well honestly, if troubadour prevents death, that is superior to rez. Also as far as range physical vs rdm in particular, rdm can be annoying on certain fights with their melee phase, forcing them to either lose damage, or get melee clustered on phases its preferable to have ranged/casters far away. Also ranged mobility does make certain bait mechanics easier, but we haven't really seen fights in shadow bringers that have those mechanics like in stormblood. Range mobility should however make a range job far more adaptable to different strategies if you end up subbing in other groups, which is a large quality of life factor. And the fact that they should have zero issue with positioning consistency can be a factor why a group would want them, as groups often prefer consistency above all else unless you're talking about speed running.

Also the only caster that can fully fulfill the type of movement a ranged can do while still holding much more damage is smn, but smn is a Mary Sue bs job after this patch, just as it was all last expansion.

[Akiudo]

Well honestly, if troubadour prevents death, that is superior to rez. Also as far as range physical vs rdm in particular, rdm can be annoying on certain fights with their melee phase, forcing them to either lose damage, or get melee clustered on phases its preferable to have ranged/casters far away. Also ranged mobility does make certain bait mechanics easier, but we haven't really seen fights in shadow bringers that have those mechanics like in stormblood. Range mobility should however make a range job far more adaptable to different strategies if you end up subbing in other groups, which is a large quality of life factor. And the fact that they should have zero issue with positioning consistency can be a factor why a group would want them, as groups often prefer consistency above all else unless you're talking about speed running.

Also the only caster that can fully fulfill the type of movement a ranged can do while still holding much more damage is smn, but smn is a Mary Sue bs job after this patch, just as it was all last expansion.

and if someone stands in shit and gets oneshotted troubadour wouldn't have done anything and the redmage rezz now has a use? if the attack is magical and the boss can be targeted beforehand the caster can do addle and reduce the damage for the same amount on a shorter cooldown ? i never said troubadour is worthless, but neither is rezz, and "but preventing death is better than "correcting" it only holds true if both scenarios where mutially exclusive, or given the tools we have even necessarely linked at all, they aren't.Also what type of movement while holding the same damage as a ranged ? redmage, the weakest caster and one which i allready stated believe to be undertuned still is above mch at the 90+ range, and above every other physical ranged until 40% , you don't think every 5th rdm (so everything above 80-90 which is the range where mch/rdm are the most equal) has a 2 more ranged with him so s/he doesn't need to do these mechanics ? as it is even the weakest caster IS holding the same damage as the strongest physical ranged, movement be damned, and that caster is undertuned. i fully agree that fights as they currently are should not see physical ranged at the top, but thats the other thing, fight design.

As it stands even with an extremly melee unfriendly fight, which we don't even have you could simply not give a damn about uptime strats and melee would still be equal or more likely on top, with more balanced fights (and more balanced classes cause the current discrepancy doesn't even fully close the gap in ultimate where realistically you should still rather compare mch with the rest of the classes, yes dnc/brd are stronger than mch there, but that is do to the very specific fight design of having 2 adds for half the fight, not do to ease of movement and as we didn't have a fight with a constant 2 targets you could actually multi dot and tank together for half the fight in years i wouldn't assume such a kind of fight to come back anytime soon, the simple "have to deal more mechanics, but also an easier time to do them" aspect not even in ultimate manages to let even mch catch up to the other classes, thats how little "free movement" really is worth.)

with more balanced (in the sense of heavy movement/light movement/special strats for uptime really required or boiling down to "let the melee take the spot closest to the boss?") you could have a situation where (lets for simplicitys sake act like all classes in a role deal exactly equal dps and other buffs aside from damage don't exist, just so it can be boiled down to a numbers question)



caster and melee deal 15k in the low movement fight where uptime strats also mostly consist of "let the melee take the spot closest to the boss" while phys ranged do 14.750. (say thats 1/4 of the fights)

a fight where mechanics need to be baited in a way where the phys ranged still do 14.750, casters would drop to 14,500 or at least have a really hard time keeping the same as the phys ranged/topping it at maybe slightly at the absolute top end (99% here, not 95%) and melee stay unaffected by the mechanics unless you got less than 2 ranged doing them (lets make this 2/4 of the fights)

a fourth fight where bait mechanics or general movement is so seldom used the physical ranged keep their 14,750, the casters drop maybe to 14,900 but the melees get bend over backwards by some sort of mechanic that they now either drop to 14,250 dps OR the group has to do extra legwork for some harder uptime strats leaving them with the potential to still be top but requiring extra work, or in this case taking the punishment and being weaker in this 1 out of 4 fights.

of course it never works out that perfectly, not even all melees are equal and their indeed is more to a class than pure dps, but as this here is a "how much dps is movement worth" question as well as a theoretical question boiling it down to just movement while having perfected balance is easier than giving a value to every rezz, addle, troubadour or mantra so lets just act like these don't exist for once and dps between classes would end up perfectly where the design wants them to at this point, now phys ranged would be the most consistent but never the absolute top while caster/melee would battle for the top with the tradeoff off being less consistent and actually on the bottom depending on the fight, problem is we didn't have any high movement/keeping uptime is actually hard fight during the whole savage tier so far (thats fight design fail) but looking at ultimate numbers even with heavier movement and more complex mechanics the gap is still to big to truly close/swing in the favor of the phys ranged in a fight that does literally everything that can be done to accommodate them which than is a pure class balance fail.

[Zerathor]

Honestly as it stands in this ultimate, preventing death is far superior to the rez. And I believe you're underestimating the value of troubadour and other ranged damage reduction abilities in comparison to addle. There are many times the damage source is untargetable in this expansion, even some of the boss's casts deal damage from an outside source that targeted mitigation will not affect. Then there's other party qol aspects bard brings, like the cleanse and minne. Idk if you want to look at a broad spectrum of fights or focus on this current ultimate, but in this current ultimate the ranged mitigation is amazing, and the bard being able to self cleanse gives healers a little more breathing room. Ranged are a bit far behind in damage, but their tools add great value. Maybe not enough on a lot of fights, but there are a few where it almost feels needed.

[Akiudo]

Honestly as it stands in this ultimate, preventing death is far superior to the rez. And I believe you're underestimating the value of troubadour and other ranged damage reduction abilities in comparison to addle. There are many times the damage source is untargetable in this expansion, even some of the boss's casts deal damage from an outside source that targeted mitigation will not affect. Then there's other party qol aspects bard brings, like the cleanse and minne. Idk if you want to look at a broad spectrum of fights or focus on this current ultimate, but in this current ultimate the ranged mitigation is amazing, and the bard being able to self cleanse gives healers a little more breathing room.

the cleanse which also hasn't worked on absolutely anything before this ultimate, it may very well be awesome there, it is however still a way (and i mean WAY) to circumstantial skill. and troubadour in general i'm not saying isn't better than addle, i'm asking (again, fights in general) if its better than addle+a rezz and if so by how much, especially as chances are you will neither need troubadour nor addle if things go smoothly at least outside ultimate.

the original question was "mch or redmage" to that i say mch cause that indeed is the strongest physical ranged whereas redmage right now is the weakest caster (if you say the rezz is worth enough to offset the dps loss compared to taking a blackmage i would disagree but thats another discussion alltogether, the fact smn so far eclipses redmage however is just a given fact, at least for the moment and that extremly devalues anything redmage offers), again preventing deaths and getting a person back up after they went down are not mutually exclusive, i'm not arguing that for ultimate specifically brd isn't the better choice compared to mch, but that never really was the original question asked, that which was redmage or mch, someone that has to ask that on the official forum most likely isn't aiming for ultimate at least right now (and both sadly suck there....) so to that i answered the original question with "you WILL want 1 phys ranged, make the group happy and fill that slot with the best physical ranged possible" the rest of what i wrote down was very much intentionally disregarding things like troubadour, addle or rezz, as i've said multiple times i try to look at an average of fights and also just wanted to give a general idea how classes can be weaker in certain fights, better in others, "equal" overall, of course in practice things like better buffs/debuffs come into this equation but that gets way to hard to quantify at least for simply illustrating a point. ultimate specifically i just pointed out because its the one outlier as far as the "mch is the best phys ranged" goes, however as this is for the fact that the fight literally bends over backwards to play to bards (and to lesser extents dancers) strengths someone thats not aiming for ultimate for the time being should most likely disregard as it simply does not translate into anything we had in years, sure the next raid tier may have 2 adds for half the fight in every single encounter, but i would assume chances for that are very slim

[Zerathor]

Well, if it's for somebody new to savage, I feel I'd still recommend mch over rdm still. For the simple reason that fights are easier for an individual to learn on a range class over a rdm, and if you aren't used to rdm in a more stressful environment, there's going to be a lot of backflips into the abyss on some of the fights, and missed gcds if you aren't good at slide casting when you dont have dual cast. Rdm would certainly help a new group learn the fights and prog faster if your whole group is iffy, or it's a new tier, but if you yourself need experience more I think it would be much easier to learn on a ranged job.

I feel that groups recruiting wouldn't be locking out the job based on what job it is, but rather on what they're lacking. Smn is popping off right now, so you can expect casters to be more plentiful and thus groups needing a range job for the buff. The party having a smn means they also already have a dps raise. 2 dps raisers is useful as well, but almost overkill. I feel most groups wouldn't mind either of them, at least I wouldn't.