So...is the Ranged Role gone? Are we in a Reverse HW?

[Lastelli]

I don't count tanks and healers but why not. Only DPS speaking however, there is a discrepancy.

I'm all for a new melee job to increase competition among the role, cause with a 2 melee comp you have currently a 50% chance to be chosen in a particular class, while range and caster only have a 33% chance as a specific class. Either improve individual odds for range/caster classes or reduce individual odds for melee is all I want.

That's only one way to look at it though, and probably not the most relevant one, as people can easily level (and gear) 2 jobs that belong to the same role. This is especially true for physical ranged dps, since they mostly share the same BiS. In this sense, chosing to main and invest tomestones on a melee job is way more risky. A DRG cannot suddenly switch to MNK or NIN when it finally finds a party looking for a melee. So why should casters and ph. ranged be able to switch between jobs in their respective role end join any party and still be good? That would be way too convenient.

[Eliadil]

1) But only one, since the rest is gone, and it is not so ground breaking either
2) very true (except when you're yourself out of range, but in that case the melee would be as well so fully agree).
3) I'm sorry, melee rotations are not a brain twister either... Don't make it look like ranged rota is a breathe in the park while monk or dragoon are complex cluster of what the fuckery...it is not true and they're pretty straightforward.
4) fully agree, although this reflects in rDPS measured by fflogs. If they didn't have that mobility, they'd be even lower. Already taken into account.

One thing you could possibly do is give the role action that reduces strenght/dex for ranged then, it gives them another damage reduction while not making them that OP (although seeing how it helps on TEA, I think it definitely would).
The issue with ranged is and will always be uptime, that is one thing clearly underestimated by the community, is how strong being free of range limitation and being able to move all the time is. I'm only talking about ranged physical here, not casters, as being a caster means that you have to watch for your GCDs. There is a reason that there is uptime strats made especially for melees and there isn't the same for ranged physical. this is purely the sam main speaking here, but missing even a single GCD has a bigger impact on my dps than forgetting to refresh a dot on bard. And missing a GCD on melee is way easier than ranged, as ranged is more about forgetting to press a button than just being out of range. (if you're out of range then everyone else is too basically)

Ranged, based on this, cannot mess their rotation because of the way a fight is made, opposed to melee. If you mess up your rotation on ranged, then you played poorly (pressed the wrong buttons) where with melee (and also casters) there is a bigger numbers of factor that can make you mess rotation. It's an easy concept of "high risk high reward" play. Increasing the offensive utility of ranged will not bring "balance" in any way. Like somebody else said earlier, two melees are a thing, two casters are too. It is a risk sure, but it has a decent damage reward. However, as soon as you make double ranged viable, then nobody in their right mind would ever take two melees or casters if you could achieve the same reward with less risk. Let's not forget Party Finder in Stormblood, where excluding Sam and Blm was a common thing because even tho they could bring decent damage (higher than the rest in fact) the risk was just too high to be "worth it" for pugs. Peoples will exactly follow the same mentality if you make double ranged viable. This we don't want to, because it will just kill the two other role outright.

[Karshan]

I fully understand how uptime is important.

But you base all your reasoning on a "what if", I see fflogs : with all uptime impacts taken into account already (I insist, this is measured, in fight, with mechanics that force downplay on melees sometime), they are still far behind.

Again, I agree they shouldn't have the same pps output on paper, and for it to be leveled by fight design. But guess what : it is not leveled enough and even if a melee has 96% uptime and a ranged 100%, in current state the Sam will outdo a bard.

It's not a risk anymore when there are strategies build to take that into account and all people (melee, range, caster, helicopter...) manage 97%+ uptime

[Myon88]

Now that SE has taken steps to contain certain 3rd party tools, I imagine some groups will opt to mark their bard instead and make them stand in key spots for mechanics like TEA trines.

So hey, they may not be able to dps, but at least ranged will have a niche in 5.2 as being a movable waymark

[Cetonis]

The reason why ranged isn't getting excluded from speed kills is because there are few if any serious competitive speed kill groups. Ultimate more or less replaced them as "something to do", and the payoffs for group coordination just get smaller and smaller as they nerf party buffs and utility tools, make no-buff jobs like Samurai top tier, continue to not challenge healing at all, etc.

So it feels less like a collaborative group activity where effort expended leads to noticeable improvements, and more like just doing some PF farm hoping for unusually good luck. And it's not like there's ever been a reward outside of sense of accomplishment, and groups that still want to do it might just speed run TEA, but you'd want the 1% vitality there.

The odds of a group being so motivated to competitively speed run Savage that they'd kick their ranged or tell them to learn BLM are just really slim for a bunch of unrelated reasons, regardless of what the numbers are on paper.

[CKNovel]

Ranged Role is not gone, but SE still see them as "Casters without Cast".

It's actually funny that they share their views about the RDM underperforming. Its buff should raise it around the NIN/DRG.

As Yoshi-P mentionned that "It's not fun to play efficiently", it actually gives the idea that they think Ranged Uptime is much higher than Melees, that melees waits 5 seconds between mechanics. On top of that, the job balance is actually a huge mess, the SMN situation proves it, SE ignored the fact that the job was doing so much damages 2 weeks before TEA release and did not nerfed it at TEA release, making it a valuable asset. During my TEA prog, we were able to skip the last tank buster & hand of pain consistantly (most groups with a SMN do it today I think?) and I'm sure if we replaced our SMN with a BLM, we could not skip it. That was saving a lot of mana, cooldowns and time over the progress.

As I said months ago, ranged role is still balanced as a support DPS with... No support. If all ranged had a Dismantle-like ability and a tiny refresh they would have been an incredible asset. Support is not always rDPS, it can be survival for the team and it often feels good to reduce incoming damages when I play tank. Survivability could be a good way to buff the Ranged Role.

Right now it really feels depressing to play ranged on EX/Savage with Pugs. All the ranged role brings is 1% stats and nothing else compared to the other DPS. No matter how hard you push, you could just play Melee and bring much more while doing less and this is my biggest concern.

With my static, ranged still feels like bringing nothing but uptime to the Melees or bait mechanics but at least the DPS is not an issue.

More DPS, more utility beyond the rDPS. Ranged DPS definitely needs something that makes them a valuable asset, because 10% every 120s ain't one.

[Lastelli]

With my static, ranged still feels like bringing nothing but uptime to the Melees or bait mechanics but at least the DPS is not an issue.

More DPS, more utility beyond the rDPS. Ranged DPS definitely needs something that makes them a valuable asset, because 10% every 120s ain't one.

My party doesn't have a SMN and we easily skip that last tankbuster.

Anyway, the fact that all parties still have one ranged after so long means that having one is optimal. I really don't see what the problem is. If they buffed ranged dps again they would just tune endgame content around the new potential dps, making the change neutral and, therefore, pointless. Are people really just sad to be at the bottom of the dps chart even if they're wanted in pretty much any party?

[Cetonis]

Anyway, the fact that all parties still have one ranged after so long means that having one is optimal.

As per my prior comment few groups care are doing serious speedruns of Savage (the top Levi kill is 5.0 ffs) so looking at those charts doesn't necessarily tell you anything.

At the most charitable, you could say that having a Dancer is optimal by a mostly-slim margin at the top end with a group that's maximally stacking buffs. That's DNC-specific though. The other two ranged are getting blown out by DNC in speedkill contexts, then DNC falls back closer to them in less-ambitious groups.

I don't think SE can or should do much of anything, given the designs, about DNC outpacing the other ranged at the top top end. But they could afford to close the gap a little, especially as it relates to working around downtime which DNC is extra strong at.

As for the ranged being behind overall, obviously you'd rather have your game be more balanced instead of less balanced, so clear gaps like this should get some work. I don't think ranged should equal other roles, or else you'd hard lock double ranged (because why not take the mobility if everything else is equal). But they can be closer than they are.

[CKNovel]

My party doesn't have a SMN and we easily skip that last tankbuster.

Anyway, the fact that all parties still have one ranged after so long means that having one is optimal. I really don't see what the problem is. If they buffed ranged dps again they would just tune endgame content around the new potential dps, making the change neutral and, therefore, pointless. Are people really just sad to be at the bottom of the dps chart even if they're wanted in pretty much any party?

A bit hasty in your reading, friend:

As I said months ago, ranged role is still balanced as a support DPS with... No support. If all ranged had a Dismantle-like ability and a tiny refresh they would have been an incredible asset. Support is not always rDPS, it can be survival for the team and it often feels good to reduce incoming damages when I play tank. Survivability could be a good way to buff the Ranged Role.

Right now it really feels depressing to play ranged on EX/Savage with Pugs. All the ranged role brings is 1% stats and nothing else compared to the other DPS. No matter how hard you push, you could just play Melee and bring much more while doing less and this is my biggest concern.

More DPS, more utility beyond the rDPS. Ranged DPS definitely needs something that makes them a valuable asset, because 10% every 120s ain't one.

Ranged lacks the utility they used to have.

Also, I'll point some flaws in your reasoning:
1) SE don't tune around the endgame, it was proved again and again and is the reason why ranged dps are lower.
2) If any change would be neutral, no one would mind if Casters are put behind and melee/ranged would deal more dps, right? Oh, that already happened...
3) Your point of view is limited to endgame and I assume Savage and Ultimate. There's dungeons and EX, despite how easy it is, it's much better if you can speed it up. EX is the same, it's often tried by casuals who don't mitigate, the more mitigation/utility around survival your job has, the better. Felt that when I would play tank in Hades EX. On top of that, there's also Relic based content that will come with 5.25
4) During 5.0 my comp was MNK/RDM/MCH/DNC, we had all the 1% from each role but due to our comp we had quite the handicap. But going Melee/2 Casters/1 Ranged brings no handicap despite the "mobility" they should be lacking. If a comp goes 2 ranged, they should be allowed to play 2 ranged without feeling a huge gap in DPS. The fact that Troubadour/Samba/Tactician don't stack also brings a new handicap.

As for the "sad" part, remember that the ranged spot only exist for the 1% stats. That's the sad part.

Don't think in "DPS" only, ranged jobs were just not stripped of their DPS, they also lost valuable utility. Overall, the ranged job lost so much that they bring little for the group and that's why there are so many complaint around the ranged role.

[Lastelli]

As per my prior comment few groups care are doing serious speedruns of Savage (the top Levi kill is 5.0 ffs) so looking at those charts doesn't necessarily tell you anything.

That doesn't really matter, though. If having a ranged dps was a strictly inferior choice, by now we'd at the very least see a lot of no-ranged parties on fflogs. If virtually all parties do include a ranged, it's because people see value in them.

I'd go even further and say that if substituting the ranged with another caster or another melee was indifferent, then we'd see some parties with no ranged dps. But again, that's not the case.

Also, speedrunners did try different party comps before 5.2. Trust me, I checked fflogs rankings frequently back then. And even then, before the ranged were buffed, most comps included a DNC.
Someone did try triple melee comps in eden 2 and 3 and got good results...but at the end comps including a DNC were still on top by a few seconds (before the buff). The role buff is probably more powerful then people realize.

I do agree, however, that DNC is clearly superior to the other 2 ranged...to the point where it's stupidly close to melee dps in TEA, but that has more to do with how beneficial downtime is to DNC, given how perfectly everything lines up with quad step and devilment. They can't do anything to DNC to fix this...but what they can do is give the other 2 ranged some tools to capitalize on downtime. I thought they learned their lesson with ultimate coil and uwu (SMN was and still is op for a similar reason)...but I was probably wrong.

A bit hasty in your reading, friend:



Ranged lacks the utility they used to have.

Also, I'll point some flaws in your reasoning:
1) SE don't tune around the endgame, it was proved again and again and is the reason why ranged dps are lower.
2) If any change would be neutral, no one would mind if Casters are put behind and melee/ranged would deal more dps, right? Oh, that already happened...
3) Your point of view is limited to endgame and I assume Savage and Ultimate. There's dungeons and EX, despite how easy it is, it's much better if you can speed it up. EX is the same, it's often tried by casuals who don't mitigate, the more mitigation/utility around survival your job has, the better. Felt that when I would play tank in Hades EX. On top of that, there's also Relic based content that will come with 5.25
4) During 5.0 my comp was MNK/RDM/MCH/DNC, we had all the 1% from each role but due to our comp we had quite the handicap. But going Melee/2 Casters/1 Ranged brings no handicap despite the "mobility" they should be lacking. If a comp goes 2 ranged, they should be allowed to play 2 ranged without feeling a huge gap in DPS. The fact that Troubadour/Samba/Tactician don't stack also brings a new handicap.

As for the "sad" part, remember that the ranged spot only exist for the 1% stats. That's the sad part.

Don't think in "DPS" only, ranged jobs were just not stripped of their DPS, they also lost valuable utility. Overall, the ranged job lost so much that they bring little for the group and that's why there are so many complaint around the ranged role.

I don't care that ranged dps lost some utility. I'm analyzing the current situation, and the current data tells us that ranged dps are not excluded from any kind of content. Being that the case, it's very likely that having one is optimal. If having one is optimal, there's no point arguing about their dps. Were they buffed by X, the devs would just increase the dps requirement for content by X = no difference at all.

Also, their AoE damage is very good, making them a perfectly viable solution for dungeons...assuming anyone cares about completing their dungeon 2 minutes earlier and dropping a job for it. If that was the case, everyone would be running BLM and WHM.

To conclude, my opinion is that double ranged comp should be actively discouraged. The current balance assures that you don't want more than one ranged in your group. That's perfect to me. And while Troubadour/Samba/Tactician do not stack, they're still the strongest defensive cd available to a dps and you can use them twice as much with a double ranged comp.