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

[Cetonis]

I'd cite the fastest Levi clear being 5.0 as evidence that there's little to no serious competitive speed running going on. Also the number two Eden time has a Bard when it would very obviously be better if you just slotted in a Dancer. Yet they didn't bother. Heck, there are barely any ASTs up there still.

This isn't a sign of numbers being wrong or misleading, it just means the speed running competitively is all but dead. Some groups will try to do their best with what they've got, but they aren't so hardcore as to kick their ranged or make them / wait for them to learn BLM. Or even, in some cases, make them learn Dancer. Nobody cares enough to do that.

It just doesn't make sense to lead with an assumption that lots of groups are doing their absolute best to get the top possible times at any cost. There's no evidence to back that up, a couple groups trying some comps out late in 5.0 does not a large-sample scientific experiment make.

[Lastelli]

I'd cite the fastest Levi clear being 5.0 as evidence that there's little to no serious competitive speed running going on. Also the number two Eden time has a Bard when it would very obviously be better if you just slotted in a Dancer. Yet they didn't bother. Heck, there are barely any ASTs up there still.

This isn't a sign of numbers being wrong or misleading, it just means the speed running competitively is all but dead. Some groups will try to do their best with what they've got, but they aren't so hardcore as to kick their ranged or make them / wait for them to learn BLM. Or even, in some cases, make them learn Dancer. Nobody cares enough to do that.

It just doesn't make sense to lead with an assumption that lots of groups are doing their absolute best to get the top possible times at any cost. There's no evidence to back that up, a couple groups trying some comps out late in 5.0 does not a large-sample scientific experiment make.

True, but at the very least I'm backing my reasoning with the observation of player behavior.

Meanwhile, how do you prove that people would be better off swapping their ranged for a caster or a melee, exactly?

[Cetonis]

True, but at the very least I'm backing my reasoning with the observation of player behavior.

Meanwhile, how do you prove that people would be better off swapping their ranged for a caster or a melee, exactly?

I'm not attempting to prove that. Just saying that it's oversimplifying things at best to just point at the speed rankings charts given all the red flags there.

I don't think there's any mystery to the role bonus - it's clearly a 0.95% or so loss of damage across the board, it's not all that complicated. So you can figure out very directly that bringing a DNC is a good idea if chasing E1S and E3S speed kills.

With E2S and E4S that appears at first blush to not be the case. However, it's hard to quantify the value of including a 2m burst job into a buff stacking scenario, because the DNC itself is going to add to the rDPS production of other jobs in a way that fflogs has no capacity to measure.


My point is that this is very DNC-specific, and that presents a conundrum. If you can't bring a DNC, it seems very unlikely that bringing a BRD or MCH will be better than finding a high-skilled SMN/BLM. But, a situation where BRD=MCH=DNC at the top end of speeds would be bad, due to how much faster relatively DNC is going to fall off with less-perfected groups.

But DNC isn't optimal for a dummy fight (E2S) by very much, if it is at all, so there's not really any space there to i.e. bring BRD/MCH closer and just-into viability range without getting to the level of DNC.

What there *is* room to do is to bring DNC up a little more, to where it rivals other jobs in an optimized group, so that you can raise BRD/MCH up but still clearly behind DNC (blocking off the double ranged option), which will get closer as group quality falls.