SE, please nerf Dancer if you aren't going to fix bard.

[Aurelius2625]

Honestly, the ranged deserve to be where they are. It's fine. They get FULL mobility AND full uptime when it can be had during each fight. Add in some utility and you have three reasons why they need to be at the bottom of the barrel. If they could even be argued to be near Melee, melee would not be taken. They are too dependent on catering to uptime strats, which ranged do not need. It's absolutely ludicrous to ask for buffs. You have everything that you need.

You're just mad that you aren't near the MNK, DRG, or SAM on the dps list. Get used to being let down, the tanks got hit with the nerf bat to their personal DPS and now healers can overtake then at the highest percentiles. It is what it is.

The question needs to be: Do you ENJOY playing the job? Is the gameplay loop satisfying? That's the only thing needing to be addressed here.

[CKNovel]

Honestly, the ranged deserve to be where they are. It's fine. They get FULL mobility AND full uptime when it can be had during each fight. Add in some utility and you have three reasons why they need to be at the bottom of the barrel. If they could even be argued to be near Melee, melee would not be taken. They are too dependent on catering to uptime strats, which ranged do not need. It's absolutely ludicrous to ask for buffs. You have everything that you need.

During first week of progres, where MELEES&CASTERS couldn't optimize their rotation as they progressed and focus on mechanics, Ranged were still really low. On top of that, it is a pretty mobile tier where ranged should have shined.
And they dive deeper as each days passes, this proves that mobility isn't that big of a deal. And I asked around multiple casters/melees that killed E8S, the majority feels that Casters and Melees have enough tools to compensate for the need to move.

Ranged needs to be lower, of course, but right now a Black Mage can avoid using Thunder at all, they'd still outdps BRD/DNC playing perfectly. That is not normal.
Melees can hit the boss front and ignore any positionnals, they'd still outdps MCH. That is also not normal.

And if you want more proof, remind yourself that any nerf on ranged physical would make the 1% too low to be actually worth.
Mobility only allows physical ranged to run in circle in front of bosses. Is that "Everything" we need?

And no, I don't enjoy a job that is gutted for a mobility tax that doesn't actually exist. You only need to look at uptime and you'll easily notice that melees/caster/ranged are not that far.
Also about the tanks, when healers parses, they only use their cooldowns to heal, they cast very little healing spells, which is why at the max percentile they can outdps tanks. Because they play in a way that is not intended.
If as a Melee/Caster DPS you cannot outDPS a ranged, the problem is between the keyboard and the chair.

[Akiudo]

The question needs to be: Do you ENJOY playing the job? Is the gameplay loop satisfying? That's the only thing needing to be addressed here.

funny how for physical ranged players the question is "do you enjoy your job" while for every other role the question is "should it be remotely possible a second physical ranged gets taken instead of me?"

And don't act like physical ranged are actually anywhere in the realm of being able to do that, in fact they are so low even that 1 physical ranged you take right now i dare say you take mostly for the 1% of stamina paired with having them making your own parse look better, because as far as dealing damage is concerned the group would do the same taking smn+blackmage instead of a token physical ranged.

[Kabooa]

funny how for physical ranged players the question is "do you enjoy your job" while for every other role the question is "should it be remotely possible a second physical ranged gets taken instead of me?"

I think the better question is do you overly suffer for taking two?

if you took any combination of 4 DPS jobs, with two being ranged, are you incapable of clearing the content?

[Akiudo]

I think the better question is do you overly suffer for taking two?

if you took any combination of 4 DPS jobs, with two being ranged, are you incapable of clearing the content?

yes you do overly suffer for taking two, cause you lose something (a quite serious amount of damage) while gaining nothing in return.

1.the "free movement" doesn't help the group, you still can't ignore uptime strats unless you want to fuck your remaining melee and both tanks over royally, even if that was a consideration it could just as well be done taking an extra caster, so that is not an advantage a physical ranged offers to a group exclusivly.
2.Mechanics that should be handled by ranged rather than melee dps (so things that take longer than potentially 2 global cooldowns outside of melee range, losing 100 dps because you had to move away for 2 hits hardly counts as a disadvantage if you start with a 1500 dps advantage) are generally limited to 2 players so again the extra physical ranged offers nothing you couldn't have by simply using 1 caster/1 physical or even 2 casters so this also is no advantage the group gets out of it.
3. the one thing a second physical ranged potentially offers is a better defensive cooldown, and as those are generally needed at fixed points during the fight and don't stack that value, while potentially there at least is highly diminished.

basically every argument against buffing physical ranged people make boils down to either

1. "They don't deserve it" which is elitism at its finest. Sorry but balancing classes isn't about deserving shit, if it were than please start campaining so the hardest to play melee actually is the one doing the most damage, blackmage at the top starts overtaking everyone else by 1000 dps more than it does now as compensation for tanking the hardest for not optimizing the fight and while we're at it, i've switched to gunbreaker, don't really know how "hard" the other tanks are, but according to square gunbreaker should be harder to optimize by design, so while you are campaining for people to get what they deserve, i would also love another 2% or so of dps, i mean its the hardest tank, at least supposed to be so, i really don't know but i'm just gonna believe square on that, so its obviously deserving of a slight boost.

or the admittingly more reasonable

2. "if physical ranged deal too much damage they risk becoming the de facto best combination, potentially risking pushing melee into the position where the physical ranged are now, where you only take 1 for the buff/maybe the lb and to feel better about yourself." However, if anyones argument against buffing physical ranged is the second one than i've got to say sorry but right now we are closer to abandoning physical ranged alltogether than even potentially taking a second one, lets not even talk about abandoning melee.

[Kabooa]

yes you do overly suffer for taking two, cause you lose something (a quite serious amount of damage) while gaining nothing in return.

So lets work with that. Taking Iconoclasm, which features a mandatory add phase that favors multi-dotters (Bard, Summoner), currently our line up at 95% shows a difference of 1.8k from the top and bottom. Bard comes close to Machinist, but nothing touches Samurai.

Max is currently not even far off, but that's more than likely to change.

This doesn't take into account possible gear disparities - We'll see what happens in a few weeks. My guess is you'll see the Ranged come up a little bit while the top doesn't move that much in comparison, but who knows - maybe all the gear is being evenly distributed this time around.

Most teams are taking one ranged no matter what, though which one they take changes - They have a fairly equal representation for Shiva kills, and not that far off all things considered for Iconoclasm.

A 2/1/1 team or a 1/2/1 team. Interesting that the melee and casters alternate all the way down.

Any combination of 3 melee and casters comes up with a range of 47,000 - 48,600. Tagging on a ranged adds on 14,500 to 15,000. Grand total of 61,500 to 63,600.

Removing the maximum (samurai) and adding the average (14,750) lowers the maximum to around 61,900.

Factoring in tanks and healers at the same skill level, we're looking at around another 34,000 total.

95,900 DPS on Iconoclasm. 1600 DPS is about 1.8% DPS loss for taking double ranged set up where you don't take a samurai.

That's a fairly generous window, when you consider the dps requirement for the turn is closer to 87,000.

[Ramura_Sono]

How many people saying melee/caster uptime is some easy non factor, actually plays them in anything that matters? From what I can gather most that claim it as such don't actually play either.

I've yet to see an actual argument for bringing ranged up that isn't based around the chicken little "the sky is falling" fear of being totally abandoned. It didn't happen when dual BLM was a dps gain over bringing a ranged for the 1% buff.

What I suspect instead, is that many ranged players got used to being ridiculously strong, and now that they're closer to where they should be they find it unacceptable.

You can absolutely take 2 ranged. You just can't take 2 ranged, and the bottom dps from melee and caster alongside them.

Physical ranged is a safety net for the party, able to react to the other members movement/mistakes without the loss of uptime. This safety net is what you're paying lower dps for. It's just that unlike Red Mage, who's safety net is payed between itself and it's res target (weakness) ranged pay solely for theirs. (Let's not mention SMN, it needs nerfs to the number of instant casts it gets among other things.)

[Akiudo]

snip

which is completly aside the point, any loss without return is just that, a pure loss.

Especially as that is what you lose for changing out 1 player, so stop making it sound like this dps gets lost spread around the whole group. by your logic if one dps class is 10% below another (lets just say nin would deal 10% less than samurai) than taking nin would "only" cost you 1,5-2% dps, yet, last time nin was more like 8% below the top melee they got excluded left and right and the general consensus was "that class is dead" 1,8% group dps is freaking huge, that's nearly twice the buff you get for taking one from every role, and that one is so impactfull we allready had someone call for its removal so the physical ranged stop holding other groups hostage with their presence, especially if there is nothing you gain in exchange (and you as a group don't gain anything as again, the second phys offers nothing to you as a group an extra caster wouldn't).

[Mortex]

So lets work with that. Taking Iconoclasm, which features a mandatory add phase that favors multi-dotters (Bard, Summoner), currently our line up at 95% shows a difference of 1.8k from the top and bottom. Bard comes close to Machinist, but nothing touches Samurai.

Max is currently not even far off, but that's more than likely to change.

This doesn't take into account possible gear disparities - We'll see what happens in a few weeks. My guess is you'll see the Ranged come up a little bit while the top doesn't move that much in comparison, but who knows - maybe all the gear is being evenly distributed this time around.

Most teams are taking one ranged no matter what, though which one they take changes - They have a fairly equal representation for Shiva kills, and not that far off all things considered for Iconoclasm.

A 2/1/1 team or a 1/2/1 team. Interesting that the melee and casters alternate all the way down.

Any combination of 3 melee and casters comes up with a range of 47,000 - 48,600. Tagging on a ranged adds on 14,500 to 15,000. Grand total of 61,500 to 63,600.

Removing the maximum (samurai) and adding the average (14,750) lowers the maximum to around 61,900.

Factoring in tanks and healers at the same skill level, we're looking at around another 34,000 total.

95,900 DPS on Iconoclasm. 1600 DPS is about 1.8% DPS loss for taking double ranged set up where you don't take a samurai.

That's a fairly generous window, when you consider the dps requirement for the turn is closer to 87,000.

Well but that changes so drastic when you try Shiva were the dps check is around 91k. That’s with 2 ranges when you don’t play around 100 % uptime and perfect a really hard run.

[Kabooa]

which is completly aside the point, any loss without return is just that, a pure loss.

Especially as that is what you lose for changing out 1 player, so stop making it sound like this dps gets lost spread around the whole group. by your logic if one dps class is 10% below another (lets just say nin would deal 10% less than samurai) than taking nin would "only" cost you 1,5-2% dps, yet, last time nin was more like 8% below the top melee they got excluded left and right and the general consensus was "that class is dead" 1,8% group dps is freaking huge, that's nearly twice the buff you get for taking one from every role, and that one is so impactfull we allready had someone call for its removal so the physical ranged stop holding other groups hostage with their presence, especially if there is nothing you gain in exchange (and you as a group don't gain anything as again, the second phys offers nothing to you as a group an extra caster wouldn't).

But it's not without return.

In exchange your party doesn't have to consider anything that a triple melee, or double caster might have to. It doesn't compromise healers because it's better to make the healer move than the Summoner, Red Mage or Black Mage. It allows greater flexibility than a double melee would.

There are implicit gains to taking Ranged that numbers don't account for.

Further, I wouldn't be using the community as examples of great and rational suggestions. At least, not "Someone". We all know a someone.

Well but that changes so drastic when you try Shiva were the dps check is around 91k. That’s with 2 ranges when you don’t play around 100 % uptime and perfect a really hard run.

I'm not necessarily against increasing them, but the manner in which you do so is important. Just flat buffing them across the board will just shift a double caster preference to a double Ranged preference, or rather, further diminish a double melee presence.

If the end goal is that "the flex spot should go to anyone and not cause any problems", the solution has to be a little more elegant than stapling on potency buffs.