Come up with ideas to fix Ranged Physical Dps please.

[Kabooa]

Proximity based damage is bad design, anyone that did raid with a basic level knows that if you dont have a mechanic to do, you are stacked behind the boss and when you're not, you're getting yelled at by the healers.

Anyone that did raid also knows there's plenty of times you don't have to be stacked, because there's no mechanic and no damage.

[Akiudo]

Anyone that did raid also knows there's plenty of times you don't have to be stacked, because there's no mechanic and no damage.

problem with that line of thought is that its often either or, and when their is a choice between the strategy that helps the physical ranged deal more damage or the strategy that helps the melee(s) +at least the off tank+is easier to heal through as everyone is staying at the same spot take a guess how realistic it is that these kind of mechanics will be handled in a phys ranged efficient way, it would basically force the group to decide between melee uptime and physical ranged maximizing strats, just that one allways benefits at least 1 player more, more likely 2 and is easier to deal with healing wise.

[Kabooa]

problem with that line of thought is that its often either or, and when their is a choice between the strategy that helps the physical ranged deal more damage or the strategy that helps the melee(s) +at least the off tank+is easier to heal through as everyone is staying at the same spot take a guess how realistic it is that these kind of mechanics will be handled in a phys ranged efficient way, it would basically force the group to decide between melee uptime and physical ranged maximizing strats, just that one allways benefits at least 1 player more, more likely 2 and is easier to deal with healing wise.

Conflicting priority is inherently more interesting to me than something you just use as it comes up, and it's also why the proximity I suggested weren't traditional static increases like you see on positionals.

I rather miss the aspect of machinist where your Wildfire window changed based on your condition heading into it. Having something similar to that (Can I / Can't I do this thing) is the aim. Some encounters will naturally align with one or the other, other encounters won't, and that's fine.

It's fine for things not to line up perfectly.

Edit: As an addendum - The thread title is 'fixing' Ranged. As far as 'fixing' goes, one of the primary obstacles ranged have is the perception that they have a significant advantage of ease. While every job has its challenges in perfecting, for Ranged, this generally doesn't change encounter to encounter. They have no unique problems to their path to optimization. Rotation complexity is just a learning curve, and will become second nature, and complexity is different for everyone.

However, adding another facet to the Ranged, where the free mobility isn't just there but is utilized as part of the kit, not as some secondary aspect of it, in my opinion alleviates this problem with perception. It's no longer 'Free mobility", it's mobility the job needs to deal with the demands the kit places upon it, and if the result is also an increase in damage, all the better.

[Akiudo]

Conflicting priority is inherently more interesting to me than something you just use as it comes up, and it's also why the proximity I suggested weren't traditional static increases like you see on positionals.

I rather miss the aspect of machinist where your Wildfire window changed based on your condition heading into it. Having something similar to that (Can I / Can't I do this thing) is the aim. Some encounters will naturally align with one or the other, other encounters won't, and that's fine.

It's fine for things not to line up perfectly.

conflicting priority is fine in theory, in practice however that conflict would allways swing in favor of the melees/ot as their are simply more of those in a group and again, stacking/moving in groups=easy to heal, spreading out=shit for everyone involved, the problem is simply that "give ranged a minimum range" sounds equal"ish" to the maximum range other classes have, in practice however that simply isn't true, at the very least healing in this game works makes it not true even if for once we ignore that there is at least the ot to account for so the "melee side" would win this one out in every scenario.

[Kabooa]

conflicting priority is fine in theory, in practice however that conflict would allways swing in favor of the melees/ot as their are simply more of those in a group and again, stacking/moving in groups=easy to heal, spreading out=shit for everyone involved, the problem is simply that "give ranged a minimum range" sounds equal"ish" to the maximum range other classes have, in practice however that simply isn't true, at the very least healing in this game works makes it not true even if for once we ignore that there is at least the ot to account for so the "melee side" would win this one out in every scenario.

I didn't advocate for 'minimum range'.

I advocated for "This ability does different things based on the distance it travels."

[Lastelli]

However, adding another facet to the Ranged, where the free mobility isn't just there but is utilized as part of the kit, not as some secondary aspect of it, in my opinion alleviates this problem with perception. It's no longer 'Free mobility", it's mobility the job needs to deal with the demands the kit places upon it, and if the result is also an increase in damage, all the better.

Agreed. And there are several ways to do it with very small tweaks that wouldn't change the core gameplay of the role but would give ranged dps something to think about when optimizing. Just a few examples (numbers can be tweaked):

BRD:
1) Chance to grant repertoire is increased by 10% if the distance from the boss is greater than 10y. Chance is further increased by another 10% if the player hasn't moved for more than 3 seconds (give a visual cue to understand if the conditions are met). The idea here is to make BRD a ranged heavy machine gun during WM and to slightly increase the value of AP, that would become the "move as you like" phase since repertoire are useless after the 4th proc. Ballad would be pretty much the same since it already procs so much. Finally, more soul voice generation overall;
2) Bring back foe requiem as it was in StB. Once activated, it cannot be deactivated. Effect fades when MP reaches 0. Effect fades when player moves and resumes when player stops moving. Max duration with full MP = 15 seconds.

MCH:
1) Hypercharge: each subsequent heat blast gains 40 potency if no movement was made from the previous one. Turns the 5th heat blast into cannon blast (800 potency) if no movement at all was made for the whole duration of hypercharge. This is to force MCH to use the flexibility they have in their rotation to chose the best time to use Hypercharge (when they can afford to stay still for 7-8 whole seconds);

DNC:
1) +100 potency to standard finish when executed far from the boss (>8y) and the player didn't move between step actions;
2) +100 potency to tech. finish when executed at melee range and the player didn't move between step actions;
3) rework improvisation: grants 15 esprit for every party member within 5y up to a max of 60. CD lowered to 30 seconds.
The idea here is to make DNC frequently switch between melee and long range to maximize damage. The 3rd suggestion is to make the cap skill actually useful while incentivizing the rest of the party to work with the DNC (the max value is there to make sure it's not too hard to make full use of the skill, so that staying at melee range with 2 melees and 2 tanks close will give you max esprit).

These are just random ideas that don't change the current rotations and give ranged jobs something to work on to increase their damage. Numbers should be tweaked to make the rDPS of the 3 ranged jobs more or less equivalent and 2-3% lower than melees/casters in a fully optimized scenario.

[Seraphor]

Proximity based damage is bad design, anyone that did raid with a basic level knows that if you dont have a mechanic to do, you are stacked behind the boss and when you're not, you're getting yelled at by the healers.

That's why I said the metric couldn't be any more complicated that being more than 5 yalms away.
If everyone is stacked behind the boss, that's literally the difference between being at the front of the stack or the back of the stack.
It would basically be a 'positional' for ranged.

[CKNovel]

problem with that line of thought is that its often either or, and when their is a choice between the strategy that helps the physical ranged deal more damage or the strategy that helps the melee(s) +at least the off tank+is easier to heal through as everyone is staying at the same spot take a guess how realistic it is that these kind of mechanics will be handled in a phys ranged efficient way, it would basically force the group to decide between melee uptime and physical ranged maximizing strats, just that one allways benefits at least 1 player more, more likely 2 and is easier to deal with healing wise.

I can imagine statics splitting because one strat is better for melee uptime and the other is better for ranged extra damage.
There's so much problem with proximity based damage, unless they are fixed at melee range like Blank back in HW or simply... The red mage.

Splitting the optimization into two routes for one role or another is a big no.
It would change little to the whole group DPS if everyone has to stack far/close to the boss, since one looses DPS and the other gain DPS.
There will be conflict and if jobs aren't balanced, it's going to go the "You don't do enough damage to compensate the uptime loss" and the ranged might suffer a loss again.

I don't get why Melee range abilities are no but going with so much complexity into proximity based damage is a good idea. Both have the same result, limiting the mobility, but one is a headache.
Simply considering healing and dealing with mechanics, it's already a bad idea.

Just thinking of how baiting certain mechanics would be relegated to healers.
Delightful.

[Kabooa]

No need to be that ambitious ^^;;

Don't tell me how to waste my time.

Charges on Empyreal arrow is good.

I'd still advocate for 10/50 on Soul Voice/Apex Arrow, as most other jobs have the ability to stock "two" uses of its big pay off, and I wouldn't think Bard is too badly impacted rotation wise by a mega GCD being usable more often, but feel free to correct me there.

[HyperiusUltima]

SMN is strong, but they are not your competition and as much as they looks free to move all the time, all of that movement have an impact on their dps, they are strong though...

as for ranged i said its actually kinda ok as their are pretty balanced in their role, maybe a little buff but make suke they still bellow melee and caster (why play melee and caster is the 100% free moving job can do more damage?)

im pretty sure bard and dancer have more potential ahead more than mch because of rdps

The Mobility Argument is pretty moot at this point in the game's lifespan given what they did with post-5.1 SMN and playerbase experience from previous Savage tiers and Ultimate. Even if their pet abilities are used for additional burst and Ruin IVs, we have to also consider how SMNs at the highest level can use them to their advantage in movement-heavy phases. It's still granting SMN more mobility, no matter how you look at it.