Ranged DPS, choose a weakness that would justify a buff

[Vulcann]

You're basically asking for Brd/Mch meta again.

oh man you mean you might have to make room in savage guilds for a MCH/BRD/Dancer ... the horror!

[AxelDH]

Bring back cast times!

[Shurrikhan]

Bring back cast times!

To a degree, I wouldn't mind something like that. Though I'd rather it more like a Bard song/mode and literally summoning a turret to man as MCH, rather than just grabbing onto an arrow for 1.5 seconds while while looking constipated or suddenly taking a weirdly long time to aim my gun...

[Cetonis]

It would unequivocally be bad for double ranged to have the same damage output as other comps. That's a non-starter, because then double ranged would be optimal since why would you not just take the mobility when there's no downside. So ranged should be behind by some noticeable amount, even if the current gap is perhaps a bit larger than it really needs to be.

In that light, for the ranged overall, while a small buff (1-2%) would be relatively harmless, Dancer in particular is fine (re: just barely good enough to warrant having a ranged) once optimized. Arguably, BLM and SMN are too strong, moreso than the ranged are too weak, if anything. Ideally-ideally DNC would be more than just-barely good enough, but it's not technically a problem right now. Good enough is good enough.


The MCH-DNC balance appears to be fairly healthy as well, with MCH plainly outpacing DNC in sloppy groups. It's really just BRD that's in a bad spot with no real strong suit outside of certain add scenarios. In the spirit of the thread -


Weakness: Inflexible support (constant song buffs, hard 3m cooldown buff) is difficult to derive optimization value out of. Even though it's numerically a fat number, it lacks the scaling that you see in other jobs with strong damage support. This is a big reason for the worst-of-both-worlds spot that Bard is in.

Fix: In my dream world I'd scrap its current damage-support profile and replace it with something flexible, such that it derives value from optimization, because in theory it'd be easier to balance if it was more like other jobs in that sense.

Namely, instead of current BV and current song effects, I'd make BV a 2-charge, 80s cooldown that gives the party (10% crit / 5% damage / 20% DH) depending on the active song. This would actually be a nerf overall on paper, but in practice an optimizing group may be able to derive more value out of it than Bard's current setup. And it's a better design anyway (Bard would feel more support-y if the player had to think about their support skills ever, and is also severely deprived of meaningful decisions atm).


Weakness: Bard is still punished by downtime to an outsized degree relative to MCH/DNC. Part of this is due to the above, but they're also a more sustained-damage job in general.

Fix: I'm a fan of 20% Raging Strikes and a second EA charge to raise up the burst a bit and bonus out long downtimes with an extra 15s of cooldown to reset. In tandem with doing the above it might be a tad too much, especially if we don't give the other ranged a percent or so, but assuming SE is far too lame to address the support situation, I think it's a reasonable buff route with a lot of incidental benefits.

[Kabooa]

I'm still thinking we should have a fourth role to shove our selfish DPS into.

With nothing else accounted for, that lets you have everyone on the same starting line with a fatter full house attribute bonus.

Then you could balance the machinist, black mage, and samurai against each other, which is less of a hassle than doing it with everyone else, and then balance the others against the rest in their category.

A more grand reorganizing might also do some good, but for a starting baseline, it solves a few things.

[Katie_Kitty]

Arguably, BLM and SMN are too strong, moreso than the ranged are too weak

Summoner yes BLM no. BLM brings nothing to the table besides damage. The outlier here is summoner who not only brings amazing damage but also a raise, damage buffs, the same role action utility as other casters (well addle really) and also benefits from having the best overall on-demand mobility of the bunch. Casters in general SHOULD be higher damage than physical ranged because otherwise why bring one at all when phys ranged can put out the same numbers while doing all mechanics easily with zero need for adaptation due to lack of cast times? The problem here is that summoner is barely a caster at all and is incredibly overpowered with utility that is too good.

[xxvaynxx]

oh man you mean you might have to make room in savage guilds for a MCH/BRD/Dancer ... the horror!

What the hell are you talking about? Groups always let in Physical ranged dps?
This the most balanced DPS roles have been where every job is included in one way or another.
My static is Samurai,Mch,Smn and RDM and we're clearing stuff fine.
What you're saying is you're trying to make a meta where BRD and MCH buffs and debuffs are so powerful again they become the meta like how it was in HW.

Mch had hypercharge which was a longer Trick attack basically and Brd had foes and battle voice.

[CKNovel]

What the hell are you talking about? Groups always let in Physical ranged dps?
This the most balanced DPS roles have been where every job is included in one way or another.
My static is Samurai,Mch,Smn and RDM and we're clearing stuff fine.
What you're saying is you're trying to make a meta where BRD and MCH buffs and debuffs are so powerful again they become the meta like how it was in HW.

Mch had hypercharge which was a longer Trick attack basically and Brd had foes and battle voice.

Hypercharge was half TA on a longer duration, TA is and was always 60s while Hypercharge was 120s.
More over, the bursts are often during a 10-15s window.

And the one you quoted probably talked about making room for double ranged rather than locking out double ranged from PF.

The problem with ranged right now is that they're only necessary for the 1% stats your get for having one job of each role (ranged, caster, melee, healer, tank)
And no, the BRD&MCH were "top meta" in HW mostly because of the piercing Debuff provided by the dragoon.

[Cetonis]

Casters in general SHOULD be higher damage than physical ranged

Yes, I said that. Don't straw man. Never did I say ranged should do just as much as other roles, in fact I literally said they shouldn't. It was the very first sentence, even.

But, that doesn't mean that casters have to deal as much as 10% more. If every non-ranged dps deals 10% more than the best ranged, that's when you're in the zone of taking a ranged at all becoming bad. 4-6% or so is closer to where you want to be. Basically, we're merely lucky right now that there are only those two or three outlier jobs.

As for SMN vs. BLM, I'd agree that SMN should do a bit less than BLM. But that's unrelated to the gap between ranged and non-ranged being larger than is probably ideal.

[xxvaynxx]

Hypercharge was half TA on a longer duration, TA is and was always 60s while Hypercharge was 120s.
More over, the bursts are often during a 10-15s window.

And the one you quoted probably talked about making room for double ranged rather than locking out double ranged from PF.

The problem with ranged right now is that they're only necessary for the 1% stats your get for having one job of each role (ranged, caster, melee, healer, tank)
And no, the BRD&MCH were "top meta" in HW mostly because of the piercing Debuff provided by the dragoon.

I wasn't talking about the cooldown. But I actually don't remember how long hypercharge was if I'm totally honest but pretty sure it was longer than TA as in the debuff.

And thanks for stating the obvious and just furthering my point on creating an imbalance. BRD and MCH don't need drg anymore now, so lets say if BRD and mch still had their buffs back in the good ol' HW days.
The meta would most likely be BRD/MCH/NIN and probably BLM since they're the strongest ST dps in the game.
And I actually don't see groups locking out two physical range, heck I cleared ES7 with two physical range.

The only people locking out those jobs are the same people that was locking out samurai's in SB and Nin in early SHB. Those people are the minority.