Ranged DPS jobs - disappointing?

[SamRF]

Yes range are weak and need a buff.

But if you are getting outdone by a tank you are definately doing something wrong.

At max level, sure.

During leveling though Tanks seem to be doing more damage comparably, I often see them (near) top on dps charts. Also a bigger gear difference there usually when they are at sync.

[Vendalwind]

Not inherently true. (Though it could be) The OP is Lv45. Which is the level range BRD suffers a decent amount. My friends BRD and PLD were both equal in iLv, and just basic auto attacks on BRD were lower dmg than the PLDs auto attacks. (at Lv50)

The level range for BRD atm isnt so great, plus if the tank was syncing down with much higher iLv gear, and they are still in some basic leveling gear thats mismatched, its easy to see happen.
(Another example was in 2.0, as WHM, stone2 did so much unreasonable dmg, I easily out DPSed every DPS in the game in copperbell and most DPS in halatali. Sometimes u have more or less options available for your job, based on the level range. Just as RDM, SAM, and DNC have broken powerful potencies at low levels, since they just werent balanced for low level content.)

Thats absolutely true. If you (bernkz) are at lvl 45 you will be playing some content now with lvl 50 much higher i lvl tanks that will out do you. So i wouldn't stress it if its happening now things will likely improve.

[Akiudo]

2. The idea is that when boss mechanics are going off, the lost GCDs from not hitting the boss as melee or caster "make up" for the DPS physical ranged maintain. Of course once u do the fight enough, and minimize downtime, your uptime is almost always keeping the GCD going.

not going into the rest as you do make some reasonable points/even if i'm not totally with you on certain ideas, the big problem that i'd like to point out however is that now the dps is so loopsided in favor of the casters/melee that basically even in the worst of worst cases it still "makes up" the difference. if we in fact where in a situation where in the beginning when fights are new and/or if you simply look at the bottom half of the playerbase you could see physical ranged pull ahead than there would be value in "free" movement, as however even in week 1 and even at like the 25% physical ranged where allready among the weakest, if not the outright weakest jobs that simply leaves the melees/casters overcompensated.

it would be fine and reasonable, (given the situation as is) if with having fights more optimized and entering the realm of "better play" melee/caster start pulling ahead, however the ability to do so in itself is an advantage, and advantages need disadvantages to counterbalance them.

now you could say the physical ranged have the advantage of not losing damage while handling mechanics, however the mechanic handling in itself can be done by casters without problems, so yes, the physical ranged advantage is "doesn't lose damage while handling mechanics" not "makes handling mechanic easier", as realistically unless you use an all physical ranged group (which would never happen, if alone for the fact that both melee and caster bring a 1% stat buff with them aswell) it doesn't make much if any difference for the handling of mechanics if you got 2 phys ranged or 1 phys ranged+1 caster.

so coming back to that, the physical rangeds advantage is not losing damage while handling mechanics, their disadvantage is lower dps
caster by comparison have the advantage of higher damage potential. the problem that now arises however is that the caster advantage of "higher damage potential" is so big a lead that even at the absolute bottom tier they still pull ahead of the physical ranged, this however is not a disadvantage compared to the physical ranged, in fact it completly devalues the advantage physical ranged actually do have, that of not losing damage while doing mechanics.

[Claire_Pendragon]

not going into the rest as you do make some reasonable points/even if i'm not totally with you on certain ideas, the big problem that i'd like to point out however is that now the dps is so loopsided in favor of the casters/melee that basically even in the worst of worst cases it still "makes up" the difference. if we in fact where in a situation where in the beginning when fights are new and/or if you simply look at the bottom half of the playerbase you could see physical ranged pull ahead than there would be value in "free" movement, as however even in week 1 and even at like the 25% physical ranged where allready among the weakest, if not the outright weakest jobs that simply leaves the melees/casters overcompensated.

I dont actually think it "makes up the difference" im saying it was the idea behind the decision. I feel the DPS loss is a bit too much. And even then, i dont feel they should have any DPS loss at all in the first place, but instead focus on making the jobs harder, and the reward for "harder to do rotations" is to have ease of movement as your reward.
The other jobs have "easier" rotations, but lack "ease of movement" as compensation. (also not complete loss of movement, or fights that heavily reward movement either) Also, BLM and SMN have way too much movement freedom that always lines up with boss mechanics. Which is another can of worms to further make things unfair.

The rest i mostly agree with, except phrased in ways thats a bit misleading, but still true for whats said.

[Akiudo]

I dont actually think it "makes up the difference" im saying it was the idea behind the decision. I feel the DPS loss is a bit too much. And even then, i dont feel they should have any DPS loss at all in the first place, but instead focus on making the jobs harder, and the reward for "harder to do rotations" is to have ease of movement as your reward.
The other jobs have "easier" rotations, but lack "ease of movement" as compensation. (also not complete loss of movement, or fights that heavily reward movement either) Also, BLM and SMN have way too much movement freedom that always lines up with boss mechanics. Which is another can of worms to further make things unfair.

The rest i mostly agree with, except phrased in ways thats a bit misleading, but still true for whats said.

sorry if this came of as disagreeing with you, i didn't actually want to shot your argument down, i was mostly trying to illustrate just where this current decision falls flat.

aside from that like i said i'm mostly in agreement with what you wrote, things that "make it harder to do well" or at least reward doing well more than doing whatever is in essence the way to go, at least i believe it is.

i do however think that people that right now scream the loudest about physical ranged superiority will just keep doing so, like i'm 100% sure say bard could have to juggle 7 different non aligning cooldowns and end up with a variance even higher than blackmages and people would still say "bard easy, free movement". mind you, thats not a problem with any argument you made, its just how the forums often look if one reads through them.

[Myon88]

If you (bernkz) are at lvl 45 you will be playing some content now with lvl 50 much higher i lvl tanks that will out do you. So i wouldn't stress it if its happening now things will likely improve.

That reminds me, I just recleared ucob for fun a couple of days ago, and the gunbreaker beat out the bard for 4th place in the golden bahamut phase. They were only a hundred or so dps behind on twin/nael too.

Granted, 70 content is 'leveling content' in a sense too, and has its own quirks with how some jobs gain access to key skills that others have to wait till 71-80 for. Still doesn't change how bad it feels to be the bard in this situation though. Ultimates are evergreen content that are technically still relevant, so it's not all fluffy leveling dungeons where you're level 40 going up against downsynced level 80 tanks or something, it's happening in the most important battle content in the game too.

[CKNovel]

I'll avoid pluging back in the debate "Should ranged do more damage", the main points have been figured out.

As for ranged, you are a new player to the game and currently leveling. Your kit is not full and tanks may have more gear/better aoes for the moment.
FF XIV is a teamgame and your job is appreciated depending on what you bring to the group.

Here's what your job will bring at lv80:
-Permanent Crit/DH/Damage to the group (except yourself) depending on the song you play.
-Nature's Minne, a cooldown that increases healing on a target.
-Battle voice, 20% direct hit for nearby allies (20s)
-Troubadour, a 10% damage reduction for nearby allies and yourself (15s)
-Head graze, a silence that can (rarely) be useful in raiding

Each jobs from different role, Tank, Healer, Casters, Melee, Ranged will bring a 1% bonus to all stats for the group.

rDPS/DPS wise, rangeds DPS received a buff a little while ago that allows them to not in the "DPS so low you can replace them" box.

I believe in WoW, it was always the opposite. Melees hard a hardtime and ranged were always on top. Be ready for the opposite during this expansion.

[bernkz]

Thanks all for the detailed replies, it really helps and the community is great here!

I'll avoid pluging back in the debate "Should ranged do more damage", the main points have been figured out.

I believe in WoW, it was always the opposite. Melees hard a hardtime and ranged were always on top. Be ready for the opposite during this expansion.

Exactly! I came from WoW which I played for years and whilst ranged classes have their own set of problems they do not suffer in DPS and can be very comparable to the other 'best' DPS classes. Which is the whole point of a DPS class in the first place... I do see why FF14 does what they do with a bard class - it's semi support class and it does have some nice buffs as outlined by the @CKNovel but I just don't feel like the buffs compensate enough for the DPS which it lacks. That's just my opinion and I won't open this can of worms again, haha.

This is exactly why I considered a Machinist instead of Bard which is supposedly a more pure DPS class. Yet it's outperformed by basically everyone according to the stats which I found online, usually picked last too, so yea. That's the annoying part - if one wants to go ranged DPS route there does not seem to be a viable enough solution in FF14 right now...

That being said, I've been doing a lot of instanced content lately and really working on my rotations and AoE damage and been outperforming almost everyone almost all the time with DPS especially when there's more than 1 target, haha. Some ninjas were double the DPS behind me at times due to their bad rotations... So it seems improving my rotations, albeit low level did help a lot too. Occasionally there will be this higher level synced person tank or summoner/black mage who outdoes me by a large margin which now I understand should be happening due to leveling and gear/sync stuff.

Let's see if I will be able to keep that up with all the skills at higher levels xD

TLR I'll stick with bard for now and work to perfect the rotations, if I will reach lvl 80 and still feel at the bottom of the DPS. I think I will work on an alt like a samurai or summoner just to have it leveled and give it a chance... Since FF14 seems to favor those classes for DPS. Hopefully, 5.3 will bring more balance to my favorite ranged classes, whether it will be with the support side of increased DPS, haha.

[Eliadil]

The thing with "ranged", and bard more specifically is that we went from an expansion that had a really high synergy meta (Stormblood basically made Bard and Dragoon a must-have due to how absurdly well they performed together) to Shadowbringers where the devs nerfed almost every synergy or party buff available because they were afraid of the same scenario happening again. As a result some jobs went from top tier to bottom of the barrel, but one thing to note is that every job is still playable and viable in every kind of content.

Just so you know, Bard was really powerfull for the last Ultimate content (well on the first two phases at least, but they're usually seen as the "hardest" phases of the fight), just because double target dot is a thing. And it's recent content, meaning you never know when a job can really shine. The current tier of Savage Raids are also very unforgiving for Melee DPS due to forced downtime and mechanics forcing you to move away from the boss... I could use a ton more examples of ranged dps bringing something that can really help your party. They just will not carry in terms of "rough" damage numbers.

Tbh, I'd even argue that playing a high damage job isn't the most important thing. Seeing your current level, you maybe have figured this, but mechanics are way, way more important than being at the absolute top of the dps chart. A bad samuraï that dies all the time is more a detriment to your team than you not being able to do 18k dps on Bard. And this will not change especially since you have one class that excels at doing mechanics, and you have some party buff that are definitely worth using (never underestimate the power of self dispell, or 20% healing buff on your tank).

And for your current issue with being on the low end of the damage range, I wouldn't worry too much about it overall. If the difference really gets noticed and becomes a handicap, Ranged Physical will get buffed quickly.

[CKNovel]

TLR I'll stick with bard for now and work to perfect the rotations, if I will reach lvl 80 and still feel at the bottom of the DPS. I think I will work on an alt like a samurai or summoner just to have it leveled and give it a chance... Since FF14 seems to favor those classes for DPS. Hopefully, 5.3 will bring more balance to my favorite ranged classes, whether it will be with the support side of increased DPS, haha.

That's the spirit, maybe you'll find something to your taste in the casters/melee. Otherwise, it's better to play a job you enjoy rather than a job for its performances.
Balance doesn't tend to change a lot but we're halfway the expansion so we'll probably have to stick with current ranged DPS for another year until next expansion.
5.3 might brings a bit but I doubt it'll be higher than the 4% increase ranged got in a previous patch, considering they did not buffed anything in the ranged role since.

One advice: You don't need to create an alt character, you can max all the jobs on a single character, it will even be faster. Might have been interpretating "alt" in the wrong way, but we never know.