Ranged DPS jobs - disappointing?

[Vyrerus]

snapple

Bard in ARR was running in the DPS category, against all other DPS. Role competition is something that is contemporary and did not exist back then, in the form that is current. Back in ARR, for quite a bit longer than one week, BRD outperformed both melees and BLM quite easily, giving SMN a run for its money. It also had the healer LB3, allowing it to reverse wipes. On top of that, the only group wide buffs meant for more than one party member as well as the support songs. It was at such a high level of damage and utility that people would rather take two bards than diversify classes for the limit break speed.

MCH only ever caught up to BRD, never surpassed it or took its spot. In the beginning of Stormblood they still shared the limelight, but when SMN was buffed, it was MCH that was thrown out of the comp, not BRD.

DRG was not always meta. It was kicked out high end raiding during Final Coil due to its low Mdef, not being able to activate positional combos in T11, and losing out in every way to Ninja and Trick Attack. That's why it was given Battle Litany and buffed twice going through the end of 2.5 into Heavensward. BRD only needed it in party to parse high, not to be a top tier party slot pick.

BRD has always been a top tier pick. It can wane for a while, if you'd even really call its current state waning. The situations brought up in thread are places where the game wasn't rebalanced due to how SE operates, not how the job actually performs in contemporary content.

[Akiudo]

Bard in ARR was running in the DPS category, against all other DPS. Role competition is something that is contemporary and did not exist back then, in the form that is current. Back in ARR, for quite a bit longer than one week, BRD outperformed both melees and BLM quite easily, giving SMN a run for its money. It also had the healer LB3, allowing it to reverse wipes. On top of that, the only group wide buffs meant for more than one party member as well as the support songs. It was at such a high level of damage and utility that people would rather take two bards than diversify classes for the limit break speed.

bard in the very beginning of coil was too strong, that i won't deny but this was also literally the very first real literation of this game, it got nerfed hard (and rightfully) which set us up in a way you wanted exactly ONE OF EVERY CLASS THE GAME HAD TO OFFER (well, blackmage OR summoner, but that was only because smn was a last second addition).

during the last two tiers of coil alone we literally had a boss were you were kiting adds basically without break, something neither blackmage nor smn could ever have done, aswell as a boss with an add phase where one add only could take magic damage and one only physical which clearly was designed on a level of 3 physical damage dealers/1 caster, also mana was way more tight than today and the only class that could give mana was bard, saying fights weren't designed with a physical ranged (i.e. bard as no competition) pick as a given back than is ludicrous . Sorry but why do you think we got mch as dps after ninja (and smn, if you want to respect that it was more or less an afterthought) ? you think that was pure chance we didn't get another caster ? or a "physical ranged" without support capabilitys that simply did a shitton of damage and nothing else ? we got what we did exactly because bard had no role competition, that role may have been "class that can give mana to heals if they run low" but it sure as hell was role on its own. saying there where no roles just because square didn't hand out a marker that said "this is your physical ranged, he does physical damage in range" really is delusional.

the heavensward bit about about mch only every catching up also ain't true, it pretty much was a back and forth between both classes, its just nearly no one was playing mch, which leads into stormblood and yes, the point where even i admitted bard was probably as its most op (aside from a simple "there really is no one that can give mana aside from bard, i.e. arr), however at this point we had exponentional crit scaling as to differentiate it from direct hit, and dragoon on top of giving piercing down had a group crit buff, which was even more usefull for bard as the way bard mechanics worked (worked, not work anymore) for one profitted way more from crit than even any other class and two bard had a permanent crit buff (which at 3/8 of the time its now active would need amounts of crit not nearly reachable again unless we go on for 6 or 7 raidtiers per addon) which is also why in the end again bard beat out mch, exponentional crit scaling, amplyfied even further by dragoon, the one class that not only had the piercing down but put up a group crit buff for good measure. (and in this case absolutely necessarely because no one at this point needed bard for tp, and mana one could handle if carefull aswell so yes, at this point it was about dps and nothing else)

the last bit again is just as petty as the first time, if you strife for balance than any class being in a bad spot is one to many, thats like if warriors now lost shake it off and did 400 dps less than they do right now and everything people would say about it was "oh well, they were meta so long and often, just let them suck completly it doesn't matter"

[Vyrerus]

b

Bard never got nerfed. The only thing that got nerfed in ARR was Subclass actions. Brought down from 20% to 10% to try to help DRG not get stomped on so badly by MNK, BRD, and NIN. And no, this didn't set it up so that parties sought 1 of everything for any reason beyond Limit break gain. What happened was they buffed other classes to catch them up, particularly MNK, BLM, and DRG.

The only adds BRD ever had to kite in Coils were Renauds in Turn 7, and either healer or SMN could do this, though SMN, BRD, and SCH were the best picks due to instant cast spells/skills. SMN was rather fine at it, actually.

As for why we got MCH next, well yes, obviously we got MCH to try and get a class other than BRD for people to play since it was such a strong pick. It's not coincidental at all, and you've misunderstood my point. What's funny though is, they made every ranged into casters in Heavensward, basically to blunt just how absurdly powerful BRD had been, along with taking away its access to healer LB3(though this was partially at the playerbase's demand, since it was an insanely popular job and many people wanted to be able to DPS LB on it). With making them all casters, they were all casters and played similarly, despite different trait quirks. It wouldn't be until later that SE would decide that there needed to be explicit distinction between ranged physical and ranged magic. Of course the implementation of casting was the first time BRD suffered, pretty much the only time it has suffered, but it was rectified within one major patch, and until then as long as you simply ignored the casting stance, you still did damage comparable to other DPS, albeit slightly lower.

It's delusional to say there was a back and forth between MCH and BRD. BRD stomped MCH for almost all of Heavensward, along with every other DPS, and like I said before, once MCH did get good, it only rose up to boot the casters out of the comp, not BRD. Which it should've been competing with, but hey, at the time different jobs regardless of role = faster LB, so it wasn't competing back then either.

The reason it's ok to let jobs wane is to get people to play other ones. That is a goal of the devs. They rarely do it with nerfs, and handle it by buffing other jobs. What my point is, is that they don't cater to old content pretty much at all, and there's no need for them to cater to specific DPSes in older situations. Job balance is like a pendulum, and no job ever gets the stage forever.

Though it's funny that you mention WAR, because that was a case where they did see it as too powerful and directly nerfed it, only to get massive backlash about it. Which is understandable, because direct nerfs to a particular job suck. And that's something BRD has never experienced.

Anyway, the point of the thread is done, and so am I.

[Akiudo]

snip

see, nerfing cross class actions still hit bard about the hardest, and while i won't deny smn or scholar could do the renauds i wouldn't even deny a dragoon could kite them, just that it would be ideal. fact of the matter is there was a fight where the ability to freely run in circles while attacking was a clear cut advantage in a way one at least could argue it was expected to be done that way. maybe it wasn't, but by that logic maybe the puddles during black smokers on levi are supposed to be handled by melees running very weird circles ? i mean who knows. also as you seem to love t11, the add phase was very clearly assuming you had 1 caster and 3 physical dps, yea you totally could do them the adds with 2 casters but that mostly meant your other 2 dps working over time and your casters being mostly afk for half the add phase.

and just for funsies, if i buff every single tank but dark knight its still effectively the same as nerfing dark knight as far as competitveness goes.

also again, i didn't even say bards "role" was physical ranged so thanks for pointing out that this distinction came later. bards role was "class that can give mana back" which is exactly why it was highly sought out even when dragoon was just unviable do to a chronic case of dropping dead on unavoidable aoe.

aside from that, i didn't ask what happened the last time warrior got nerfed, while i will wholeheartily say what happened back than was stupid beyond belief, the point i was making wasn't "how would the playerbase take this" but that the argument you make against bard "it was strong so long it doesn't matter if it sucks now" can really be made for most classes.

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smn so often was the very literal top class , what does it matter if we let it suck for a patch or two ?

war was either without competition (only two tank roles for two slots) or clearly the at least second strongest tank (and therefore a given meta pick) so why can't we make it even worse ? like right now its arguably one of the weaker tanks (things get muddy if you look at more than just dps) but tank balance indeed is close enough that basically no "normal" group will really prefer one over the other, so why not nerf it by another 400 dps to let it suffer for a bit ? i mean it was strong for so long, that won't hurt the class.

also dragoon right now is pretty much middle of the pack level, like the 3 weaker melees are all neck and neck anyways, why not nerf it for a bit ? i mean sure, it wasn't meta for exactly one tier of coil because it just couldn't survive as you so helpfully pointed out, it was still meta for 8 out of 9 raid tiers until shadowbringers so really, why not bring it down a notch ? monk never was that good for that long, surely it needs some time to shine so lets buff it so it does outperform samurai by 300 dps while we're at it ?

also scholar was a default pick for arr and basically all up to the end of stormblood due to alternating suckage of ast/whm (well, mostly whm suckage once ast really got rolling), can we please make it suck for a patch or two ? like not "being the worst pick" but "being so clearly the worst pick it doesn't even have its own niche where its preferable" level bad ? i mean it was a default pick long enough.
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if jobs are well designed and work, i.e. have a compeling "class fantasy" and smooth and engaging gameplay people will use it, if a job lacks these thing than things like damage will not change that.

people that just hate the mch class fantasy won't play mch because bard sucks.

or just look at the melees. there are nearly as many dragoon parses as monk/nin parses combined even though drg technically is the weakest out of these 3.

If a class is well designed you don't need to trick people into playing it by making it deliberatly op/another class underpowered by comparison, what you mostly get out of this is people that keep on playing a class (be that bard, dragoon, redmage,whitemage during the height of ast supremacy, paladin for all of heavensward etc...) that feel shitty about their chosen class clearly falling short. the percentage of people that not only change their class but actually start to prefer that class without deeper level of changes is to small to be worthwhile as people that do this for absolute min maxing concerns will just switch back the moment the tide changes, the rest will stay where they are and feel left behind because their class is losing out compared to others.

[Ramura_Sono]

if jobs are well designed and work, i.e. have a compeling "class fantasy" and smooth and engaging gameplay people will use it, if a job lacks these thing than things like damage will not change that.

Except people will absolutely ignore a lack of compelling class fantasy and gameplay issues if a job has high damage. 5.05 Monk attests to that. Even HW Bard itself while having gameplay that was hated by a vast number of people saw heavy usage due to it's high damage potential. The exact opposite is far more true. A job slightly lacking in damage will never be used even if it has a compelling class fantasy or engaging gameplay. Monk's gameplay in HW was highly engaging. You still almost never saw it due to it's damage potential being low. Players in this game have always cared more about the damage potential of a job than anything else. Look at the threads from 5.0 asking for Bard to get it's song buffs back because, "muh class fantasy". What happened when the buffs were reinstated? We had threads immediately following up complaining about the subsequent potency nerfs that were implemented to balance the rdps increases the songs brought. It was never about class fantasy, or compelling gameplay. It was an attempt to get damage buffs veiled behind "class fantasy".

If compelling class fantasy and engaging gameplay will see people use a job then why aren't Bards and ranged in general asking for improvements in these areas? Even when they ask for more support abilities, it is almost always for support of an offensive nature. Damage potential is where players have always put the most weight when it comes to job selection.

Bard has been top of the totem pole for nearly 7 years. They'll survive not being top tier for an expansion. Other jobs have survived being in a far worse place for far longer.

[Vyrerus]

smh

If it did hit BRD harder than the other DPS, then it deserved it. BRD was overpowered.

No, fallacious. If DRK were leagues above the other tanks, then buffing the other tanks to catch up would not impact its performance. It just might make less people feel the need to play DRK.

BRD's role was utility DPS. Ideally it funneled its MP into Foe's Requiem, not Mage's Ballad. It had a love fest going with the other two ranged DPS.

You've put words in my mouth again and again. My argument is that the game doesn't need to retune BRD or ranged just to make sure they aren't ever outgunned in old content, and that ranged have never been and never will be a weak pick.

WAR's original competition was PLD, as original WAR had no mitigation, and many people wouldn't take WAR to raid before 2.1. Heck, people would even quit dungeon if they saw a WAR sometimes.

I never said to nerf anything. I've only said that it is OK if sometimes jobs sit on the back burner for a bit. P.S. It was 6/9.

When 2.1 hit MNK became insanely good until the start of Heavensward. Then they buffed its timers and damage. Heck, in Shadowbringers they actually did do what you joke about here. At SHB start it out DPSed SAM by a good bit with the Anatman opener and SAM not having Shoha/meditate stacks.

SCH did get some edging at the start of Stormblood when its shields were weaker than Noct Ast. They rectified that within a patch though.

It isn't so much about people just using a class or not, it's also about other people wanting to include that class in the parties they make. When one job is used too much for too long, the devs make a conscious decision to try and change things, so that there will be more variety, and so that people will stop being biased against certain jobs.

[Claire_Pendragon]

Except people will absolutely ignore a lack of compelling class fantasy and gameplay issues if a job has high damage.

Id say a significant portion, but not the majority.
ppl who prefer classes based on identity/aesthetics are more likely to be the players not doing endgame content. (which is the majority of players)
and the majority of endgame players are the type of ppl who pick classes based on effectiveness.
so if you look at those doing endgame content, and see a large number of ppl playing BRDs for effectiveness, its not reflective of the majority of BRD players as a whole.

This of course has always had its share of exceptions, but both casual players, and endgame players have different requirements from the classes they play. So in your example, its important to note that differences in DPS does matter, because the majority of endgame players care about DPS a bit more than aesthetics. (Also doesnt mean they dont wish aesthetics and performance wouldnt line up, cuz they obviously would like to have both.)

Not that this really means much in your conversation, but felt it should be clarified.

[Akiudo]

Except people will absolutely ignore a lack of compelling class fantasy and gameplay issues if a job has high damage. 5.05 Monk attests to that.

except monk even back than was the least played dps so i kinda fail to see where that worked. however even if it wasn't back than, it is clearly NOW, just take a look at the logs, there are 2,5 as many dragoons as there are monks, so what was won by that ? people still don't want to play monk, should we now make it 20% stronger than every other dps so players are forced to play it ?

A job slightly lacking in damage will never be used even if it has a compelling class fantasy or engaging gameplay. Monk's gameplay in HW was highly engaging. You still almost never saw it due to it's damage potential being low. Players in this game have always cared more about the damage potential of a job than anything else.

highly engaging to whom ? simply throwing out a statement like this doesn't make it true, also mnk back than had a way healthier population compared to nin/dragoon than it has now, looking at logs of alexander during the corresponding patches there mnk both during gordias and midas was about used at a rate of 0,65-0,7 parsed monks per dragoon, that did drop down to slightly above 0,5 during midas but at this point the synergy meta was going at full gear for the first time, something which luckily and rightfully has been broken down. btw you know whats funny ? theres no super duper synergy meta going on right now, yet at current dragoon outparses monk at a rate where we have about 0,4 monks per dragoon, even though dragoon in itself is way weaker (or not nearly as meta ) pick today than back than.

Look at the threads from 5.0 asking for Bard to get it's song buffs back because, "muh class fantasy". What happened when the buffs were reinstated? We had threads immediately following up complaining about the subsequent potency nerfs that were implemented to balance the rdps increases the songs brought. It was never about class fantasy, or compelling gameplay. It was an attempt to get damage buffs veiled behind "class fantasy".

bard asked for "support capabilitys" back, mind you that was in a patch where physical ranged actually where promised buffs . what it than got was a completly passive buff, one that did nothing but raise dps while at the same time their personal dps got nerfed so hard they are now weaker than before in any content other than max level raids and even then the "damage buff" (which again, all physical ranged were promised during the ll before) they received was so small bards in fact got weaker if you look at parses in relative terms.

if you use the "aggregate using normalized scores" setting on fflogs you will see that bards actually DIPPED the literal day the patch happened. so yea, bards are totally just entitled, complaining when you are in fact promised buffs and when it happens everyone but the one class outperforming literally everyone get in fact buffed more than you do leaving you off (in competitive terms) weaker than before is totally unreasonable. sorry but yes, bards asked for support capabilitys back,you know, maybe a button you actually have to press like foes requiem, or even utility support like palisade. heck, as refresh would be redundant with the amount of mana people have today how about we finally get the hp regen song our bard teacher used during the level 40? class quest things like that, that is support (and actually usefull to the group outside of just dealing more dps) , a pure "dps aura" is just that, dps, and therefore completly worthless if personal dps can't keep up.

If compelling class fantasy and engaging gameplay will see people use a job then why aren't Bards and ranged in general asking for improvements in these areas? Even when they ask for more support abilities, it is almost always for support of an offensive nature. Damage potential is where players have always put the most weight when it comes to job selection.

aside from "they totally do" ? dancer is pretty much beloved by everyone who plays it and has a very healthy playerbase, even though aside from speedrunning its actually also pretty weak, mch actually only got a lot of plays out of it with the current rework, the second major rework it had mind you because before that it just didn't click with the playerbase and they made this clear. and we have another "make bard a BARD" or "split up bard into bard and ranger" thread once every two weeks.

aside from that , support has to be meaningfull to be worth something, its the very nature of the game this mostly boils down to damage. take redmage, while smn clearly benefits from overperforming right now (and redmage works the worst with double caster due to embolden) still a lot more people play redmage than blackmage right now, even though dps wise blackmage performs better at basically every level, however its support works out to make them close enough paired with redmage seemingly simply being more liked.

Bard has been top of the totem pole for nearly 7 years. They'll survive not being top tier for an expansion. Other jobs have survived being in a far worse place for far longer.

the only class less used right now than bard is monk, a class thats rightfully screaming for a rework since early-mid stormblood and that is both in a "general" aswell as a speedrun environment, pair that with the fact that bard gameplay is generally still on the level of "well received" and maybe even you can see that theres a difference between "not being top of the totem pole" and "being so far behind you can't even find a real niche where you can justify being taken over anyone else"

also, to get back on the original argument about gameplay. i never said you absolutely can't get people to play a class by making it op, i said the effect is less than people assume (and it is, otherwise we wouldn't nowadays have a higher dragoon/monk ratio than back when the synergy meta first kicked in) paired with 90% going away the moment a class is not clearly over or underpowered anymore. the player who only switches a class to play the strongest will just do the same the moment this new class isn't strongest (or so much stronger the gap to his chosen class simply can't realistically be bridged) anymore.

theres also the question of "whats the use?" who wins if you "force" people to play say monk by making it the clearly strongest melee? all that happens is that people now play monk, complain even louder that it sucks to play and jump ship the second it gets brought down to normal, you really think this is a desirable design goal for anyone ? yes, getting people to play a class to basically test it out does make some sense, but that doesn't change that if the core is lacking that will not help in the long run, you can see this clearly with monk numbers over time and to a lesser extent with blackmage currently.

If it did hit BRD harder than the other DPS, then it deserved it. BRD was overpowered.

except i never denied that, it still hit (and therefore nerfed) bard harder than the rest, paired with buffing of the other dps classes at other points leaves me with what i wrote about drk, that the net result of nerfing one class or buffing every single competing class is the same in relative terms. if i buff everyone but you i may aswell hand you a nerf, you may feel worse about the nerf as you would feel about the buffing of everyone else, but in a competitve sense it would change nothing.

[SpeckledBurd]

When 2.1 hit MNK became insanely good until the start of Heavensward. Then they buffed its timers and damage. Heck, in Shadowbringers they actually did do what you joke about here. At SHB start it out DPSed SAM by a good bit with the Anatman opener and SAM not having Shoha/meditate stacks.

SCH did get some edging at the start of Stormblood when its shields were weaker than Noct Ast. They rectified that within a patch though.

It isn't so much about people just using a class or not, it's also about other people wanting to include that class in the parties they make. When one job is used too much for too long, the devs make a conscious decision to try and change things, so that there will be more variety, and so that people will stop being biased against certain jobs.

If the devs made a conscious decision to buff or nerf jobs based on what's been meta, you'd think Dragoon would have been short strawed at some point. The only time they were really weak was Final Coil which they immediately responded to with buffs and QoL, outside of that Dragoon has consitently the highest performing melee for the majority of the game.

As the Monk example it was strong in Final Coil so by your logic it spent the entire next two expansions in the gutter, then it got buffed for Eden Tier 1... only to land back in the gutter again. Historically Monk was incredibly weak on Heavensward Launch so they buffed Monks timers and attack damage but by the end of Heavensward it was still the weakest DPS job in the game by every measure due to TP problesm, aggro problems, still too weak personal damage, and no party support. Monk was only ever a third string to Dragoon and Ninja in Stormblood. Making Monk OP at the start of Shadowbringers was probably an accident too considering the devs didn't anticipate the Anatman opener or PB being used to spam Leaden Bootshine. Even if they were intentionally trying to boost Monk plays, they also failed completely since 5.05 really only boosted the jobs play numbers in the very early Raid progression scene and it fell back to being the least played job in everything except TEA. Overall though it's been one of the weaker jobs for the games lifespan, not a job that they've cycled in and out of prominence. Dragoon has remained in prominence pretty much entirely with Ninja sharing the spotlight for two expansions, and currently Samurai sitting there with it.

The only instances where the devs have actually buffed jobs when things were otherwise balanced has been to change player perception and every time it's been a failure on some level. They buffed Balance to 20% damage on Astrologian at the end of Heavensward after it was too weak at launch and undeprlayed in Midas, and they mady pitiful 1-2% buffs Monk and Machinist received at the end of Stormblood when no one was using them because they were terribly designed. In the former case it was unnecessary because perception of Astrologian had already begun to shift, so they shattered the game balance, and in the latter case the expansion was over and the slight buffs weren't enough to coax people to play them anyway.

[bernkz]

Wow guys, this thread is really blowing up, haha. Thank you so much, everyone, for your input! I have learned a ton from some detailed replies, wanted to reply to all individually but it would take me 30min just to get all the replies copied, lol.

Anyway, in case if someone is interested - I did stick with BRD up to 55. I spent a good amount of time figuring out the mechanics and the rotation to maximise the potential. And from time to time (especially AOE) I was at the top of the DPS in my parties. But when SAM/SMN/RDM joined in and they were somewhat decent or same gear like mine, I would be outdone. Single target was way worse and often found myself at the bottom.

Luckily I joined a FC in Spriggan (STORM) and the community there is awesome. Coming from WOW and getting used to being shouted at by the 40year olds who live at their parents basements, I see why FF14 community is praised about! People really go out of they way to help.

I've been encouraged to try MCH and promised I won't be disappointed. Long story short, I levelled it to 52 in 24h and so far I'm loving it way more, I really enjoy the burst windows (I have very low ping) as no matter which other DPS class is in my party I out damage them by a large margin, haha and I did 20+ instances with almost all the classes in my party. I out damaged even SMN or SAM which I'm really impressed by! Had a couple of RDM with better gear and 10+ levels and still did better, haha.

I studied the rotations and if I do it perfectly, no one can come on top with the DPS, so far anyway... Gonna be interesting to see where I will be when I'll be stacked with more serious/advanced players who have good gear and also care about their DPS. But I can see a lot of potential with a MCH. More importantly, I find it way more fun to play which I think is very important.

Laslty, I'm not sure why people say MCH is simpler than BRD? It has more damage skills and some OGCDs require thinking and planning to execute, burst window is short too so doing the rotation correctly is harder than putting 2 dots and keeping them, then rotating the songs with my bard. Again I didn't reach max level on either of the classes so maybe things change at higher levels but at this stage I find MCH more complex than BRD, as BRD is actually, personally annoying to keep the dots on, rotate songs, that's it. Anyway, I'm a beginner and just talking from what I personally seen in a couple of weeks of play - I'm sure I'll get way more into it down the line and my feel/opinion may change but that's what it is now. Cheers all! Thanks again for all the replies!