Is SE making more and more anti-melee fights?

[Katie_Kitty]

This is not the case of just dealing with forced down-time/ temporary dis-engage, but the frequency and the increasing amount of times even normal trials are getting into. An example is trials like Suzaku, where the immediate disengage is far worse for melee, not to mention the constant movement impairs melees as well than anything else, and from there to E8s, which is also heavily melee mechanics in its execution, while even Alliance raids are getting into it for a long time now.

It's often noted how much more frustrating playing melee is, alongside there seems to be a general increase in more and more people going ranged DPS. Including anecdotal evidence of more statics looking for melee as well.

I never understood this meme where melee complain about every fight. Yes, there are mechanics that inconvenience you sometimes. Casters deal with that, too. On the other hand, however, there are no fights for casters like e3s and e7s for example which are designed to be as easy as possible for melee.

Seriously, think about it. Those two fights? You never, ever have to even think about leaving melee range for any reason. Now imagine a fight that never required a caster to move ever. Sounds really easy, right? Well there you go, you get one of those fights in every single tier this expansion, except just for melee instead of anyone else.

[Vyrerus]

Melee have it kinda rough, don'tcha think?

Ehh, they've always been rough on melee and so has the playerbase. Back when the game was first starting, melee even had a stigma attached to it. I.E. If you play melee, you are dumb and likely to die.

What's rough about playing melee is that they can be punished in two ways. Denial of positionals and denial of uptime. Because all Melees have combos with time limits to execute the combo, if you lose too much uptime you also lose DPS directly by losing your combo. This is the entire reason for "uptime strats."

Whereas casters have some issues too, they generally do not have uptime issues, as all casters have movement options baked into their class, however bad those movement option attacks maybe... or however not bad they may be... *stares at Xenoglossy and sighs*

They've taken to alleviating it somewhat for melees by having fights that require no positionals, along with the addition of True North. Still though, every other patch, there's going to be fights where melees just don't get to have near perfect uptime, even with uptime strats. In more casual content, like dungeons, it's perfectly fine to just eat the damage, depending on your gear.

I never understood this meme where melee complain about every fight. Yes, there are mechanics that inconvenience you sometimes. Casters deal with that, too. On the other hand, however, there are no fights for casters

There are no fights for caster like that, because caster is still, in effect, ranged. They just have cast bars to make up for their beefier weapon damage and potencies. And they all have instant cast spells to make up for having to move. The only ones that really suffer damage wise are Healers and BLM. RDM and SMN basically suffer almost none(though obviously in x2 melee comp RDM has to think about when they dash in). And this is pretty universal. They also never have to care about positionals at all, in any fight, ever. So the two things that melee gain from these, "Spoiling the melee only." fights is two things casters always have anyway. Full uptime granted and no positionals.

[Jin-]

Ehh, they've always been rough on melee and so has the playerbase. Back when the game was first starting, melee even had a stigma attached to it. I.E. If you play melee, you are dumb and likely to die.

What's rough about playing melee is that they can be punished in two ways. Denial of positionals and denial of uptime. Because all Melees have combos with time limits to execute the combo, if you lose too much uptime you also lose DPS directly by losing your combo. This is the entire reason for "uptime strats."

Whereas casters have some issues too, they generally do not have uptime issues, as all casters have movement options baked into their class, however bad those movement option attacks maybe... or however not bad they may be... *stares at Xenoglossy and sighs*

They've taken to alleviating it somewhat for melees by having fights that require no positionals, along with the addition of True North. Still though, every other patch, there's going to be fights where melees just don't get to have near perfect uptime, even with uptime strats. In more casual content, like dungeons, it's perfectly fine to just eat the damage, depending on your gear.




There are no fights for caster like that, because caster is still, in effect, ranged. They just have cast bars to make up for their beefier weapon damage and potencies. And they all have instant cast spells to make up for having to move. The only ones that really suffer damage wise are Healers and BLM. RDM and SMN basically suffer almost none(though obviously in x2 melee comp RDM has to think about when they dash in). And this is pretty universal. They also never have to care about positionals at all, in any fight, ever. So the two things that melee gain from these, "Spoiling the melee only." fights is two things casters always have anyway. Full uptime granted and no positionals.

Noticed this as my BLM hit 80. I know it's a fresh job but already feels way way harder to make consistent damage compared to Samurai, Ninja or Red Mage

[Waterscape]

Noticed this as my BLM hit 80. I know it's a fresh job but already feels way way harder to make consistent damage compared to Samurai, Ninja or Red Mage

Blm is a hard job to play and optimise . I main BLM and imo the more spell speed you have the more comfortable you will be playing it

[Katie_Kitty]

There are no fights for caster like that, because caster is still, in effect, ranged. They just have cast bars to make up for their beefier weapon damage and potencies. And they all have instant cast spells to make up for having to move. The only ones that really suffer damage wise are Healers and BLM. RDM and SMN basically suffer almost none(though obviously in x2 melee comp RDM has to think about when they dash in). And this is pretty universal. They also never have to care about positionals at all, in any fight, ever. So the two things that melee gain from these, "Spoiling the melee only." fights is two things casters always have anyway. Full uptime granted and no positionals.

In high-end content, RDM gameplay revolves entirely around squeezing movement in between casts using dualcast, this idea you have in your head that RDM somehow does not suffer at all from being a caster is hilariously wrong. Additionally, you are completely ignoring their melee combo which they actually use quite a bit and which forces them into melee range as well, it isn't just the gap closer that they need to think about. Black Mage actually has more on-demand movement tools (aetherial manipulation is an amazingly powerful instant teleport to anywhere a party member is at,between the lines is useful as well, not to mention the fact that their most powerful spell has no cast time at all and can be STACKED two times for use whenever it's needed. That's not even mentioning triplecast). Summoner is barely a caster at all but even they spend a significant amount of GCDs hardcasting ruin 3 (assuming they aren't total garbage at playing the game).

[Vyrerus]

In high-end content RDM

I didn't say it doesn't suffer at all. It suffers less. It has more of an ability to move with less loss, there are no leylines to keep track of, and half of all of its casts are instant, allowing for 2.45~ seconds of movement every other cast, in addition to Corps a Corps and Displacement getting reset with every Manafication. The melee combo itself is all instants, on higher speed use and recast, with their strongest spells at the end also being instant. Lots and lots of movement with the only real penalties coming in if melee combo has to be held due to melee oriented mechanics in a meleex2 comp or in the case of ranged mechanics, but you still don't lose any uptime until you have to interrupt a cast, which occurs less than it will on any other caster.

It even has the option for Enchanted Reprise now, which is yet another instant, that is only mildly below the average potency of their spells with cast times... none of which have the cast time of Fire IV. Fight timers and optimization per situation, this is an excellent tool that is available for high movement segments of fights, allowing nearly the same potency at the cost of pushing back the melee combo and potentially costing you one, but it is head and shoulders beyond what Melee have when they move out of melee range.

Yes, SMN should be hard casting Ruin III as much as possible, but it has 15 seconds every minute where that becomes instant. It then has instant casts in the form of pet attack GCDs and Ruin IV procs that further push it into being instant casts about half the time. Also has to use Ruin II/IV during Demi-Egi spawns to maximize their damage output. All in all a lot of freedom where it suffers less, just like RDM, but suffers even less than RDM because it does not have to move into melee range, but it should get those book thwops in if there's nothing in the way.

There's nothing off about what I said. Casters have it easy, especially RDM and SMN, especially when compared to BLM and Healers. They all have less rigid requirements for them than melee do, by design, with better uptime options. The only time melee have better uptime is when a segment of a fight requires high movement without moving the boss, such that getting off a single cast between moving is impossible/very difficult. These moments are seldom.

In ARR, there were 5 Ranged jobs and 4 Melee. Later 5 and 5 when Ninja was added. Then in HW it skewed to 7 Ranged, 6 melee. Then in Stormblood 8 Ranged and 7 melee. Now in SHB, 9 Ranged and 8 Melee. The game itself has always been biased towards ranged jobs. There have always been raid groups that only take 1 melee(3 cause tanks, but 1 DPS). Our NA/EU playerbase sees a rise in ranged usage because a lot of people have gravitated towards inefficient stratagems that have melee disengage from anywhere from 10 seconds to as much as 30 and conclude that melee are inferior for the fight.