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.

[Melichoir]

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.

It's not punishing melee so much as forcing the DPS overall to participate in the fight beyond pew pewing the boss. It just feels bad because compared to older content or non savage content, it feels like the game is being nasty to melee. That older content or non savage stuff has melee the potential of near 100% uptime with minor problems. Now, boss fights are saying you gotta get off boss for a GCD or two relatively often.

Its fine overall.

[Nayout]

decided to reduce the complexity of their rotations .

I think someone remembers the rotation of the Bard very bad lul

[Soge01]

The only melee class I'd say that's been suffering is Monk while the rest are just fine. But honestly, once you get Monk down, problems in raids aren't much of an issue anymore. :/

[Ayuhra]

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.

SE is making more and more anti-Black Mage fights.

[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.

[LittleImp]

I think someone remembers the rotation of the Bard very bad lul

I raided with someone off-and-on who was among the top 5 BRD players in the game during HW and some of SB.

The current incarnation of the job is a joke compared to the previous level of nuance involved in optimizing.

[Sylve]

This tier in particular has been pretty punishing towards melee, and some of the fights are pretty rude to casters as well. 3 ranged comps are pretty common. The game has been notably crawling with PhysRanged lately, and people have even been caught using third-party software to automate their rotations. >.>

Bring back Physranged castbars!

I'd love a longbow or rifle wielding physical ranged that used a mix of cast bars and instant shots. That'd be pretty fun in my opinion, But then again, I'm that kind of whacked individual who enjoyed cast bars on Bard (Not MCH, made no sense there. I just head cannoned the cast bars as extra strength draws on Bard bows)

On topic though! I'd be inclined to have some sympathy towards Melee were it not for the abundance of "Melee uptime strats" that revolve around punishing the Healer so the melee don't have to move.

[xxvaynxx]

As someone that has been melee through out my whole FF life.
I can tell you, it's a yes and no.
But mostly~ a yes.
Speaking from savage. They usually tend to have fights that totally F**k over melee and fights that are decently fine to keep uptime.
Like es5 is fine for melee, aside the stupid wait for him to charge. Es7 is also fine since the boss is just a dummy to beat up.
But then we have MASSIVE middle finger to the melee like 6 and 8 until people made uptimes but even still. Pretty unfair to melee.

It's why double melee is finally dying off and its better to go double caster now.
Because its really not worth the effort to cater to your melee when casters already do equal or even more amount of dps with less galaxy brain uptime strats.

Even if you say there has always been more ranged(which there is). Its even more now because as the OP said, there is big lack of melee's if you try to form a static.

Idk who's designing these savage fights but they need to play a melee.
Really, the only reason to play melee is if you like to get up close and move around a lot. Playing melee now in days is harder not even because the jobs itself but because the fight designs...but you know what? that's actually why it's fun to play melee.

[Dogempire]

I dunno, if you ask me one of the more fun elements of playing a melee job is seeing how greedy you can get with your gcds.

Sure it's annoying having to disengage for mechanics, but there's a reason that melee skill potency is much higher than ranged.