Is SE making more and more anti-melee fights?

[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

[Shurrikhan]

I mostly jest;

Bowmage was essentially a misguided answer to the fundamental balance issue created by having a set of jobs that don't really interact with fight mechanics on a rotational level.

The most recent answer has been to simply make those jobs do the least damage, though they've also unfortunately decided to reduce the complexity of their rotations as well. I personally think it would make more sense to have unlimited mobility coupled with a really complex kit that's hard to maximize on a purely rotational level.

Bowmage was, to me, an unpolished mess. But, it was still the most fun I've ever had on Bard in quite a few situations, and still felt like a Bard, to boot. I enjoyed playing chicken with AoEs and my procs feeling doubly meaningful.

I just think the animations should have been clippable a bit earlier (or the cast should have ended a bit sooner), as not to punish higher-latency players, a second Straighter Shot proc made savable, and the period for which we were locked into WM replaced with a (much shorter) period for which we could not attempt to reenter WM if we left it.

I was seriously hoping they'd move the mechanic from an contradictorily named overlappable Wanderer's Minuet on Bard to a Full Draw mechanic on Archer and would have loved to see what a split job, e.g. Ranger, could have made of it.

[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

[Jonnycbad]

Some fights favor melee and some fights are punishing to melee (which favors ranged). I guess this is balance. Melee have ways to mitigate downtime though with ranged GCD, aoe combos, ninjutsu, SSS, etc.

[Tracewood]

I've felt Ninja does okay in more ranged, but not by much. However, I share the sentiment.

Memoria Misera has some mechanics were you HAVE to be away from the target otherwise you die or can indirectly cause a wipe. Struggled with this fight on my 494 Samurai, but once I started to gear MCH to 480, I was able to beat it with relative ease. Helps to have a good party, but our comp had one melee as opposed to two-three. DRG, SMN, RDM, and me as the MCH was our DPS and the uptime was insane. The poor DRG couldn't get off LB3 at the end, and when he did, he died due to random AoE during the animation.

Only punishing move I've seen for ranged are the sudden "get under the boss AOE" after you spread out to avoid a previous AOE. MCH doesn't have an instant "rush to the target" moves so I have to pray I can pop sprint and make it before I get hit.

[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).

[Nanchi]

The only meele that truly suffers in literally any fight is Monk. And anyone who thinks that SSS is on the same level of any other meele "disengage" skill hasn't touched Monk. Absolute garbage most of their kit produces and every fight except e7s has been a total pain. Then again that is my opinion since my static doesn't do uptime strat so that's just an increase in suffering. Also cutscenes and forced disengage are absolute torture.

[Brill_]

The only meele that truly suffers in literally any fight is Monk. And anyone who thinks that SSS is on the same level of any other meele "disengage" skill hasn't touched Monk. Absolute garbage most of their kit produces and every fight except e7s has been a total pain. Then again that is my opinion since my static doesn't do uptime strat so that's just an increase in suffering. Also cutscenes and forced disengage are absolute torture.

Agreed. What makes it really bad is when your own party makes it worse(ie, range taking the back slots for clock positions forcing melee to attack up front). I decided in 6.0 I don't want new skills, just give me more true north stacks.

[ForteNightshade]

I play phys ranged because I lack the skills to play melee at an acceptable level, but the competent melee players have no issues. It takes a certain level of competency to play melee with uptime, positionals but the good players can do it. The last 2 tiers really do a good job of weeding out good and bad melee players.

Except it really has little to do with being good or bad. If you're a PF hero, you pretty much will be forced into Ilya, which is an awful strat for uptime. Both E6S and E8S also have unavoidable downtime regardless of skill. One grip I have is the whole argument surrounding downtime is this is supposedly the trade off for dealing higher damage but the Casters, yes, even Black Mage, barely suffer at all by comparison and all three deal higher (sometimes considerably higher) damage. Which means there isn't actually any trade off. Casters are just strictly better. Another problem is the horrendous range abilities Melee have. Ninja can somewhat mitigate this now that Murdras are on the GCD but all other range attacks are either laughably weak (Piercing Talon, Throwing Daggers), break your combo (all of them) or are nonexistent (Monk). For reference sake, Piercing Talon is so bad, it's actually better for the Dragoon to do literally nothing if they're in the middle of their core 1-2-3 combo, and to spam their AoE combo otherwise.

All in all, they need to seriously boost range attacks and/or consider making the melee stronger if heavy downtime intends to be a thing going forward.

Some fights favor melee and some fights are punishing to melee (which favors ranged). I guess this is balance. Melee have ways to mitigate downtime though with ranged GCD, aoe combos, ninjutsu, SSS, etc.

Nope. Ranged GCDs are complete garbage save backstep Enpi; and SSS is only worth using if the downtime is long enough. Both Dragoon and Monk will have points where they can do absolutely nothing, and it's optimal. AoE combos should not be your go to option for a range attack. Why even have Piercing Talon then?

[GenericMagus]

I also forgot to mention the recent dungeons have also started getting into the anti-melee mechanics even more as well, such as the recent 5.3 dungeon as well, which is starting to be a trend brought forward by this xpac.

The 2nd boss of 5.3 dungeon is also one that heavily punishes both melee if you're unlucky to queue up with each other for example.