Is SE making more and more anti-melee fights?

[Gemina]

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.

Pretty much my thoughts. I hear people say, "downtime sucks playing a melee!" and I'm over here thinking, "uh yeah, that's what makes it challenging, engaging, and fun!"

I've spent so much of my DPS days just in the melee department that when I tried ranged combat, being able to move while causing damage and not having to worry about positionals just felt weird to me. I was quite bored to be honest but have yet to bring a ranged into higher level stuff. But I just don't see that role providing the same enjoyment I get from melee DPS.

[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.

[Lauront]

There's always been a lot of ranged DPS players. Being ranged with no cast times is super safe, and since one was added with the expansion, of course there's going to be lots. I don't think it's that new, it's just more noticeable with each new ranged DPS added.

People seem to generally be afraid of playing melee, so much that even when they are they'll refuse to ever use LB even when there's no reason to save it. I'm not sure how much the fight design impacts how many ranged DPS there are.

If they're mindful of their performance, there's a reason as to why they may hesitate to use a LB. Beyond that, in casual content it is often expected to leave LB3 for the healers, because of how variable people's performance can be. It's not so much out of fear of playing a melee dps that I leave the LB, but just in case the healers need it. There's been a few occasions where everything is fine, I use the LB3 and then the group finds innovative ways to kill itself just after, and you get the snarky "what a shame we don't have healer LB3". This in turn leads to it being reserved for the last few % of the boss's HP, at which point it may be forgotten about/the boss may melt too fast. Generally I still use it ASAP but I can understand why people might delay it, particularly in a bad group. It's the fact that it competes with the healer LB3, IMO, that can be the biggest disincentive in 8/24 man content, plus you're not personally rewarded for it on logs, so better to have someone else do it.

Anyway, personally I don't think it's the safety of ranged roles that makes them more popular than casters or melee - ranged pay a "tax" for this in their raw damage potential. At least at higher levels of difficulty, damage output, utility and how fun the job (=subjective) are seem to make the bigger impact, if we go by the number of parses per job alone. Granted this is a limited subset, but it's also the only area of the game where difficulty plays much of a role. IMO, it's more to do with the fact that two of the melee jobs are not available immediately, and the two which are have the perception of being slow/clunky until higher levels and are not as popular as the archetypal swordsman. The same issue applies to ranged but the archer "job fantasy" is a popular one. I think any perception of there being lots of ranged can also be down to people leveling alt jobs etc. I know I leave the ranged for dead last.

[ForteNightshade]

The reason why the game punishes you for having too many melee is because otherwise there would be no reason to bring ranged. It's got nothing to do with being "anti-melee." Fights are designed around a maximum of 4 melee jobs including tanks and melee DPS, and that's the way it needs to be. It's the same reason why phys ranged is the weakest role, because otherwise why bring melee and casters? It's balance, nothing more.

Except range mobility has seldom been utilized. Take E7S, for example. If you're running a double melee comp, one of the melee will have to disengage if they both have the same color. There is no strategizing uptime or moving at the least second. You just lose two GCDs because RNG. If that mechanic were bait-able then you could argue it exists to justify the range. But it isn't. You literally bring range for the 1% party bonus and no other reason. Without that buff, the range would be locked out constantly, especially in Savage and Ultimate. Them being brought rarely has anything to do with their mobility.

Pretty much my thoughts. I hear people say, "downtime sucks playing a melee!" and I'm over here thinking, "uh yeah, that's what makes it challenging, engaging, and fun!"

It's fun when you can strategize ways to avoid downtime. It isn't when mechanics force you off no matter what you do. Nor is it fun Melee have zero in the way to compensate for disengaging as their range attacks are generally laughably weak.

[FF16Necromancer]

Isn't that the whole point? To make you think when to play safe and when to greed.