The unrewarding state of physical ranged

[Lastelli]

Forgot we didn't mentionned SMN at all due to Melee focus.

I'd say current SMN is as mobile as HW MCH/BRD while bringing good support to the team.
The heal provided is not amazing, but it was enough to beat E4S with no healers and some Paladins.
Addle works almost everywhere, I believe.
Res is good for prog but there was always a ton of debate about res that shouldn't be taken in account in job balance.

The SMN is deeply flawed but still gets 40% of unpunishable instant casts. I believe that we spend more than 60% of current savage being static, when bosses are targetable.



Obviously the first reason is the nerf. And all melees received a buff
But I believe this tier is quite melee friendly, allowing melee to have an easier uptime and E11S is harder to gauge due to all the downtime. Jobs like NIN seems to enjoy these to refresh their cooldowns.

Yet, the SMN remains at a healthy spot. SQEX might have nerfed it a bit too much or they should have made a choice between buffing other jobs and nerfing the problematic one.
But it's still healthier than ranged.

SMN has approximately 55% of its GCDs instant, but most of these instant cast are fixed because of weaving purposes or they're locked behind the demi-primals. Comparing smn to phys ranged dps in terms of mobility is definitely wrong. I'd say both RDM and SMN are at a very good spot right now and pretty much equivalent both in rdps and mobility. The big elephant in the room is actually BLM, as even with the indirect nerf due to the weird itemization of the last patch, its still quite a bit more powerful in terms of rdps. My point was that metioning SMN as and exemple of perfect job is simply wrong now. It's outshined by all melees and BLM and the only reason it's still so popular is because most casters use it for prog instead of BLM and BLM has a totally different BIS, so casters just stick with what they started with.
Anyway, please don't compare current jobs to old jobs, it's really pointless. HW was also a time where balance was completely out of the window.

As for phys ranged, I still don't get the complain about rdps. Even if all three of them get buffed by 3-4%, nothing would really change. You'd still bring one and only one. Buff them too much, and you bring 2 instead of a melee, which is clearly what the devs don't want to see. I agree on the rest though. Phys ranged dps just feel too shallow, unrewarding, incomplete, as if you still need to unlock some major key skills that give some closure to their rotation. All of them. But rdps is not the reason for it.