There's a huge Physical range shortage in PF and Statics

[Quuoooote]

snip

cont.

The state of the game right now has put the phys ranged role in a state of unbalanced limbo, where they simultaneously have to deal the least damage for balancing purposes while also having as little justification as ever to deal the least damage. I doubt we're ever going to go back to the old systems from prior expansions with more focus on party utility, so I think the best thing SE could do for the role is design fights with more of a focus on phys ranged movement versatility. If raids had more mechanics that needed someone to bait AoEs far away for example, then obviously phys ranged would have a purpose in fulfilling that need for the party. It's a bit disappointing that our greatest advantage and DPS handicap, free movement, is largely squandered by fights where we park on the boss' ass with the party the whole time.

[Elleia]

cont.
If raids had more mechanics that needed someone to bait AoEs far away for example, then obviously phys ranged would have a purpose in fulfilling that need for the party.

This would be a good start, but it would also show just how punishing the ranged tax is. If you compared a phys ranged DPS doing a bait mechanic to a melee who has to break away and miss GCDs to do the same bait mechanic, you'll find that the melee still dwarfs the DPS of the phys ranged, even with all the missing uptime.

Ranged tax is fine as long as the phys ranged can stand equal or close to the other damage dealers on fights with forced high mobility/ bait mechanics. If you still do more DPS overall having a melee or caster bait than you would bringing a phys ranged to handle the mechanic, then maybe the ranged tax isn't so fair.

[elioaiko]

I was going to fill for a friend's static this raid tier because I notice there was a shortage and was going to take a break from healing.

And while there's issues with the gameplay of each phys. ranged dps, that's not really the part that dissuaded me from it. I actually enjoyed the role during ShB but even then they had the same overarching issue: what is their purpose?

In SB, there was only MCH and BRD and before HW, there was only BRD. In SB, BRD was really strong as it was the only ranged to have party buffs and the job was rather engaging. MCH was scuffed but it wasn't horrible, it was complex and had its own niche, but like it wasn't horrible–just meh.

After the introduction of ShB and DNC, BRD lost its identity of being the party buffer as that was now DNC's strongest suit. And selfish dps was MCH. No one wanted the mid-tier DPS. This brings us to the main problem, aside from party buffs, how do you balance them around being party buffers? DNC and BRD are constantly fighting for who's better and the meta generally picks whichever has the better dps and buffs which rn is still BRD with DNC not too far behind.

Mobility tax hasn't been relevant for awhile as a lot of content doesn't require a dedicated bait dps for mechanics as most of these mechanics require all ranged to do it or it's random. Melee and caster not having uptime is false. BLM literally has two charges of Triplecast, SMN's kit is nearly insta-cast and RDM's combo has three insta-cast GCDs. Most of the melees had 90% their positionals removed and boss hit boxes have gotten so big that the ring is literally in your face.

What hurt Phys. Ranged the most was losing their support skills. Refresh was used for healers and casters for MP assistance. OG Tactician and Refresh was used to mama ge the whole team's aggro. Palisade helped tanks with autos.

What I'm saying is because of the removal of MP assistance and aggro management, phys. ranged has been reduced to crippled DPS fighting for whoever does the most damage/gives the most. Without meaningful support mechanics, a lot of support jobs lost their identity and are cannibalizing each other in balance patches.

I went back to healer because at least I'm keeping the team alive and mitigating DPS, because playing phys. ranged doesn't feel impactful.

[Elleia]

What hurt Phys. Ranged the most was losing their support skills. Refresh was used for healers and casters for MP assistance. OG Tactician and Refresh was used to mama ge the whole team's aggro. Palisade helped tanks with autos.

Yeah. I miss this stuff the most. Using palisade at the right time in UWU and if I missed it, the tank could die. Planning out when to use refresh for my healers. Tactician at the start of pulls after dumping my entire burst, taking aggro if I failed to use it.

They removed all of this and phys ranged jobs didn't really get anything to make up for it. Now they just feel like a weak DPS with some party damage boosts and a party mitigation tool (which casters also have in virus).

[WiccaP]

I may be in the minority, but i miss the old turret system. I loved the rook and bishop, mainly for flavor, but also because it felt like I was a machinist not a gunner. I personally think the devs should go back and look at the old model when MCH were more useful and try and revamp it to fit current game. ALso the whole Adps vs Rdps doesnt make sense to me. When we talk about balancing issue, you dont look at a single piece in a vacuum(adps), you look how everything fits together as a group, so Rdps would be the model I would base balancing on and seeing where things are falling short

[Connor]

I think it is possible to balance both Bard and Dancer as ‘party buffers’. Extremely difficult, but possible. Probably.

Basically as long as what they do is ‘the same but different’ it can still work I think. Like if Dancer had stronger buffs for single target but Bards were all aoe and weaker to compensate.

Or they could go the way of having different limitations on the support (I.e Bards have to stop spamming Jump to sing again, Dancers have to do the dance input part which is essentially a cast time you can move with). Or making it tied to different job gauges / resources or whatever to ‘bottleneck’ them in different ways for balancing.

I want to say there’s a case for making one more defensive/utility buff oriented and one more offensive/damage buff oriented. But then that doesn’t really work because unless the ‘utility oriented’ one is literally game-breaking it would always be inferior to the ‘damage’ one. Even if it had Raise and a heal gcd it’d still be considered massively inferior to the ‘damage’ one, even assuming exactly the same personal dps (because of rDPS). For them to make a situation where a ‘utility’ and ‘dps’ buffer are both valuable they’d have to both provide roughly similar rDPS (with dps one edging out of course) which is nigh-impossible. If not just because defensive utility like healing and raising can’t be quantified in rDPS because the value is technically both 0 and infinite depending on whether you have to actually use it lol (it can single-handedly save a wiping party as you resurrect more dead bodies than Jesus Christ, or it can offer absolutely nothing the whole fight except a dps tax and a wasted ability slot because nobody died lol)

I think balancing Bard and Dancer around having ‘the same but different’ buffs is really the best way for them to get balance between them. And of course following from that they should be around the same dps as a Dancer, with rDPS being what determines who’s higher so there’s an actual reward for using support abilities. I kinda wish they’d say ‘screw’ it and take ranged dps back to how they were in Heavensward or Stormblood. Obviously that won’t happen though because they were so disgustingly OP it broke the game lol.

Although, I find it hilarious that SE justified deleting all the ranged role support because ‘we don’t want to force players to take a ranged dps’…

then they add a system that specifically forces players to take ranged dps (role bonus)…

[elioaiko]

Although, I find it hilarious that SE justified deleting all the ranged role support because ‘we don’t want to force players to take a ranged dps’…

then they add a system that specifically forces players to take ranged dps (role bonus)…

Exactly, they wanted to end job synergy but you're soft required to take a ranged dps anyway. It makes zero sense. Having each ranged have MP assistance tools helped healers manage their MP consumption and recover post-death. Idk taking support out with nothing to compensate for it is making the whole role feel...devoid of importance.

[Kabooa]

Exactly, they wanted to end job synergy but you're soft required to take a ranged dps anyway. It makes zero sense. Having each ranged have MP assistance tools helped healers manage their MP consumption and recover post-death. Idk taking support out with nothing to compensate for it is making the whole role feel...devoid of importance.

You're required to take one of every role.

It's called a tuning lever, and you use them because it gives you more leeway into the design space. Come 7.0, maybe the casters suck. Maybe the melee suck.

Whatever role happens to suck at the time, the role bonus is an incentive to adhere to composition they balance around.

[Rika007]

You're required to take one of every role.

It's called a tuning lever, and you use them because it gives you more leeway into the design space. Come 7.0, maybe the casters suck. Maybe the melee suck.

Whatever role happens to suck at the time, the role bonus is an incentive to adhere to composition they balance around.

The issue is, that is on top of the decision that the ranged dps should always be lower because of their 'mobility' and 'uptime' advantages. Advantages that mean nothing when fight design doesn't capitalize on them. So no matter what, ranged DPS are always the one that suck. So it's not a tuning lever. It's parents enforcing their kids to play with the one loser no one else likes.

Which no one wants to be.

[Grimoire-M]

The issue is, that is on top of the decision that the ranged dps should always be lower because of their 'mobility' and 'uptime' advantages. Advantages that mean nothing when fight design doesn't capitalize on them. So no matter what, ranged DPS are always the one that suck. So it's not a tuning lever. It's parents enforcing their kids to play with the one loser no one else likes.

Which no one wants to be.

Similarly, you're not required to take advantage of the role bonus or the top DPS jobs to clear. Most of the week 1 clears had a Ranged DPS and Summoner in them, who were all occupying that 'bottom of the barrel' area.

I still feel most of the ranged should be buffed, but the degree to which I would like to see it varies based on their strengths. I'm okay with Dancer being where it is now.

The real problem is I think Ranged DPS just aren't that fun. They're good for learning/callouts but I don't think they're particularly enjoyable to master in their current states, nor do they offer practical and tangible utility outside of literally Curing Waltz and Samba equivalents. They have access to crowd control, but it's never used more than once a tier, at this rate it averages once an expansion. I want fights that make that utility matter just as much as their mobility does. But the last mechanic that I can even think of that did that in a tangible manner was the tether during Level Checker in O11S. And Summoner could still do that with DWT back then.