I really don't understand the use of the word "Warrior" in this world

[Cleretic]

I wouldn't have looked twice at a boring ranger bow job, frankly, and I don't know why people keep pushing for that idea without proposing something more to actually make the concept, yaknow, interesting. Something that exceeds just using a weapon and moves into fantasy heroism. Even warrior, perhaps the most "basic" job design in XIV, has some elements of berserker and geomancer in it to give it some additional magical flavor and better carve out a job fantasy niche. A bow-wielder by itself is not much of a job fantasy.

I get the complaint, because... well, some people's favorite Avenger is Hawkeye or Black Widow. There is genuine appeal to the guy that can keep up with crazy superpowers because he's Just That Good. I have a friend who actually hates the Shadowbringers Machinist rework not because of playstyle, but because it moved so much of Machinist away from 'good at guns' and into 'has Batman's utility belt'. I'm not even sure what I'd want to recommend to someone who wants to play a 'naturally good and that's it' character in this game. Monk, maybe, if you ignore the outright Hadokens? Samurai, but basically only if you love Kurosawa enough to accept the theatrics as theatrics instead of magic?

I think the main problem comes from the fact that, in games like this, it's actually really hard to stretch the concept of 'just that good' into the entire skillset. Samurai only barely gets there, Monk falls short, and those two actually have the easiest job since it's just a melee skillset, and there's been a lot of media that's found ways to stretch those. You go into something like a range toolkit? Every FFXIV job has to have thirty-something powers and animations over its lifetime, how many things can you give someone with just a gun before you run out of ideas? Hell, way back I used to play City of Heroes; they only had nine powers per moveset, no required mechanic gimmicks, and all of comic books to borrow from, and their Archery and Assault Rifle powersets still had to get wacky. (Specifically Archery had to pack some Green Arrow-style trick arrows, and Assault Rifle had to make its default model a 'Frankengun' with multiple barrels, a flamethrower, and a grenade launcher.)