Is ranged support dps needed as a job type anymore?

[Reinha]

Their non-damage support skills aren't needed like they used to be, their mobility is less and less out of line with other jobs and SMN and RPR really challenge the notion that ranged jobs are the easiest to play. There isn't any reason why they shouldn't be competitive with other jobs that offer utility.

[Reality23]

Right I personally don't think so a least not from a dps standpoint.
Whit the way square makes raid bosses these days.
They are being made to be as melee friendly as possible.
Along with melee dps having attacks they can do from range.

Casters have plenty of instant cast spells or ways to make them instant cast.
To help with movement alongside dots and such.
Most melee and caster dps also has some kind of raid utility/support skill.
Be it damage increase or reduced damage taken.

So there is really no reason for BRDs MCHs and DNCs to be gimped damage wise.
Just cause they bring raid buffs and a high up time since most " pure " dps jobs.
Have high uptime and hell some of the " pure " dps bring more utility.
Then some supposedly ranged physical support dps. ( cough cough MCH )

Also can we please just ether have adaptable LBs.
Where if there are multiple engaged enemies it dose split aoe damage to all targets.
While if there is only one target it dose all the damage to a single target.
( it would work like this for all dps)
Or just remove the aoe LB and just make all the dps LBs single target.
Since the aoe one is dam near useless and is only really used when a melee lb is not available.

No, it hasn't been needed for a long time. Originally when modern MMORPGs were first starting to get going with EQ and WoW there was a quaternary in play as opposed to a trinity. That was when ranged "support" was a thing in the form of a crowd control specialist. In the original Everquest this was typically an enchanter who could lock down mobs, with pulls being intentionally designed so in order to win you'd have to lock down so many members of each group, keep them locked down, and fight the group in a specific order. This continued into WoW to an extent where certain classes would have spells like Polymorph (the sheep O' legend) to do the same thing, and you had specific classes able to lock down specific types of mobs. Depending on group content you could wind up doing different fights very differently depending on what CCs you had in the party.

At any way MMOs moved away from that and in over a decade now I guess I don't think there has been any real expectation of routinely using CC, never mind having a class built specifically to facilitate that. I do remember in very old school Molten Core playing as a mage and having my main job being to keep specific mobs polymorphed, more so than DPS (that and the almighty decurse spell needed to deal with certain boss mechanics). Today I think things are actually a lot easier in a lot of MMOs (even if I am slowing down) as people can more often tunnel vision, and typically just focus on rotation, a bit of movement, and whatever mechanics a boss might have in a certain phase.

[RaZz0r]

So everyone agrees that its essentially a relic from the past that really has no real place in the modern game.
Lets see if it gets spoken about in the live letter or maybe some tuning changes in 6.1 to reflect them slowly moving away from it.
This is probably pure copeium and there is no way at least not this early maybe next xpack but one can at least hope.

[Lesan]

Dancer has gotten shat on by EW, Bards provide a more constant group buff, and pay way less 'Support Tax' than DNC. Support Tax on DPS needs to get removed.

[Xiaoki]

So everyone agrees that its essentially a relic from the past that really has no real place in the modern game.
Lets see if it gets spoken about in the live letter or maybe some tuning changes in 6.1 to reflect them slowly moving away from it.
This is probably pure copeium and there is no way at least not this early maybe next xpack but one can at least hope.

Yes, it is a relic of the past that has no place in modern MMOs.

No, not a chance in hell it will be addressed any time soon.

I see posts constantly about how people are fine with the "support tax" and that they deserve it. Kind of like Stockholm Syndrome of class design.

[CKNovel]

With ranged attack not being a straight loss, the tax just becomes more and more ridiculous.
SMN is a physical ranged in gameplay but has a much stronger support than a support DPS.

MCH has even less support than RPR, BRD has niche support and DNC somehow gets the best treatment.

Nothing justify ranged tax since ShB:
-You would still have 1 caster, 1 melee, 1 ranged and a flex spot. Always has been
-Due to mechanics being quite easy to melees and casters having more mobility, double ranged never brought any advantages. It's the opposite, a second ranged is always shotting your group in the foot.
-Yes, the skill floor is lower. But there is no job with high skill ceiling other than BLM who remains far from complex.
-The whole situation just forces a reward ceiling on ranged. The jobs are not as efficient as melees by design.

For the sake of simplicity, we'll say the ranged are 90% efficient compared to a melee job.
That becomes quite frustrating when you decide to gear up said job but you know you'll only get 90% of the value.
This is also frustrating when a melee can afk or forget an important mechanic of its job but still outdps a ranged.

It's old design, it should have died 3 years ago when mana song and tp song were removed.

[deadman1204]

Notice its only ranged who say the free movement is pointless and shouldn't be counted against them.

Try having to stand still and do mechanics when the fights are HARD. Sure you have them memorized now and are over geared.

[ty_taurus]

No, it hasn't been needed for a long time. Originally when modern MMORPGs were first starting to get going with EQ and WoW there was a quaternary in play as opposed to a trinity. That was when ranged "support" was a thing in the form of a crowd control specialist. In the original Everquest this was typically an enchanter who could lock down mobs, with pulls being intentionally designed so in order to win you'd have to lock down so many members of each group, keep them locked down, and fight the group in a specific order. This continued into WoW to an extent where certain classes would have spells like Polymorph (the sheep O' legend) to do the same thing, and you had specific classes able to lock down specific types of mobs. Depending on group content you could wind up doing different fights very differently depending on what CCs you had in the party.

At any way MMOs moved away from that and in over a decade now I guess I don't think there has been any real expectation of routinely using CC, never mind having a class built specifically to facilitate that. I do remember in very old school Molten Core playing as a mage and having my main job being to keep specific mobs polymorphed, more so than DPS (that and the almighty decurse spell needed to deal with certain boss mechanics). Today I think things are actually a lot easier in a lot of MMOs (even if I am slowing down) as people can more often tunnel vision, and typically just focus on rotation, a bit of movement, and whatever mechanics a boss might have in a certain phase.

Honestly, I think it would've been cool to have a dedicated support role in a similar fashion to FFXIII's Synergist and Saboteur. Each of these jobs could ONLY buff or debuff respectively, but were considered very important, and you'd often swap your DPS roles out in exchange for these to ready yourself for damage bursts. Obviously XIV isn't constructed in a way that would support this, but had we included this role, that wouldn't theoretically be an issue.

This almost happened as well, but the dev team worried that not enough players would want to play a dedicated support, and understandably so. That's the real issue that prevents support from being a thing--that requiring a 4th role for buffs and debuffs would exacerbate queue situations, which were particularly worse during the ARR days when PF wasn't a thing.

[Thi]

Notice its only ranged who say the free movement is pointless and shouldn't be counted against them.

Try having to stand still and do mechanics when the fights are HARD. Sure you have them memorized now and are over geared.

Done it in the past, ran caster in previous raid tiers. Its not any harder if you use two braincells and preposition.

[Doragan]

Giving a Raise ability to some Melee and Ranged doesn't sound like a bad idea imo. That way, maybe all ranges of jobs would be able to compete numbers wise.. if jobs were ever balanced on that factor, that is. With SMN up and downs, I'm not sure it mattered too much.

-Due to mechanics being quite easy to melees and casters having more mobility, double ranged never brought any advantages. It's the opposite, a second ranged is always shotting your group in the foot.

After seeing so, so many times p4s p1 enrage at 50%, yeah, I'm definitely agree. The game is balanced to clear with all comps supposedly.. but not all of them are able to, clearly.