Is ranged support dps needed as a job type anymore?

[Sequora]

It used to have a real support niche that justified its playstyle, now it's just an arbitrarily easy job you put your weakest raid member on, so their mistakes hurt you the least.

Because most of the melee jobs are super challenging to play. Not having 100% uptime does not mean it’s difficult.

[Myon88]

Because most of the melee jobs are super challenging to play. Not having 100% uptime does not mean it’s difficult.

Yeah that's what I'm saying. And it's completely by design too, the current state of the physical ranged (and now summoner as well) is a result of very explicit and targeted simplifications to their gameplay. They were dumbed down, to put it bluntly.

Of course this has affected the melees too, after successive expansions of tweaks to timers, positionals, and combo breaking, they too are a far cry from their original difficulty. I'm not sure about 'super challenging'. The phys ranged in Heavensward were more difficult to play than melees now.

Melees just started from a harder baseline so they haven't really felt it yet. Maybe they will have their watershed moment once 1-2-3 combos get the PvP autocombo treatment.

[Thi]

Yeah that's what I'm saying. And it's completely by design too, the current state of the physical ranged (and now summoner as well) is a result of very explicit and targeted simplifications to their gameplay. They were dumbed down, to put it bluntly.

Of course this has affected the melees too, after successive expansions of tweaks to timers, positionals, and combo breaking, they too are a far cry from their original difficulty. I'm not sure about 'super challenging'. The phys ranged in Heavensward were more difficult to play than melees now.

Melees just started from a harder baseline so they haven't really felt it yet. Maybe they will have their watershed moment once 1-2-3 combos get the PvP autocombo treatment.

I believe you missed the sarcasm in the post you responded to.

On a scale of 1 to 10 of challenging gameplay, rpdps is around a 1 and melee is around a 2.

Balancing around job difficulty is a joke in this game because none of the jobs are actually difficult, especially with the trend of simplifying everything even more.

Also pvp autocombo won't make a job any easier than it already is. If you can't press 3 buttons in a proper order then every job in this game is too difficult for you.

[Cabalabob]

I believe you missed the sarcasm in the post you responded to.

On a scale of 1 to 10 of challenging gameplay, rpdps is around a 1 and melee is around a 2.

Balancing around job difficulty is a joke in this game because none of the jobs are actually difficult, especially with the trend of simplifying everything even more.

Also pvp autocombo won't make a job any easier than it already is. If you can't press 3 buttons in a proper order then every job in this game is too difficult for you.

It’s not about the difficulty to play, it’s about the fact melee and caster are a harder playstyle and that means they should do more damage.

Look at it this way, let’s say they add gauss barrel back to the game BUT they don’t make it increase your damage dealt, it just adds a cast time to all your GCDs, why would a MCH ever press that? Conversely, let’s say BLM gets a button that removes their cast times and there’s no downside to pressing it and SAM gets a button that makes all their attacks ranged with no downside, why would they ever NOT have those stances on?

Do you see how that design makes no sense? Do you see how adding and removing range and cast times needs to come with some kind of benefit/drawback?

Again, the gap between dps could be smaller and MCH definitely needs to be higher, but the gap does need to exist for jobs that have range and mobility. The alternative would be bringing back the gauss barrel and they got rid of that for a reason, people picked up the ranged role for the free movement not to be a caster.

[Keiisuke]

It’s not about the difficulty to play, it’s about the fact melee and caster are a harder playstyle and that means they should do more damage.

Look at it this way, let’s say they add gauss barrel back to the game BUT they don’t make it increase your damage dealt, it just adds a cast time to all your GCDs, why would a MCH ever press that? Conversely, let’s say BLM gets a button that removes their cast times and there’s no downside to pressing it and SAM gets a button that makes all their attacks ranged with no downside, why would they ever NOT have those stances on?

Do you see how that design makes no sense? Do you see how adding and removing range and cast times needs to come with some kind of benefit/drawback?

Yes, we are free to move, but you have to remember that we are already paying this tax by dealing with mecanics in many high end content that can wipe the whole raid that melees or casters don't have to care about. Isn't this enough in terms of drawback ?
And when you see BLM or Monks coming with braindead rotations like the paradox one and still doing shit ton of damage, excuse me but this is not what I call a hard playstyle.