Is ranged support dps needed as a job type anymore?

[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.

[Grimoire-M]

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.

That’s kinda ignoring the fact it’s not just 1-2-3 and done. Melee have just as much cooldown management as any other DPS. The fights themselves matter too. P4SP1 is probably the first fight I’ve ever felt the need to spreadsheet any job on just to approach useful numbers, and it’s because the combination of the tempo, the tight DPS check, and the consistent alignment of mechanics with raid windows forces you to hit a useful percentage of melee and caster uptime before a clear is even possible. I’d argue that it’s easier to reach that check on a ranged DPS but still demanding in general.

If fights slowed down a smidge and built in long stretches of ranged bait mechanics and more opportunities to use cc like interrupts you’d probably feel more impactful as a role. That’s what I feel is missing from encounter design. Your utility as a ranged DPS should matter more than other roles.

[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.

[Anvaire]

you say that like other jobs are hard to play almost all jobs in ffxiv are pretty easy to play at a pretty decent level hell summoner can make a single button macro chain that is good enough to get purple parses.
Some might be a bit harder to master but that is not enough reason for some jobs to do several thousand less damage at the higher end just cause they are " support jobs "

Actually this is a fallicy. That video of the summoner "solo macro" is a lie. What is actually happening is a series of macros that copy bars over to make it seem like it is a single macro. The same thing could be accomplished on any job tbh.

[CKNovel]

That’s kinda ignoring the fact it’s not just 1-2-3 and done. Melee have just as much cooldown management as any other DPS. The fights themselves matter too. P4SP1 is probably the first fight I’ve ever felt the need to spreadsheet any job on just to approach useful numbers, and it’s because the combination of the tempo, the tight DPS check, and the consistent alignment of mechanics with raid windows forces you to hit a useful percentage of melee and caster uptime before a clear is even possible. I’d argue that it’s easier to reach that check on a ranged DPS but still demanding in general.

I was playing tank, used 6 juicy ranged attack during the first clear.
It's actually the first content that requires melees to use melee attack to not lose a single GCDs.

But even then, I'm sure you could elaborate strategies to have a full uptime... Pretty sure the share can be done by 3 players now.
The difficult part that remain is the raid buff alignement, due to a much earlier clear, you now can't delay otherwise you'd lose 1 window of raid buff.

But that's optimization.

[MistyMew]

Agree with op limit break suggestion

[Gaethan_Tessula]

Actually this is a fallicy. That video of the summoner "solo macro" is a lie. What is actually happening is a series of macros that copy bars over to make it seem like it is a single macro. The same thing could be accomplished on any job tbh.

The original guide video was quite clear that the way to actually make it work, w/o major losses from clipping and drift, is to use hotbar copying. The new guide is even more clear, discussing the matter from the beginning. There's no "lie" beyond people failing to watch the entire video, misunderstanding what they're seeing, or being hyperbolic when discussing it.

And no, it's not something that could be done on any job, not to the same degree of success at any rate. The present SMN one-button macro chain needs a specific range of SpS to not innately drift just from the few places they couldn't prevent clips. Thus, any job with semi-random procs (BRD, BLM) or more nuanced optimization can't be one-buttoned to the same degree of effectiveness. People could always macro their rotations - the real issue exposed with summoner is how close to the skill ceiling one can get with a near-automated (just add mashing) setup.

[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.

[Urielparadox]

I don't think any of yall actualy inderstand how damage works so let's break this down. Dancer and bards, raid dps(which means the buffs they provide to the team) currently make, esp dnc incredibly strong. When in a "bad party their rDps suffers, they can easily pass up other teammates in damage, on the huge end a dnc partner to a good Sam, and the other party supports, can put dancers rDps at just .3 dps below a blm and Sam, 2 of the strongest jobs in the game, bards are only .4 dps below Sam's and blm. They are actually both slightly stronger than rdm, and barely weaker than the strongest classes. The only difference is they support and buff the party, so if your team members aren't very good then it makes your bard/dancer look bad. We had a mnk, with dnc partner being in 7th place on the agro list with no deaths, in p3s. That makes the dnc look bad and on the next pull the dnc adjusted. Their damage and party buffs are in the best places they have ever been and because of this they are extremely useful in every fight, how do they do all this damage by support their party. So yes they are support dps and they are amazing at it.