Why are Ranged DPS so unfun to play?

[Payotz]

Refresh, the point at which it became a free use-on-CD ability, was never fun. It just held a large portion of your party's agency/"fun" hostage.

It has niche use in recovery, the same as raises on a SMN and RDM, as it'll fill up a recently raised healer
It'll also have a niche use in prog in general because healing won't be optimized as much, especially with changes like Thin Air for Whm.

It's on a 5s CD as is, and lasts 30. Is this supposed to be "a shorter cooldown relative to SCH's Expedience"?

Yeah relative to SCH's expedience. It won't have a damage mitigation attached to it, so it's more akin to extra movement for executing mechanics.

Why bring back further ST external physical mitigation in a context in which tanks take so little damage already (given that their own and healers' additions to their mitigation profiles have increased their durability considerably more than boss damage has increased)? Moreover, the majority of modern tankbusters are magic damage.

Which they can just tune the fights for. DSR P6 massively destroys tanks, so clearly they're capable of increasing damage on tanks rather than the whole party.
The physical only aspect can be switched to take both physical and magical or if you want, we can also have another button for a magical Palisade separate from physical palisade.

This one, though, sounds fitting and fun! I see no reason to homogenize it by making it a Role Skill, however.

This is more of a compromise due to how SE likes to make sure that jobs have baseline abilities. I see this as a baseline ability due to how powerful it actually is.
I think having role skills be improved/changed depending on what job you are is a decent compromise to both keep the job's flavor, and making sure that the job differences aren't as massive.

This way of designing jobs around encounter types is not a good idea, unless you want to be obliged to swap Physical Ranged jobs on a per-fight basis (and for the "good for one target only" option to be preferable in the vast majority of cases).

It's not anything rough because I see this similarly as the differences between Battle Litany and Arcane Circle, or PLD mitigation vs DRK mitigation. It's job flavor without sabotaging a job's ability to clear content.

And honestly, SE should lean more into incentives to swap job within the role. Phys Ranged is less punished when switching between jobs because the melds are so similar to each other compared to let's say.. BLM and RDM. We can all play every job with one character, so it's about time if SE actually adds incentives to do that within a role but not require it.

And besides, there will always be a meta class, a meta playstyle and a meta comp even if there's only minute differences between every single job within a role, so really, leaning into the job fantasy without making it so that some jobs can't clear content won't hurt. With this, people can literally just play whatever they want BUT they're incentivized and rewarded to be an omni role. It's just less homogenization without hurting anything.

Like I still played MCH in TEA even when BRD was obviously the better ranged in that fight because I just liked MCH better and I'm a lot more comfortable in that job.

And to reiterate:

Sure this probably needs more tuning and all that to be viable, but literally THIS IS BETTER than the state of the role right now.

These are just napkin ideas that I've been thinking of when thinking up of how Phys Ranged can actually be improved. I don't claim it's the answer but it's a step in the right direction.
Feel free to discuss it and add your ideas though! I'd love to refine my ideas and learn of new ones.

[Shurrikhan]

It has niche use in recovery, the same as raises on a SMN and RDM, as it'll fill up a recently raised healer.

Having power, though, is not the same thing as being fun.

If I had to hit an oGCD once every 2 minutes or increasingly suffer a damage down debuff until I hit it again, that button would be impactful, but by no means interesting, let alone fun.

The only thing offering any complexity to Refresh was in its first use per fight, via its compromise between not wanting to waste its MP generation on too early a use and needing its Enmity purge early enough not to pull off the tank despite Physical Ranged at the time being significantly bursty.

That's gone now, leaving it only to be used on CD. You may as well say that Lucid Dreaming is oh so exciting to press.

If MP were reworked to be an actual mechanic and Refresh to have even an ounce of worthwhile decision-making behind it, then I'd agree. But Stormblood Refresh in today's context would be as brainless and bloated as Lucid Dreaming is now (relative to just increasing healers' passive MP generation).

And honestly, SE should lean more into incentives to swap job within the role.

Sure, but you should never do that by tailoring the jobs within a role each to basic categories like ST, 2-target, and AoE. Else, you're just stuck with Bards for some extreme niche within Raids, Dancers for Dungeons, and Machinists for everything else, etc.

That decision-making should instead come from the exploitable value of their actual utility, not just the raid damage buffs we pretend to be anything more than number-shuffling.

That every job can nonetheless complete content is still no warrant for specifically designing them towards pigeon-holes rather than per the gestalt affordances of their whole kits. Yes, the feel of Physical Ranged jobs would almost certainly benefit from more variance in their utility (and more utility in general), but raid buffs preferring certain of basic situations is not that.

Yeah relative to SCH's expedience. It won't have a damage mitigation attached to it, so it's more akin to extra movement for executing mechanics.

Sounds good, then! Imo, this would be much more apt than the likes of a buffed Palisade.

That said, I'd personally rather it be job-specific. For instance, axe Peloton and grant back Swiftsong, with En Avant buffing allies passed through (or those who pass along its wake), alongside perhaps one other effect. And perhaps give MCH something different altogether; not every job needs to grant the same utility (which, unlike basic damage raid buffs, movement speed buffs actually would be).

[Payotz]

Having power, though, is not the same thing as being fun.
If I had to hit an oGCD once every 2 minutes or increasingly suffer a damage down debuff until I hit it again, that button would be impactful, but by no means interesting, let alone fun.

I don't think you'd have to hit it once every 2 minutes. It's an extra cooldown that you can use for progging, or for recovering.
The very fact that you have a recovery option to help out a role, like healers, or to just plain help pump out more healing throughput because they keep spamming AoE heals makes it fun.
It's more utility without making it 100% mandatory. Another tool in the box.

Sure, but you should never do that by tailoring the jobs within a role each to basic categories like ST, 2-target, and AoE. Else, you're just stuck with Bards for some extreme niche within Raids, Dancers for Dungeons, and Machinists for everything else, etc.

Why not? Most jobs have specific niches because of little factors here and there.
Like, even physical ranged themselves have always had the single target (mch) > 2 target (brd) > multi target (dnc) niche in regards to damage, and it never affects their ability to clear all content types.

These raid buffs will lean into more of that niche, making it less homogenized in the process.
It incentivizes being an omni role without making it mandatory, which is my point. It won't pidgeon hole jobs into specific scenarios because they can still clear content as baseline.

If you want to be more optimal and efficient, then yeah you can switch jobs around. If you don't care about that, then you can just stick to your main and clear content that way.

That said, I'd personally rather it be job-specific. For instance, axe Peloton and grant back Swiftsong, with En Avant buffing allies passed through (or those who pass along its wake), alongside perhaps one other effect. And perhaps give MCH something different altogether; not every job needs to grant the same utility (which, unlike basic damage raid buffs, movement speed buffs actually would be).

I don't really know if something that's restrictive as "En Avant leaving a trail of movement behind" is something that's healthy of encounter design or even fight design as a whole.
Utility shouldn't hamper or make a job clunky because of it. You can't double weave if you use En Avant due to the animation lock, so it'll be a detriment to the experience to even execute the utility.

Like don't get me wrong, this is fine if the encounter design was completely different from what we have now, but because of the choreographic nature of mechanics, it's really never going to work out.

Making utility baseline will enhance the identity of the role itself, making sure that every job can clear content designed with that utility in design while traits that enhance the baseline utility and will keep the jobs feeling unique.

It's the same logic that I have with raid buffs. The role itself has raid buffs/vuln ups, the role has defensives, the role has combat peloton, which gives the devs the ability to design encounters with it in mind, while traits and how raid buffs work will give the jobs a specific niche, but won't make it that they're required to clear the content.

[Shurrikhan]

I don't really know if something that's restrictive as "En Avant leaving a trail of movement behind" is something that's healthy of encounter design or even fight design as a whole.

Utility shouldn't hamper or make a job clunky because of it. You can't double weave if you use En Avant due to the animation lock, so it'll be a detriment to the experience to even execute the utility.

Like don't get me wrong, this is fine if the encounter design was completely different from what we have now, but because of the choreographic nature of mechanics, it's really never going to work out.

Every ability has an animation lock/duration. What's "clunky" on that mere basis will vary from player to player based on ping. That's no reason to axe utility options altogether over the offchance of a high-ping player losing a second weave slot.

Instead, you simply deal with the actual problem the greater value makes more noticeable: Shorten En Avant's animation lock, just as was done for most Shukuchi, Gyoten, Yaten, Repelling Shot, Reaper's movement skills in either direction, Jump, Spineshatter Dive, Dragonfire Dive, Stardiver, etc., etc.

The choreographic nature of mechanics, moreover, makes needing to be move close together for brief moments between mechanics less demanding, as one can preposition for anything and everything, not more.

Moreover, if Dancer's utility thus provided has 3 charges of 30s, rather than a single-charge CD just "slightly shorter than Expediant," that is plentiful compensation for the slightly more demanding/constrained form of that party-movement utility.

Which, again, I'd vastly prefer over yet more homogeneity across jobs.

I don't think you'd have to hit it once every 2 minutes. It's an extra cooldown that you can use for progging, or for recovering.

Except, again, it's value taken from others regardless. The fight is tuned to offer leniency X, and now Physical Ranged are taking up part of that amount.

You're effectively arguing that healers should just get more MP over time and thus that content should be made easier and MP less a mechanic, or, if balanced out, that a portion of it should be held hostage to Physical Ranged. Since so long as this was in any way significant, Physical Ranged would then be that much more obligatory -- and, yet again, for just a tacked-on, basically passive gimmick (now also so healers can get their full MP, rather than just the party its 1% damage buff) -- it's not going to feel like a Physical Ranged affordance so much as a compositional constraint.

The optimal way to use Refresh, unless you know a healer is about to die (e.g., sacrifice themselves), will just be to hit it on CD. That's not interesting. That's not fun. It doesn't even have as dynamic of value as, say, Quelling Strikes, which was by no means entertaining, either.

It's more utility without making it 100% mandatory. Another tool in the box.

That's... not really a thing, though. That's like saying "I leave Hallowed Ground for only emergencies." It'd be a waste.

And balancing kit value around something you may well waste, when everyone else is trying to optimize all they have, is not a good idea.

If you're going to bring back Refresh, it needs to feel actually worth having as a button and/or trait -- something with at least decent skill expression (i.e., beyond not forgetting it exists / hitting it on CD).

At present, there's little to no place for it, and the last time the mechanic had any meaning, gameplay-wise, was when it also had opportunity cost (via Mage's Ballad or Bishop Turret + Promotion) to optimize against.

It won't pidgeon hole jobs into specific scenarios because they can still clear content as baseline.

That's simply the standard argument against tight overall parity in general. "Balance doesn't need to be tight because everyone can clear everything anyways." Nevermind the community perceptions which, despite that, cause players frequently to bar any jobs they feel are significantly disadvantaged.

On principle, I'd mostly agree with you that some fight-specific imbalances are fine, and perhaps different fights should have different metas, so long as they're still clearable. But that is not how MMO Party Finders and the like operate.

Given that, then, it makes little sense to make those advantages as clear-cut and disproportionate as the likes of "MCH gets single-target fights (the vast majority of anything serious), Bard gets two-target fights (obligatory for only some 1% of content, avoided otherwise), and Dancer gets AoE fights." If there is to be fight-specific (dis)advantages, that should at least come from active utilization of their unique skills and features across their whole kit, not simply a singular overlying gimmick like one's raid (de)buff being capped at affecting only two enemies.

The role itself has raid buffs/vuln ups, the role has defensives, the role has combat peloton, which gives the devs the ability to design encounters with it in mind...

And my point is that if every or nearly every significant function/feature/affordance of Physical Ranged jobs' utility can be checkmarked off via their Role Actions, that is far too much homogeneity. You can have parity, even tight parity, without using literally the same utility abilities across every job in role.

[Payotz]

Every ability has an animation lock/duration. What's "clunky" on that mere basis will vary from player to player based on ping. That's no reason to axe utility options altogether over the offchance of a high-ping player losing a second weave slot.

Sure but En Avant takes a whole weave slot. Just like every movement skill in the game.
Even the movement skills you mentioned takes a whole weave slot. Shukuchi, Hell's Ingress/ Engress, Aetherial Manip.
Even DRG's jumps have always had the problem of not being able to double weave with it, that the only Jump you can actually weave with is High Jump.

So take a job who's very heavy on double weaving, DNC, and putting a mandatory "no weave slot" OGCD on it to actually use their utility will just make the job clunky, which is something SE isn't gonna do that.

It's a problem you can't really solve because of how the game works.
Which is why it's more preferable to pop sprint and move to a location since you can't lose uptime and risk clipping a GCD or drifting cooldowns rather than using movement skills; And no amount of shortening animation lock can fix it.

It can only be fixed by removing animation lock from all the skills entirely, and we both know SE ain't gonna do that.

The choreographic nature of mechanics, moreover, makes needing to be move close together for brief moments between mechanics less demanding, as one can preposition for anything and everything, not more.

You... can't preposition for every mechanic. Even if it did, most of the time it involves mechanics where the "En Avant giving speed to everyone if they moved where DNC dashes to" doesn't apply.
There are more Light Rampant, Curtain Call, Strength, Basic/Intermediate/Advanced Relativity, Junction Titan, Junction Shiva, BJ/CC Phase, Wormhole and Wyrmhole type mechanics in this game compared to Pantopraktor, Storm Horizon, Wroth Flames, Sewage Eruption and the first part of Sanctity.

You can't dash to give the whole party movement speed during these mechanics because each member of the party moves on their own and there's barely any overlap, and even then, you can't actually En Avant for tight movement mechanics, because if you go too far at one direction too fast (which is literally what En Avant does) it's just gonna kill the party, or kill you.

En Avant is a personal movement tool so the DNC itself can go to the DNC's preposition spot for a mechanic. There's no reason for another party member to be at the DNC's preposition spot, and even if they were, there's no reason for the party to get there faster. The Combat Peloton will be used during the mechanic, not positioning for it .

Making En Avant's movement ability as unwieldly as you want will just make it so that nobody will use it, and I don't know about you but I'd rather have utility actually be usable.
It's like saying that I'm saving Phoenix for heal checks... which is nonsensical for that purpose.

You're effectively arguing that healers should just get more MP over time and thus that content should be made easier and MP less a mechanic, or, if balanced out, that a portion of it should be held hostage to Physical Ranged.

No to the first part but yes to the latter. The party is already forced to take a Physical Ranged because of a 1% dps buff that they themselves have no control over.
Being forced to take a utility dps for their utility is the same as taking a melee for melee LB3. Its literally the identity of the role .

Hell, if SE didn't remove both Mana shift and Refresh, then ShB Astro would've been okay in terms of MP. The new MP changes were made precisely because there's no Refresh and Mana shift, so they can revert those changes when Mana shift and Refresh is brought back. Simple as.

And even if SE doesn't revert it back, it's still going to be a recovery tool. It's not gonna be used on cd because you would want to save it for when the healer dies, or even when the caster dies, or even when the PLD dies.

And one thing:

Physical Ranged would then be that much more obligatory

They're already obligatory. This is why the 1% Party DPS buff exists.
So if they're making Physical Ranged obligatory, then they might as well make it so that the reason is something the player can control, which is utility.

Do you really prefer being brought in because of something out of your control OR do you prefer being brought in because of your toolkit, just like every other job (RDM, NIN, PLD, AST, SGE, SCH)?

That's... not really a thing, though. That's like saying "I leave Hallowed Ground for only emergencies." It'd be a waste.

Except it is. I raise you RDM and SMN's raise. Hell even in much more extreme cases, PLD's Clemency.
They're all prog utility that you don't technically need for a clean clear run.

But for prog, when everyone's making mistakes and dying left and right, oh they're really valuable.

My proposal is to make Refresh the same way. A recovery tool that you can keep handy when things go wrong.

That's simply the standard argument against tight overall parity in general. "Balance doesn't need to be tight because everyone can clear everything anyways." Nevermind the community perceptions which, despite that, cause players frequently to bar any jobs they feel are significantly disadvantaged.

And that mentality left us with this homogenized mess of a role. I don't understand why you're employing this mindset when right now when MCH is actually "barred from parties"(not really cause PF doesn't really actually care what job you are on, and I've pugged fights on MCH back in Stormblood and Shadowbringers when it was considered as the "worst dps").

If there's still balance issues despite the role being in this state... then we should just say fuck it, and double down and make the jobs distinct and fun again.
Fix outliers sure, but Balance doesn't matter if everyone can clear. Play whatever you want. If you really wanna play MCH in DSR even though it's the lowest DPS right now, then go for it.
You're not forced to switch to DNC to achieve the bare minimum, which is to clear and that's fine.

You can't have your cake and eat it too. It's either you homogenize everything by having every job play the same, deal the same damage, have the same utility, have the same hp, have the same gear, have the same rotation and burst phases, have the same damage cooldowns so everything's optimal and the best pick, OR, you make the game fun again by de homogenizing jobs and rebalancing them so they can achieve the bare minimum, which is clearing all content in the game.

And idk about you, but I'd rather have the latter. Balance and meta should come at a close second to fun in a video game, because a video game should be fun first and foremost.

And my point is that if every or nearly every significant function/feature/affordance of Physical Ranged jobs' utility can be checkmarked off via their Role Actions, that is far too much homogeneity. You can have parity, even tight parity, without using literally the same utility abilities across every job in role.

Which is funny because you were arguing earlier that the ST > 2 Target > Multi-target would be too much of a variance, when it wouldn't because the fights are clearable and now you're arguing that Role Actions would make the jobs feel homogenized, when it would allow the devs to design fights around said Role Actions precisely because they know every party will have Physical Ranged, and every Physical Ranged has a role action .

Having a Role (Physical Ranged) achieve the bare minimum (Role Actions) would free the devs to develop encounters with it in mind.
The distinctions between MCH (Better Palisade), BRD(Better Refresh or something else idk), DNC(Better combat Peloton) would dehomogenize the classes alongside the damage variance across the jobs.

Every job needs to be able to clear content, but making it so that a specific job is better at specific scenarios in the encounter will de homogenize the jobs within the role, which is what I'm looking for.

[Shurrikhan]

Which is funny because you were arguing earlier that the ST > 2 Target > Multi-target would be too much of a variance

I repeatedly argued that it would be the wrong basis for variance, that such variance should instead...

...come from active utilization of their unique skills and features across their whole kit, not simply a singular overlying gimmick like one's raid (de)buff being capped at affecting only two enemies.

it would allow the devs to design fights around said Role Actions precisely because they know every party will have Physical Ranged, and every Physical Ranged has a role action

That's exactly it: I do not want fights developed solely around Role Actions. To my mind, they should instead be developed around the various jobs, with some jobs offering X and some offering Y, with a greater total span of mechanics instead of just being satisfied with meeting a portion of most roles' features via a Role Action checklist.

Less shared functions can't be as severe (not mechanic in this game ever is without at least 2 people in an average party being able to counter it), but it's literally just a matter of putting in a much greater number of mechanics --some of which, yes, might not go countered, while others uniquely will for roughly the same value over the fight-- instead of constraining mechanics to just those handful of types that are provided via RAs.

better at specific scenarios in the encounter will de homogenize the jobs within the role, which is what I'm looking for.

The fight simply being ST, 2-target, or AoE, though is not a "specific scenario". It's the most basic category you can possibly have, and massively favors whoever has the ST advantage, since virtually all meaningful content is ST. Have the jobs be advantaged according to finer differences across their toolkits (which you can do by not homogenizing their actual utility), not primarily on the basis of a single damage buff (with all else that'd have an in-fight effect being, as you'd have it, homogenized).

Except it is. I raise you RDM and SMN's raise.

Raise cannot simply be used on cooldown. It is bottlenecked by the number of people who die, and is therefore barely, if at all, taxed -- for better or worse. Slight MP generation over time is not bottlenecked. Refresh is literally Lucid Dreaming, just affecting twice as many relevant players on twice the cooldown.

Lucid Dreaming, and its MP-best-used-exactly-on-cooldown, has no reason to exist beyond adding a single CPM and single thing to track to healers; it could be replaced by that much more passive MP generation and no one would care. Refresh is similarly absent of any real gameplay.

Old Mage's Ballad? Sure. That had room for optimization and, in punishing its use only for as much as it was used, did not force the kit to be taxed for merely carrying it. Gameplay? Check. No tax? Check.
But not Refresh. It has zero thought required. And it has neither compromise nor bottleneck, and thus forces a tax.

[Payotz]

That's exactly it: I do not want fights developed solely around Role Actions. To my mind, they should instead be developed around the various jobs, with some jobs offering X and some offering Y, with a greater total span of mechanics instead of just being satisfied with meeting a portion of most roles' features via a Role Action checklist.

Which is pretty much impossible to balance and will eventually revolve around one job being picked precisely because they need that job not role, the specific job to clear.
Case in point: MRD instead of WAR being taken in 2.0 before WAR's rework and double PLD being meta and in Heavensward where PLD not being able to block magic led DRK to be the tank that you pick for Savage since most of the damage going to the tanks is magic damage.

Fights being designed around role skills will make it so that both SE's primary goal of "You can play whatever job you want, they all can clear content" (which is a major selliing point of the game) AND the desire of "making the jobs feel distinct from one another" will be fulfilled.

A fight being designed around jobs rather than roles will make it so that specific jobs every tier will never actually be played at all, even in PF, and people will have to reroll for flavor of the month jobs every tier to actually get into groups; And that is a worse case scenario for a game like FF14.

You should be incentivized, not forced to play another job in your role.

The fight simply being ST, 2-target, or AoE, though is not a "specific scenario". It's the most basic category you can possibly have, and massively favors whoever has the ST advantage, since virtually all meaningful content is ST.

Square has also experimented and implemented fights that are not just Single Target. They proved that they are more than capable of actually implementing 2-target fights (BJ/CC, P6 DSR, Shinryu EX, A8S), and they're also more than capable of implementing multi-target phases (Death of the Heavens, E8S, Shinryu EX).

The argument that "they can't do this because all fights are Single Target and will ONLY be single target" is invalid because there's already established precedent in Heavensward, Stormblood, Shadowbringers and Endwalker that they have done this, and they're willing to do this.

And I don't understand why you think that vuln ups are not utility, when they're actually utility. It's a damage up, which is the most powerful utility of all.
If Trick Attack/Mug, Battle Voice, Battle Litany, Dragon's Eye, Brotherhoord, BRD Song auras are not utility, then what are they to you?

Having damage buffs that cater to ST/ 2-Target/Multi-target is a part of a job's identity and utility and won't sabotage a job's ability to clear content.
You can still clear a 2-target fight with a MCH, you can still clear a ST fight with a BRD, it's just not gonna be optimal, and that's completely fine.

It's not like it's the ONLY utility (and variance) that the jobs are going to have.

Raise cannot simply be used on cooldown. It is bottlenecked by the number of people who die, and is therefore barely, if at all, taxed -- for better or worse.

So... Refresh is not utility, because you're not taxed in actually executing it?
So in that logic, all raid buffs and BRD songs and even the CC like Arm Graze, Leg Graze, interject and cooldowns we have right now in the game, including stuff like Intervention, Divine Benison, Astro Cards, TBN, Nascent Flash, Mug/Trick Attack, Arcane Circle, Feint, SCH's combat Peloton and many more are not utility... because you're not punished when using it?

So by that definition.. Shield Bash, Clemency, Swiftcast+Raise, and Hardcast Raise is the only valid utility in the game?

Old Mage's Ballad? Sure. That had room for optimization and, in punishing its use only for as much as it was used, did not force the kit to be taxed for merely carrying it. Gameplay? Check. No tax? Check.

I'm confused.

1. Refresh isn't going to tax the Ranged Physical's kit either. It's another tool in the toolbox that's niche is recovery. You will only use it for specific scenarios, like Combat Peloton, like Interject, like old Refresh. It's not going to punish a Ranged Physical... for simply doing its job. It's not as powerful as a Raise or as potent as a Clemency to warrant taxing.

2. Old Mage's Ballad did tax the job itself, because you would lower your own damage during the song by 20%:


And you wouldn't be able to use the strongest song, Wanderer's Minuet:


Being punished for doing your job (role action) is a design decision I will never agree with.
In that job/role design the utility itself is the tax which I will never agree is good design.

Refresh is literally the same thing as Mage's Ballad, but only on an OGCD, without reducing 20% (or even 50% ) of your own damage and without interrupting your own rotation.
If that means that Refresh isn't considered a utility, then we clearly have different definitions of utility, and I disagree with your ideas.

[george357]

all my main jobs are ranged and i for one like playing them.