Why are Ranged DPS so unfun to play?

[Selvokaz]

They...are fun to play? o.O

I mean, I don't care much for DNC, but I like MCH and I like BRD and both feel fun to me. And the thing I dislike about DNC is more its aesthetic and I still have a grudge from it not being a healer.

I think, as others have noted, the answer here is "personal preference is personal". I strongly dislike Melee DPS, but many people live those Jobs. I very much like Ranged DPS and you do not. We're all different, and that's great.

I admit this is a very subjective topic.. what one finds fun can vary from person to person.

[LeonKeyh]

MCH for me have the best ''gunner'' aesthetic of all MMO's i have played, but the gameplay is the worst, PvP MCH is so much better and fun.

I only try the DNC at lvl 80 and feels like is missing something in the kit, i dont like the RNG too, sometimes i am stuck at 1-2 combo for 20 seconds because back luck.

BRD i find really fun to play, but the kit is completly lost between a Archer and a Bard, the job tries to be both but its none of them.

To be fair, the original intent of MCH seem to lean a little more towards guns, but the gameplay has moved more toward Edgar from FF6.


PvP MCH IS great. I love the slow movement "casting" of their base attack and REALLY think that would add something to all of phys ranged. Phys range could be the halfway role, they can move while casting BUT they don't get many/any instant cast tools like casters do.

DNC is kind of fun, but the most fun is the Simon says dancing and you only get to do that a handful of times every couple of minutes. The procs are a lot better than they were in ShB but are still a big issue.

BRD was my least favorite at low levels, but managing the songs/DoTs well at higher level is fun to an extent. I agree that it is stuck between Archer and Bard and doesn't really do either that well. EQ2 bard was basically a melee class with a couple of spells which was pretty cool. RIFT bard had a ton of short duration buffs that were fun to keep up in the party. I'd honestly rather they dump the DoTs and give us short duration buffs to manage and keep up in the party.

[Bonkleberry]

I disagree with you. BRD and DNC are two of my favorite jobs to play. I prefer all three Ranged DPS jobs over the other DPS jobs.

[Vencio]

It’s subjective to say they’re boring & solely depends on your personal playing style/ level pf comfort.

Same can be said about any role likewise!

[Amenara]

I really enjoyed MCH back in ShB but for some reason it hasn't clicked with me in EW. On the flip side I hated playing BRD and DNC in ShB but for some reason they are much more enjoyable for me in EW.

[Equitable_Remedy]

I'm finally leveling BRD for my physical ranged EW role quests, and it is by far my least favorite job that I've played. In fact, none of the physical ranged jobs appeal to me in the slightest. There are a few things going on here: I don't like the lore (BRD is boring, DNC is not my vibe, MCH is ok), I hate some of the role norms (the weaponskills just feel off in several ways as compared to melee - like the delay between hitting heaving shot, the animation, and the actual hit), and all of this proc nonsense is for the birds.

I do like the host of BRD utility abilities, though - cleansing, damage reduction, damage buffing, etc. is great. The rest of it is so bad I'm struggling to decide if I actually care about the EW role quests enough to keep leveling BRD.

(Full disclosure: NIN main who really just likes playing NIN all the time.)

[Payotz]

Why are Ranged DPS so unfun to play? Multiple reasons really:

• They gutted the role and removed literally every single utility from the jobs, and then decided to take half of BRD and MCH's kit and merged that together to form DNC, instead of actually adding new mechanics for DNC.
• They also haven't accounted for Physical Ranged in their fight design either. You don't have mechanics where you can bait aoes away from the party anymore. You can't even use CC in add phases. Literally the only fight in that's currently relevant right now that people actually interrupt stuff is literally DSR, a fucking Ultimate.
• The role itself doesn't even have a "harder" rotation to account for no positionals and infinite movement. Wildfires and midfires are unsatisfying compared to HW and SB iterations of the job, and you don't even have to juggle more procs anymore in multi target fights cause they removed the DoT/Song synergy. MCH has a 1 2 3 rotation rather than juggling ammo and it just turns MCH from juggling procs to doing tank rotations all day every day.

They turned the whole damn role from a "Ok, I have a toolbox. You want mana? I gotchu. You want more personal mit? I gotchu. Oh yeah I can bait this AoE so you guys have uptime, no problem!" to a "baby dps first time savage uwu pls carry me" job, and as an old Physical Ranged main, I despise it.

How can they improve the overall gameplay of physical ranged? Simple. We can start with bringing back every single utility action and synergy they ripped from the jobs in order to restore the role's identity.

• For the role, bring back Refresh. Give them combat Peloton on a shorter cooldown, and bring back Palisade. Since we can't have old Tactician back cause TP is gone, we can have another role skill that hastens defensive cooldowns or healing cooldowns, or something else.
  
• For BRD, bring back Foe's Requiem. This can be a multi vuln aura skill that's good for two targets, cementing that BRD is really good for multi target fights. Bring back the DoTs/Songs synergy, and bring back crit scailing for the procs. As a job special trait, make their version of combat peloton have two charges, just for flavor.
  
• For MCH, bring back old Hypercharge. Bring back Dismantle. Maybe have a Reassembled single target GCD would apply a vuln up to the first taget it hits. Maybe when you're overheated, it applies an aura around you that increases the auto attack speed of all jobs, kinda like Riddle of Wind but for everyone. Maybe for class flavor, you can have their version of Palisade have two charges.
  
• For DNC, you can probably just add Refresh with two charges, just for flavor.
  
• And for fight design, add more mechanics that a Ranged Physical need to juggle in fights. Applying heavy to adds, Applying bind to invulnerable adds that's chasing someone down and will one shot them when they get close. AoEs that a physical ranged will have to bait out for the group so you can actually give the group more uptime. Maybe even tethers that you take and move out of the party so they can't get blasted by a heavy hitting AoE, OR maybe even just kiting a mob around the arena, like E5S. There's plenty of ideas that SE refuses to tap into that's it's so maddening why they're not willing to experiment.

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. Physical Ranged used to be more than a 1% buff, it used to be more than just adps vs rdps. It HAD UTILITY, IT WAS THE UTILITY DPS, and it was AMAZING to play the fantasy of a SUPPORT DPS .

There's literally a shitton of ideas they can learn from other games and even past iterations of the game to make the role better and they still won't do anything about it.

[Shurrikhan]

There's literally a shitton of ideas they can learn from other games and even past iterations of the game to make the role better and they still won't do anything about it.

While I'll agree with all this, there are some odd points here, imo:

For the role, bring back Refresh.

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.

Give them combat Peloton on a shorter cooldown

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

and bring back Palisade

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.

Since we can't have old Tactician back cause TP is gone, we can have another role skill that hastens defensive cooldowns or healing cooldowns, or something else.

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

For BRD, bring back Foe's Requiem. This can be a multi vuln aura skill that's good for two targets, cementing that BRD is really good for multi target fights.

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).

And for fight design, add more mechanics that a Ranged Physical need to juggle in fights. Applying heavy to adds, Applying bind to invulnerable adds that's chasing someone down and will one shot them when they get close.

This would be great!

[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).