Why are Ranged DPS so unfun to play?

[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.