Why are Ranged DPS so unfun to play?

[Shurrikhan]

We are all already dependent on Physical Ranged.

No. We are not. We are mildly, mildly incentivized to take at least one Physical Ranged, just as per Melee and Casters, so that the devs can pretend the roles are more closely balanced. We are not dependent on having at least one of each.

You have this scenario, when I literally offered you a solution in the last post:

Your "solution" was to increasing healing requirements, something the devs have explicitly said they will not do.

Moving healing checks "closer" together to require more healing output from healers is still increasing healing requirements. There's no subtle loophole in the devs wanting to make the healing part of playing healers easier.

Again, want more healing?

I do. But I'm not the devs, who don't.

You. Are. Already. Obligated. To. Play. Physical. Ranged. Today. Because. Of. The. 1%. Party. DPS.

1% damage bonus (that may or may not even be a net increase to party throughput give the better alternatives).

Vs.

Automatic party wipe in most serious content upon reaching X heal-check.

Do those... seem equivalent to you?


Imagine what you're asking for from any of the either sub-roles:

• Take at least one Melee or lose access to A after X time. In practice, this means you will eventually, inevitably wipe for most Savage fights.
• Take at least one Caster or lose access to B after X time. In practice, this means you will eventually, inevitably wipe for most Savage fights.

What you are asking for is the same as if you were arguing that Melee should all be constrained by TP again, just so whether they can actually use their weaponskills after a given point in a fight will depend on you. Hard pass.

We can't possibly be even more dependent on Physical Ranged, because we NEED Physical Ranged in High End Content because the dps checks are tuned with it in mind.

So, per your earlier comments...

'tight parity doesn't matter because any composition can clear anything anyways'...

yet, somehow... at the same time...

most parties will clear or wipe on the basis of the 1% Damage bonus of having taken a Physical Ranged (despite that being far less, or even a net negative, in practice, given how much more strongly other jobs will perform).

Tell me, how do those two things go together?

[Payotz]

Your "solution" was to increasing healing requirements, something the devs have explicitly said they will not do.

Moving healing checks "closer" together to require more healing output from healers is still increasing healing requirements. There's no subtle loophole in the devs wanting to make the healing part of playing healers easier.

They've also said that they're never gonna go back to 4.0 design, where Ranged Physicals have utility, the very thing we want.
But that doesn't stop us from posting our feedback that we want that.
Just like how healers are demanding either more dps buttons or more healing requirements.

1% damage bonus (that may or may not even be a net increase to party throughput give the better alternatives).
Vs.
Automatic party wipe in most serious content upon reaching X heal-check.

When we're already required to take a Physical Ranged, it's not the former OR the latter, it's former AND the latter.

No. We are not. We are mildly, mildly incentivized to take at least one Physical Ranged, just as per Melee and Casters, so that the devs can pretend the roles are more closely balanced. We are not dependent on having at least one of each.

Tell me you don't do High End Content without telling me you don't do High End Content.

High End Content has always been tuned against the 1% damage bonus. It IS that huge because it's literally a party buff that's present at -ALL- times.
It's literally an extra 242k damage in P4S P2 for literally just existing. It's literally an EXTRA melee LB3.. for no reason other than having a Physical Ranged in the party. It's literally an extra percent on the boss' hp bar GONE for having a Ranged Physical be in the party in an evironment where people wipe to 0.1% hp often at enrage.
OF COURSE it's going to be tuned around it.

So, per your earlier comments tight parity doesn't matter because anyone composition can clear anything anyways...
but... at the same time...
somehow the less than 1% rDPS bonus (sometimes still a net negative, given how much more strongly other jobs will perform) will, for all parties, make the difference between clearing a fight and dying to enrage.

Any job within a single role can clear content yes. You just have to bring every role, just like you have to bring a tank, a healer, a melee dps, a ranged physical and a acaster.

I didn't say any composition. I said every job within a role can clear. Don't put words in my mouth.

Why are you being this disingenous? What's next in the argument? You should be able to clear Savage Content with all tanks?

I need to reply to your EDITS:

Take at least one Melee or lose access to A after X time. In practice, this means you will eventually, inevitably wipe for most Savage fights.

Yes that is the case. You don't have access to Melee LB 3 and its 1% party dps if you don't have a Melee.

Take at least one Caster or lose access to B after X time. In practice, this means you will eventually, inevitably wipe for most Savage fights.

Yes that is the case. You don't have access to Addle and the 1% damage bonus if you don't have a caster.

All these scenarios are already TRUE in the game for High End Content, especially in an Ultimate.

What you are asking for is the same as if you were arguing that Melee should all be constrained by TP again, just so whether they can actually use their weaponskills after a given point in a fight will depend on you. Hard pass.

Except... Mana is still here, and it's still used by casters. So why not abuse that fact by adding more utility to ranged physicals?

Like this whole conversation started with me suggesting it as a recovery button, then you replied that there's no reason to press it, so I added a reason to press it, now you're screaming because now there's a reason to press it, so I go back to suggesting it as a recovery button, and then you're going back to it being a boring button.

You're really hell bent against this idea when I've already proven that it can work, that there are solid scenarios where it can work. Stop being disingenuous.

[Shurrikhan]

High End Content has always been tuned against the 1% damage bonus. It IS that huge because it's literally a party buff that's present at -ALL- times.
It's literally an extra 242k damage in P4S P2 for literally just existing. It's literally an EXTRA melee LB3.

You know what else does that in P4S? The players' own ~8% rDPS increase for having taken, say, a BLM instead of a Physical Ranged.

"Ahh, but there are 8 people, so it's the same!" Except, each DPS makes up more than an 8th the total damage. A typical BLM in a conventional 2-tank, 2 healer 1 melee, 1 ranged, 1 caster, 1 any party will be doing nearer to 16% of the whole.
0.16 * .8 > .01.

The underperformance of Physical Ranged is largely shored up by the 1% damage increase, yes, but it's certainly not enough to make Physical Ranged obligatory.

<You'd already be guaranteed to wipe without Addle and the 1% Caster buff>

Addle does no more mitigation than is supplied by the +/-5% attached to every damage event.

But here, since Addle was enough to save people from an otherwise guaranteed wipe, I should see, at least once where Addle was used, people surviving by a hair within the various Ultimate logs, no?

Wait... no, that... isn't happening. No non-tank ever dropped below 15% from raidwide damage. It's not even saving a tank, who only drop below 25% during invulns. Nor sparing a heal, for that matter.

And... they're clearing with over a minute to spare. Hmm. Odd, that.

They've also said that they're never gonna go back to 4.0 design, where Ranged Physicals have utility, the very thing we want.
But that doesn't stop us from posting our feedback that we want that.
Just like how healers are demanding either more dps buttons or more healing requirements.

The problem is wanting to hold other players' kit access hostage by wanting utility-whose-only-benefit-is-sustained-kit-access now, when there is no context by which it'd be anything more than removing X to let someone else give it back. Which, if feedback since Stormblood hadn't made clear, is not a popular design choice.

• Do I want more Physical Ranged utility? Absolutely.
• Do I want more to do as a tank? Absolutely.
• Do I want higher healing requirements? Absolutely.

But that doesn't make it good idea to want healers to be dependent on my Refresh in the current environment. And no matter what, a bimodal functionality like current MP isn't a good place for that added utility, especially if isn't to be paired with fine control or some manner of exploitability prior to going OOM.

Put MP costs on healing abilities, have the potency and costs of MP spenders scale with current %MP, and voila, now Rangers' granting MP no longer requires healers to otherwise lose access to their spells after X time for it to have value, because there is actually something available for trade, rather than just "Can cast / Can't cast."

From there you have an actual context where MP utility feels like a bonus, rather than a fetter purposely added just to be removed again (purposely desyncing all raid damage from healer cooldowns or by whatever other means forcing healers to need it or face inevitable wipes because it constrains their literal ability to cast spells at all).

Like this whole conversation started with me suggesting it as a recovery button, then you replied that there's no reason to press it, so I added a reason to press it, now you're screaming because now there's a reason to press it, so I go back to suggesting it as a recovery button, and then you're going back to it being a boring button.

Your "added a reason to press it" required that every serious fight in the game be changed to realign damage intervals to make healers' abilities unusable over heal checks... just to further tax MP via AoE spells... just to then make Ranged more obligatory for being able to give that MP back. You are requiring an absurd number of hoops there just to, ultimately, try to make healing dependent on Physical Ranged.

And yet, at the end of all that, that dependence doesn't add a mechanic beyond your hitting your raidwide Lucid Dreaming on CD.

[Shurrikhan]

For context, my hopes for Physical Ranged:

1. Give them back meaningful mechanics in their rotations, rather than solely the general mechanics of hitting the glowing button and pooling charges (atop, at best, choosing which song order to be locked to from then out).
   
   
2. Give them distinct forms of utility --here meaning something with variable value and not directly exchangeable to rDPS / moving numbers out and back again-- that reward timing and, via the kit's context, add additional depth to positioning and/or rotation. Give the most situational of that utility an opportunity cost itself, rather than taxing the kit itself in all fights for the few fights in which it's particularly useful.
   
   
3. Improve their rDPS (by 4-6%, depending on the average value of the utility added above). Roles should not be taken only for their 1% Damage bonus. If we're still somehow following the "hypermobility tax," then, screw it, give Physical Ranged the occasional cast and or melee skill, inverse to the likes of BLM's or NIN's 'occasional instant' or 'occasional loss-less ranged attack', and give Physical Ranged a little bit more throughput to work with/from if they optimize it.
   
   
4. Dive deeper into core themes of song, dance, and tech/construction, building up from that instead of attempting to just meet a shared template or checklist through reskinned equivalents.

Do not:

1. Relegate added utility solely to Role Actions.
   
   
2. Set them up as the ST, 2-target, and AoE versions of each other. If they are to be advantaged in a given fight, let that be due to the sum of their finer utilities.
   
   
3. Give them utility that would require the removal of functions or internal synergy from others (e.g., Lucid Dreaming or Internal Release being turned into Refresh or Devilment, respectively). Well, too late for that last one.

[Payotz]

You know what else does that in P4S? The players' own ~8% rDPS increase for having taken, say, a BLM instead of a Physical Ranged.

"Ahh, but there are 8 people, so it's the same!" Except, each DPS makes up more than an 8th the total damage. A typical BLM in a conventional 2-tank, 2 healer 1 melee, 1 ranged, 1 caster, 1 any party will be doing nearer to 16% of the whole.
0.16 * .8 > .01.

The underperformance of Physical Ranged is largely shored up by the 1% damage increase, yes, but it's certainly not enough to make Physical Ranged obligatory.

Alright I just went ahead and fact checked on the Balance and other sources for you to really make sure that I know what I'm talking about.
Week 5 you can just run whatever you want, which makes sense because everyone has full gear, and there's more vit and stats going around to trivialize any dps check and any damage going out. Sure it's whatever. You can literally go in with One Tank, One Healer, and 6 dps and it wouldn't really matter at that point.

But if you don't have gear in Savage and in DSR, you can't just drop the Physical Ranged because Party Bonus is both 1% DPS AND 1% HP, meaning that's more of a risk to dying to a high roll raid wide even under mitigation.

Two BLMs that is perfectly optimized will not beat a Physical Ranged bonus, but they get extremely close, so yes technically they beat the dps check with two BLMS. HOWEVER, that's if they're playing perfect, which is not 100% of the time, and also extremely fight dependent.

The problem with this approach is that you will still die to raidwides without that 1% hp (which is correct as there are times where I die to 500 hp overkill during a raidwide in DSR) if you aren't overgearing the content. Which means that even though you can still get very close (but not surpass) the physical ranged +1% party bonus, you'll still have to drop the 1% hp and the 10% party mitigation that Physical Ranged has. You will also get penalized for having two of the same jobs for LB generation, meaning you'll lose an LB1 at the end of the fight, which is also important for the dps check.

So yes, the fights are still tuned to have all 5% Party Bonus (and thus need a Physical Ranged), not just because of the dps check, but also because of the raid wides, party busters and mitigation checks and the fact that it doesn't only increase dps, it also increases hp.

THIS IS NOT A MILD INCENTIVE,

If this is some mild incentivize, then having 2 tanks and 2 healers is a mild incentive.

Calling this a mild incentive is like assuming that everyone can solo heal or solo tank an Ultimate, when even if you technically can, it's still clearly designed for two tanks and two healers.

Addle does no more mitigation than is supplied by the +/-5% attached to every damage event.

Addle does 10% mitigation to magical damage. That extra 5% to mitigation counts in a non overgeared scenario, just like the Party Bonus.
In fact, if you over mitigate a raidwide, you won't have another cooldown for the next raid wide, and the next one and the next one.
That's why you keep a mitigation sheet, so you don't over mitigate it.

But here, since Addle was enough to save people from an otherwise guaranteed wipe, I should see, at least once where Addle was used, people surviving by a hair within the various Ultimate logs, no?

(For context, the lowest party member's max hp is 56k (with a 5% Party Bonus) )

You mean stuff like Ultimate End in DSR, where even with Reprisal, Sacred Soil, Addle, and Shields it still deals 51k damage?
Or do you mean stuff like Ancient Quaga, where even with Shields, Soil, Dark Missionary, Reprisal and Addle, it still deals 51k?

Let's go to P6.

Or maybe you mean Hallowed Plume, where even with Bloodwhetting, Adlo, Divine Benison, and Aquaveil, it deals 56k damage on a tank?
Or maybe even just Akh Morn, where even with Seraph shields, Dark Missionary, Addle, Expedient, and Reprisal it deals 20k damage/ per second for 4 straight blasts?

The moment you miss a mitigation for any one of these skills, hell even if you don't have food buff on for the vitality buff, you'll actually die and wipe the group.
So it's extremely disingenous to say that mitigation is not that tight.

And... they're clearing with over a minute to spare. Hmm. Odd, that.[/INDENT][/INDENT]

Oh cool, what's the comp? Is that with a physical ranged 1% Party bonus, or is it double BLM?
And what fight is it? Are they overgeared or minimum ilvl?

Put MP costs on healing abilities, have the potency and costs of MP spenders scale with current %MP, and voila, now Rangers' granting MP no longer requires healers to otherwise lose access to their spells after X time for it to have value, because there is actually something available for trade, rather than just "Can cast / Can't cast."

This... is literally what they did when they revamped max mana to only be 10k.
That's why they homogenized MP. This is literally that we have right now.

From there you have an actual context where MP utility feels like a bonus, rather than a fetter purposely added just to be removed again (purposely desyncing all raid damage from healer cooldowns or by whatever other means forcing healers to need it or face inevitable wipes because it constrains their literal ability to cast spells at all).

Which is why I said that it should be a recovery option instead, but again, you wanted there to be a reason for pressing it which brings me to the next point:

Your "added a reason to press it" required that every serious fight in the game be changed to realign damage intervals to make healers' abilities unusable over heal checks... just to further tax MP via AoE spells... just to then make Ranged more obligatory for being able to give that MP back. You are requiring an absurd number of hoops there just to, ultimately, try to make healing dependent on Physical Ranged.

Realigning damage intervals will go ahead and give healers something more to heal yes, which is literally what they're looking for. Ranged are already obligatory because of the Party Bonus, and the only way to actually get away from that obligatory Party Bonus is to literally be overgeared, which you can literally drop a healer and a tank in a party and do whatever if you're overgeared.

The healers want more to heal, so yes give them something to heal. If MP is gonna be the issue blocking the devs from giving them more to heal, then solve it by literally giving Ranged Physicals more of a reason to be in the party, considering they've been tuning the fights with Physical Ranged in mind anyway.

If this is not good enough, then literally turn Refresh back into a recovery button, but again we're going to go back into the discussion of "yeah this is boring as fuck, make it have a purpose", which is exactly what this line is:

And yet, at the end of all that, that dependence doesn't add a mechanic beyond your hitting your raidwide Lucid Dreaming on CD.

As for your next post:

I agree with almost everything in what you said in the Do portion however:

1. Relegating added utility to Role Actions will make it so that every job in the ROLE will be able to clear content, and thus is needed. The devs will be able to go ahead and design fights with role actions in mind because again, they're goal is to go ahead and Make sure that every job in a role can clear any content . Not adding utility to the role will just mean it won't get used in the fight, just like Fluid Aura, and Repose. If you DO design fights around the utility that a specific JOB in the ROLE, then you will be FORCED to play that job in that fight, which is not what we're looking for

2. Setting them up as Single Target, 2-Target and AoE version will go ahead and incentivize the mastery of the role but not require it, which is what we want. You wanna be optimal? Go ahead, and pick the job depending on the encounter type of the fight. Like I said, this is literally what the jobs design for the Role is right now , and this is just going to boost that distinction across the jobs in the role

3. It's not even necessary to require the removal of function, it can just be a supplement, which is literally what my first proposal for Refresh is. It's just a supplement to niche scenarios where the healers died, or the caster died, or the RDM needs to rapid rez people in a prog scenario. This is the best option if we don't want this button to be mandatory, but if we want more reasons to press this button "to make it interesting", then we're gonna go ahead and make the healers have the risk to go OOM, or close to it.

[Shurrikhan]

Taking a Physical Ranged vs. an individually higher rDPS

Yes, as player skill decreases, so too does the rDPS benefit of their taking a higher performing of over simply going for the +1% Damage bonus. For P4S, the example by which you prompted the comparison, that'd be somewhere between the 75th and 50th percentile. Above that, taking the extra BLM, NIN, or DRG is worth more slightly rDPS to your party. All still within a range as easily produced by your party, on average over the fight, critting slightly more.

Given that, it seems more fitting to say that taking a Physical Ranged is merely incentivized (and only conditionally incentivized at all for pure rDPS), not --as you put it-- "required," "obligatory," or "forced."

Melee is about the closest we get to a hard requirement in the average Extreme or Savage, and only if the enrage itself is quite tight, due to the added 33% LB efficiency in single-target. But, it also has almost double the number of jobs for that very reason; it was never split into multiple functional sub-roles (despite having the greatest number of nominal sub-roles, Scouting, Striking, and Maiming), meaning you can take whatever you please for the, typically, two slots.

Addle does 10% mitigation to magical damage.

I'm aware. +/-5% is a range of 10%. A range of 5% would be just +/-2.5%.

So it's extremely disingenous to say that mitigation is not that tight.

Your most immediate example before my quote was Ultimate, so I checked Ultimate -- additionally because it uses fixed HP values instead of becoming increasingly easier with gear. I used a random 1-300 number generator, picked 7 samples, and looked through them. At no point following Addle casts did anyone's HP dip below 15% HP (or any non-tank, throughout the whole fight). For Addle itself to have made that difference, the unmitigated hit, if magical, would have to do more than 150% a non-tank's HP; if physical, more than 300% a non-tank's HP.

I realize now I had an oversight there, in that I should have also looked for the effect of the added 1% HP (or the effect of losing 1.01% HP), but even adding that in, it still wouldn't indicate that the two together uniquely caused the party's survival in any damage event.

Realigning damage intervals will go ahead and give healers something more to heal yes, which is literally what they're looking for.

My point was that those are going to be two separate steps. If you think that healers having more to heal is a good thing, then I fully agree.

I just noted that realigning damage intervals such that there's greater relative healing requirements isn't going to somehow avert, as if through subtle loophole, the devs' refusal to increase relative healing requirements (damage intake relative to free healing within healer kits). Nor would I like to see that done just to provide Physical Ranged with more to do. If that can open up further utility options to be more interesting and useful, great, but the requisite change needs to be a good thing in itself if you're to affect other roles just to prop up the target role.

This... is literally what they did when they revamped max mana to only be 10k.

No, that's not what I'm referring to at all. Not a single healing ability (oGCD) has an MP costs, so I'm not sure when they "did" that. And by "scaling with %MP," I'm referring to the idea that, when you have less %MP, spells both do less and cost (a greater amount) less. In that way, it's not a mere survival mechanic, and as a healer, there's far more to game out of MP interactions/economy.

_________________

At present, there are only two things MP can produce: the ability to cast, or the inability to cast. It's purely bimodal. You will never touch Cure, regardless, so there's not even a matter of saving MP by using less expensive spells. As such, the fight will require X, and you will give it X, and you will either have Piety enough (which is slightly countered by taking more SpS), or not. The amount of MP restored by Refresh is far less than the MP you save, moreover, by having a RDM or SMN rez, if that's ever needed (since they have otherwise infinite MP --i.e., no opportunity cost-- and can support almost a Rez per minute over time).

As such Refresh/MassDreaming can only really reduce the Piety required, such that now one's BiS varies with how many Physical Ranged there are and how nearly on cooldown they press their Refresh buttons after the first scheduled use. That in turn means healers are incentivized to stat differently based on others' performance, which... as someone who played Melee/Tanks under old Army's/Tactician, I can honestly say does not feel great.

So you've got an "emergency tool" that's worth far less for emergencies than just taking an extra SMN or RDM, but which also messes with Healer gearing in the few fights it'd affect. All while the skill itself is best used, after first activation, identically to Lucid Dreaming (best hit on CD). That seems really... lackluster, to say the least.

You can say that's just because of context, but that's a very involved context to mess with. And it would probably require changes to both healing and to how MP works in order to invigorate that.

If you made it so MP economy was an actual mechanic for healer, likely by both giving more to heal and, especially, polishing the MP system and its costs, then there's far more for a Refresh effect to play into.

I'd just still, even at that point, prefer it be something over which Physical Ranged had fine control, instead of just an on-CD like Refresh (Lucid-Dreaming-but-raidwide-at-double-the-cooldown).

1. Relegating added utility to Role Actions will make it so that every job in the ROLE will be able to clear content, and thus is needed.

I don't think you need to specifically make Ranged so fixedly required/needed. Not every utility needs to be "use X or wipe." I prefer that they feel like advantages for use rather than hard survival conditions (at which point those utilities begin to feel more like solely counter-buttons or compositional checks).

2. Setting them up as Single Target, 2-Target and AoE version will go ahead and incentivize the mastery of the role but not require it, which is what we want.

See, I still don't get how you can say that Bard is already required, right now, over the potential rDPS buff of taking a Physical Ranged despite its jobs' underperformance, yet say that taking a likely more significant gap in performance on a fight-specific basis (BRD-fight, MCH-fight, DNC-fight) somehow wouldn't require the advantaged job. The advantage would have to then be so tiny that, prior to 6.1, it'd have practically been the difference of just a Namikiri crit.

3. It's not even necessary to require the removal of function, it can just be a supplement

You know what, fair enough. Within current contexts, I'm not a fan of its likely impact, and would much rather the missing budget go to other forms of utility and Physical Rangeds' more direct rDPS than to Refresh, but at least then it'd just be the most typically LB-advantaged role (who more than makes up for it) and BLM who get the short stick. That would be a modest improvement over basically untaxed Rez-capable casters just having by far the most utility (by which, again, I'm just referring to highly situationally-varied and therefore difficult-to-predict rDPS value, as opposed to that which just shuffles numbers around). (Granted, I'd prefer RDM and SMN both had rDPS slightly nearer BLM but then opportunity cost on their rezzes. Just as I'd prefer opportunity costs on Refresh but higher Physical Ranged rDPS.)

[darkdyllon]

I don't think it's quite as drastic for other Jobs tho as it is with BRD.
And the songs are also something that you keep rolling, so no matter when you die you're losing that song.
Losing songs is fundamentally different than for other Jobs, I think it's a uniquely bad thing for BRD.
When you lose a song on BRD that's a 45s buff down the drain and it throws off your song rotation ( you do swap songs a tad earlier tho, but basically ).

I am not saying it isn't bad for other Jobs too, but I think it affects BRD in a way that doesn't affect most other Jobs.
With other Jobs it's quite a bit more contextual and you have to die in especially bad situations while with BRD's it's more consistently bad.

Edit: Also the Coda system is negatively affected by missing a song too and BRD are all about party buffs so it's a pretty shitty situation.
And then there's also songs requiring a target which is a commonly brought up issue I see.
Both of these things screw with your song timings.

as an RDM main generally if i die i'll lose an massive chunk of DPS due to not having my melee combo anymore.
for example in DSR, i generally get my melee combo when Thordan returns at the 1st trio, but if someone misses their mitigation or i get less because of bad rolls and die, that's an melee combo down the drain, which is a lot.
granted it's just that missed, but that's over 50 mana in both black and white gone, down the drain and that takes nearly the entire phase to get back.
an death in general for most jobs means you'll have to run recovery for the rest of the encounter, be it because your songs are miss aligned, or you lose all your resources.

[george357]

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

[Tetsujin]

MCH is the only ranged class I can opine about, but at least when it comes to it, I feel like all the execution and nuance has been taken out and replaced by mindless button mashing. Really, that simple. It's got high APM without any thought.

I realize old MCH had ping issues and that people could find it very difficult if not outright impossible to fit everything into wildfire. Instead of fixing that, making Wildfire a stack type of debuff, or anything else, MCH was instead stripped of so much. Stance dancing, ammo system, its RNG manipulation, the turret features were scraped to the point turret/automaton queen is almost a DoT you can see, DoTs themsleves, any real AoE optimization, a lot of utility, headshot, I mean. Whew. That's off the top of my head! And for what? For it to supposedly be a selfish DPS which amusingly enough had worse damage than its peers last time I was subbed? Hope they fixed that at least.

And yes, people complained about BRD casting but when this happened in HW, that was when the MCH identity was made and thus the devs should have kept this aspect of its gameplay going forward while BRD returned to being the lighter more mobile ranged class. For heaven's sake, it's a class with guns and heavy weaponry. Machinist WAS a mix of both things ultimately, similar to Samurai with their Iaijutsu thanks to the stance system. Skilled players, especially in raids, would change it up on the fly. It was a rich job with demanding execution, forethought, and depth, but INCREDIBLY rewarding. 3.4 and 3.5 MCH was a dream if you had the ping.

Now it's as simple as can be, I don't even think there's any real weaving. Lots of mashing so you feel busy. It's bland and boring, and as I hear it BRD's interactivity with DoTs, RNG, and more has been striped as well.

[Curisu]

Wait, what is this long discussion about?
Not everyone has to like every job/role.

I know enough people who like to play phys ranged.
There is no phys range shortage in any content.

The 1 each roles buff is just really important in week one savage, ultimates and when a LB is needed.

I would say that phys ranged are in a good spot right now.
You have different playstyles for them and everyone is viable in any content.