Fight Designs & Class Balancement - Why everything is wrong and favors Melee Fantasy

[Mortex]

Less than 15 seconds left? No one's getting their full burst widnow off in that time except maybe MNK/WAR/DRK. Summon Phoenix once the boss is targetable again and fire off Revelation, if there's that little time left then holding until after the downtime window shouldn't turn a clear into an enrage wipe.

Why do you call it favouritism, anyway? Yes melee DPS deal more damage, but they have limitations like not being able to stand wherever they want to, or having to hit the boss from certain directions or lose damage. It's not favouritism, it's a fair trade. Ranged don't deal as much damage in exchange for the ability to be wherever they please outside of mechanics, and an easier time pre-positioning for mechanics because 25y range allows far more freedom of positioning than 3y.

The bosses this raid tier have so massive hitboxes that the only way not hitting the boss in meele is too stand in narnia. Like lord hephaistos having a normal human model but the hitbox of a jacked behemoth is just funny. Same with hegemon

[Myon88]

Show this picture to any joker that tries to tell you melees still have uptime and positional constraints lol.

[george357]

my mains are all ranged my second jobs are magic and third are melee i don't put a target on my back by not moving moving is my best way to stay alive.

[Aikaal]

It really can't be overstated how easy melees have it with uptime these days, you barely need to work for it anymore.

Yeah, they are 100% jsut favoring melee DPS >_>

@Naizakane, I'm not going to held it against you to defend your position because I do see you've cleared P7S and you're working on P8S. Let me ask you something. Have you had to drop any GCD at all on P8S door boss? I guess your Gaze could make you lose a GCD but thats everybody. Because I sure can tell you there's that one nice mechanic where you deal with 3 flares markers that makes you constantly moving. Mechanic is Cthonic Vent and this requires about 40seconds of movement. I can do it just fine on Summoner. That's not something a Red Mage can do and He will have to sac GCDs if casting you clip him. Meanwhile, the hig box is so huge that you don't miss a single GCD. You may miss a positional here and there. But what's that compared to a full cast? You even have tools like True North to deal with that crap.

Where is the so-called difficulty of keeping melee uptime? You don't. In Cthonic Vent, I open on buff window with Bahamut and follow with Ifrit. Because ultimately I'm way too much of a danger unless I burn the hardcasts right away. In your own knowledge, that's me hitting my rotation properly but not hitting my strongest buttons on burst window. It's the tax I pay as you pay your tax on those mechanics by missing some positionals. I do hope you understand where I'm going from and I do hope you understand your RDM is probably not having fun Red Maging that fight because I swapped from RDM to SMN for that fight.

This is Melee Fantasy XIV. This is Meleewalker. I can't wait to see how they butcher the balancing further.

The only time you could have lsot melee uptime in Door boss is during Car 2 and they made the boss invulnerable because if you're gonna lose uptime, they'll make everyone lose uptime so it is just bs that Melee DPS needs to be ahead now.

[Fryfor]

Honestly? Good.
If it compromises fun boss design or mechanics I don't want heavy downtime or positionals to exist period. Not like the devs know what they're doing with job balance anyways!

[SaberMaxwell]

https://clips.twitch.tv/FilthyAlluri...nc2mj2KxrrEP-W

This was admittedly early in prog so I had a few plates I could have spun to make this work (or at least not suck so bad) but I just wanted to illustrate Aikaal's point. To make things even worse, I've had to come up with several different strategies to minimize movement downtime based on several factors, one of which being snake first or stomp first.

[Aco505]

@Naizakane, I'm not going to held it against you to defend your position because I do see you've cleared P7S and you're working on P8S. Let me ask you something. Have you had to drop any GCD at all on P8S door boss? I guess your Gaze could make you lose a GCD but thats everybody. Because I sure can tell you there's that one nice mechanic where you deal with 3 flares markers that makes you constantly moving. Mechanic is Cthonic Vent and this requires about 40seconds of movement. I can do it just fine on Summoner. That's not something a Red Mage can do and He will have to sac GCDs if casting you clip him. Meanwhile, the hig box is so huge that you don't miss a single GCD. You may miss a positional here and there.

As a DRG, you need 2 charges of TN or using one and greeding really hard to catch all your positionals during the Cthonic Vent part. It's not as free as you might think. Also playing as DRG often requires conscious TN planning and positional use due to how positional-intensive the job is.

RDM having to plan their resources for movement is something that happens in every fight because they are the least mobile caster. Healers have it worse, since they're quite the turrets now if they want to avoid dealing less damage.

WHM for instance can use lilies to move, but it's not always beneficial to do so (e.g. Act 4 when everyone's bursting).

Some fights are going to favor casters and some others melees, but this common idea that I see in this thread about how ranged don't have freedom of movement is not true to reality.

What a melee had to do to keep uptime during Pinax 1 or now with Double Rush 1 in P5S, just to cite two examples, is hardly the pampering that people claim melee have.

I'm not denying though that melee may have it easier now compared to the past, but it's not that freely given. Plenty of people will disengage or play extremely safe as a melee at lower levels, whereas at higher level players tend to play in risky (but controlled) ways to keep 100% uptime. This does not apply to ranged, who have quite the freedom in that sense no matter their skill level, although casters may have to greed a (slide)cast here or there in specific moments that require quick movement (e. g. Act 1).

Melee uptime often requires active effort, even if it may have required more in past fights.

This doesn't change the fact that the gap between DPS should be lower though. However, plenty of people misunderstand and misuse statistics. rDPS, aDPS and nDPS are not the same metric, they have different purposes and citing rDPS as the main one is a mistake, because there's two main types of job: buffing jobs and "selfish" jobs, and they operate differently.

A "selfish" job should never have more rDPS than a buffing job; it should have more aDPS and nDPS to reflect the fact that their personal damage is higher. Under no circumstance should a job at the top of the aDPS/nDPS charts also be the top rDPS because then it means that this job deals more raid damage than a job buffing 7 other players, as well as gaining a lot more benefit from buffs compared to non-"selfish" jobs. Or in other words, such a job would always be better than any other, a situation that was already present in ShB and leads to imbalance.

The relationship between rDPS and aDPS/nDPS is inverse: as one goes up, the other goes down and vice versa.

And with all that in mind, checking DPS charts right now without context is going to do more harm than good. We won't really know 100% how (un)balanced jobs are until everyone is BiS and we have enough data to compare, week 1 job viability notwithstanding.

[Rilifane]

Then explain why all melees deal signifcantly more damage at all gameplay levels (including the time when they bork their rotation and lose GCDs/ positionals to playing safe as opposed to phys ranged only borking their rotation)?
The only hard hitter that frequently starts at phys ranged level is BLM. The starting gap ranges from 500-800rDPS at low percentiles to up to 2k at higher percentiles across the 5 boss fights.
Which means even a melee that is played terribly and loses uptime and positonals is still inherently stronger than a phys ranged. And then we have bosses like p7s ...

The "range tax" and "mobility tax" is a lie, as is "melees are stronger when played well but they are weaker when they play it safe" - no, they are not. They are still stronger when played terribly and safe than all phys ranged/ casters barring BLM when played terribly.

[Aco505]

Then explain why all melees deal signifcantly more damage at all gameplay levels (including the time when they bork their rotation and lose GCDs/ positionals to playing safe as opposed to phys ranged only borking their rotation)?
The only hard hitter that frequently starts at phys ranged level is BLM. The starting gap ranges from 500-800rDPS at low percentiles to up to 2k at higher percentiles across the 5 boss fights.
Which means even a melee that is played terribly and loses uptime and positonals is still inherently stronger than a phys ranged. And then we have bosses like p7s ...

The "range tax" and "mobility tax" is a lie, as is "melees are stronger when played well but they are weaker when they play it safe" - no, they are not. They are still stronger when played terribly and safe than all phys ranged/ casters barring BLM when played terribly.

I already reply to your points in my post, if you're talking to me in particular: the gap between DPS should be lower, statistics are not fully accurate yet because of gear funneling, and finally melee do have to work to get their uptime (even if it's less work now than it was) whereas ranged don't have this problem at all levels of play.

The last point doesn't justify big DPS gaps, however when people compare the rDPS of a DNC/BRD vs a MCH's, they're making the mistake of ignoring the latter's aDPS/nDPS values. Whether the latter should be higher or not due to MCH's status as a supposed "selfish" job is another question entirely.

[Rilifane]

I already reply to your points in my post, if you're talking to me in particular: the gap between DPS should be lower, statistics are not fully accurate yet because of gear funneling, and finally melee do have to work to get their uptime (even if it's less work now than it was) whereas ranged don't have this problem at all levels of play.

The last point doesn't justify big DPS gaps, however when people compare the rDPS of a DNC/BRD vs a MCH's, they're making the mistake of ignoring the latter's aDPS/nDPS values. Whether the latter should be higher or not due to MCH's status as a supposed "selfish" job is another question entirely.

No, I didn't. I usually quote people I directly reply to to avoid confusion.

I generally take issue with the stance of several people here who argue that a 10%+ dps gap (rDPS or aDPS, whichever applies to that particular class) is fine because they occasionally lose 2-3% to being a melee.
And I've deliberately looked at all fights because the lower floors include casual statics that don't funnel gear. Gear funneling is an issue for p8s part 1/2 statistics.

You don't have to work hard enough for your uptime to justify that sort of gap, that's where we agree.
Because you'd have to put conscious effort into losing enough uptime to be on par with a phys ranged that naturally has full uptime, that's how big the gap currently is. Even if you played every mechanic on Carby really safe and choose the worst positions on top of it (ranged puddle, group 2 stack at the wall, spread pos in the corner) you'd be ahead of a phys ranged that naturally has full uptime.