Anyone else think caster has suffered this expansion? (hopes for the future)

[Mesarthim]

It is, and it somehow manages to be better than red mage anyway. Red Mage is such an exercise in frustration. Your attacks are impotent. Your dualcast rez is basically useless (I'm sorry, if you have to rez that often, you're going to hit an enrage wall in meaningful content). Hell, your mobility options when the AOE gets crazy is your frigging melee combo...and even with the buff, it felt more like a "fix" than a buff.

I can easily second the whole buff feeling more like a fix than a buff. Only after this "buff" do I feel like I am doing the damage I feel like I should've already been doing at the very least.

Meanwhile melee gets to do significantly more with hitboxes the size of the moon.

[Turtledeluxe]

As a Blm since ARR launch, being a caster has rarely felt so unrewarding as of now. We need to put in a lot more work than melee to not even be able to keep up with them dps wise. We have positioning issues, uptime issues, lack of mobility, yet melee out-dps us without even trying.
Unpopular opinion, but Blm should do more dps than melee. Blm has zero utility, which was always used as an excuse for its high dmg, but we don't do any more atm. We traded high numbers against being able to move at will and against having anything to help the party (what little we had was taken from us). That was not a problem, cause what we brought was killing the boss faster, but since we don't atm, the only reason to even bring a caster these days is the 1% buff and a tad faster lb build up.

Old post but QFT. Being a BLM now feels mostly pointless, even when you know what you're doing. I used to see jokes it was punishing but like really, it is.

To the people that mourn summoner, welcome to what they did to MCH for ShB. Even though old SMN wasn't especially hard either, more like fighting against your pets...

To the people that mourn the state of casters (bar BLM), welcome to what rphys has been since ShB.

Let's unite casters, and break free of our second rate dps job chains.

I don't think a class like Bard should competing with a BLM. Maybe a RDM, but not BLM.

SE really needs to decide if roles mean something or not. They have this attitude about glam but it seems like with classes damage is just becoming an all inclusive thing. Certain roles should be top DPS, easily, and the roles that aren't should be bringing something else to the table. Or the alternative is just let every class do similar DPS but also ensure they all have decent utility in some way, so that way people can play the one they like style and gameplay wise.

[Vinal211]

Remember when being called a "Selfish" DPS meant something? not even just for caster dps, but dps in general. SAM, BLM, MCH. the "Selfish" DPS, bringing little utility but more than enough DPS to make up for it. now the other jobs can easily hit the same damage while bringing something besides it to the table (well more or less, there's still a difference I'm sure, but it's probably VERY minimal by now.)

and it's not just that either. it's already been said millions of times but we're hitting a point of job identity where there is none to be said. hell I'm sure for a lot of ARR and HW vets we've been losing identity since the first post-main story patches dropped. what is the point of having all of these jobs when none of them feel objectively unique to one another in any amount? at that point why should i play half the jobs? i should just play the jobs that play the simplest and push out the most results. Casters? Ranged? nah, why should i? the boss can be hit with a sneeze from halfway across the room and always recenters itself, i should just play melee. but only MNK or DRG, or even NIN or RPR, cause those four are CLEARLY the best with the extra utility they throw onto everyone.

[Dahlinea]

I just hope the devs don't point their "braindead rework gun" at Red Mage next expansion. If I have to change main jobs again because of stupid reworks I'd rather quit the game for good.

[Valence]

SE really needs to decide if roles mean something or not. They have this attitude about glam but it seems like with classes damage is just becoming an all inclusive thing. Certain roles should be top DPS, easily, and the roles that aren't should be bringing something else to the table. Or the alternative is just let every class do similar DPS but also ensure they all have decent utility in some way, so that way people can play the one they like style and gameplay wise.

We're not in disagreement. I'm all for it if they bring me something meaningful to give to my party besides my 1% damage bonus.

Else yeah, let's stop the discrimination for once and give me the same raid dps than the melee/blm posterboys. You can make my rotation more complex or whatever if it shuts everybody whining about subjective difficulties and all that jazz. I would actually not complain.

[Sequora]

The problem with casters is the way fights are designed AND the way casters are balanced against each other.

Fights are designed with melee players in mind first and foremost.

This means that melee just have more mobility than BLM and RDM.

There’s also the Rez tax. Caster is the only sub role that has a sub role within a sub role.

BLM is the pure caster and has damage similar to that of melee jobs.

Red mage and summoner pay a Rez tax. Even taking their damage boosting utility into account, they deal less damage than melee jobs and black mage because the developers consider Rez to be such a strong utility that they should deal less damage.

This creates a strange feeling that red mage and summoner are “progression jobs” and that black mage is technically just superior in a perfect run.

No other role really deals with this disparity.

Melee and phys ranged are all balanced around their personal damage and the extra damage they provide to their parties.

[Denji]

RDM is my main caster as of late (i even got the last eureka weapon the other day) and I think it's fine. Its AoE rotation's a little meh but I'm quite pleased with it as a class overall. Honestly don't understand the complaining coming from them tho'.

SMN needs some serious help. Honestly have no idea what they were thinking removing all the dots and everything that made it unique.

BLM is fine. It used to be my main caster class and I hope to go back to it once I finish getting everything to 90 but, yeah. It wouldn't ever -not- be fine since it's yoshi the xivth's main class

[Ggwppino]

Red mage and summoner pay a Rez tax.

Red mage pay the Rez Tax. Smn is currently being treated with kid gloves than it deserves.

As a "lifelong" smn player, we currently find ourselves in an unfair position for both blm and rdm. The smn is a bug to the system: it has no resources to manage and no significant optimizations to do, an operationally simple and simplistic rotation, high movement, non-existent casts and a buff that has a half minute window, but has damage equal to if not greater than the rdm. All due to the fact that SQE had the discontent of people who didn't like the new rework and also felt teased for the little damage output it had.
Currently the smn would have to pay so many "taxes" that the ress falls into the background

[Dahlinea]

My hopes for SMN, to make it more engaging and less braindead:

1) Eiliminate the mandatory Summon Bahamut/Phoenix condition to access the 3 lego summons and make them ready to use;
2) Instead of spend gems to summon, make so you fill a "gem gauge" when you summon;
3) Let me repeat lego summons if I see fit to do so;
4) Return Outburst as basic AoE spell and move Tri-disaster back to an oGCD that now gets ready whenever the Gem gauge is filled and spend the gauge gems when used, enabling the legos to be summoned again afterwards;
5) Put Energy Drain/Syphoon at 30 secs CD again and replace Fester with an oGCD Ruin IV;
6) Delete Carbuncle (as a dummy pet on the field) and add it as a separate support summon that apply a shield to party and go away after using its skill;
7) Being the summon with your hardcasts, make so Ifrit is the one providing the most damage of all summons and make his abilities single target.
8) Make Garuda's abilities all AoE oriented turning it into a summon specialized in AoE damage again (in dungeons, add phases, etc)
9) Keep Titan the instacast single target summon to go but reduce its AoE effectiveness;
10) Give back to Phoenix its two spell combo, instead of mashing the same button for six times;
11) Make Bahamut/Phoenix uses their attacks only when we use their spells like it was in ShB. There'll probably be no issues with ghosting their first attack now that their Summon skill is GCD;
12) Remove the limit of Gemshine spell casts for your current elemental attunement.


So basically: split Demis from I/T/G and make legos rotation its own system, let us repeat the summons that fill the gem gauge instead of forcing us to use all three needlessly and make them more specialized again (Ifrit the stronger one with single target hardcast spells and abilities, Titan with single target instacast spells and abilites, and Garuda with AoE hard and insta cast spells and abilities)

[Tamaerl]

Boss hitboxes should probably go back to what they were pre-Endwalker. The large hitboxes making it braindead easy for melee to stay in attack range has done perhaps the most harm to casters this expansion.