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

[Sequora]

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.

I would rather casters just deal closer damage to melee DPS than to make it purposefully more challenging for melee to keep uptime. That's not fun.

[tearagion]

I would rather casters just deal closer damage to melee DPS than to make it purposefully more challenging for melee to keep uptime. That's not fun.

if melee players don't find it fun to try to stay in melee range they should consider the physranged role

[Denji]

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.

i'm fairly certain the change was to accommodate sages screaming phlegma balls every 40-80 seconds but you do have a point.

[Renathras]

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

Offhand, they probably were thinking how Summoners have nothing to do with disabling/debuffing/enfeebling/poisoning things, so the DoTs were very out of place on the Job. Arguably Energy Drain/Fester are now (Siphon and especially Painflare less so), though.

Interestingly, I dislike BLM and RDM, but like SMN. (RDM's AOE rotation being "backwards" sets my OCD off...)

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,

It's strange to me that everything you hate about SMN is what I love about it, and what you want for it is what I hate about RDM and BLM. The only thing I think is stupid is how little damage RDM does, which isn't a problem with SMN, it's a problem with RDM tuning. RDM shouldn't be doing less damage than the party buffing Ranged Jobs, yet here we are.

EDIT:

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.

100% agreed.

[Connor]

I feel like casters and ranged phys have both suffered greatly in Endwalker lol. Physical Ranged may as well be renamed to ‘Dancer and the other two you don’t use’ lol. Summoner and Red Mage just feel ‘meh’, you don’t really have anything helpful if nobody is dying, but you also don’t have high enough damage to justify having 0 functional utility lol. Which, really, is more of a game design (and community) issue, than a job design one. Ultimately you just end up losing dps over taking Black Mage.

I don’t agree with Summoner / Red Mage being so heavily penalised for having support utility. I mean, if not just for the fact that as a Red Mage you will absolutely be shit on for using Vercure. And Summoner has no control over its utility in the first place so Everlasting Flight barely counts lol. Unfortunately it’s that exact thinking that’s caused the game to become the way it is; everything is perfectly optimised. Which means less abilities (lower damage variation), fixed rotations, no DoTs because unfair advantages on certain fights (e.g boss cannot be targeted ) may skew damage outputs, and honestly I wouldn’t be surprised if they deleted Vercure, Verraise, Everlasting Flight and Rekindle. All they do is get in the way of optimisation…right?

[Valence]

if melee players don't find it fun to try to stay in melee range they should consider the physranged role

Or a summoner role...

That's why I play rphys, but then I'm being told because I don't like it I don't deserve the same kind of damage output. The mentality behind this design is absolutely genius.

[Renathras]

if melee players don't find it fun to try to stay in melee range they should consider the physranged role

Kind of agree, honestly. That's the entire point of the Melee role and why it has higher damage in the first place, and a lot of people actually LIKED fighting for uptime and positionals on the Jobs that offered it. MNK had to be completely reworked to adjust to the fact its core rotation absent positionals was rather...bland.

[Valence]

I feel like casters and ranged phys have both suffered greatly in Endwalker lol. Physical Ranged may as well be renamed to ‘Dancer and the other two you don’t use’ lol. Summoner and Red Mage just feel ‘meh’, you don’t really have anything helpful if nobody is dying, but you also don’t have high enough damage to justify having 0 functional utility lol. Which, really, is more of a game design (and community) issue, than a job design one. Ultimately you just end up losing dps over taking Black Mage.

I don’t agree with Summoner / Red Mage being so heavily penalised for having support utility. I mean, if not just for the fact that as a Red Mage you will absolutely be shit on for using Vercure. And Summoner has no control over its utility in the first place so Everlasting Flight barely counts lol. Unfortunately it’s that exact thinking that’s caused the game to become the way it is; everything is perfectly optimised. Which means less abilities (lower damage variation), fixed rotations, no DoTs because unfair advantages on certain fights (e.g boss cannot be targeted ) may skew damage outputs, and honestly I wouldn’t be surprised if they deleted Vercure, Verraise, Everlasting Flight and Rekindle. All they do is get in the way of optimisation…right?

I'm gonna be pedantic, but please keep in mind that I agree with your post.

1) DNC and the other two you don't use is a meme. BRD and MCH are competitive enough (and kinda surpass DNC those days).
2) RDM actually has Magick Barrier, which is pretty good.
3) SMN may not have any control over everlasting flight, but a good team can still make use of it, since nobody needs to constantly keep the party topped up. Imo it feeds into team skill play.

[Equitable_Remedy]

Given that they can use earth, wind, fire, water, lightning, and ice magic, does NIN count as a caster?

Because NIN feels glorious right now

[Connor]

snip

They do lore-wise! At least partially lol. I’m sure they explain in one of the early class quests that Mudras/Ninjutsu is identical to the ‘spell casting’ we have in Eorzea. In that ‘Mudras’ are essentially how they cast spells in the East. Different means towards the same end. I have Ninja at level 90 but my skill with it is non-existent lol so I can’t really say how it stacks up compared to ranged/casters, but it’s fun to play at least lol.

If there’s one thing for certain is that regardless of where your opinion falls on whether casters/ranged have/haven’t suffered, Melee have really benefitted this expansion lol. For better and worse lol.

snip again I need more characters lol

1) Definitely true; as much as I meme about Bard, in terms of actual output there’s actually fairly good balance between ranged dps, and just all dps in general (give or take). There’s no job currently that ‘isn’t worth taking’ to any content. Still, there are a lot less Bard and Machinists than Dancers according to a certain website, so I do think there’s something there. Though it may be there’s less players for them purely because of the meme lol
2) Again this is a good point I didn’t touch on. Summoner and Red Mage do have good utility; it’s not like they do less damage but have nothing to show for it. I do kind of wish we had more opportunities to use them, but then that’s more an encounter design issue
3) It’s also worth mentioning as well that in my experience, Phoenix / Everlasting Flight tends to line up with boss AoEs as well. So even if you’re not thinking about it, it’s rare that it’ll literally do nothing