From Meleewalker to Meleetrail

[Semirhage]

"Let's add a bunch of instant casts to casters so they can move around in our cardio-heavy constant movement modern fight design. Now that they're more mobile let's make sure their damage remains lower relative to the melee (except BLM, lol)"
"Let's delete a bunch of positionals, add more stacks to True North, add a TN effect to a Dragoon ability, and blow up boss hitboxes so melee never have to lose uptime. Oh, and if they would ever lose uptime due to mechanics vomit, we'll just make the boss untargetable so everyone loses damage. Now let's buff the crap out of their damage so they do way more than the ranged, because this makes sense".

It's the naked double standard. All of this faff about "damage is balanced intra-role" is a fat load of bull. It wasn't like this in Shadowbringers. But now that the melee are doing way more than everyone else, *suddenly* you'll hear all the melee mains claim damage "should" be balanced this way for...comp reasons or something, because that second slot should always be melee.

[kayll]

"Let's add a bunch of instant casts to casters so they can move around in our cardio-heavy constant movement modern fight design. Now that they're more mobile let's make sure their damage remains lower relative to the melee (except BLM, lol)"
"Let's delete a bunch of positionals, add more stacks to True North, add a TN effect to a Dragoon ability, and blow up boss hitboxes so melee never have to lose uptime. Oh, and if they would ever lose uptime due to mechanics vomit, we'll just make the boss untargetable so everyone loses damage. Now let's buff the crap out of their damage so they do way more than the ranged, because this makes sense".

Yeah I don't really get this, I really don't know how anyone can look at all of theses facts and say "Yeah this is how it should be".
The fact that the biggest complaint melee seems to have atm is related to Kaiten being removed is really telling I think, even despite Square rebalancing their abilities to make up for its removal.

Endwalker has massively coddled melee to the point that as a RDM,7.0 has me more scared than excited for how the gameplay develops further, RDM and BLM being given the SMN treatment, or just more of the same neglt.ec

[Rychu]

Endwalker has massively coddled melee to the point that as a RDM,7.0 has me more scared than excited for how the gameplay develops further, RDM and BLM being given the SMN treatment, or just more of the same neglt.ec

Ehhhhh dont worry about it mate, we'll get what RDM's always wanted in 7.0 I promise. another finisher after resolution further fucking up the burst window, a shield mitigation that can be put on anyone but ourselves, and verfire and stone II that function exactly the same but with 20 more potency....

[Deo14]

The fact that the biggest complaint melee seems to have atm is related to Kaiten being removed is really telling I think, even despite Square rebalancing their abilities to make up for its removal.

They rebalanced SAM to deal more damage with basic GCDs and less with the big attacks, which is contradictory to the class fantasy. If they simply wanted to remove Kaiten, they would need to do just handful of potency changes, but they did about 21 of those changes in single patch. Midare deals just like 2.5x as much as regular GCD. Most importantly, now on average every 5th skill you use is Shinten. Imagine that RDM has a bland, uninteresting oGCD, and each spell builds gauge that is pretty much used only for this skill, and the gauge generation is so high that you spend 20% of all actions on using this boring spell. This is the state of SAM.

I understand that casters, and especially RDM really feels like devs' unwanted child, but that doesn't mean that we as players should point fingers and antagonize each other. I really don't think that any sensible players asked for SMN to become pranged, for RDM to be taxed to oblivion for a verraise, which is barely any better than single use ress, or any of the questionable changes EW brought.

[Lyth]

...

Not necessarily. I've repeatedly argued that all DPS jobs should have similar rDPS values, and I'd be happy if they put everyone on a level playing field next expansion.

Job 'difficulty' is a very personal, subjective experience. You're of course naturally going to argue that casters are 'more difficult' to play than any other subrole, and thus should be rewarded with higher damage numbers and triple ranged comps at baseline. But is that perceived 'difficulty' on casters a function of having a protracted progression experience in P10S? Are there elements of that 'difficulty' that could be softened through repeated practice and self-improvement on a personal level?

The other issue is when you take that personal sense of 'superior difficulty' and force that view on to others, it actually makes the gameplay experience worse across the board for the community. I remember that you didn't like WHM being treated as the 'easy' healer by the community very much. Why propagate that experience on to others? All subroles should be in a place of mutual respect. Rather than finding reasons to justify discrepancies between subroles, we really should be finding ways to justify eliminating them.

If you shrunk boss hitbox sizes, had more boss movement, and even had mechanics to physically force you off the boss, a lot of melee would enjoy that. Forced downtime is a skill differentiator, because then you see melee who are good at using movement actions really excel over everyone else. It's actually funny that Criterion of all things does this better than the raid tier.

Likewise, physical ranged would probably have no objection to taking on additional skill checks if it means doing the same rDPS as melee. You want them to do double the CPM of casters? Juggle double the procs? Intermittent casts in the form of charged sniper shots? Ranged positionals? Actions that cannot be executed at proximity? Some of the most talented players I've met have actually been physical ranged, so I have no doubt they'll rise to the occasion, regardless of what you throw at them.

I also think that these constant complaints around 'difficulty' are what's at the center for eliminating skill checks on every role. When you complain about a 'cardio-heavy' movement fight design that's hard on casters, they turn around and start removing your cast bars. Resource management too difficult? They might as well remove MP next expansion. Random number generators holding you back? No problem, all your big hits are now guaranteed Crit/DH. Every time you complain, you think they're going to buff your job so that you can clear more fights. Every time you complain, they remove skill checks from everyone. Take pride in your skill checks. Demand more.