Giant boss hitboxes and constant mid teleports make melee less fun.

[Valence]

Even with the hidden buff it's a crap-shoot
Some jobs like BLM and MCH are head and shoulders above everyone else, specially for BLM since crit is heaven for them practically designed around triple cast, while things like Bard even when accounting for the biggest hidden buff I mean look at that sheet lmao, they are still a huge joke.

Yes, running through the numbers it seems to be a little undertuned, which doesnt surprise me with SE. After very fast napkin math a BRD would give the healer about +150 dps, the tank about +200, and you and the other dps around +300 (*2) average, which isn't enough to account for the 2k difference that a MCH would bring for example.

Something curious is how AST provides less damage to the party through this hidden buff than SCH. Plus this damage doesn't go to the buff jobs themselves but the entire party, thus making the "selfish" jobs present even stronger.

Probably for the same reason that DNC provides half what BRD does even if both jobs in full parties are very similar on the party wide damage buffs (DNC is even a bit ahead). DNC partner's mechanics aren't affected by the size of the party and count for a decent chunk of their buffs, much like AST's card are solo targets and a constant source of buffs that is unaffected by the party size.

Now, if that does compare well in terms of numbers in fine or if those numbers are off, idk.

Having a theoretical superior damage is fine if it's reflected by the gaussian spread of skill level. Ranged should provide a tighter reliable spread while an excellent melee player should be able really push their uptime to the upper quartiles past simple reliability. I don't know if that's at all reflected by fflogs data currently. I doubt it.

No, because it means that one role favors bad players (rphys) and one favors good players (melee). As a rphys afficionado, I do not want to be shoehorned into the "role for bad players", thank you very much.

We can also see how great it's working right now within the caster and rphys roles with the amount of players just going for SMN and DNC (over 50%), because DPS checks don't matter that much, and if they did people would whine because some jobs would become useless. And since everything those days has been baked into encounter difficulty and mechanics and not on the battle system or the job gameplay, then the only thing that matters is the effort one has to pour into playing DDR and solving mechanics.

The only solution would be to bring back uniqueness to the rphys role, that currently has been left as a melee without positionals and a ranged without casts. Those jobs used to have the most demanding rotations and the most demanding support, which they lost. And they still had the ranged tax already anyway, because fuck them rphys amaright?