Quote Originally Posted by Akonyl View Post
It feels baffling how the physical ranged jobs are essentially "support", but nowadays that support is mostly in the form of dps, and even *with* that party dps, we come out lower with overall damage contribution than dedicated selfish dps. At times, it seems like the only reason to take a phys range is for the party composition buff, not for the actual merits of the role.

The ranged tax has felt extremely odd ever since full melee uptime became the norm. If the role really needs to be taxed because of freedom of movement, tax it through difficulty of the job, not a hard limit on their dps. Or, keep the dps tax, but in return give us actual, meaningful party utility beyond dps buffs that don't even compensate enough.
We're hitting the point where even the comp buff is becoming irrelevant because other jobs can simply push their dps higher to compensate. Phys ranged design is using ARR logic in Dawntrail class design. That needs to change. It's not a case of they need to do more damage. Yes it would help, but more damage has to come at the cost of something. Thus the design of phys ranged as a role needs to change. Casters and melee aren't bound by the old class design anymore, so why should phys ranged be?