Quote Originally Posted by Valence View Post
It's not the first expansion. It has been the case in early ShB and in early EW. 10% discrepancies isn't unheard of, actually it went above that back then.

The only reason people didn't do it was because of the 1% party bonus "muh parses" and a slightly lowered vitality for the whole party.

I do agree that without extremely specific mechanics directly targeted at the role, it will remain in limbo, since you can't either buff it on par with melees/BLM/PCT else nobody would play melee anymore. It's not a solvable conundrum.
No one playing melee anymore because of physical ranged doing damage is just not true at all. People will always play melee as long as they aren't significantly behind in damage like physical ranged is currently in due to them having 6 different fun options with somewhat unique gameplay.

Not only that but my main point is that the difference has just been simply laughable, anything more than a few percentage ahead is awful balancing.

Majority of the player base will not play a job they simply don't enjoy. Players are just being punished currently because their favorite job happens to be a physical ranged or caster that isn't PCT or soon to be BLM when they inevitably get major buffs.