Physical Ranged (Also SMN) "Freedom of Movement" Tax

[Galvuu]

Having this discussion before Savage is somewhat pointless because, presumably, they're attempting to reintroduce melee uptime concerns (smaller boss hitboxes, actually working for the few positionals left, etc).
I agree that, in EW, melee were basically physical ranged because of the bloated boss hitboxes, but that has more to do with the poor encounter design than the jobs themselves.
You also absolutely cannot run double caster without losing damage. Double caster is awful, because any of the non-Pictomancer casters are substantially weaker than melees.
Like, I agree that MCH needs a decent bump in damage, but I disagree with the general premise that free perfect uptime shouldn't be taxed. There are fights where you will struggle to maintain uptime in some jobs, and doing so usually incurs a substantial penalty to your burst (TOP p6). This is even true with the current extremes for some jobs.
And I also generally think that if you need to work 5x as hard to get perfect uptime (usually as a team), that should have some non-insubstantial reward. I remember the voodoo I did in Shiva (E8S) for perfect melee uptime, we ended up adopting a much riskier, harder to execute strat. In a universe where BRD and MCH are comparable to NIN and SAM, we simply would never run those two jobs.

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?

This comment is interesting because, imho, Picto and Viper are much closer to the "classic" design of their roles than the recent reworks/additions. Picto has a number of fairly long casts (although it has tools to help it deal with modern encounter design) and definitely feels like a caster (unlike the reworked SMN). Viper has a fast gcd and quite a few positionals, which is reminiscent of the older versions of MNK.
You can tell that the cast bars on Picto matter because it has a differential between the 25% and 50% percentiles, and a differential between the 50% and 75% percentiles similar to Black Mage's, which is usually the case for jobs whose damage is gated behind gcds.

There are certainly severe issues with the current balance that need addressing, but saying physical ranged don't have an advantage in keeping total uptime while handling mechanics is disingenuous. Are they overtaxed? Yea, I agree with this. But I'm not comfortable in saying that mobility should be free- you'll have a hard time convincing me current SMN should be within 1% of current BLM or PCT.

[Warlyx]

Having this discussion before Savage is somewhat pointless because, presumably, they're attempting to reintroduce melee uptime concerns (smaller boss hitboxes, actually working for the few positionals left, etc).

let me "doubt" about that , being viper the prime job of this expansion

and yep remove "Ranged tax" should have been removed long time ago

[Galvuu]

let me "doubt" about that , being viper the prime job of this expansion

and yep remove "Ranged tax" should have been removed long time ago

This entire "ranged tax should disappear entirely" stance stands on the assumption that encounters allow for ready and consistent uptime on all roles.
This is true for some encounters, but this isn't true in general. On the one hand, there are encounters in which this isn't true no matter what, or is true with a large amount of effort (like some phases in TOP). But you're also vulnerable to people- for example, the current preferred pf strat in the EU DCs for extreme 1, on the triple group stack+fire puddle in the fire phase, is very punishing for casters. I didn't did that fight with BLM yet, but I'm pretty confident you likely bleed uptime, and at the very least you're losing 3 gcds in Ley Lines.
If they do like, two tiers in a row where you can confidently say that playing Black Mage or playing Dancer yields no difference in uptime and no cost in burst for keeping said uptime, sure, remove ranged tax. But this isn't even true in EW to begin with, let alone the new savage with the re-adjusted boss hitboxes (the one Yoshida showed had a SB-style hitbox that will likely cause melees to lose a few gcds).

While pictomancer has the 'classic' design of long casts, how much uptime does it lose?

Another example beyond the one from extreme 1 I just gave above, in extreme 2, there's a burst window during a mechanic where one of the roles (dps or support) needs to get punted to another platform using a tornado. If dps needs to go across after the party share, Pictomancer needs to somehow fit all 5 gcds on their Starry Muse before jumping cross. The timing for this is extremely tight, and if you mess it up, it becomes impossible to even get your Rainbow Drip proc (the Starry Muse respawns outside of the arena in that mechanic), which, on its own, is like a 600 potency loss in burst. I don't think Picto is particularly difficult (certainly easier than BLM), but it's definitely not without challenges that physical ranged don't even need to consider.

My point isn't even that ranged aren't over-taxed right now, among a myriad other balance issues- they are. DT launched in a disastrous balance state. But I don't think we're at a point where ranged tax should be 0 (or even 1%, honestly).

[Ruminous]

Another example beyond the one from extreme 1 I just gave above, in extreme 2, there's a burst window during a mechanic where one of the roles (dps or support) needs to get punted to another platform using a tornado. If dps needs to go across after the party share, Pictomancer needs to somehow fit all 5 gcds on their Starry Muse before jumping cross. the timing for this is extremely tight, and if you mess it up, it becomes impossible to even get your Rainbow Drip proc (the Starry Muse respawns outside of the arena in that mechanic), which, on its own, is like a 600 potency loss in burst. I don't think Picto is particularly difficult (certainly easier than BLM), but it's definitely not without challenges that physical ranged don't even need to consider.

My point isn't even that ranged aren't over-taxed right now, among a myriad other balance issues- they are. DT launched in a disastrous balance state. But I don't think we're at a point where ranged tax should be 0 (or even 1%, honestly).

Pantokrator needs you to fit double that or risk casting while standing still. Most people solved that. The game's given you tools to solve a lot of the problems thrown at you, and it's up to you to use them. That's part of the class design now. We're all aware of how bad the balance is currently, but this also highlights a design of apply ARR class balance logic in Dawntrail where things like uptime aren't even a problem anymore.

[Galvuu]

Pantokrator needs you to fit double that or risk casting while standing still. Most people solved that. The game's given you tools to solve a lot of the problems thrown at you, and it's up to you to use them. That's part of the class design now. We're all aware of how bad the balance is currently, but this also highlights a design of apply ARR class balance logic in Dawntrail where things like uptime aren't even a problem anymore.

TOP p6 makes one of the Ley Lines literally unusable. You can only get 3 gcds into it before you're forced to go on a merry-go-round. Should things like that not be considered?
You're also gonna be forced to burn Xenos to run around (which is a loss on your burst window), and go into some pretty terrible lines to keep uptime (and not drop AF as you're forced to LB3). Like, there is an array of considerations you need to take to mitigate your losses, and you're still losing something. Yes, it's narrow- maybe it's just BLM and maybe Picto, but I think just dismissing it as "they can sort it out" when it's not really possible to do so every time is not a good idea.
Even the idea that "the very best statics make it work!"- sure, but the majority of people are not those statics and probably is at the mercy of the pf. This feels like League, where some junk gets balanced for pro play, which is a different universe from what 99% of the playerbase experiences.

[Ruminous]

TOP p6 makes one of the Ley Lines literally unusable. You can only get 3 gcds into it before you're forced to go on a merry-go-round. Should things like that not be considered?
You're also gonna be forced to burn Xenos to run around (which is a loss on your burst window), and go into some pretty terrible lines to keep uptime (and not drop AF as you're forced to LB3). Like, there is an array of considerations you need to take to mitigate your losses, and you're still losing something. Yes, it's narrow- maybe it's just BLM and maybe Picto, but I think just dismissing it as "they can sort it out" when it's not really possible to do so every time is not a good idea.
Even the idea that "the very best statics make it work!"- sure, but the majority of people are not those statics and probably is at the mercy of the pf. This feels like League, where some junk gets balanced for pro play, which is a different universe from what 99% of the playerbase experiences.

It works both ways, you make x job worse because y job has to obey a mechanic, that is like league where you're balancing around something, only the opposite for your example. In the same vein, melee can throw out their burst before the exaflares start. Should we punish melee too by making them do less damage?

And yes, they should 'sort it out' when the tools exist for them to do so. Compare that to ARR, when it was "guess I'll just scathe" when you had hard movement mechanics. What casters got now is a massive, marked improvement. Same with melee. They have a lot of tools to maintain their uptime and the boss hitboxes are much bigger that they have to run to the arena's edge most of the time to be out of melee range. By the way, on the leylines note, they can move them now. So another tool if you position your leylines wrong or you can't stand in them from the boss just straight targeting you.

But I'll clarify. I don't think phys ranged should be hyper mobile without giving something up for its damage. I don't care for the mobility of phys ranged if it means I do anywhere from 10-15% less than most dps. But currently the design is so against the player that we're at the point where bringing a phys ranged means you're an active detriment to the party. That is not a fun feeling, nor is it great design. Make phys range be cognizant of their positioning to maximize their dps if you have to.

[Galvuu]

It works both ways, you make x job worse because y job has to obey a mechanic, that is like league where you're balancing around something, only the opposite for your example. In the same vein, melee can throw out their burst before the exaflares start. Should we punish melee too by making them do less damage?

Just to touch on this point, but I'd say yes. Melees being as high damage as they were in EW while basically being the same as physical ranged in terms of uptime was a travesty. That's why MCH should've been within 1-2% of SAM in EW. And, in EW, you absolutely can make the argument that the encounter design was skewed towards being pro-melee for so long that it became a pattern. I still think BLM specifically should be ahead of either by a good 3/4% due to some issues I touched on.
The same argument would apply to RDM, which should be much higher damage than a lot of its ranged counterparts and SMN, and quite close to melee, as that job had some uptime struggles in multiple encounters as well.

And, on your Ley Lines comment, retracing them is useless on TOP p6, because you're running around for like 8gcd. Even if you move them, you get 1 more gcd tops before you lose them again as you're running around the edge of the arena. The 3 gcds included one you'd get with retracing- but DT BLM probably is gonna bleed multiple gcds in TOP p6 as it simply no longer as the required tools to even keep perfect uptime no matter what.

Again, I keep reiterating this, I think this is the worst balanced .0 patch since HW (and including HW). If you said that you want to give a blanket buff of 5% overall damage to all non-PCT ranged jobs, I wouldn't argue against this in the slightest. I am simply commenting on the fact that I firmly believe that saying "ranged tax shouldn't exist" isn't accurate. And, if you want to talk about EW design with giant boss hitboxes and perfect melee uptime, then you can construe the same argument about a "melee tax".
If we get to the point where every job can get perfect uptime with minimal disruption of their burst windows and without some hyper-cursed, top 0.5% of the playerbase strats, then yes, I will share the sentiment that this "ranged tax" should be gone. But we're really not there yet, not for 2/3 jobs. And the preview we got from savage leads me to think that melee uptime might become challenging again. Ofc, maybe that was another classic SE bait and I'll end up saying the opposite of this once savage hits. It wouldn't surprise me in the slightest.

[Ruminous]

This comment is interesting because, imho, Picto and Viper are much closer to the "classic" design of their roles than the recent reworks/additions. Picto has a number of fairly long casts (although it has tools to help it deal with modern encounter design) and definitely feels like a caster (unlike the reworked SMN). Viper has a fast gcd and quite a few positionals, which is reminiscent of the older versions of MNK.
You can tell that the cast bars on Picto matter because it has a differential between the 25% and 50% percentiles, and a differential between the 50% and 75% percentiles similar to Black Mage's, which is usually the case for jobs whose damage is gated behind gcds.

There are certainly severe issues with the current balance that need addressing, but saying physical ranged don't have an advantage in keeping total uptime while handling mechanics is disingenuous. Are they overtaxed? Yea, I agree with this. But I'm not comfortable in saying that mobility should be free- you'll have a hard time convincing me current SMN should be within 1% of current BLM or PCT.

While pictomancer has the 'classic' design of long casts, how much uptime does it lose? Yes viper has fast GCDs and positionals, but how often is it a problem to hit them? The answer is not very, pictomancer has a lot of instant cast abilities or short casts to avoid mechanics, viper has a ranged ability that they can bank charges of that hits for a fair bit. Black mages now have several instant casts, samurais got longer range on iaijutsus...Need I go on? If the argument between the lower and higher percentile is skill, then we're needlessly punishing an entire role because a couple jobs in another role have extremely low lows due to not knowing how to play theirs effectively. That's not great design.

It's not disingenuous to say phys ranged don't have an advantage on uptime now, because they don't. The fact that boss hitboxes got much wider, the prevalence of uptime strats...The only advantage phys ranged have is completely gone. Yet they still play with the ARR mentality of "should have highest uptime but lowest dps". On the note of summoner though, I don't think many disagree that the job is way too easy to pick up. The Endwalker rework did the job no favors, but to leave it where it is now relegates it to dumpster tier status.