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

[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]

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.

Thing is, ranged tax shouldn't exist. At all. It's old, it's antiquated, it's a product of the design of its time. That being said, ranged should have mechanics that promote proper positioning like black mages. Not gun/bow mage like in Heavensward, but something that rewards the ranged player for playing well. A blanket 5% buff isn't going to make phys ranged more desired, machinists and dancers will just suck 5% less and still not be worth bringing to parties. But until ranged tax finally gets removed, the role is going to be the token role for the 1% until the other jobs can make up for that 1% loss. We're already seeing that right now, and as gear becomes stronger, the differences will become more and more pronounced.