Rphys: why slow walk casts (ala pvp) aren't a solution

[Valence]

I did say dance steps are a pseudo caster mechanic. While you can still freely move around, they do ask you to intentionally take downtime in your rotation in exchange for high burst damage. The same logic applies to NIN Mudras as well. And yeah, not being able to cancel walking casts is a bit of a problem, but it's a mechanical problem, and not a job design problem, and so it could easily be developed. It's just a wrinkle that needs to be ironed out.

I'm still not really sure how walking casts would prove that different from normal casts in effect though. It's casting, it prevents you to move enough to complete mechanics and you have to find instants casts or ways to play around it. Unless you make the speed debuff outright ignorable but then what would be the point of them?

It's worth noting that the Magical Ranged DPS role is not called 'Caster'. It's called Magical Ranged DPS. Casts can be found on pretty much all other roles. All of the arguments against occasional casts or walking casts on Physical Ranged DPS just boil down to personal preference.

Discussing balance around 'difficulty' is subjective. There are different things that each role values in terms of 'challenge.' I think Snow makes a good point, in that Physical Ranged doesn't really have an identity currently. It's not really a 'support role', because even the likes of PCT has equivalent utility. It's not a 'damage role' either, 1% buff aside.

I can appreciate that any change to design direction is going to be met with resistance and naysayers. But there needs to be one in place for 8.0 at the latest. Otherwise, they might as well merge down Ranged into a single category and just standardize people replacing the Physical Ranged slot with a Magical Ranged.

I don't think anybody disagrees that rphys has lost all identity by now and shares a similar diagnostic.

I don't want them however to dumb down the game anymore by making jobs even more homogenous but turning everybody into various shades of a caster. Don't get me wrong, I don't mind some casts like iajutsus on certain moves, but that's hardly gonna change anything.

We need to draw a clear line between occasional casts like that and casts on the actual filler/combos. That's two completely different worlds.

Some people want to fix the damage issue by introducing heavy cast times like it used to be in HW/SB, I want to fix it by refocusing on the core of the role, which includes the rotation styles and their intricacies, that's about it. If anything the fact that the very idea of cast times is extremely divisive or outright not shared at all by the actual rphys mains (but who knows I don't have a survey?), is pretty telling of what direction they shouldn't go for.