Do you think any DPS jobs are in a good spot right now?

[EthanXdeath]

Ninja needs some buffs as does Dragoon, they're both imo underperforming for being melee dps, a great machinist shouldn't be doing as much or nearly as much damage as a great ninja or dragoon. I think rotationally both Ninja and Dragoon are fine they just both need buffs a 5% buff since we don't have the freedom to run around like a machinist does away from all manner of AoE's and maintain uptime at the same time. Though Machinist also needs a buff as well if it's going to be a selfish non-support DPS.

[Supersnow845]

Ninja needs some buffs as does Dragoon, they're both imo underperforming for being melee dps, a great machinist shouldn't be doing as much or nearly as much damage as a great ninja or dragoon. I think rotationally both Ninja and Dragoon are fine they just both need buffs a 5% buff since we don't have the freedom to run around like a machinist does away from all manner of AoE's and maintain uptime at the same time. Though Machinist also needs a buff as well if it's going to be a selfish non-support DPS.

Ranged uptime doesn’t mean much when mechanics factor in uptime considerations anyway

Melee are barely losing 10 GCD’s in a fight this tier but they can afford to drop like 60 before they are at risk of dropping below MCH

You shouldn’t balance a bad uptime melee against a perfect MCH then give melees more on top of that

If you are dropping 15-20 GCD’s in a fight you should be doing less than the physical ranged

[Aco505]

Melee are barely losing 10 GCD’s in a fight this tier

Melee uptime requires effort in this tier (besides M1S), in a similar way to Criterion in EW.

While a lot of it can be mitigated with skill and knowledge, you will find plenty of players using several ranged attacks per fight to avoid griefing their party, whether they play on PF or not.

[Supersnow845]

Melee uptime requires effort in this tier (besides M1S), in a similar way to Criterion in EW.

While a lot of it can be mitigated with skill and knowledge, you will find plenty of players using several ranged attacks per fight to avoid griefing their party, whether they play on PF or not.

And the fact that melee are still so ridiculously far ahead is my point

If melee are struggling to keep uptime then your average poor uptime melee should be doing around the damage of a phys ranged or slightly less, not “the worst melee you know is doing about 3% more than a phys ranged and we only go up from there”

[Aco505]

And the fact that melee are still so ridiculously far ahead is my point

If melee are struggling to keep uptime then your average poor uptime melee should be doing around the damage of a phys ranged or slightly less, not “the worst melee you know is doing about 3% more than a phys ranged and we only go up from there”

In Criterion the numbers were close for several melee and ranged jobs, so it's possible, but would you say that BLM or PCT should be doing p. range damage if they had to move too much? When was the last time a fight forced a caster to use Scathe or Enchanted Reprise for movement after optimizing resources and strats?

The thing is that the DPS difference is not necessarily due to uptime but because the devs refuse to balance MCH or the other "lower end" jobs. If a fight forced melees to use 20 ranged attacks, it would feel awful game play wise. Even when allocating resources to keep uptime, like RPR does by moving their strongest hit to get uptime in this tier, melees would just sit there firing weak ranged attacks, while casters have the option to keep their rotation easily by, at worst, losing some potential damage or resources within burst, just like RPR does with Perfectio.

I invite you to play a melee job and try to get full uptime in M2S or M4S. The Stage comboes, Beat 3 defamations, Alarm Pheromones 2, Witch Hunts or Electrope Edge 2 require precise timing to pull it off.

The gap between top and bottom should be lowered, I think we can all agree on that.

However, complaining now considering that melee have to work for their uptime makes no sense, as this was one of the biggest gripes of the player base in EW due to melee uptime being fully free. If the gap is still wide enough, then melee uptime is not the reason.

It makes even less sense when we realize that the jobs that will end up on top when there's melee downtime are BLM and PCT, those balanced within the "top group", not the rest of the ranged jobs. Precisely because casters can still continue their rotation unimpeded as long as they optimize their movement, slide casts or resources.

I think it's good that players can keep uptime by clever use of resources and skillful timing. Should there be more challenges to melee uptime in future content? Yes, but at the same time, not every job is equal. VPR has zero issues with it, and the jobs that struggle the most don't deal the highest damage even if they manage to get 100% uptime.

TL; DR. The gap should be at 5% at most. A difference of 10% or more between PCT and the bottom jobs is too much.

[Supersnow845]

TL; DR. The gap should be at 5% at most. A difference of 10% or more between PCT and the bottom jobs is too much.

I’m not comparing to PCT or the rezz casters because they explicitly are balanced differently due to the presence or absence of rezz. That’s a different discussion. Meanwhile physical ranged are explicitly taxed because they have 100% uptime by default whereas the melee theoretically have to work for their uptime. But currently the balance exists in a way that even when the melee are working for uptime they still out damage the phys ranged by a ridiculous degree. If you have poor uptime as a melee you should be doing less damage than a phys ranged because that’s the only difference between you

This is the problem I have, a lot of people seem to think the balance should be “bad uptime melee does 3% more damage than phys ranged, good uptime melee does 10-15% more” whereas I think that if you are bad melee you should do less than a physical ranged. Inherent higher damage minus average uptime concerns=physical ranged damage. If you are “working for your uptime” and still doing 10% more damage than the physical ranged and those that throw an enpi every time they are remotely challenged also still do more damage than the physical ranged then you aren’t actually being challenged on your uptime

The damage casters can just be bought down to that new equilibrium but the damage casters are a different story because they are fighting for a spot with classes that have rezz

[Aco505]

Snip

PCT and BLM are balanced within the melee group, not the other ranged. They occupy the caster slot (and ideally also flex slot) but they also have to work for their uptime. If a caster player is unable to keep uptime, then they should do less than p.range, following your logic. Yet you're only focusing on melee.

Put PCT and BLM down with the other ranged and players of those jobs would (rightly) complain that they don't do much more damage than the jobs with utility. The fact that they occupy the resurrection slot is not important for uptime purposes besides, of course, the fact that SE nerfs SMN and RDM damage based on it. Buff BLM to be more competitive with melee and two caster comps that spring up won't contain a RDM or SMN if damage is a concern.

The fact that casters have to cast doesn't mean they don't compare to melee or p.range. Both casters and melee have to work to keep uptime when conditions are against them, with p. range fully ignoring this problem regardless of circumstances (with some small exceptions being DNC not having range to hit the boss with a dance in specific encounters).

The problem is, again, bad balance, not that melee can finally work for their uptime again. The difference should just be 5% at most.

[CKNovel]

Melee uptime requires effort in this tier (besides M1S), in a similar way to Criterion in EW.

While a lot of it can be mitigated with skill and knowledge, you will find plenty of players using several ranged attacks per fight to avoid griefing their party, whether they play on PF or not.

By "effort" let's say it's not a given anymore. We're still under the 10 ranged GCDs.
The EW tiers felt like playing a ranged DPS, which made absolutely no reason putting a range tax at all.
There's also jobs like RPR, NIN, VPR that can trade a melee GCD for a ranged GCD with no DPS loss.

It's cool we finally have to seek melee uptime, but the ranged tax still makes no sense.
If players don't make full use of their kits to mitigate the uptime loss, well it's on them. The same way it's on them to drift or clip.

I've been playing as NIN and VPR on an alt, if I could gear more jobs I'd try to raid as RPR and DRG as well.
I believe NIN is fantastic, not too hard but not easy either. VPR is very comfy but I wish there was more than just doing damage.

[Valence]

By "effort" let's say it's not a given anymore. We're still under the 10 ranged GCDs.

I think it's been the same since forever tbh, in ShB and possibly before even. Fights in savage have always been designed with melee uptime in mind, but I could be wrong.

I can only speak to melee dps since that's what I play (and a little tank), but I think melee is in the worst spot it has ever been. Not necessarily balance wise, but engagement wise. There's currently nothing really notable or engaging about any of the melee jobs at all. This was already a minor issue in EW and DT just made it way worse.

Fights are just a list of buttons you need to press in a rigid specific order, with no variance. I've mentioned this before in another thread but if FFXIV allowed for proper castsequence macros every melee job could be assigned to a single button. For some reason this isn't seen as a problem by the developer (the 7.05 change to Viper solidifies that), or even some players, but I think it's a massive issue.

The only thing you need to think about in fights is avoiding mechanics and boss uptime. The jobs in regards to the actual buttons being pressed are 100% auto-pilot. There's no meta-mechanics, management, or random engagement at all. There's nothing to think about or consider. It's so dull and a huge problem imo.

Haven't melee DPS always had fully deterministic rotations though?

Not that I disagree with you though. And people have already made single button encapsulated macros, I've seen it on SMN and DRG back in asphodelos, and they played perfectly fine with it. Battle system mechanics have been removed to make place to full encounter memorization and uptime considerations.

[CKNovel]

I think it's been the same since forever tbh, in ShB and possibly before even. Fights in savage have always been designed with melee uptime in mind, but I could be wrong.

Well, hitbox used to be much smaller and we didn't had all those dashes.

In ShB, E8S was the fight that required the most disconnect for the whole expansion, the last tier actually made sure melees could resolve their mechanic at max melee range.
RDM was doing very well compared to melees in E8S.

Before that you still had some heavy disconnect that would make you lose 2 to 3 GCDs per disconnect. If you were a MNK, it could have resulted in more GCD lost.
I believe forcing melee to disconnect just for the sake of making them disconnect is straight up bad and lazy, we've had some of them in M4S but they don't amount to 10 GCDs.