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

[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.

[Zarkovitch]

Coming from Ninja standpoint. I wish dokumori/mug give us some sort of free ninki 50 spender a la reaper/rdm or no cost zesho meppo due at times on 2 mins burst windows, if not pay attention you overcap ninki because of the 40 points from dokumori and this really sucks, 40 points need to change of some sort rdm esque of free spender on dokumori. TCJ need to have a puddle to do ninja thing or be able to do move while TCJ is on, that would fix ninja 5 openers to 1,2 openers. Outside of that Ninja is great.

[Valence]

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.

I feel like E8S is an outlier more than it is relevant to the general pattern to be honest, but point taken. And still, it just made casters better. All other fights of the tier, as well as Edensgate have the same usual damage tax gap (8-10% in Edensgate) than we have today. I don't see much difference in the results at the very least.

[Aco505]

There is that fantasy from non rphys players that rphys is 100% uptime free and can do whatever the fuck it wants by having full freedom. The toolkit and the job mechanics make this true, but the encounter constraints do not, and also affect rphys jobs to a lesser degree. It's not because you're playing rphys that you suddenly magically can stand everywhere you want without consequences, you know?

Having to think about your position for heals or mechanics is true for every job. If players say that p. range have full uptime, it is because they can roll their GCD and continue their rotation unimpeded regardless of what's going on. If a p. range messes up due to mechanics happening at the same time, any other role could have the same problem, too.

P. range simply don't have to take casts, range or positionals into consideration and have no constraints at all in what they do DPS-wise.

Having a look at the current tier, p. range isn't bothered by the following mechanics:

- M1: Mousers and the knockback after Mouser 1

- M2: donut > out pattern, Center/Outerstage combos, Beat 1 tower placement and out AoE, Alarm Pheromones 1 (more freedom on where to go and how), Alarm Pheromones 2, defamations in Beat 3

- M3: chariots, dives (DNC does have to consider range to the boss for dancing), towers, chains, Final Fusedown, Bombarian special

- M4: all Witch Hunts, all Electrope Edges, Ion Cluster (platform break), intermission cones and spreads/wild charges (a pain for casters), Sabaths (can take any spot or tower regardless of strat), Chain Lightning (not affected by potentially annoying patterns or rod #4 order)

I'm probably missing some but I believe the point is clear.

Does p. range deserve to deal 10% less damage than the top DPS or for MCH to be so terribly balanced? Of course not, the gap should be at most 5%, but p. range is the most consistent role when it comes to uptime because they always have it.

Perhaps what the role needs is precisely some kind of mechanic that allows them to optimize the way they look at encounters, in a similar vein that melees do with uptime or positionals or casters with slide casting and management of movement tools.

[Ramiee]

Does p. range deserve to deal 10% less damage than the top DPS or for MCH to be so terribly balanced? Of course not, the gap should be at most 5%, but p. range is the most consistent role when it comes to uptime because they always have it.

Perhaps what the role needs is precisely some kind of mechanic that allows them to optimize the way they look at encounters, in a similar vein that melees do with uptime or positionals or casters with slide casting and management of movement tools.

If the raidbuff meta didn't exist MCH would be in a better spot because it has the third highest range job personal damage and also has the ability to have the most uptime of the three. It just doesn't burst very well due to it's lacks of high potency attacks during burst. It's the same issue as BLM though it's less bad on BLM, you look at all the jobs that during burst have multiple 1000 potency attacks and then see MCH, yeah it's pretty obvious that is the problem.

[Valence]

Having to think about your position for heals or mechanics is true for every job. If players say that p. range have full uptime, it is because they can roll their GCD and continue their rotation unimpeded regardless of what's going on. If a p. range messes up due to mechanics happening at the same time, any other role could have the same problem, too.

I think you completely missed my point but that's fine. I could also cite some mechanics that are more demanding on the range side (rphys included) like in UwU where melees have literally nothing to do during the 3 primals, but that leads nowhere. We all agree that rphys has the least constraints to play around even if in terms of mobility, they're actually less mobile than most melees, which they more than make up for in terms of freedom for full uptime.

What the role needs is either being shoehorned into the full uptime/damage meta the gameplay is all about those days by becoming casters (when that day comes I'll have truly lost all faith in the dev team whatsoever), or the whole meta and model to change back to give them new meaning. Because damage difference between jobs is a can of worms that will never prove satisfying for anyone, unless something else significant brings us out of that one dimensional gameplay.

[Valence]

Actually while we're on the subject, let's be honest for real. So alright, rphys doesn't have to do as much effort to apply damage in a fight. Agreed.

But what does it give a group in reality? You're doing equal or more damage than melees and casters during prog, where damage is literally the least of your worries. What is that damage consistency you claim to be such a boon coming into play exactly? We're progging mechanics and wiping, and learning. What is that consistent damage even useful for? Nothing.

And then once you're in the last mechanics of the fights, any melee or caster worth their salt will have already optimized most of their uptime for 80% of the fight except for those couple of last mechanics, and be doing more damage than the damage taxed classes anyway. When you're trying to clear, they'll be doing more damage than any rphys, and that's where damage matters.

Even 5% of a gap is stupid and is ironically only meaningful in casual content where instances can be cleared in one blind pull. But I do agree it could feel bad to see some jobs having it easy while you're crying tears of blood just to play at their level, as evidenced by this thread alone.

[Quuoooote]

But what does it give a group in reality?

Phys Ranged as a role exists to give the party a 1% buff to DMG/HP/LB generation and a 15% mit, of course!

[Ramiee]

Phys Ranged as a role exists to give the party a 1% buff to DMG/HP/LB generation and a 15% mit, of course!

Pelotan too