Concerns Regarding DPS Balance: Physical Ranged, Red Mage, and Summoner

[Rika007]

As someone has mentioned above, early in ff14's lifecycle bards (and archers from 1.0) we're the top dps yet they had the advantage of range and mobility, this led to people bringing 4x bards/archer and a whole lot of people complaining about that.

Again, asking for Phys ranged dps parity across the entire roster is fully within your rights to ask for, I am simply raising some of the implications for why that isnt necessarily a good idea on its own.

Except that was during a time when there were no tools in place to insure that would never happen again. That was when healers and casters needed bard present to insure they didn't run out of Mana. When only bard had access to a TP regeneration song to insure you didn't run out of tp on tank. When Bard was one of the only jobs that had access to central raid wide damage utility. When accuracy was a primary stat so having a job like bard that could pemanently attack from the rear and have the kindest accuracy limit was something that existed. When there wasn't a role damage bonus to insure that every role remained present. When there wasnt a limitbreak gain penalty for repeating the same jobs (and also there were hardly ANY fights that necessitated the use of an LB3 to get through mechanics). When there was only 4 other DPS jobs besides bard instead of 12. Oh and don't forget that was when Rain of Death put a damage down debuff on the target, so cycling it between 4 Bards was a legitimate way to make difficult fights easier.

It was just a totally different time frame and advocating to keep that in mind is just ignoring that there are many systems now in place that invalidate that view. 14 is an entirely different game then it was in ARR. It's the same argument for when people bring up stormblood job balance and the triple ranged comp as why ranged shouldnt be able to do that much damage, as that was when the crit synergy between scholar, bard, astro, and drg still existed (as did the biggest lynchpin of the meta as well, DRG's piercing debuff). None of that would even be close to possible anymore because none of those jobs are even remotely like they were 6 years ago.

The game has changed but those concerns and design/balance philosophy has not changed with it. They are making decisions based on something that no longer exists and it is extremely disheartening.