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

[mallleable]

I wouldn't mind phys ranged doing less damage if they actually gave them mechanics to do. "Furthest player baits X" mechanics used to be fairly common, but nowadays they simply don't exist and everyone does the same shit regardless of role. Made you feel useful beyond your 1% stat boost.

It's so annoying when people are like 'but Liquid Hell baits in UCOB' or some other mechanic from a fight from a previous expansion. Like that is one mechanic from one fight from 3 expansions ago. Where were the phys ranged mechanics in any of the SHB dungeons? Where were the phys ranged mechanics in any of the EW extreme trials? Where were the phys ranged mechanics in the current savage tier? Unless they plan on retrofitting the rest of the game with stuff for phys ranged to do, the 'easiest' thing they can do is rethink the role, and change the jobs to make them feel like they have a place in the game.

[Valence]

Oh I mean im not saying the numbers im referring can be directly translated to job difficulty 1:1 but it does indicate dps consistancy within each job, and a good theory behind that consistancy is ease of play.

This is not exactly how it works... Skill is only a facet of the whole. It plays a part, but it's not the whole by far, else BRD would have the exact same issue for example.

1) MCH has a very low skill ceiling and everybody does the same rotation past low purple percentiles. In fact, once you get over 85-90p that portion of the chart is pure luck and rng variance.
2) MCH and DNC have a very high guaranteed DPS floor. Just press the big buttons when they're up, you're already doing a lot of your (pitiful) full outcome. It doesn't even come close to playing the job properly or well, but it guarantees a very disproportionately high DPS floor.
3) Not just for MCH but all jobs in general, basing skill and accessibility only to damage output is a fool's errand at best since as seen with point 2, every job behaves extremely differently and for instance, why doesn't BRD follows the same trend then? Not because BRD is harder (is it even harder?), not because BRD has crappy uptime and must play around it either, but because not playing the job at a basic level will nuke your damage output like crazy in comparison.

Yeah! Also it would be nice if there were some add phases where you got to utilise those slow and bind skills too! Head graze and leg graze or whatever, I vaguely remember it being a thing in the petrifying medusa snake things from binding coils xD. That and pacify! though we saw that for the door boss in DSR. Still! That sorta phys ranged specific stuff would be a neat alternative to simply adjusting damage

It would be fantastic if we got mechanics where things pop up on the edge of the arena periodically and as a phys ranged you gotta slow/bind and then snipe them down while the team works at the boss. What might even happen is that we find the meta for those types of encounters turn into Melee, Caster, Phys ranged, Phys ranged. Would be a cool change of pace. /shrug its an idea :P

Yeah many have been asking for those thing to come back (and I do mean come back, because we used to bait things a lot more as rphys before ShB... with way more complicated and demanding rotations to boot, and a better raid damage contribution... the tax was here, unless we got a DRG).

On top of it they removed trash from raids after Alexander, which is a shame because those could also not only bring variety, but also opportunity for rphys to do some warranted crowd control. Criterion gave us a peek of the actual possibilities with trash sections, and it's a shame it's still not being explored seriously, whether it's trash or adds during actual bosses.

[Rithy255]

Physical ranged will be fine because of the 1% buff of bringing them, which yeah I'm not a fan of Phys ranged being only useful because of the 1% buff but I'm not really concerned about it not being used, I hope the gap closes between phys ranged damage personally but time will tell.

Summoner should have actual cast times if it had free mobility and a rez and did close to picto/blm damage then it would clearly be the choice, this jobs design is actually flawed under the current way the game is balanced, Red mage could stand a little higher.

I think when it comes down to it phys ranged currently are just under performing and hopefully will be buffed up, maybe give phys ranged mechs that they are good with dealing with sometimes to also make their job feel more intresting, Caster balance is going to be a nightmare as Rez is a utility that is powerful for prog esp when body checks are less. Removing rez and buffing RDM/SMN up is a solution but that solution would also make people mad, but keeping RDM/SMN damage the same will also make people upset, so it's kind of just up to how SE feels people are split about rez in general.

[SieyaM]

Like, there's no purpose or advantage to any of the DPS jobs, really.... not in a meaningful way at least.. I don't consider "this job does a little more DPS" meaningful.

No additional functionality, no unique thing that only such and such job brings, outside of buffing, or mitigation that is largely the same for every role type (like BRD and DNC or DRG and RPR i guess) they seem kinda similar to me.

Mch has two party wide mits and melee (some lol vpr?) Have 1 party and a self mit. I .... guess that's what they bring? An extra party mitigation.. Silence is never used but neither is stunning.

For every role.. All the "fluff" abilities you have (like bind, weight, blind, stun, etc..) , all raid bosses, he'll even dungeon bosses, are immune to.. so they're kinda pointless.

I do miss the functionality of the various turrets MCH had. At least it was somewhat interesting and uniqiue.

I don't think it's really a phys ranged only issue, but they do have a lot of pointless abilities. The problem were seeing. It's the overall job design "balance" by making them all the same job.

You're basically left to decide which aesthetic you like.

But anyway, we should make all the jobs do the same damage so we can all just be the same and feel good.

When you start having unique advantages and disadvantages to jobs it becomes more difficult to balance them, and the jobs have all been designed to appease people that cried for absolute balance in the raid scene. This means that no one job can have an ability that gives it any kind of perceived advantage over another job in any scenario. This doesn't mean that jobs are balanced, just that the sole focus of the dev team is to ensure that jobs perform as close as possible to the same level in an arena against a single boss for a short duration. Jobs are not designed for anything else.

[Lorika]

RDM should have batter DPS, and by a lot more.

Right now, RDM is the less mobile and the most fragile Magical DPS.
Picto and BLM have a Dash and 95% of the SMN skills are insta, making him more closer to a Physical Ranged than to a Magical.
SMN, Picto and BLM all have a personal shield... RDM doesn't have.
RDM party buff are meh to bad.

Its ironical since the RDM is the Magical DPS that take the most risk by going into melee range for a whole 3 GCD.

Right now risk vs reward for the RDM is utterly bad.... The job is still one of the most fun and is the one with the best verStyle (), but still it's DPS should be way more higher than it is actually.
And it's raise is not an excuse anymore since you really don't use it often.(it's more of an insurance than a real utility)

[Carighan]

RDM should have batter DPS, and by a lot more.

I agree. And Pictomancers should be able to paint the finished goods, like muffins or waffles or cake.

[Sunako]

I have good solution.

Remove raise from SMN and RDM. Buff SMN/RDM dps to PCT/BLM level.

Raise become physical ranged role skill 60 sec cd ogcd skill then physical ranged can feel more like support role.

[BabyYoda]

I have good solution.

Remove raise from SMN and RDM. Buff SMN/RDM dps to PCT/BLM level.

Raise become physical ranged role skill 60 sec cd ogcd skill then physical ranged can feel more like support role.

So how to solve movement tax for summoner?

[Valence]

But is SMN taxed for movement? Because it seems to me that doing similar amounts of contributed damage than RDM, which is arguably a lot more constrained for uptime, means that the tax is applied for raising and party healing specifically, not their uptime potential.

Rphys is taxed for movement (else I don't see what else), but not SMN, else SMN would output an even lower damage as a consequence of a double tax.

[Lorika]

Remove raise from SMN and RDM. Buff SMN/RDM dps to PCT/BLM level.

Here the thing : you can't remove raise from RDM because :
- RDM always had raise and heal since the job system was introduced into FF Serie
- FFXIV Lore wise : RDM must have heal and raise