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

[VellAshe]

Misunderstandings aside, I think we can all agree with the concerns. A short-term solution would be reducing the damage gap so that it's never higher than 5%.

Long-term solutions would involve rethinking the physical range role as a whole, as well as SMN and RDM's role within casters.

Bumping this thought process. To make physical ranged more relevant in a high-end mindset, there should be a change in how we review the roles of DPS in the game.
We always talk greedy vs support DPS classes regardless of the roles, and in a perfect situation, we should be able to say yes to the following scenarios:

1. Can 4 'Greedy' DPS classes together clear this fight?
2. Can 4 'Support' DPS classes together clear this fight?
3. Can a combination of both Greedy and Support DPS clear this fight?

If you can answer yes in all scenarios, then it would mean that we've achieved some solid level of balance across all forms of DPS roles.

With the requirement of having specific roles filled out for the 5%, only two of these three conditions are usually met because we don't really have a good 'support melee dps' example. I'm pretty sure all Melees are just significantly strong across the board with minimal party buffs outside of 1/2-minute burst (MNK, RPR, DRG), or are greedy by design (SAM, NIN, VPR). Does that classify them as support melee? I don't think so.

Other DPS roles have significantly easier examples to showcase however; we can call MCH greedy in design, DNC is good for single-target support (greedy support? lol), and BRD is just full support, no greed.

Casters are even easier: BLM, PCT, SMN, RDM in terms of greed - support respectively. (Picto is just both; it's just that universally powerful right now that any class with a Pictomancer is just incredibly buffed.) But their support is still very subjective, and similar to Melee; burst DPS windows, and some mitigation similar to Ranged.

Do we lean more towards their defined roles (Melee, Ranged, Caster) and their utility going into raid, or more into their subjective roles (Greedy, Support)? Can we find a good mesh of both? I feel like that line of dialogue may yield better gameplay relevance for Ranged DPS.