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

[NightHour]

Didn't you also say that Red Mages and Summoners should lose their unique aspects? In that case, kick BLM down the road. They got superior mobility nowadays with their teleporting back and forth + constant instant cast barrages. Should cost them some damage, if everyone else loses their unique aspects. Or take BLM's teleports to people and back to the circle away. /shrug

I said that hierachy based on IF they keep their current gimmicks.


We could also go as far as yeeting melee gap closers too then.

Melee don't really need them if mechanics are designed with their uptime in mind anyway, right?

[Supersnow845]

I said that hierachy based on IF they keep their current gimmicks.


We could also go as far as yeeting melee gap closers too then.

Melee don't really need them if mechanics are designed with their uptime in mind anyway, right?

I mean arguably yes

If melee want the damage they do their uptime shouldn’t be so damn easy

Delete the huge amount of charges their closers have, make UF melee only and restrict NIN’s downtime capacity for its ninjutsu

Right now melee have all the upsides and none of the downsides

[mallleable]

Fights are more interesting when they are designed with varying amounts of melee uptime, because managing the disconnect is a really simple way to differentiate between players. It just means that you tune ranged jobs to do slightly less damage under target dummy conditions. The same is true for downtime segments and burst-orientated jobs, where you tune burst-orientated jobs to do less damage under pure uptime conditions. This type of numerical balance is the easy part, and it's really just player and development team dogma that prevent it from occurring.

The hard part is determining what sorts of support functionality each job should have, such that it's viewed as fair. But you can't really trade-off support functionality and DPS, nor can you have large discrepancies in support functionality within the same category. I suspect that the long term options are either to remove Raise altogether, or to merge Ranged down into a single role category with two slots, each which brings Raise as a role action.

But where is the 'skill expression' for phys ranged players?

Let's imagine a mechanic that is tailor-made for the physical ranged experience. The boss drops an ice puddle at its feet that freezes anyone who touches it, the boss won't move out of it, and the edge of the puddle exceeds max melee range. Everyone then gets the 'keep moving or you freeze' debuff as well that lasts 35 seconds, and everyone has to dodge randomly baited AOEs with even some important far baits on top of it until the mechanic ends when the debuff wears off. It has what we want: challenging down time for melees, and casters to navigate, and the phys ranged player or two gets to have their moment, and run around far away from the boss, and press their buttons -- right? Right-?.. The physical ranged player didn't have to make any adjustments to their rotation in preparation for this mechanic. Everything just sorta happened around them, and then it was over. Maybe things got a little spooky with the randomness when being out at the edge of the arena for that important far bait, but things were just as spooky for everyone else. There were no job related challenges for the physical ranged player to overcome. They continue to just kind of exist. Where is the skill expression of not having to make any adjustments to how you play a physical ranged job while other jobs are forced into significantly more down time because fight design changed?

It's 8.4, and the player sentiment is still 'we just need more mechanics like Frozen Shithole for physical ranged to feel like they serve a purpose.'

[Supersnow845]

This is a big thing, putting in enforced melee downtime to equalise the damage doesn’t really make physical ranged worth it as their own class because they still aren’t doing anything unique, it’s basically just altering melee to justify physical ranged existence

A mechanic like the bait on T7 that could not be ignored is something that actually works to make physical ranged feel worth it as a unique class but altering melee just to make phys ranged exist doesn’t really change the either problems it just forcibly equalises their damage to the benefit of nobody

[AmiableApkallu]

I feel like a mechanic like Mountain Fire from Valigarmanda extreme should be the standard for role celebration mechanics. It goes hard on delivering the fantasy of being the party's shield for tanks on top of being mechanically engaging for them even if it is simple. The rest of the party also has to participate, they take on an active role of 'being protected' by following valigarmanda's movements so they can stay behind the tanks. And to top it all off, it is just a very cinematic mechanic, and doesn't require lb3. You need all of these elements. So like what does a 'Mountain Fire' look like for other roles?

The mechanic would play out the exact same if you put little colored dots on top of people's heads, number them 1 through 6 (or whatever), have them stand in the tower in order or else the party wipes, and have everyone else stand outside the tower in just the right spot, or they die. The only significant change you'd have to make is calibrating the damage to the person standing in the tower.

And at that point, it becomes clear that Mountain Fire is hardly a celebration of being a tank. Getting hit "real hard" is the bare minimum.

If the mechanic were actually celebrating the tank role, we might see that:

• Aggro and positioning matter: Instead of jumping around all over the place, the tanks could limit or outright halt Valigarmanda's movement. Remember how everyone complains about (new) tanks spinning bosses, making it difficult for the party to know where to stand? That's exactly how Mountain Fire plays out currently, just without any need for the tanks to do the spinning.
• Mitigations matter: No mitigation? Only the tiniest of slivers behind the tank is safe. 40% mitigation, or Passage of Arms? Maybe a comfy 90-degree arc behind the tank is safe. The "effort" the tank puts into "shielding" the party makes an actual difference to how comfy the mechanic is for everyone else.

[Valence]

You can up-titrate most of the ranged jobs to be more competitive with melee, but PCT has no business being consistently above BLM and MCH. Possibly even RDM and BRD.

Everyone is above MCH, and PCT is above everybody. I don't understand the point of that comment?

[Carighan]

Melee don't really need them if mechanics are designed with their uptime in mind anyway, right?

That is, sadly, 99,5% or so true. Depending on specific animation lock it can be a damage loss to do the gapcloser instead of just walking in.

[Lyth]

But where is the 'skill expression' for phys ranged players?

I don't know, to be honest, and it would be remiss of me to say. I'm not offering a 'skill-based' interpretation but rather a 'feasibility-based' one. Everyone, under the right circumstances, should be able to aim for the top spot. That may not always be simultaneously possible. A fight with a lot of forced melee downtime will favor ranged. A fight with a lot of forced targetless downtime will favor burst (and PCT). So you adjust DPS numbers appropriately. Melee should be tuned higher under target dummy conditions, such that ranged pull ahead when there's a lot of challenging melee downtime. Consistent DPS should be tuned higher under target dummy conditions, so that when you have fights with multiple intermissions, burst pull ahead. That way no job is always on top. When you ignore these design considerations, you end up with PCT being a hard lock on all fights.

You've had some discussions already about job design approaches to Physical Ranged (walking casts, ranged positionals, more procs), and there are probably opportunities for fight-based design approaches that involve kiting (T7S Raynauds) or distance-based baits. I encourage you to collectively decide what forms of skill expression you want to see going forward. I'm just reinforcing the fact that Physical Ranged should not be treated as an inferior tier of Ranged DPS compared to 'Damage Casters'.

Everyone is above MCH, and PCT is above everybody. I don't understand the point of that comment?

I'm saying that given PCT's overwhelming burst and the fact that it generates motifs without a target, PCT should be tuned to do less damage than BLM, MCH, RDM, and BRD on a target dummy. That way whenever you have fights with downtime, it will actually be more reasonably balanced. The devs can't be playing favorites like this. Hope that helps.

???

Ah yes. Melee should just stroll back to the boss after disconnects. Is that how you think melee is played, out of curiosity?

[Supersnow845]

What disconnects? The whole point of the current balance problems is melee aren’t remotely challenged on thier uptime then get given DPS as if they are dropping dozens of GCD’s.

Melee uptime should be a direct result of planned downtime and tank positioning, not just having infinite dash charges that make it so you can just zip to the boss whenever you want. If you or the tank messes up you should do the walk of shame back to the boss, like a caster does when they cancel a cast

Melees have to have downsides and right now they don’t. PCT also doesn’t have downsides but that’s not the point I’m making if you wanna deflect to PCT for whatever reason

[Lyth]

Ah, I keep forgetting that you don't participate in current raid content. I suppose if your standard is dungeons and 24p alliance raids, then perhaps, but the game isn't balanced around that sort of content.

If we're talking about movement tools, might I remind you that PCT probably has the most broken movement tool in the history of the game, with nearly 50% sprint uptime and a fixed distance dash on a 20s recast?