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

[Lyth]

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the role labelled 'DPS' is primarily concerned with how to output more DPS. Anyone who claims otherwise is trying to sell you the bridge at Griffin Crossing.

That aside, numerical DPS parity for all jobs is really easy to achieve on a single fight. The problem is that DPS is also a function of fight design, which makes it a lot more challenge to balance over multiple fights. The problem with Endwalker's DPS balance came down to the fact that Abyssos in particular had a large number of bosses with large hitboxes and wall bosses. It's worth noting that no melee player enjoys this type of design, because managing disconnects and uptime challenges is how melee players differentiate themselves from other players. You could just as easily design a fight at the other extreme, and everyone would happily just play ranged if given the choice.

The problem that PCT presents in particular is that it completely ignores downtime because of how motifs were designed. If you want an analogy, it's the equivalent of designing Soul Sow on RPR to grant you full gauge (and even that would be a bigger constraint than what PCT has currently, because Soul Sow has a longer cast time than PCT's motifs.) As a result, you're not going to balance it for uptime and downtime considerations simultaneously, because no other job ignores downtime in the same way. I'm just baffled that we're approaching the midpoint of the expansion and the balance team still hasn't identified that pure potency adjustments will not fix this.