They forgot Ranged Physical is a role in the game

[Valence]

I genuinely don't understand this mindset. it just seems so defeatist. Every phys ranged's party mit was just buffed, and is arguably the strongest, and most flexible of all the DPS. And yet the role continues to struggle. So instead of nerfing 10 other jobs, just change how 2 or 3 other jobs play (as a MNK enjoyer, you can pry Mantra, and Riddle of Earth from my cold, dead, and bloodied knuckles). Healers are already being encroached upon, and concentrating all the DPS utility onto phys ranged is a surefire why of just replacing healers with phys ranged. It's better that it's spread out.

So just give phys ranged some kind of aiming mechanic so they have better control over their damage output, and balance them against the other roles -- y'know, coz like they're DPS or something. MCH should be balanced against SAM, BLM, and VPR as a non buffing job, and BRD should be balanced against like MNK, and PCT as buffing jobs with utility, and no rez. It's not hard to imagine.

I said it somewhere else but this is just 2 incompatible mindsets clashing with each other. Yours is probably the more correct one when it comes to the current battle model, but ours stems from the fact that we do not like the current battle model and rphys was a way to continue playing pve without caring about uptime bullshit because what we used to enjoy in the game wasn't about DDR and uptime bullshit. Sure, that thing isn't here anymore, but at least we still don't have to deal with half the new model.

If it takes damage out of rphys and leaves it in the dumpster like it is right now, selfishly, all I can say is that I still prefer this because I can continue ignoring half of the current pve bullshit the game has been about since SB/SHB. But your vision or Lyth's is probably the best within the current system.

And to be frank, even when it comes to casters and melees, the mobility of other roles has been sanded down enough to accommodate for that endlessly increasing uptime/DRR crap so all roles are slowly but surely starting to merge together anyway.

[Connor]

snip.

Ok I’m sorry but this entire post isn’t making sense lol.

Firstly, how is making physical ranged do literally the one unique thing they’re advertise to offer…going to invalidate healers ?!That’s a whole other role honey, they don’t compete for spots.
You…you know physical ranged can’t heal right? You honestly think Curing Waltz is going to invalidate healers and have every single one replaced with a Dancer? Bards and Machinists are literally incapable of restoring party HP. You know Summoners and Paladins can already do that right? But that’s totally cool, as long as it’s not a phys ranged…wouldn’t want those Poets to think they’re anything other than mega archers delivering death and destruction.

If removing the ‘increases damage dealt by %’ or ‘reduces damage taken’ from most dps (who don’t even need them) and focusing them on phys ranged (to give it an actual unique contribution) is going to invalidate healers then the game has far, far, far, faaaar bigger issues than role responsibility.

As for the last part, MCH balanced against SAM/BLM is absolutely hilarious. That totally won’t invalidate casters or melee, but if we give phys ranged support the poor healers won’t be able to do their utility skills that they barely have anyway!!!! Either it’s below other dps and literally inferior or they make it equal/surpassing and it literally breaks game balance. There is literally no way for them to make phys ranged ‘equal dps to other roles’ without completely breaking the role system. Again, they tried already at 2.0 release , 4X Bard stacks were not appreciated by Yoshi-P. Pretty sure they would rather delete the phys ranged role than have a repeat of that, so somehow I don’t see any of the role ever getting higher in the dps ranks.

Increasing phys ranged dps output drastically enough to move their ranking is effectively impossible for them to ever do, so basically their choices are either to develop the role into having a unique niche (i.e party support) and adjust other jobs/roles as necessary…or just leave it as a worthless role and delete phys ranged or something. Boosting their dps will solve absolutely nothing except bringing every non-phys ranged to the forums to scream and wail about why the two ‘easy mode support jobs’ are doing the same dps as all the other pure damage classes. Unless they had their entire support kit gutted and deleted and retooled the entire role into pure dps that is, which again I’m pretty sure most phys ranged players are hinting towards anyway…..

[Lyth]

Or instead of making the entire role ‘melee but with slightly longer attack ranges’ they could actually focus on the one unique thing the phys ranged role is actually supposed to bring; party support.

We’re never going to see physical ranged have equalised dps to caster/melee because 2.0 release Coils already happened and the devs were not happy about the Bard stacking lol. So personally I don’t see much value in begging for higher personal dps when we know it’s not going to happen anyway.

They could make an actual effort to clean up the vastly homogenised ‘party support ability’ mechanic in ffxiv, centralise them on phys ranged, distribute smaller scale support to certain caster/melee, add support abilities that are actually interesting and valuable and not just 1000 different versions of ‘increases damage dealt’. Thus reinforcing the intended position the role is supposed to take in the party.

Wanting ‘more personal dps on phys ranged’ is just chasing the dragon if you ask me. Either they equalise with caster/melee and threaten to straight delete those roles, they equalise with caster and have to fight each other for party spots (which caster will likely win because Raise and Pictomancer). Or they increase our damage but at such a small value it doesn’t change how phys ranged actually perform relative to other jobs and thus has literally achieved nothing lol.

There really isn’t any ‘phys ranged get more dps’ option that doesn’t just cause issues. Well…unless they deleted all phys ranged support and utility entirely. But then, sometimes I wonder if that’s not what people actually want lol…

The primary goal is this: Maximize damage, subject to a set of support constraints.

In many games, this is a balanced proposition because survival can be unpredictable. In PvE environments, you can design variable damage (i.e. critical hits), randomized mechanics, and recover from unexpected deaths. In PvP, this is always the case because human opponents are intrinsically unpredictable (that's why Healers are often the carry role in PvP games). The end result is that having excess support functionality always has value if you want to consistently clear.

FFXIV's PvE design was very strongly influenced by a speedrun mindset from its early days in ARR/Heavensward, which informed the fight design from Stormblood onwards. Critical hit variance working against you on a pull? Reset. Didn't get the correct Balance procs? Reset. The end result was feedback from raiders that drove a push towards very consistent pulls with very little true variability (I still can't believe that certain influential people argued that Critical Hit procs were unfair in Stormblood). But without that unpredictability, support functionality loses its value and the focus shifts strongly in favor of DPS. You don't need that extra security. Maximize damage, subject to a set of support constraints. The minimal amount of support actions to clear, in order to facilitate the maximum DPS.

In this highly predictable, DPS-orientated environment, it is untenable for Physical Ranged to be a 'party support' role. Supports themselves are scrambling to demonstrate value that they just don't have. Tanks are taking on healing functionality to demonstrate value. Healers are looking to swap off to damage roles where they'll be better valued. You can argue that the game is in need of a direction change, but we've been locked into this strictly choreographed, predictable fight design since Stormblood.

And let's face it: Magical Ranged have you beat on support functionality anyways, and they offer more damage to boot. Raise is the most powerful support action that you can have. And you even have Damage Casters with defensive actions that can challenge Physical Ranged on the support domain.

I think mallleable has the right of it. Physical Ranged needs to be able to hold its own in DPS if it's going to retain players, barring a massive design shift in this game that is unlikely to happen in this point in its life cycle. Convincing your Magical Ranged colleagues of that equivalence is a different story, though.

[Connor]

I think mallleable has the right of it. Physical Ranged needs to be able to hold its own in DPS if it's going to retain players, barring a massive design shift in this game that is unlikely to happen in this point in its life cycle. Convincing your Magical Ranged colleagues of that equivalence is a different story, though.

It’s ‘untenable’ for the ‘dps role that provides support’ to..*checks notes* provide ‘support’…yet somehow it’s entirely tenable that all physical ranged dps can have their dps equalised with caster and melee and that totally won’t affect the game balance in any way. Right . Have fun convincing the developers of that

[Lyth]

Magical Ranged is the 'DPS role that provides support'. But more importantly, they also do more damage than Physical Ranged while providing superior support functionality. Unfortunately, Physical Ranged has nothing on them except for a 1% passive cheerleader buff. Well, that's 'support', I guess.

I don't need to convince the developers of anything. My preferred role is a high value one, and if it wasn't, then I wouldn't be playing this game. I'm just here to present the bigger picture around retaining players in their preferred roles for the continued health of the game in the long term. Every job should be able to provide high value, and every job should allow good players to demonstrate skill on the upper end. Otherwise, why bother adding new jobs?

[mallleable]

snip

I'm mostly confused about how you say it's impossible to make changes or certain ideas are impossible. Like did they launch the job designer's work stations into orbit -- is that why it's impossible? Does the job editing software crash whenever they try to make any changes to phys ranged? The walking cast mechanic is right there in game right now, and they even survived the big 7.1 pvp job update when other job mechanics didn't. By making phys ranged on par with magical ranged, they automatically become comparable to melee because magical ranged are allowed to do that if they don't have a rez. It's the rez that keeps half the magical ranged dps so low. And respectfully, have you ever played any shooter games? Have you ever watched any action movies or TV shows? Your claims that ranged/marksman/firearm job fantasies don't exists outside of support are also confusing.

As for concentrating almost all DPS party utility onto phys ranged, let's actually see what that looks like.

BRD
Nature's Minne
Troubadour
The Warden's Paean
----
Arcane Crest (from RPR) > Call and Responce
rez (from SMN) > Catharsis
Vercure (from RDM) > Curing Harmony

MCH
Dismantle
Tactician
----
Phoenix regen / excog (from SMN) > Dispenser
Magicked Barrier (from RDM) > Amplifier
Tempra Coat (from PCT) > Adaptive Shield
rez (just to round things out) > Defibrillator

DNC
Waltz
Samba
Improv
----
Riddle of Earth (from MNK) > Break a Leg
Mantra (from MNK) > Inspire
Verraise (from RDM) > Encore

(copy, and paste this table out of context into the healer strike thread to give them a fright!)

I tried to evenly redistribute the utility across the phys ranged, and even renamed them to fit each job. And now we can see how squirrely things look, and how blurry the line between healers, and these new phys ranged has become. At a certain point you gotta ask: are you trying to reinvent healers? On top of that, now we gotta make room on phys ranged hot bars for these new utility actions. Which specific damage actions or mechanics do you think players are willing to part with to make room for these actions?

[Valence]

It’s ‘untenable’ for the ‘dps role that provides support’ to..*checks notes* provide ‘support’…yet somehow it’s entirely tenable that all physical ranged dps can have their dps equalised with caster and melee and that totally won’t affect the game balance in any way. Right . Have fun convincing the developers of that

What Lyth and mallleable mean is that equalized dps would have to come with a complete transformation of rphys in order to bring it on par under a general ranged umbrella where there is little difference between them and casters. If doing more dps to retain value in the current DDR/damage model is a correct assessment, I also fear that the role is going to actually lose its players to make room for new ones. Much like MCH or SMN lost its players to make room for new ones.

[Supersnow845]

And let's face it: Magical Ranged have you beat on support functionality anyways, and they offer more damage to boot. Raise is the most powerful support action that you can have. And you even have Damage Casters with defensive actions that can challenge Physical Ranged on the support domain.

I think mallleable has the right of it. Physical Ranged needs to be able to hold its own in DPS if it's going to retain players, barring a massive design shift in this game that is unlikely to happen in this point in its life cycle. Convincing your Magical Ranged colleagues of that equivalence is a different story, though.

This isn’t fair for 2 reasons

1) here you are overinflating how useful casters are on the support by conflating 2 vastly different casters in the same sentence. “They have raise and they also have ones that do huge amounts of damage”. That’s a pointless statement because the game in the modern form is explicitly designed to try and make you not want to run double caster. You either get raise or you get PCT, if you take both you lose a melee and nullify PCT’s higher damage advantage anyway. You yourself have even expressed very strong desire to want to avoid double caster comps so it’s a little unfair that you are now using them as an example of advantages that the casters have over the physical ranged. The only valid point here is that SMN while classed as a caster should not be as easy as it is while retaining raise

2) casters (particularly PCT, BLM and RDM) if they do oppose equi-damage between them and the phys ranged do so for the same reason you oppose equi-damage with between the melees and the physical ranged; that being having an extra job consideration (casting or melee ranged) doesn’t play into an offered advantage because everyone does the same damage. If you support equalising damage amongst the ranged jobs you should also support equalising damage amongst the ranged AND melee roles otherwise your “support for the plight of the physical ranged” just reads like a veiled attempt for an excuse to nerf pictomancer

[Lyth]

?

For the damage disadvantage that Physical Ranged have relative to Damage Casters, they might as well have access to raise. The difference is that your SMN main brings raise for prog and swaps out for PCT when you're clear ready without any significant re-gearing. If double Magical Ranged is strongly feasible, then double Physical Ranged should be equally feasible. Let people bring whatever pair of ranged jobs that they like.

I have no idea what you're talking about regarding damage parity. I have always argued in favor of it, because I know that a fair and balanced playing field favors skilled players (and that's why you are determinedly resistant to it). Ideally, melee will be tuned slightly higher under pure target dummy conditions, but fight design will make it a toss up between melee and ranged, with a variety of melee and ranged jobs pulling out on top based off of variations in uptime. They really need to stop making wall bosses, it's not even an interesting gimmick. Either way, fights are designed off of a 2/2/2/2 principle. This has nothing to do with melee, and has everything to do with Magical Ranged completely dominating Physical Ranged in their respective category.

[Supersnow845]

For the damage disadvantage that Physical Ranged have relative to Damage Casters, they might as well have access to raise. The difference is that your SMN main brings raise for prog and swaps out for PCT when you're clear ready without any significant re-gearing. If double Magical Ranged is strongly feasible, then double Physical Ranged should be equally feasible. Let people bring whatever pair of ranged jobs that they like.

I have no idea what you're talking about regarding damage parity. I have always argued in favor of it, because I know that a fair and balanced playing field favors skilled players (and that's why you are determinedly resistant to it). Ideally, melee will be tuned slightly higher under pure target dummy conditions, but fight design will make it a toss up between melee and ranged, with a variety of melee and ranged jobs pulling out on top based off of variations in uptime. They really need to stop making wall bosses, it's not even an interesting gimmick. Either way, fights are designed off of a 2/2/2/2 principle. This has nothing to do with melee, and has everything to do with Magical Ranged completely dominating Physical Ranged in their respective category.

“I have always argued in favour of damage parity”

“Ideally melee should be tuned a little higher in dummy conditions”

See this, this right here is just a tiny little microcosm of how internally inconsistent your arguments become when you try to argue both sides of casters unfairly dominating the phys ranged but also somehow believe the melees should stand above by default. This is relevant to physical ranged because you’ve straight up argued in the past that damage parity is to the melee’s detriment but never to the casters. Caster is just as distinctive a role from phys ranged as melee is, you can’t just ignore that as a concept. As a whole people who have concerns around uptime will always oppose parity from those who don’t and casters and melee both share that problem

I don’t oppose parity in damage because I’m unskilled (that backhand was just pointlessly rude) I oppose it because melee and casters have uptime concerns the physical ranged lack. HOWEVER before you quote that sentence and stop right there I don’t like the current design either, like I said my desire to fix the physical ranged involves giving them mechanics only they can do because they play to their advantages. I’ve never had a problem playing a role that does less damage if I feel like I’m uniquely contributing to the party on other fronts (hell it’s the entire foundation that non damage buffers like 11 BRD are built on)

I don’t want everyone shoved down further into grey slop because they refuse to innovate fight design to the physical ranged benefit but if I had to go that route then I’d rather they go back to ShB balancing of 2/2/1/1/1/x where you can bring any fourth member even a second physical ranged because you prefer mechanical consistency over raw damage. The phys ranged don’t do enough damage in the current design that’s a universal problem but nor is it a problem entirely derived from the casters