Do you think that Picto needs a nerf?

[Supersnow845]

Except they do not. Caster balance is awful, nobody is going to deny that. However, that is entirely separate problem from melee.

If you were to buff Red Mage to deal melee level damage, you now have a job without any uptime restrictions, 10% party mitigation and both an on demand heal and raise. In what world is that remotely comparable to the current landscape, one where Red Mage was chosen over melee in FRU prog on more than a few teams despite it's awful damage? I'm all for buffing the casters but the person I quoted went to the opposite extreme. Right now running RDM/SMN and Pictro is perfectly fine in a prog setting. If RDM is pushing SAM/DRG/NIN levels, you'd be actively trolling to not have it because they offer nowhere close to the utility and flexibility.

Axe Magicek Barrier, Vercure and Verraise then we can talk about Red Mage doing melee damage. Although, there's still the uptime discrepancy.

So why is melee uptime a consideration but casting cast times aren’t. People seem so quick to forget that casters have to…….you know cast. Mechanics these days rarely force melee out of melee range but mechanics love casters running marathons around the arena to solve mechanics. Does “I can’t hit the boss when I’m not next to them” mean literally anything when you know every mechanic they made will allow you to solve it with 4 people next to the boss

Where is the compensation for caster uptime

When was the last time we got a mechanic that felt like it was designed around a turrety caster and not a melee

[VerySadDRG]

Mechanics these days rarely force melee out of melee range

Please play as melee in current savage tier, because you clearly have no clue what you're talking about.

[Supersnow845]

Please play as melee in current savage tier, because you clearly have no clue what you're talking about.

And again I’ll say being pushed away for half a GCD doesn’t count

When was the last time we had a mechanic line junction shiva or light rampart (the original) where you actively had to design a unique strat that was 4* as dangerous and twice as hard just to allow your melees to have decent uptime that wasn’t always implemented. The full uptime light rampart strat was a monster compared to the standard but if you wanted to fight for uptime you actively did it. Now every mechanic is either solved with 100% uptime or 100% enforced downtime

Being pushed out for half a GCD because of a chariot or being shoved to the other arena where you couldn’t even hit the boss anyway doesn’t count as the type of actual downtime that used to bend strategies around it

[VerySadDRG]

Now every mechanic is either solved with 100% uptime or 100% enforced downtime

Being pushed out for half a GCD because of a chariot or being shoved to the other arena where you couldn’t even hit the boss anyway doesn’t count as the type of actual downtime that used to bend strategies around it

I hope you'll try to stay on platform in 1st phase of M4S. Spoiler: you'll die in 2 hits without extra heals and mit (especially DRGs and VPRs, for they don't have any mitigation tools). And to make things worse, you drift your GCD alignment, you lose usage of some OGCDs, you lose autos, you lose dot ticks, so you're punished for that "100 enforced downtime" and not getting any type of compensation, while casters are completely safe and do everything as usual.

And that half of GCD can cost you either whole usage of it in burst window, or can cost you stuff like Bhavacakra that generates from GCDs. Casters, on the other hand, have means to deal with suff like that with either slidecasts, personal instacasts or a swiftcast.

I would understand that type of discussion during 6.x, where you had to try really hard to lose uptime, but it isn't the case rn.

[Supersnow845]

I hope you'll try to stay on platform in 1st phase of M4S. Spoiler: you'll die in 2 hits without extra heals and mit (especially DRGs and VPRs, for they don't have any mitigation tools). And to make things worse, you drift your GCD alignment, you lose usage of some OGCDs, you lose autos, you lose dot ticks, so you're punished for that "100 enforced downtime" and not getting any type of compensation, while casters are completely safe and do everything as usual.

And that half of GCD can cost you either whole usage of it in burst window, or can cost you stuff like Bhavacakra that generates from GCDs. Casters, on the other hand, have means to deal with suff like that with either slidecasts, personal instacasts or a swiftcast.

I would understand that type of discussion during 6.x, where you had to try really hard to lose uptime, but it isn't the case rn.

Yes about the single example of enforced downtime and one that punishes you with resource mismanagement. A fair point. Does it justify the 5-10% extra damage the melees do over the non PCT ranged players. You tell me

Then think of all the times that you are forced to move alot or you watch the ranged players have to move a lot. Thats their downtime. Is the amount of time the casters are forced to move when they don’t particularly want to not on average greater than the amount of time the melees are forced away from the boss

[VerySadDRG]

Yes about the single example of enforced downtime and one that punishes you with resource mismanagement. A fair point. Does it justify the 5-10% extra damage the melees do over the non PCT ranged players. You tell me

No, I like the idea of casters and melees doing approximately the same damage and think it sould work that way, because both of them have to deal with their fair share of problems (and would love to see RDM do a bit better than it does now, because it has to deal with casts, uptime and RNG on top of that).

Well, except for SMN, it deserves to sit there with phys ranged, lol.

[Supersnow845]

No, I like the idea of casters and melees doing approximately the same damage and think it sould work that way, because both of them have to deal with their fair share of problems (and would love to see RDM do a bit better than it does now, because it has to deal with casts, uptime and RNG on top of that).

Well, except for SMN, it deserves to sit there with phys ranged, lol.

Then you and I are in agreement, I was pushing back against the idea that melee should do MORE purely based on uptime considerations

I have zero problem with the 3 casters and the 6 melee doing roughly equitable damage

[Carighan]

So why is melee uptime a consideration but casting cast times aren’t. People seem so quick to forget that casters have to…….you know cast.

I think it's because only Red Mage and Pictomancer really cast anything at all. Summoner is 3 casted spells per cycle and usually only 2, Black Mage is near-100%-instant or 100%-instant depending on how you want to do it.

[Ggwppino]

I think it's because only Red Mage and Pictomancer really cast anything at all. Summoner is 3 casted spells per cycle and usually only 2, Black Mage is near-100%-instant or 100%-instant depending on how you want to do it.

Playing instant blm is not so worth a dps.
Of course, if one has to choose between life or changing the rotation to have everything instant and not die, I'm fine with it (Rotation not at all trivial however). But that's like telling the melee to detach from the boss and attack him with ranged attack for no valid reason.
Even though the BLM has received a lot of movement, almost making it unrecognizable in some ways, it still suffers from micro-movements that need to be optimised.

The smn is not a caster, it's fine where it is, no comment.

[ForteNightshade]

In your imagination, unconsciously, when you think of a balanced party you think of 2 melee, 1 caster and 1 pranged. And throughout Endwalker was objectively the best thing to have, given the 6-8% difference between melee and the others.
Well a balanced party is 1 melee, 1 caster, 1 pranged and a free spot.

If the RDM did the same damage as the melee, the melee would still have their space, but it would allow the RDM to compete much more easily at the caster spot because it will do considerable damage plus its versatily and could compete for the free spot.

No, I'm thinking about what you conveniently ignored in my response: the fact Red Mage has vastly superior utility to every single melee, thus buffing it to deal comparable damage wouldn't allow it to simply compete for the free spot but guarantee it. You'd be downright griefing your team to bring two melee with your buffed up version of Red Mage.

Once again, Red Mage brings 10% party wide mitigation, a raid buff, position flexibility and on demand healing and a raise. Literally nothing the melee have can compete with that. What you're asking for isn't a "well balanced party" but turning Red Mage into, ironically, the best job in the game alongside Picto.

So why is melee uptime a consideration but casting cast times aren’t. People seem so quick to forget that casters have to…….you know cast. Mechanics these days rarely force melee out of melee range but mechanics love casters running marathons around the arena to solve mechanics. Does “I can’t hit the boss when I’m not next to them” mean literally anything when you know every mechanic they made will allow you to solve it with 4 people next to the boss

Where is the compensation for caster uptime

When was the last time we got a mechanic that felt like it was designed around a turrety caster and not a melee

Didn't you just say: "The AVERAGE melee in M4 has EIGHT. 8 GCD’s of downtime"

There is not a single fight in the last two expansions combined where you're losing an "average" of 8 GCDs due to miscasts. You're not even losing half that. At the balance threshold (85-90%), casters are hard pressed to lose any casts whatsoever. I didn't forget. It's simply not nearly as big an issue for them as fights like say, E8 were. Even M4 is worse for melee by far than casters. And that's even by your own admission. If you're losing casts in M4. I'm sorry mate, that's on you.

Just for specifics, we can basically ignore Black Mage and Summoner in this discussion because neither one of them struggles whatsoever with mobility. That leaves Picto taking a very small loss having to use Holy in White, which exist solely as a movement tool and literally nothing else. And then Red Mage which does have to put in the most effort but between Acceleration, Swiftcast and duel casting, it does fine enough.

None of this considers the benefit of safer strats because it's typically easier to spread five people away from the boss than four locked on it, being able to preposition outside of melee range or simply not having to worry about greeding in melee range. A double caster comp is almost always superior assuming equal damage. As for a mechanic designed around a "turrety caster." Find me a caster that can't move while turreting first.

Put bluntly, Casters don't have an uptime problem.