They forgot Ranged Physical is a role in the game

[Valence]

Because people don't speak about the same things and then wonder what was missed in translation when they end up in heated argument about cast times on rphys. See yourself for instance, you instantly went back to defend your stance on a modicum amount of casting by justifying it with the fact that other jobs not part of the caster roles have smaller casts here or there. Some others actually want walking casts on the filler and everything and argue that it's not the same as casting (but it is). Some just want to make rphys into casters unabashedly.

And they all refer to it under the umbrella of "cast times".

[Lyth]

As far as I can tell, the common point under discussion is in justifying why Physical Ranged should do equivalent damage and offer equivalent utility to Magical Ranged. The cast times discussion comes down to the fact that most casts are trivial to resolve and reduce APM rather than adding to job complexity. If you had even one Physical Ranged job with even a degree of casts (be it walking or stationary), the idea of having two tiers of Ranged jobs becomes completely undefendable. That's the bottom line.

I have no idea why an actual Physical Ranged player would ever defend the status quo and defend Magical Ranged superiority, unless they're off moonlighting as a PCT somewhere.

[Connor]

snip

Now I’m just confused again. I’m not trying to have a heated debate about anything, except maybe with Yoshi-P about what he thinks a Bard is lol. If I wrote my ranting any more neutral it’d be Dutch. And, not that it’s really relevant, but I’ve been complaining about Bard specifically since 2013 lol; it’s hard not to create giant rants with how much material I have stored up lol. Particularly after being either straight up ignored by devs for 11+ years or laughed out of the thread by most other Bards for my suggestions.

I’m defending my own stance because I have nothing to defend anyone else’s stance with really lol. I mean, if ‘class cohesion’ amongst players is required for a job to ever get looked at healers won’t ever have a chance lol; 1000+ pages and still people disagree about what healers should actually get to be ‘fixed’.

As for people requesting ‘make rphys into casters’, maybe it’s just me but I haven’t gotten that impression from anyone’s posts. Lyth is talking about role consolidation and the ‘casts’ part of the argument is less of a consideration, Malleable I figured is talking about walking casts on the filler rather than putting them on everything HW style. Which I’d say isn’t ’intrusive’ enough that it’d blur the line between casters and ranged (assuming everything else wasn’t casts of course). I think, anyway lol. And that’s not to say I agree/disagree with the points just the general vibes I got looking back through some posts.

I mean, the only person stupid enough to think Bard could be a ‘real/true’ caster is me lol, and again I’m usually laughed out of threads for it anyway.

As for ‘cast times’ an umbrella term i think that’s just an issue of ‘meaning different things to different people’. Like some would only consider a 2.5+ cast time a ‘full cast’, others would still consider 1.5 a ‘cast’ while others would say it’s only half of one, etc. Personally - not to muddy the waters - but I’d say ‘casting’ is really just a specific way to present ‘delay in activation while your character is doing the thing’. Like I’d say Steps and Improv fulfill essentially the exact same function as ‘casts’, it’s just presented slightly differently (no bar during delay lol).

Honestly I’d say pretty much every thread on the forums devolves into disparate people saying their own thing rather than one involved and informed discussion lol. I think it’s just an inevitable thing in ‘online posting’ really. But at the same time I don’t imagine if the devs were to read the thread they’d somehow get the wrong idea and mistakenly put casts on everything phys ranged. If anything I think the conclusion they come to would be ‘maybe some cast times on certain abilities could be an idea’ (also ‘why is that idiot catboy talking about harps and poetry’ lol)

[Supersnow845]

As far as I can tell, the common point under discussion is in justifying why Physical Ranged should do equivalent damage and offer equivalent utility to Magical Ranged. The cast times discussion comes down to the fact that most casts are trivial to resolve and reduce APM rather than adding to job complexity. If you had even one Physical Ranged job with even a degree of casts (be it walking or stationary), the idea of having two tiers of Ranged jobs becomes completely undefendable. That's the bottom line.

I have no idea why an actual Physical Ranged player would ever defend the status quo and defend Magical Ranged superiority, unless they're off moonlighting as a PCT somewhere.

I mean at risk of opening old discussions all I’ll say is that’s precipitated entirely on the idea that casts are easy to solve and that the APM reduction exceeds the movement considerations which given higher IQR’s of casters is likely at least partially untrue. Like WHM was a BEAST to optimise in ShB because it simply could not move. It’s APM was like 15 casts a minute because it was so slow but it was a nightmare to optimise because you simply couldn’t move on it

This isn’t to say phys ranged shouldn’t be prevented from doing the same damage as the casters or the melees but it comes back to a discussion of do you

A) give physical ranged a non rotational consideration like the other 2 roles as those considerations are why the casters and melee do more damage

B) keep their damage to here it is now but give the physical ranged a niche ONLY they can do whether that’s utility (in whatever form) or mechanics designed around only a physical ranged being able to solve them sorta putting them in a position somewhat analogous to the current rezz casters

Support as a concept isn’t necessarily wrong and it’s not like the physical ranged all have to adhere to one or the other. For example you could give walking casts to MCH and have it do SAM/PCT damage but have to drop ALOT of damage to solve the same mechanic DNC and BRD could solve trivially while DNC and BRD are instead given much more support or utility so the decision comes down to a similar one that currently affects the casters

There really isn’t a need to fuse the ranged roles, it doesn’t add anything to the game, they don’t need to fuse anything to justify or dys-justify why anything is the way it is now, simply put the physical ranged are in a bad position and need something and that’s no other roles direct fault like the tanks directly affect the healers

[Lyth]

...

You do realize that IQR is influenced by Critical Hit and Direct Hit variability, right? And that having a coma-inducing APM count coupled with high damage values per individual action adds to that variability as well? Descriptive stats are meaningless without the ability to critically evaluate them.

You could trade off damage vs. utility if you turned Physical Ranged into a 'support subrole' with a protected slot. But the end result is the healer situation, but worse, where players find workarounds to drop the additional support where possible. You'd effectively create a support role that was even less valued than healer.

In practice, it makes much more sense for Physical Ranged to deal competitive damage while offering unique utility, which is what Magical Ranged is currently doing.

[Valence]

As for people requesting ‘make rphys into casters’, maybe it’s just me but I haven’t gotten that impression from anyone’s posts. Lyth is talking about role consolidation and the ‘casts’ part of the argument is less of a consideration, Malleable I figured is talking about walking casts on the filler rather than putting them on everything HW style. Which I’d say isn’t ’intrusive’ enough that it’d blur the line between casters and ranged (assuming everything else wasn’t casts of course). I think, anyway lol. And that’s not to say I agree/disagree with the points just the general vibes I got looking back through some posts.

Lyth wants to consolidate all ranged into the same role, which would require significant changes to make casters not scream in rage if you just introduce rphys into ranged and buff them enough to match PCT. And if you just keep them at RDM/SMN level (which is already kinda better than rphys are), you'd end up with a nothing rphys burger that's even more useless without the 1% party bonus, unless perhaps if you give rphys access to raise so they essentially play SMN with a little less braindead rotation. Let's be reasonable a little, even if cast times reduce APM, that's the only thing the community will accept to justify rphys being buffed to PCT levels. Else if you're telling me that APM is everything then sure, why are MCH/BRD not approaching VPR? As soon as you mention something like this, melees will scream madly until you cease and desist for suggesting anything competing with them.

Malleable has already stated multiple times that they do want walking casts on the filler at least for BRD, and perhaps MCH, and whether one adds caveats like some instants (or increased walking speed) from procs, it's not reasonable for the single reason that those would still not be controllable unless you reintroduce something like ammo. And even if you do, you still end up with, guess what, basically casters with a different visual flavor. And then there is DNC. Do we make DNC cast too?

And then there has been other attempts at suggesting cast times but only like iajutsu or communio, essentially for example on BRD would be casting the songs, or MCH the tools. This is nice if it justifies a little more damage, but this will never fix the issue because again, everybody not rphys will scream in rage if suddenly they get buffed to compete with melee/casters with just a couple of cast times peppered like that.

This is the point I made in my post, everybody speaks about different things, different cast times, and that's why everybody talks past each other.

As for ‘cast times’ an umbrella term i think that’s just an issue of ‘meaning different things to different people’. Like some would only consider a 2.5+ cast time a ‘full cast’, others would still consider 1.5 a ‘cast’ while others would say it’s only half of one, etc. Personally - not to muddy the waters - but I’d say ‘casting’ is really just a specific way to present ‘delay in activation while your character is doing the thing’. Like I’d say Steps and Improv fulfill essentially the exact same function as ‘casts’, it’s just presented slightly differently (no bar during delay lol).

You can do whatever you want during steps. You can move, you can dash, you can pop mitigation... Sure you'll clip if done between steps, but the most important thing is that you don't have to stand still or basically slow, which is inherent to casts.



tl;dr: the solution can be both bullet points advanced by Supersnow:

1) Give rphys significantly more involved, intricate and rng rotations with constant choices to do, than any other dps.
2) Make encounters and/or mechanics require interaction from rphys.

[Lyth]

Lyth wants to consolidate all ranged into the same role, which would require significant changes to make casters not scream in rage if you just introduce rphys into ranged and buff them enough to match PCT.

You'd need to bring all ranged jobs on to the same DPS tier, and ideally standardize raise as a role action (i.e. Phoenix Down). Then you'd take any combination of two ranged jobs that you like. I don't personally care what Magical Ranged has to say on the issue, nor should you (unless you've already made a swap to PCT).

Melee have literally nothing to do with the matter, and you might as well be comparing yourselves to tanks. Melee uptime is a physical constraint, which is why it influences fight design and the 2/2/2/2 raid comp. (You'd also need to catch up to NIN first). I think close parity is reasonable where possible, but it's a natural limitation of game design (otherwise everyone would play ranged).

[Connor]

Malleable has already stated multiple times that they do want walking casts on the filler at least for BRD, and perhaps MCH, and whether one adds caveats like some instants (or increased walking speed) from procs, it\\'s not reasonable for the single reason that those would still not be controllable unless you reintroduce something like ammo. And even if you do, you still end up with, guess what, basically casters with a different visual flavor. And then there is DNC. Do we make DNC cast too?

They have their own issues with janky reaction times and clunky gameplay, but don’t things like HW Minuet or Gauss Barrel solve that? Then you have complete control over when you do/don’t cast. In theory anyway. I suppose that would make phys ranged kind-of have uptime considerations, so maybe it would convince the devs to make phys ranged super strong lol. As for Dancer, I’m not a Dancer main so I can’t answer that question for them. But honestly I wouldn’t care much if Dancer did have a cast on something as long as it actually added to the gameplay and did something interesting.

And then there has been other attempts at suggesting cast times but only like iajutsu or communio, essentially for example on BRD would be casting the songs, or MCH the tools. This is nice if it justifies a little more damage, but this will never fix the issue because again, everybody not rphys will scream in rage if suddenly they get buffed to compete with melee/casters with just a couple of cast times peppered like that.

I mean, I’d say a lot of that is the result of ‘what phys ranged need to become balanced’ and ‘what phys ranged need/could have to be more fun/interesting’. Like, I think those are more suggestions for ‘flavour’ rather than ‘these are what will solve the balancing issues’. And I mean, it kinda sounds like it doesn’t matter what they do to phys ranged, either casters or melee will scream about it anyway lol.

You can do whatever you want during steps. You can move, you can dash, you can pop mitigation... Sure you\\'ll clip if done between steps, but the most important thing is that you don\\'t have to stand still or basically slow, which is inherent to casts.

Throwing out weaponskills combos mid-step are we? You know I didn’t mean ‘including using oGCDs that were made available later in the job’s development due to player feedback’. It’s a delay ‘between main actions’ (GCDs) not ‘literally any action whatsoever’. And it’s completely ignoring the mention of Improvisation which has those exact qualities that ‘define a cast’ you mention. You have to stand still, which is inherent to casts, isn’t it?

tl;dr: the solution can be both bullet points advanced by Supersnow:

1) Give rphys significantly more involved, intricate and rng rotations with constant choices to do, than any other dps.
2) Make encounters and/or mechanics require interaction from rphys.

No offense to the original poster, but don’t these solutions have their own issues too though?

1) Makes the assumption that phys ranged players would accept their jobs becoming ‘significantly’ more complex than they already are. Not to mention, how does one even measure ‘involved, intricate rotations’ relative to other jobs. More involved than Viper? Pictomancer? Where do we set the bar? And where even is the bar for every other job? I mean, there could theoretically be someone out there who thinks Summoner is more involved than Viper. They’d (probably) be objectively wrong, but I don’t think you can convince them of that lol.

2) We kinda had this before and didn’t people just complain ‘if phys ranged dies nobody can do the thing!’? It wasn’t technically true, but they still said it lol. I mean, it’s kind of the same argument devs have used to justify spreading healing capabilities so widely across roles (‘if healer gets overwhelmed who will save the precious dps?!’ lol). The devs seems to be strongly against the idea of one ‘capability’ being the sole domain of a single role. Like being able to silence the enemy; it could be a responsibility unique to the ranged role, but ranks do it too. Devs would be like ‘we can’t make it so only ranged do it cuz what if they die forget etc’. Player tension and all that.
Then again, we already have the role bonus ‘enforcing’ (or trying lol) specific comps anyway, so it’s not like you could get into a situation where there’s no phys ranged. And it’s not like we have much pressure on the role anyway lol.

But I wouldn’t say it’s a case of ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ solutions anyway. I’d say everyone’s points have both merits and weaknesses, whether it’s ’add [form of cast time]’ or ‘increase rotational complexity’ or whatever else. Ultimately it’s the devs that need to deal with that anyway lol, however they decide to do it. Probably something hilarious like ‘we buffed WAR’.

[Supersnow845]

You'd need to bring all ranged jobs on to the same DPS tier, and ideally standardize raise as a role action (i.e. Phoenix Down). Then you'd take any combination of two ranged jobs that you like. I don't personally care what Magical Ranged has to say on the issue, nor should you (unless you've already made a swap to PCT).

Melee have literally nothing to do with the matter, and you might as well be comparing yourselves to tanks. Melee uptime is a physical constraint, which is why it influences fight design and the 2/2/2/2 raid comp. (You'd also need to catch up to NIN first). I think close parity is reasonable where possible, but it's a natural limitation of game design (otherwise everyone would play ranged).

Your logic doesn’t make any sense though because there is no way your suggestion actually benefits the physical ranged in terms of pick rate

If we standardised casters and physical ranged into a single role by your own logic they HAVE to do less damage than the melee or you would simply run 4 ranged (never mind casting considerations but I’ll ignore them here). So to make this work you wouldn’t buff the physical ranged you’d nerf PCT and BLM to make them all fit around where RDM is (especially since standardising raise would theoretically be another justification for lower DPS)

So instead of being one of three going for one spot you are now one of 7 going for 2 spots and at most MAYBE MCH and DNC get a 1-2% buff to make sure that they are still short of the melee. 7.05 BRD is already approaching the range of if every ranged did that damage 3 ranged is a totally viable comp which means 7.05 BRD is about the ceiling for this design

Just……nothing about this seems to benefit anyone, this doesn’t help anyone

[SenzorialBoundries]

It's completely unnecessary to give something like that to a DPS and half the time has no value because either no damage is going out, or you have more than enough to not need it. At least RDM can proc a dualcast off of their heal in downtime.

Not a big deal, yet can't help but think they could've given SMN more damage buttons to press rather than a heal that's very situational at best.

Thats the thing, they cannot, summoner is fundamentally a broken job and feels like an intern designed it with poor knowledge. They basically cannot ever ever give summoner any new actual gcds because it breaks how the jobs 1 minute loop works. Summoner is just horrible job design thats all and it needs a proper rework.