Let's talk about physical range jobs

[Connor]

In my experience the community shows as much contempt for phys ranged as the devs do lol. People will rarely even mention the role anymore. I mean, how could they not when the devs have neglected it so wholly? None of the role’s functions or features make sense anymore.

- ‘Sustained damage’ is meaningless in a game with so little downtime (specifically for melees)
- Mobility is absolutely not an advantage in a game where every job has an abundance of mobility skills and tools specifically to subvert intended ‘disconnects’.
- Claims to be a support role but Machinist
- Bard’s entire ‘support’ identity is represented through passive button presses on a conveyor belt that literally aren’t anything to do with supporting the party at all (songs are personal dps cool-downs).
- Speaking of which, Bard’s identity is still an absolute mess. Are they some magical poet using their voice to smack enemies with (a 100% physical weaponskill) a pillar of light? Are they consummate archers who just pull an instrument out their ass every 45 seconds? Make up your mind SE.
- Machinist seems wholly confused about what it’s even meant to be
- Literally no difference between how Bard and Dancer support. You hit a button as part of your dps rotation and buffs spew out. Developing dance partner and song spellcasting could’ve differentiated them a bit more, but naa let’s just make it all 120s button presses.
- A literal fucking role skill parading as a real individual ability. When they constantly go on about ability amount limitations and avoiding button bloat…
- What possible reason is there for Peloton to not be usable in combat other than to spite us? Just make it half duration. Literally no other job/role in the game has an ability slot taken up by an ability they literally cannot use in combat. None! Just phys ranged.

[Raikai]

- Literally no difference between how Bard and Dancer support. You hit a button as part of your dps rotation and buffs spew out. Developing dance partner and song spellcasting could’ve differentiated them a bit more, but naa let’s just make it all 120s button presses.

There is... DNC buffs one person for more, and BRD buffs the whole team for less, unless you're just talking about the 120s actions, which is basically the 2min meta that is also composed by other jobs.

If we had no such thing as this static 2min buff window, maybe BRD and DNC could bring more value for their buffing aspects, the ones not tied to that 2min window, I mean.

As for MCH. I don't think it's even possible to balance this job given the niche it is. You make it stronger as the "selfish dpser" it is, and suddenly the other 2 are outclassed. You try to make all 3 of them somewhat equal, like how it seems to be now, and then MCH eats the dust since the buffs scale better with good players and stats.

[Carighan]

‘Sustained damage’ is meaningless in a game with so little downtime (specifically for melees)

This is something that's frequently overlooked. The meaningful difference between being a Melee vs being a Ranged vs being a Caster has been factually eliminated, and this is not good in a game with so many classes.

Usually, in RPGs:

* Melees have significantly more damage output and more survivability. In return they frequently and extensively have to disconnected to do mechanics, reducing their momentary DPS to 0, and also are frequently subjected to PBAoE attacks that cannot meaningfully be dodged and hence need to be able to survive these. Their overall DPS balances out, as does their survivability, even though in a tank&spank situation both would be incredibly high compared to all other damage.
* In second place come Casters, who also does substantially more damage, in return for dropping to 0 whenever they have to move with few if any tools to continue uptime during movement (and if they have any they're like Scathe, significantly weaker than their normal output regardless of any CDs they might have, or have downsides such as reducing damage by 50%).
* Only then come the non-casting ranged, who can essentially guarantee full uptime. Naturally they are neither survivable (they have the flexibility to avoid stuff) nor do they bring high DPS (they can keep it up 100% of the time). Again, overall it balances out, but it's much weaker on a target dummy, MUCH weaker. In return for melees losing say, 30%+ of their uptime, and casters also missing 10%-20% of their potential casts and hence rotations constantly going haywire and things not lining up.

This is also incidentally why tanks and healers usually share the downsides of melees and casters respectively (with some exceptions, see Vanguard's melee healer or EQ1's Beastmaster when tanking): They get easy-use tools to avoid the downside to some degree, on tanks usually this is their tank-survivability which means they don't have to disconnected (and in fact their job is to not do this!), and for healers they usually have the frequent or no-downside movement tools to ensure they can heal while moving. But this also frequently only affects their healing, not the rest of their kit, to ensure that for damage output they are casters.

Mostly the game, I feel, needs more adversity:

* Significantly more damage on the raid as a whole, and importantly not equal damage. Say every autoattack bosses also hit 2 random non-tank people for 25%-30% of their HP.
* Significantly more tank damage, and more consistent autoattacks. Tanks ought to be constantly pressured to use their plethora of defenses, not just for mechanics.
* More issues stemming from your class' design. Inability to be good in a fight involving a lot of movement. Yeah, you're a caster, you will not do well in this fight!. Tough luck, there are others where you rock!

Without adversity, all difficulty has to come from DDR + speed, and I feel we're capping this with modern fights. They're really not easy, but it can't be increased much more.

[Valence]

I accept to do less damage than the Melees and Mages but except for MCH

I personally don't.

DNC has buffs with Standard Step and Technical Step that reach 15y where Bard Buffs has 30y range. Also Tilana feels a little bit odd to press now.

I don't like homogenization.

BRD dots and Sidewinder feel a little bit useless where in previous expansions had it uses.

But you must understand, according to the devs the skill ceiling of having it linked to dots was too much...

In my experience the community shows as much contempt for phys ranged as the devs do lol. People will rarely even mention the role anymore. I mean, how could they not when the devs have neglected it so wholly? None of the role’s functions or features make sense anymore.

- ‘Sustained damage’ is meaningless in a game with so little downtime (specifically for melees)
- Mobility is absolutely not an advantage in a game where every job has an abundance of mobility skills and tools specifically to subvert intended ‘disconnects’.
- Claims to be a support role but Machinist
- Bard’s entire ‘support’ identity is represented through passive button presses on a conveyor belt that literally aren’t anything to do with supporting the party at all (songs are personal dps cool-downs).
- Speaking of which, Bard’s identity is still an absolute mess. Are they some magical poet using their voice to smack enemies with (a 100% physical weaponskill) a pillar of light? Are they consummate archers who just pull an instrument out their ass every 45 seconds? Make up your mind SE.
- Machinist seems wholly confused about what it’s even meant to be
- Literally no difference between how Bard and Dancer support. You hit a button as part of your dps rotation and buffs spew out. Developing dance partner and song spellcasting could’ve differentiated them a bit more, but naa let’s just make it all 120s button presses.
- A literal fucking role skill parading as a real individual ability. When they constantly go on about ability amount limitations and avoiding button bloat…
- What possible reason is there for Peloton to not be usable in combat other than to spite us? Just make it half duration. Literally no other job/role in the game has an ability slot taken up by an ability they literally cannot use in combat. None! Just phys ranged.

The community tends to oscillate between utter pity the same way passerby would send a look at the local destitute, and outright contempt when rphys players even dare ask for more damage because they suddenly feel threatened in their imaginary metrics of effort vs reward.

Mobility except for DNC is not an advantage of rphys but actually a disadvantage of playing the role. The only remaining jobs with no mobility are AST and SCH, and SCH has Expedient so technically it's still faring a little better than MCH and BRD. Actual raw mobility has become increasingly more valuable in the last two expansions and the difference betweeen playing a DNC and BRD/MCH is pretty much the difference between margin for error and no room for mistakes. Don't get me wrong though, I'm not asking for more mobility for rphys especially since the other half of the pve game those days is about uptime and rphys has no issues there for obvious reasons. The reason I'm mentioning it is because everybody always conveniently glosses over this.

[mallleable]

Usually, in RPGs:

Interestingly, the opposite relation usually occurs in shooter games where melee attacks, and weapons are far more sparce, and weaker because they are physically easier to aim as opposed to ranged weapons which have a lot more nuance needing skills like positioning, projectile travel time (if applicable), and crosshair placement. Which is why the idea of physical ranged needing to 'aim' seems so attractive to me. 'Aiming' becomes their 'adversity,' their 'challenge.' The design challenge becomes how to create 'aiming' mechanics that work in XIV's combat system.