Let's talk about physical range jobs

[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.