Why is there a noticeable gap between Casters and Melees?

[Skeith-Adeline]

As a disclaimer, player skill is the greatest factor. I'm going off of personal and other anecdotal evidence on a training dummy, and such should be taken into thought.


Why are melee's much more potent over Ranged? (suppose I should change to range vs melee). They aren't in more risk than ranged with the current fights.

[Tex_Mex]

Typically, MMO designers give melee DPS around a 10% buff to DPS output over other classes, because it is assumed that they will not have 100% up time. They are melee, which usually means that they have more mechanics to worry about that will keep them from being in melee range.

That being said, the current FCoB mechanics do not follow this path. They are all very melee friendly, which has lead to the gap between the DPS classes being very VERY noticeable. It is easy to spot this occurring because most FCoB raid compositions are 2 melee DPS, 1 BRD, 1 BLM. In past coils, this was much better balanced.

FCoB has been called the melee DPS coil because of these changes, and if a caster was not required for most of the fights, 3 melee 1 BRD compositions would be all over the place.

[RinchanNau]

FCoB has been called the melee DPS coil because of these changes, and if a caster was not required for most of the fights, 3 melee 1 BRD compositions would be all over the place.

We did every turn w/ a 3 melee + 1 BRD config this past week in my main group. It wasn't really any slower from not using a caster, to be honest. Perhaps this would have been less viable when we were working on actual progression the first few weeks of 2.4, but with the gear we have now and knowledge of the fights it's very simple. Could probably do them all w/ 4 melee too.

[Tex_Mex]

We did every turn w/ a 3 melee + 1 BRD config this past week in my main group. It wasn't really any slower from not using a caster, to be honest. Perhaps this would have been less viable when we were working on actual progression the first few weeks of 2.4, but with the gear we have now and knowledge of the fights it's very simple. Could probably do them all w/ 4 melee too.

haha ya, T11 is definitely tough without a caster. And we still use a caster in T10 for 2nd add phase. But it sounds like your progression group is a bit further along than ours so y'all can skip/avoid mechanics on the basis of higher DPS alone.

[Leonus]

For most content in the game, the moment ranged dps is equal to or better than melee dps, melee dps becomes a liability in comparison. They are then no longer needed for anything other than melee LB.

Though composition has changed since the beginning of ARR. It used to lean more towards 2 casters, brd and 1 melee. Now it's 2 melee, 1 caster and a brd.

It just happens to be the content available is melee friendly. Also, the people playing melee classes to their fullest are getting in as much uptime as possible every chance they get. Hopefully ranged dps don't ask for buffs, because as soon as content goes back to being less melee friendly, melee dps will be getting out shined and then start asking for buffs.

Then another viscious cycle will start and continue.

Edit: most melee players that I know tend to not like having more than 2 melee dps in a party. It starts to feel crowded around the boss. No one really cares hoe many casters are I a group most of the time. Or at least, not from what I have seen.

[Tex_Mex]

Hopefully ranged dps don't ask for buffs, because as soon as content goes back to being less melee friendly, melee dps will be getting out shined and then start asking for buffs.

Then another viscious cycle will start and continue.

Agreed, it is perfectly acceptable for melee DPS to do more damage than ranged; however, I do want SE to be careful about how melee friendly they make content. IMO, FCoB is very poorly designed because ALL of it is melee friendly. This is mainly because every fight tends to have high boss up time. Mix it up a little. It would be perfectly fine if 2 of the 4 fights were more friendly to ranged, so that some classes would not be getting left out consistently. *Cough SMN*

[Spayd]

I Think the gap in dps from a Melee and a Ranged dps comes from what they are able to do where Ranged usually wreck in Aoe damage and where melee is purely done for Single Target. Yes melees have AoE moves, but get easily Outshined by BRD, SMN, BLM and even SCH. So to me, it is only normal that they wreck shit up on single target, since that's their focus.

Considering the fact that ranged dps can do a considerable amount of DPS on Single Target While being able to burn the s*** out of adds is an enough reason for me to have melee dps being top dps on ST.

[Tex_Mex]

I Think the gap in dps from a Melee and a Ranged dps comes from what they are able to do where Ranged usually wreck in Aoe damage and where melee is purely done for Single Target. Yes melees have AoE moves, but get easily Outshined by BRD, SMN, BLM and even SCH.

Though this may be true in other MMO's it is not true for FFXIV. DRG AoE easily rivals that of SMN and is significantly better than BRD. Nothing gets even close to BLM though.

Melee get more single target DPS than ranged because they have to be in close, not because of AoE tradeoffs. And just because a class is ranged does not automatically make it a strong AoE class. I would actually consider BRD the 2nd lowest AoE DPS class in the game, only ahead of MNK.

BLM>SMN=DRG>NIN>BRD>MNK in terms of AoE DPS.

Basically, in this game AoE tradeoff for single target damage only actually affects one class, and that is MNK. All other classes have good AoE DPS with BLM being the strongest.

[Dunncan]

Pretty everything covered, but in resume...

Melee can't hit from ranged spots (Oh rly?)
Ranged DPS can hit from melee spot.

If both DPS (and utility) were the same, there's no point, other than job preference, to play as melee.

This game lacks some Jobs balance, not roles balance, imo.

[Skeith-Adeline]

The close argument doesn't sound, well, sound in my head. They don't have to dodge much mechanics, or at least in final coil, comparative to ranged. The ranged deal with the same mechanics.
Note that I'm not asking for a buff, just sounding my irritation that the fights are always so stagnant and... plain. Why can't phases of a fight favor different job styles? Why can't there be more ranged/melee specific mechanics?