Casters in Slaughter - Would be nice to increase mobility, reduce focus on CC

[Hiruke]

Right now a lot of folks are complaining about how "powerful" ranged are in Slaughter. They seem overpowered for two principal reasons: 1) They are able to enjoy the support of many tanks/melee near them, making it more difficult to get close range. 2) Coordinated efforts by multiple ranged can be difficult to manage (e.g., if 3-4 BLMs want you dead bad enough, all casting at the same time, you're probably dead - also, multiple Cometeors can have this effect on your entire group).

However, ranged are easily countered. First off, they're very squishy. While a single caster will have a very difficult time killing much of anyone by themselves, a single melee can kill a single caster very quickly with ease. And yet the game and the player base treat casters like they are ultra dangerous gods of crazy dps disparity. Any strategy in Slaughter is basically considered "OP" because folks I guess just want to go melee and 1-2-3 everything to death without any thought to how to counter anything.

The dev team has been very good about nerfing casters and healers from using crazy coordinated attacks (obviously a team of BLMs with Swiftcast Flare was too strong, same with WHMs stacking Medica 2 and Holy), but it doesn't seem like much thought went into improving the fun or usability of magic jobs outside of these class stacking scenarios (since these nerfs also diminish their potential in "legitimate" scenarios).

Reduce focus on crowd control effects

Even now, effects like Bind and Sleep last what feel like forever. No one has any kind of fun while being bound/slept. It's just annoying. People probably hate being CC'd even more than being killed, which has always made casters a priority (and easy) target in Secure. They are only harder to kill in Slaughter because the group of people involved is larger, and folks refuse to coordinate. I'd prefer to see timers on CC effects drastically reduced to put more emphasis on dynamic action rather than neutralizing folks entirely to try to blitz key players while everyone on their team is CC'd.

Don't interrupt based on target moving around to behind you

Pretty much any melee that engages a caster is going to run circles around you, literally, causing just about every cast to fail because you are no longer facing them. Spamming "face target" is uniformly unhelpful for this, because you get interrupted anyway (happens in PvE as well when monsters jump past you very quickly). This is even less fun for me than being slept. I mean, it's not bad enough that every melee attack interrupts me, or that they can stun/silence me, but they get to interrupt me by running around behind me constantly as well? Um, thanks.

Increase mobility

I'm not sure why BRD is so special that they get unrestricted movement, while casters can only move with instant-cast spells. I would understand this better if caster dps was on par with melee dps, to give them a counterbalance to that power, but caster dps is significantly lower than melee dps on a single target.

Spells like Fire I and Blizzard I should be able to be cast while moving. It's frustrating to watch melee just literally walk out of range when you're trying to cast on them. CC'ing them doesn't help, because you break the CC as soon as you hit them, or in the case of heavy effects, just gives you more time to Scathe them before they run away. Spells like Fire II, Fire III, and Flare should still force you to remain still while casting, but it's a bit much that caster movement is so heavily restricted, especially for PvP.

A means to escape

If casters are only meant to be effective when keeping a melee at range, they should have some tools for getting away. Attempting to Sprint is largely ineffective as melee have many tools to directly counter this, in the form of stuns, gap closers, weapon throw, fists of wind, sprinting themselves, etc.

One thing that might be nice here would be making Blizzard II an instant cast. Give them a short bind so you can potentially run off. It's always possible they will stun you or do a gap closer as soon as they shake it off, but at least it would give you a chance. In WoW, a Mage would be able to Ice Block (an ability basically given to healers in PvP in this game) and Blink (Aetherial Manipulation doesn't break effects, and you'd have to find someone to port to before the melee crushes you - good luck!). In FFXIV, you, um, never let anyone get close to you begin with (good thing everyone has crazy gap closers, right!?), or you pretty much just die. And SMNs have it even worse than BLMs.

Not every attack should interrupt

Getting every spell interrupted due to being hit is... ridiculous. I think most everyone would prefer the cast time be extended per hit taken, similar to WoW, rather than lose every spell because you took damage. Casters don't have any real tools for keeping anyone at range, and yet they become completely useless when not at range. This is a huge disparity, and certainly not what I'd expect from a game mode where, as Yoshida/dev team states, "everyone should be able to just drop in and have fun". I guarantee you that amateur casters will have ZERO FUN in any PvP mode.

A means to keep enemies at bay

Casters would be more viable in a 1v1 scenario if they could keep their distance. Being able to cast spells like Fire I at range would help with this, because as is they need someone's assistance to really deal with anything, while a melee can just "get in there" and take care of it on their own.