How about a non-support ranged dps?

[Shurrikhan]

Indeed. And honestly one of the ways they could tune a "non-support" ranged DPS would be for it to have less utility than the others (that kind of balancing already sort of exists for MNK, which has higher theoretical DPS but less useful utility, and NIN which has lower personal DPS but much higher utility).

Such a DPS would likely compete with BLM/SMN for party slot, which might cause concern due to the fact that a lot of fights "require" magic damage (original T4 and T11 for instance), but given that Final Fantasy has potential to add melee casters (either Red Mage or Blue Mage), there are ways to prevent it from being a problem.

If Ranger/Sniper/Marksman, ammo types would be another, though perhaps gimmicky, workaround.

[RiceisNice]

you finding escuse for ignore the main point...

in terms of mechanic, the bard and machinist haven't the same issue than melee... make them deal as much damage is simply idiot. if you want a full dps ranged, go magic and that will not change. they will not make a physical ranged dps that will have almost no constraint deal the same damage than the melee.

No, you're not taking the whole point into consideration beyond the damage numbers. And even if it's an excuse, so what? This is an argument/debate and that's how it's supposed to be going back and forth, unless you can disprove my point.

Lesser raid buffs, no stuns, lesser armor, limited ranged space anyways. (Yes, MCH has a stun... which is also only from melee range. It might just as well be called Failed Mafia-style Execution as Suppressive Fire, going by the icon.)

Mafia-style execution for 100 potency. Seems legit. Though in seriousness, all it does is shoot fuzzy...electric mist that apparently stuns them.

Indeed. And honestly one of the ways they could tune a "non-support" ranged DPS would be for it to have less utility than the others (that kind of balancing already sort of exists for MNK, which has higher theoretical DPS but less useful utility, and NIN which has lower personal DPS but much higher utility).

Such a DPS would likely compete with BLM/SMN for party slot, which might cause concern due to the fact that a lot of fights "require" magic damage (original T4 and T11 for instance), but given that Final Fantasy has potential to add melee casters (either Red Mage or Blue Mage), there are ways to prevent it from being a problem.

The discrepancy between, say NIN and MNK isn't really wide enough to objectively take one or the other. Although at the same time, DRG is practically needed because no other job in the game provides a piercing debuff for your BRD/MCH.

They could also get away with doing a spellblade or spitfire dps, magic damage without the restrictions of cast time or in melee range. If MCH was to be the pure-dps type without the support, they could have given them an ability to change their ammo to be attributed with magic and deal magic damage in place of a caster (and change functionality of their abilities). Or they could have made MCH blunt and be able to provide blunt resistance, so a MNK can keep using bootshine for a potency increase. You've heard me say this before, there's a lot they could have done with MCH if they were aiming for it to be competing with BRD or as a ranged dps, but instead they undershot it big time.

[Alahra]

If Ranger/Sniper/Marksman, ammo types would be another, though perhaps gimmicky, workaround.

True. That's honestly what I thought they were going to do with MCH for awhile, until we got more information about how turrets were going to work. I thought they were going to be a full DPS for the caster slot (and even pondered if they might have been INT-based "engineers" instead of marksmen). But I'm a dork and like to ponder different wonky possibilities.

[RiceisNice]

True. That's honestly what I thought they were going to do with MCH for awhile, until we got more information about how turrets were going to work. I thought they were going to be a full DPS for the caster slot (and even pondered if they might have been INT-based "engineers" instead of marksmen). But I'm a dork and like to ponder different wonky possibilities.

To be fair though, I think it's a better alternative to make them compete with BRD, because otherwise you're looking at 3 melee, 3 casters, 1 ranged competing for 2/1/1 slots respectively. Unless they homogenize BRD into a full dps without the regen, and do away with the ranged/caster role to consolidate it all into one "Ranged" dps role. If they go with the latter though, they'd need to bake in the missing regen into the healers and physical dps so that it's entirely on the burden on the individual players to manage their resources, or at least not make it a requirement for progression.

I mean taking an example, WoW healers aren't running out of mana because they don't have regen, it's because the fight is taking too long (on the DPS) and/or the tank is requiring too many heals (which can be partly be because they're not durable enough from a mitigation perspective, something that FFXIV doesn't make a point of with the vit/str setup)

[Alahra]

To be fair though, I think it's a better alternative to make them compete with BRD, because otherwise you're looking at 3 melee, 3 casters, 1 ranged competing for 2/1/1 slots respectively.

Sure, given the current class spread I'd agree that MCH is a better fit for BRD's current role. I think there is room in the future for a ranged DPS that's physical in the current caster slot, though.

[Shurrikhan]

True. That's honestly what I thought they were going to do with MCH for awhile, until we got more information about how turrets were going to work. I thought they were going to be a full DPS for the caster slot (and even pondered if they might have been INT-based "engineers" instead of marksmen). But I'm a dork and like to ponder different wonky possibilities.

I thought they'd be INT/DEX, using a sort of Scavenge resource that could be used to build turrets, augment ammo, or upgrade their weapons, and that Gauss Barrel would be either a simple rifle-grip style or a battlefield component that accelerates, redirects, or splits shots passing through it... Then disillusionment set it.

Still a damn fun job though, as far as I've gotten to see (lvl 55 atm, and many a lvl 60 dummy MCH dps video drooled over).

That sad, its current state kind of feels like a half-ass mix of an actual Machinist and a Marksman, which is fine except that it somewhat prevents purer variants of each from being worth developing.

Sure, given the current class spread I'd agree that MCH is a better fit for BRD's current role. I think there is room in the future for a ranged DPS that's physical in the current caster slot, though.

I'd just really like to get away from the Ranged = Support paradigm, honestly. Sure, bring a (longevity, rather than offensive) Support for every progression / serious 8-man, but I just don't see why it would have to be Ranged, or that in turn each Ranged would have to be that. It works, but I hope it won't carry any further.

[Alahra]

Still a damn fun job though, as far as I've gotten to see (lvl 55 atm, and many a lvl 60 dummy MCH dps video drooled over).

I want to love it, but the "rhythm" of their ability usage feels too disparate from that of the other classes for me to play it at all. It's somewhere in between the standard GCD classes and the casters, and I just can't acclimate to it. Outside of the crafting mess at the start of HW, MCH was probably the thing I was most disappointed in on a personal level.

I'm crossing my fingers that they completely revamp both WM and GB in 4.0, as I think they're ultimately both detrimental to the game in the long run.

[ChalupaBatman]

The way they could get this issue is to add a pure ranged DPS class in conjunction with a melee based on int. So you essentially trade 1 for 1.

In this scenario:
You would get to keep at least 1 magic DPS in comp.
Not sacrifice party utility, You get a BRD/MCH (or give the utility to the new melee magic DPS) 2 ranged, and 2 melee.
The only problem that I would see would be balancing this party comp against the current ones to ensure the same DPS relative to uptime.

[Shurrikhan]

I want to love it, but the "rhythm" of their ability usage feels too disparate from that of the other classes for me to play it at all. It's somewhere in between the standard GCD classes and the casters, and I just can't acclimate to it. Outside of the crafting mess at the start of HW, MCH was probably the thing I was most disappointed in on a personal level.

I'm crossing my fingers that they completely revamp both WM and GB in 4.0, as I think they're ultimately both detrimental to the game in the long run.

That's the thing for me, though. I actually prefer WM Bard. I think it could have been done way better, but it's still an improvement. I like the gambles and the fighting for my free double-weaves. Maybe a slightly higher Straighter Shot chance would be nice, maybe being able to stack two of them, but all in all I've come to enjoy working with and around it. That said, I also really like going back to level 50 synced runs (especially with everyone overgeared) as Bard. But what makes those level 50 synced runs fun to me on my 60 Bard isn't the lack of WM, which makes the original rotation feel flat by comparison, but just the sheer crit rates and RoD/BLs I'm getting from the cheaper secondary stat scaling. It's like I can't not oGCD on a given GCD... ever, at least in when there are more than two mobs present. That, and the tanks usually remember then that with Quelling up, I can have a mob pack up to half dead by the time we reach the final mob gather point from running AoEs...

Overall, my biggest issue with WM is its acquisition level - why here, why now? It's a hugely jarring change, especially for those who've never played a caster, or perhaps more fittingly a healer (sub-recast cast times). I would have much preferred it to be a level 25-40 ability (e.g. Full Draw) with a lesser stance cooldown, which gradually increased benefits and disadvantages through traits to reach something much like WM by level 50. Ideally, the optimal Bard would then stance-dance between both forms, Marksman and Hunter, Full Draw and Quick Draw, whatever you might call them, with more interesting rotational priorities in each (simply put, more internal mechanics, rather than just River of Blood). We need things to rotationally look forward to and set up. As is, pure-dps WAR seems like the best example of this kind of thought or gameplay, albeit just barely starting into it, and that's by wasting freaking defensive CDs to time out Abandon stacks and Infuriate with Fell Cleave and Berserk. That's just sad... MCH itself is probably a close second, or perhaps DRG or BLM through BotD and Enochian timing with BFB and the Astral cycle.

Edit: But oh god that WM animation. Going to charge up the light-juice in my quiver. Glowy hand. Somehow it make things stronger.

P.S. If a weird hybrid of two different GCD-handling styles isn't your thing, pretty much all the jobs I try to make up when bored to death probably wouldn't fit your preferences, either. : (

[Alahra]

That's the thing for me, though. I actually prefer WM Bard. I think it could have been done way better, but it's still an improvement.

You're not the only one that likes it more (though at least among those I talk to/read on the forums, you're one of the few). The distaste is so great for me that I won't even play either class in level-50 content anymore because all it does is remind me how much I liked them before 52. BRD was my third Zeta in ARR, and I had rather grown to enjoy it as an alternative DPS choice next to my main NIN.

But I definitely agree that if it were implemented better, it would have been a much different story. That sort of core gameplay should really be introduced early on (as you suggest, perhaps around level 30). MCH in particular should have had Gauss Barrel from the start, and the fact that it doesn't suggests to me that the cast times were a late-development addition to the two classes (and it's generally pretty obvious they didn't get enough testing given that).

Compared to other classes that received "larger" changes, like BLM, DRG, and SMN, BRD and MCH just feel really careless in the overall implementation. The other three all introduce you to the new concepts gradually—and ultimately the problem with suddenly adding cast times to the class is that it's not something you can add gradually, in addition to the change feeling like a penalty (that doesn't really adequately make up for the loss in mobility for several levels).

By the time I got BRD to 60 I was so disgusted with the mechanics that I did my level 60 class quest and shelved it, not even bothering to do a level 60 dungeon (which is something every other job so far has gotten the courtesy of). And I had leveled MCH first, so I was already accustomed to some degree to the cast times. Both classes are just glamour fodder for me now (and MCH is something I'd been dying for since I had always wanted to use guns in FFXI but never did).

BRD's implementation overall is just really messy—MCH at least has a number of mechanics that interact with GB in a positive way (such as shot procs and Rapid Shot making your shots normal GCD skills again). BRD, though, feels like it was shoehorned into the paradigm in a way that none of its skillset really seems like it "meshes" with WM.

And yes, the animations for both WM and GB are awful, especially when you throw in the really cool oGCD animations and sound effects that both classes have that are constantly getting clipped because of it.