Lack of melee lately?

[Rathael]

As a main BLM I have actually found myself forced on to DRG lately. I hit a wall that was zero caster DPS spots for pf o7s and zero statics in need of casters.

As it happens I am actually enjoying DRG so far and may swap main. Pf and statics are always needing MDPS right now. I don't even know why.

[Dralonis]

Personally, my reason I don't often go melee lately is it's a bit too tedious. I enjoy DRG the most out of the melee classes, however I'm not a fan of heavy thrust and constantly going from back to side with it's rotation. Ninja is fine though, just not one to do mudras with my lag spikes and how laggy places get for me. The rest just aren't interesting enough/tedious for me. I primarily main RDM, second BRD and play BLM on the side, though I dislike ley lines. It used to be my main before RDM. I wish they'd buff RDM and do something with it's utility. I don't know, for me there's that line of the amount of effort to play a class super effectively doesn't give me that rewarding feeling when it's annoyingly complex with massive rotations and openers. MCH is also unfun to me as well. When wanting to do dungeons, I'd prefer to go ranged or something a bit easier rather than melee and chasing down mobs for positionals or w/e then go melee for raid stuff every now and then because a lot of raid mechanics are pretty melee friendly and require a lot of stacking on boss or group movement that it's not too bothersome doing mechanics as a melee.

[Shiroe]

see so many casters.... in PFs often the 1st dps spot to fill are casters somehow (atleast on EU servers..)

might really be due to rdm still being loved, while sam has lost love..

(and recently only one melee got love, mnk.., while kind of 2 casters got love, blm & smn..., the impact of the smn buff a just a few patches back, is bigger than the nerf smn just got)

[Exiled_Tonberry]

It was already said, but yes, the disparity in mechanic difficultly between ranged and melee is jarring in this patch.

I mean, Deltascape was bad enough with bosses moving all over the place, but this is somehow worse with Byakko preventing you from doing any damage at all, Phantom train forcing you to run to the back while ranged can still hit etc.

I could see if there was a big difference between ranged and melee DPS, but it's not uncommon for a MCH or Bard to do more do than melee.

[AppleJinx]

Melee jobs in dungeons feels awful to play though since a slow tank can really mess up your buffs and stacks so people picked up casters for an easy time with trash pulls

[Ryaz]

I enjoy playing my Samurai and doing a well-timed Yaten/Enpi/Goten to get back into combat quickly.

But it's mostly boss mechanics and encounter design that are hurting melee. I can't recall many mechanics that actively hurt casters like they do melee, save for a few.

Still love playing my Samurai and will only occasionally switch it out for my RDM (namely in Eureka). Invisible mechanics and lack of raises is bad there.

[Atreides]

The issue is not the lack of any classes but more the skill gap between pro/great/good/decent and bad.
No matter what you seek you may have a bad time because you are either further in the content than them and they are scared to apply, or some bads straight up try to leech a kill.
Or you're behind and people don't feel like progressing again. It gets even harder if you add a language to it. D:

[Aomine1992]

I think they need to work on how buffs work for melee if they continue to have fights where you can't do anything for like 30s, some of these fights are just obnoxious and unfortunately as a caster or phys range main 99% of it doesn't effect me but melee have to be on point or it will effect them severely

[Rathael]

Hit 70 with my DRG a week ago or so. Took a week to level up and max out all the Eureka gear for DRG, and used mendacity and normal sigmascape to get the right side full 350 and up. Managed to parse just under 5.2k on Chadarnook savage yesterday, which was the highest in the group.

I can see why people prefer caster a little bit. I don't find movement to be an issue, but positionals definitely make it more complex. Caster is a case of slide-casting and moving as little as possible. Melee is about moving almost constantly while doing your rotation without missing a beat. Especially for people on controller I can see melee being more challenging with simultaneous movement and use of cross hotbars. Anyone who clicks any amount of abilities will also find melee more challenging, since you can't turn while clicking.

I do have one question however. On bosses where there is no visible back, do positionals still apply or do they automatically receive the positional bonus? Both OS5 and 6 appear to have no gap in the target circle so I have been ignoring positionals... but my DPS still seems to be quite high for my ilevel.

[lulunami]

I do have one question however. On bosses where there is no visible back, do positionals still apply or do they automatically receive the positional bonus? Both OS5 and 6 appear to have no gap in the target circle so I have been ignoring positionals... but my DPS still seems to be quite high for my ilevel.

Enemies with omni-directional targeting circles can be hit from any spot to get positional damage bonuses. You can just stand in one spot and do your rotation. These types of enemies include Cloud of Darkness, Neo Exdeath, Phantom Train, and Chadarnook.

Omni-directional targeting circle:


Targeting circle requiring positional for bonus damage (notice the arrow tip at the front):