Do you find playing melee more difficult?

[Mhaeric]

I am less than good at melee. Not terribad, but definitely not winning any parse contests.

[Azerhan]

Healing and Tanking is way more difficult than DPS in my opinion and this is why;

As a Tank; we have to deal with people who think they know their job, to be fair, there a lot of decent players however that credibility goes out the window when they are poorly geared, can avoid aoes ( or understand that it's better to avoid then let action / spell trigger ), or follow simple mechanics thinking Healers and Tanks are to blame for short comings. Also healers who lack common sense of not healing while pulling or adding regen.

As a Healer; Same above, just add tanks that don't use their CD or stick around to get hit, can't face mobs properly, or think too much of themselves not using tank stance giving healers a hard time.

Over all DPS can be power houses and a Decent DPS will be able to keep tanks on their toes. ( Extremely rare as of resent )

Totally false.

I'm playing both 3, dps tank and heal, and tank is the easiest part of the game. You have spell to manage your aggro (Shirk is a joke, it's incredibily powerfull), and you can have a Nin + all other job have spells to manage their aggro.
And your mechs are at the same difficulty for any other jobs, sometime is even easier.

Also, a big difference between dps and tank are the cycle.
This is where you see in what dps is harder : you need to do your cycle AND your mechanic. And you cycle in dps is far far away from the cycle for tank.
In that, maintain your dps high and doing all mechanics without error, is quite more difficult for dps than tank.

For healer, I will not saying anything, because it's more how others players are playing than other things. And I respect those healers that can do a big dps, heal everyone and do all mechs.

Oh, and I invite those who think the rota for melee is harder than those for ranged to play MCH and to have a good dps !

[wereotter]

Both caster and melee have their own sets of challenges. Melee have to know when to disengage to avoid point blank AOEs, that aren’t always telegraphed. Casters have to deal with movement impacting their DPS potential.

In my experience, though, BRD/MCH is basically playing the game on easy mode since you’re fully mobile without consequence.

[lulunami]

Every job has their own quirks and challenges. I do not think being dismissive of other jobs' challenges is the correct mindset to have. Healers and tanks have to coordinate a lot more than DPS in general to perform optimally. Ranged jobs like Bard/machinist are mostly unaffected by movement mechanics, but they are usually tasked with dealing with mechanics since they lose the least uptime (i.e. baiting Twintania's Liquid Hell in UCoB). Casters have their own issues they have to deal with. Melee DPS can lose uptime, but most encounters for melee DPS are striking dummy fights.

Being melee is not necessarily harder just because you are closer to the boss. Sometimes being ranged/caster is a lot more difficult depending upon the fight. Manipulator (A4S) is a boss where melee DPS basically did zero mechanics and just did a striking dummy rotation for 10+ minutes while everyone else died.

[Lium]

Both caster and melee have their own sets of challenges. Melee have to know when to disengage to avoid point blank AOEs, that aren’t always telegraphed. Casters have to deal with movement impacting their DPS potential.

In my experience, though, BRD/MCH is basically playing the game on easy mode since you’re fully mobile without consequence.

This is what gets me as melee. Not all the AoEs are telegraphed, which can be deadly. Sometimes it's a visual cue, like the boss raises his left arm or whatever, which depending on your position, can be tough to see. As a caster, I can avoid all AoEs.

And again this wouldn't be nearly as bad if every single boss in this game didn't have instadeath mechanics. Which is super annoying.

[Mhaeric]

In my experience, though, BRD/MCH is basically playing the game on easy mode since you’re fully mobile without consequence.

Bard yes, but they make up for that a bit by having a crap ton of buttons to press.

Machinist, however, is not easy mode by any stretch of the imagination. They also don't have full mobility like a Bard, because a key part of their rotation is a short range near-melee ability they have to sustain for 2 ticks. And if they mess up their cooldown rotation it has a huge impact on their dps, unlike with Bard whose cooldowns have buffer time built into them and line up well so that they're always available slightly before you actually need them even if you screw up a bit.

[Duskane]

Really depends on fight
Like Byakko is very annoying for melee when he just spawns balls around slowly
But then sephirot is annoying for casters with all his knock back cant spam sure cast forever
Bard has it the easiest

[Exiled_Tonberry]

Melee is a lot harder in most fights. Mostly because nearly every deadly attack designed tokill you in this game happens on top of the boss, and on top of YOU. This makes optimizing and surviving a lot more harder to do on a melee than it is, say, a BRD or SMN that can freely move and dps.

[Rayo]

i don't know, I've met too much casters and Ranged DPS who outright ignore mechanics and are more a burden to a party and I can't say the same with melee DPS

Also no fight is created equal for DPS, some fights are positional heavy, that is you have to be at a certain position to be safe or fight at all and actively punish those who are too far to make instant Adjustments

some fights have enemies that love to cleave, teleport, and force players to scatter, making it difficult for those who can't fight at any range

Though most clearly don't care what job you are and will make your life difficult no matter what

[TelosNox]

As Melee I never have to decide if I cancel a cast, I can move when I need to. But I always have to take care about my position (in range + correct positional). I don't have to care if I am in range of the healers because I have to be where the boss is.
I have to manage my uptime for aoe in melee range.

As Range (especially caster) I have to decide when to cancel a cast and when to be greedy and move later. I have to plan when I have to move and my movement needs to be more precise (missile safespot in o7 for example - corrections can not be done during cast). I have to take care of my position, so I don't get out of range for the healers. I have to preplan cone effects because I can not just react to it (melee is easier here).

For me it is just different. But it is not generally easier or harder. And it is extremely dependend on the job you play. SMN is easy to move with some preplanning. BLM is hard to move. RDM is somewhere between (has it's windows where it can move).