Ranged DPS role is about to be excluded from all content

[Cetonis]

Does anyone else think a test server would have made this ShB transition smoother?

They've had 8+ weeks of live servers, and still haven't been able to realize that ranged dps are heading for the dumpster. A test server would not have made them any less blind.

SE needs to solve some fundamental problems with their perception of job balance vs. the public perception of job balance.

They can think what they like about the accuracy of fflogs, or the justified-ness of the playerbase primarily valuing damage contribution at the high end of play. But they have to respect that these things impact player behavior way more than their calculations or wishful thinking ever will.

That doesn't mean they need to completely cave on their design philosophy and balance solely around fflogs, but they can't just wholly disregard it as they seem to be doing.

[Absimiliard]

They can think what they like about the accuracy of fflogs, or the justified-ness of the playerbase primarily valuing damage contribution at the high end of play. But they have to respect that these things impact player behavior way more than their calculations or wishful thinking ever will.

A large part of the playerbase putting so much emphasis on damage output is their fault to begin with. The number of mechanics people are expected to do increases a bit with every expansion, it seems like. Combine the ever-growing number of mechanics (and increased pace/overlapping thereof) with tighter and tighter and tighter enrage timers and you get a bunch of players that want to push maximum damage to the exclusion of almost all else to get everything over with ASAP. The faster it dies, the less likely the raid is to wipe.

Mind you, this isn't one of those lolgametoohard posts. I have no opinion on the game's difficulty as it currently stands. I do, however, believe there is a direct correlation between fight design and the need for greater emphasis on damage. The damage first mentality existed as early as the coils in ARR, I concede, but it wasn't anywhere near as prevalent as it is now. Subsequent changes to encounter design philosophy have necessitated a far more aggressive approach to most fights.

[ForteNightshade]

They've had 8+ weeks of live servers, and still haven't been able to realize that ranged dps are heading for the dumpster. A test server would not have made them any less blind.

SE needs to solve some fundamental problems with their perception of job balance vs. the public perception of job balance.

They can think what they like about the accuracy of fflogs, or the justified-ness of the playerbase primarily valuing damage contribution at the high end of play. But they have to respect that these things impact player behavior way more than their calculations or wishful thinking ever will.

That doesn't mean they need to completely cave on their design philosophy and balance solely around fflogs, but they can't just wholly disregard it as they seem to be doing.

The problem I've noticed is the dev team can seemingly get very stubborn with their ideas. Look no further than Monk who launched with the slow on Riddle of Fire, no way to maintain their stacks and yet another situational ability for Greased Lightning; all things Monks complained about for years. It took people outright refusing to touch the job for the devs to panic buff it with everything people wanted. Samurai is another example. They seem to think we pad Samurai, which is why they refuse to buff them appropriately yet never seem to realize we're going to buff the strongest jobs not the ones they think we should.

I dare say it's almost a good thing the Range are in such a dire state. That seems to be the only thing that grabs the devs attention.

A large part of the playerbase putting so much emphasis on damage output is their fault to begin with. The number of mechanics people are expected to do increases a bit with every expansion, it seems like. Combine the ever-growing number of mechanics (and increased pace/overlapping thereof) with tighter and tighter and tighter enrage timers and you get a bunch of players that want to push maximum damage to the exclusion of almost all else to get everything over with ASAP. The faster it dies, the less likely the raid is to wipe.

Mind you, this isn't one of those lolgametoohard posts. I have no opinion on the game's difficulty as it currently stands. I do, however, believe there is a direct correlation between fight design and the need for greater emphasis on damage. The damage first mentality existed as early as the coils in ARR, I concede, but it wasn't anywhere near as prevalent as it is now. Subsequent changes to encounter design philosophy have necessitated a far more aggressive approach to most fights.

What encourages the heavy focus on DPS is their entire design philosophy. There is virtually nothing else to care about except damage. They stripped away a lot of utility; frankly out of fear because of the Stormblood synergy, seemingly never realizing it would just cause yet another imbalance.

[Renryuu]

So... does this mean I should give up my Mch and go Blm? I've been doing really well with Mch and still have issues with movement on Blm, but if phys ranged are being ditched, then I guess I have no choice but to learn to be a Blm.

[Sylvain]

While I agree the range should be brought up, people cleared all content on week 1 with all jobs so I can't believe this is to be an actual issue.

My static has a Nin and a BRD and we cleared E2S on week2 with no dps issue (, and had we raid 2 more days the first week it would have been a week 1 clear)

So, yes they should be buffed, but any party not bringing a range because of that 1k difference isn't worth much.
If your group just has every player at 40% perf that should be enough to get a clear on any boss, especially with the 460 weapon

[HyoMinPark]

While I agree the range should be brought up, people cleared all content on week 1 with all jobs so I can't believe this is to be an actual issue.

My static has a Nin and a BRD and we cleared E2S on week2 with no dps issue (, and had we raid 2 more days the first week it would have been a week 1 clear)

So, yes they should be buffed, but any party not bringing a range because of that 1k difference isn't worth much.
If your group just has every player at 40% perf that should be enough to get a clear on any boss, especially with the 460 weapon

To preface, I’m speaking as a DNC that cleared E1S to E3S Week 1 and E4S Week 2.

Just because the physical ranged and SMN/RDM are viable (read: can clear the content) doesn’t mean that they aren’t underpowered compared to some of the other jobs and BLM. The difference is anywhere from 1,000 to 1,500 DPS—it’s astoundingly large. There’s very little reason for the gap to be this large between the Top DPS jobs (BLM, MNK, DRG, SAM and now possibly NIN) and the bottom jobs (SMN, RDM, the physical ranged).

[CKNovel]

While I agree the range should be brought up, people cleared all content on week 1 with all jobs so I can't believe this is to be an actual issue.

My static has a Nin and a BRD and we cleared E2S on week2 with no dps issue (, and had we raid 2 more days the first week it would have been a week 1 clear)

So, yes they should be buffed, but any party not bringing a range because of that 1k difference isn't worth much.
If your group just has every player at 40% perf that should be enough to get a clear on any boss, especially with the 460 weapon

Personnal experience:
Our comp is MNK/MCH/DNC/RDM.
We have 2 rangeds, and the worst caster. We cleared E3S week 2. Any job is viable, aka you can clear content with it, it's not a dead job.

Our DPS was far from bad, we even cleared E3S on enrage after a Healer LB3!
But our Dancer was previously a Dragoon, he was tired of the job in SB and now he intend back to Dragoon because our DPS is low for the sole reason that we have 3 jobs that are not in the DPS Pantheon. In other words: You can't play the job you enjoy because you'll put more work on the rest of the party.
We have a strong desire to tackle Ultimate but without adjusments on ranged, we would have to work and perform more than half of the other comps because we don't have the right jobs, how is it fair? It's not like the mobility would make give us an incredible advantage.

We meet E4S DPS requirement with a small margin.
But because we have 2 ranged, our group cannot afford to make more mistakes than a MNK/DRG/BLM/BLM comp.
The irony.

[SaitoHikari]

We meet E4S DPS requirement with a small margin.
But because we have 2 ranged, our group cannot afford to make more mistakes than a MNK/DRG/BLM/BLM comp.
The irony.

That's the major thing that really worries me about the DPS gap becoming as wide as it is (plus the gap separating the top classes from the bottom five).

We all know Ultimate is highly tuned to require intense coordination and expects high performance from every single player in the team. But with a gap this large, it begs the question: What party comp will it be balanced around, which also means what level of damage should we expect to do to clear it? If the situation remains as is and all of the bottom five don't receive substantial buffs, the developers cannot seriously claim that the next Ultimate will be clear-able with any party composition at all.

(Arguing with FC friends about the situation resulted in a fair amount of people thinking that my interest in this was purely from a personal standpoint. But no, I always had a vested interest in future-proofing, and the situation now threatens to affect future encounter design in a big way. This is exactly why the uproar now is so much louder than it ever was before.)

[gumas]

seriously guys cmon, its the same old pattern again. iam sure they going to buff every class later, they just doing it one by one. first AST and MNK, now the NIN and SAM, so yeah give it time.

[Kitfox]

seriously guys cmon, its the same old pattern again. iam sure they going to buff every class later, they just doing it one by one. first AST and MNK, now the NIN and SAM, so yeah give it time.

How much time? In Stormblood, MCH was released in a seriously underpowered state, it got mechanical changes and buffs at 4.05 and 4.06 that happened within 2 months, but then it remained in the shadow of BRD for 16 months until it was buffed at 4.5 to finally be on par with other jobs. Not really looking forward to playing a dead job for the whole expansion again. Not to mention, our ping issues haven't been fixed for like 2 years now. Since it took them over 4 years from NIN release to realize they might have a problem with latency, I'm not really holding my breath for MCH changes, but I really don't want to wait another 2 years until 6.0 to have those fixed.

So far they haven't even mentioned making changes to ranged classes so we definitely need to put the issues on their radar.