Ranged DPS role is about to be excluded from all content

[Rika007]

I have to echo HyoMin here. I don't mind if there is a 500r DPS difference between two jobs when both are playing perfectly. I find no difference in difficulty when I play Black Mage in Leviathan Savage then I do when I play Bard in Levi Savage (Black Mage feels nearly as mobile as Bard these days), but I can recognize I do have to at least have a better fight knowledge to make it feel so easy on Black Mage. What I do have an issue is with an I put in that same level of effort on both jobs, on Bard I drop an 85% parse, and on Black Mage, the job I'm less familiar on I drop a 40% parse, and my BLM did 1.1K rDPS more then my very well played Bard.

Now I'm someone who plays every job in the game. And although I will always gravitate towards Bard, I don't have issues with just playing something else while I'm displeases with the state of my main. But I try to put myself in the mindset of people who main a job and play it exclusively instead of my own. And simply put the disparity right now is simply far too high when you tell me that players on Dancer, Summoner, Bard, Machinist and Red Mage are having to put in a monster level of effort to just simply be slightly worse then a Black Mage or Monk who are barely able to play the class optimally and make multiple mistakes during the run. It's not fair to those players who put in all that effort to be the best at their favorite jobs and strive to be amazing and then have others blow them out of the water by just being mediocre.

[Besame]

BRD: The forsaken class...

[Katie_Kitty]

SE does not intend to have ONLY those jobs in content. I understand that.

Says who? The game should be balanced so that you can do content with any party composition equally. Devs should not be putting their fingers on the scale making it so that certain classes must be brought or so that you have to work harder and perform better to get the same performance out of certain classes simply because they aren't the chosen ones.

[JanVanding]

Says who? The game should be balanced so that you can do content with any party composition equally. Devs should not be putting their fingers on the scale making it so that certain classes must be brought or so that you have to work harder and perform better to get the same performance out of certain classes simply because they aren't the chosen ones.

^this.

All classes and compositions should be able to clear all content, yes some will be able to do it quicker/easier than others but it should all be doable.

It's why I've always hated the idea of hard one shot enrage mechanics, it's basically "Congratulations you beat the mechanics but the timer says nah"

Soft enrage is always better compared to hard enrage as it at least gives those that get close opportunity to potentially finish up instead of "LUL DENIED".

[CKNovel]

^this.

All classes and compositions should be able to clear all content, yes some will be able to do it quicker/easier than others but it should all be doable.

It's why I've always hated the idea of hard one shot enrage mechanics, it's basically "Congratulations you beat the mechanics but the timer says nah"

Soft enrage is always better compared to hard enrage as it at least gives those that get close opportunity to potentially finish up instead of "LUL DENIED".

So the team can die again and again and as long as they keep up they can clear? Or better, go with 4 healers and 4 tanks.
It's safer and you some mechanics won't one-shot you and if you need to res, you have 4 healers!
Enrage is here to punish multiple deaths, prevent cheesy comps and avoid cheesing challenges.

It's been done in 24 man raid, the challenge was mostly the length due to the lack of DPS from the team.
If you remove enrage, you also get rid of the challenge, remove the purpose of DPS jobs and allows anyone to cheese through the content.

But that's not the subject.

[JanVanding]

So the team can die again and again and as long as they keep up they can clear? Or better, go with 4 healers and 4 tanks.
It's safer and you some mechanics won't one-shot you and if you need to res, you have 4 healers!
Enrage is here to punish multiple deaths, prevent cheesy comps and avoid cheesing challenges.

It's been done in 24 man raid, the challenge was mostly the length due to the lack of DPS from the team.
If you remove enrage, you also get rid of the challenge, remove the purpose of DPS jobs and allows anyone to cheese through the content.

But that's not the subject.

Soft enrage: Boss builds up to a point they overwhelm you, hitting harder and faster with each passing second, slower teams can potentially get through the last percent or two before it's too much.

Hard enrage: Boss insta-kills as soon as they hit a certain time limit, no way to mitigate/counter or try to play through it.

That's the difference, so no, a soft enrage doesn't mean you could do 4 healers 4 tanks as you would still wipe as the percentage would be way too high for you to finish it off before being overwhelmed.

There should be an enrage mechanic, I'm just stating why I've never been a fan of hard enrage as it's always been a poorly conceived mechanic which forces the very thing we see, exclusion and elitism. It's difficult to blame players for the exclusionary mindset when Savage has such a strict enrage timer that taking anything less than META is seen as a handicap.

Hopefully it's a lesson for the Devs and they think about using more soft enrages than hard "Times up, start again" hard enrages.

Edit: In fact there are all sorts of clever ways they can implement soft enrages, such as removing your mana regeneration and greying out your ethers/mana regen skills, boss resistances growing to the point they become invuln, stacking, unremovable healing debuffs to the point you can no longer be healed and so on.

[SaberMaxwell]

Anything less than meta would be seen as the same "handicap," hard enrage or no.

[JanVanding]

Anything less than meta would be seen as the same "handicap," hard enrage or no.

Only by the DPS Parse crowd and we all know what the Dev team thinks of people like that. For everyone else, viability would be based on role need as opposed to "WE NEED 4 BLM or 3 + SAM because Phat Deeps" The roles intended to have additional functions would actually be used more because their intended additional functions would be valued not ignored.

That's the true issue at heart, Eden Savage is a DPS race, DPS races encourage taking only the best DPS classes, so no RDM to make your Healers life easier, no DNC to provide group wide buffs and a bit of filler healing, heck I've even seen people talking about Excluding DRKs despite them having the best damn anti-tankbuster in the whole game in TBN because "They don't do as much DPS"

The Phat Deeps mindset needs to die, it's unhealthy.

[WalxAtNite]

I'm BRD main. I don't have any trouble with anything and nobody's ever called me out on my mad deeps (giggle), but then again, I'm still doing HW content.

In all seriousness, if I spend months learning this job and this game and then get excluded from content for no other reason than simply being BRD? Yeah. I'm not gonna be pleased with this game at all.

[Katie_Kitty]

I'm BRD main. I don't have any trouble with anything and nobody's ever called me out on my mad deeps (giggle), but then again, I'm still doing HW content.

In all seriousness, if I spend months learning this job and this game and then get excluded from content for no other reason than simply being BRD? Yeah. I'm not gonna be pleased with this game at all.

So here's the thing about meta and endgame parties. Right now, everyone who plays anything besides a Melee job or Black Mage is actively holding back the party's DPS just because the gap between Melee+BLM and everyone else is so high. Does that mean you're going to be excluded from content? In some circumstances, from some parties, yes, but generally, no. I'll explain.

I play RDM. My job is going to be excluded before yours, and it's true that I've seen several PFs with my job locked out, but it's not something you see frequently. Bard, despite its relative weakness, has two advantages: First, it still receives some residual love from players who remember how Bard was a meta job for so damn long, that alone makes it unlikely to be locked out. Second, Bard has the advantage of being a physical ranged job which is actually pretty well-balanced within the role even as the role as a whole is very very weak compared to melee+BLM. 99.999% of parties are going to want one ranged physical job regardless because people who play those jobs are often used to perform mechanics that would be particularly annoying for melee or casters, and since Bard competes nicely against both MCH and DNC, there is no reason not to bring one. .001% of parties at best will want to bring a 2 melee + 2 BLM composition but frankly those parties are going to be statics, not pug groups you find in party finder.

I wouldn't worry about it, especially since ranged physical is likely to get a buff in 5.1