Ranged DPS role is about to be excluded from all content

[Myon88]

Ive been running mch and no other roles out dps me except for blm, and its typically by alot. If im between 10-12k (im only 453) a blm is at 15k.
Ranged physical is fine imo.

"I'm doing 3-5k less dps than a blm, but ranged is fine I guess".

If you do extreme trials at most and only run into random players off the street of questionable and mediocre skill, of course you're going to do more dps than them. But that's a horrible way to judge balance. Even if you were with players as good as you, that only proves the point of this thread (that the numbers are balanced at average skill levels) - and in any case, we already have plenty of empirical data out there letting you compare jobs of equivalent percentiles against each other, like has been done at the start of this thread.

[Yandere-chan]

I feel like you're disregarding that 1. Most players aren't hardcore players and the game won't survive off the small number of hardcore player subs alone thus Square must have balance feel appealing to casual players as well. 2. The ease of play advantage ranged dps have vs. other melee and even casters. I'm sorry, but being able to attack from almost any distance while being optimal in output is going to cost you ceiling dps. Maybe stop playing with people who would rather kick you off their teams than have a 1% less higher damage ceiling (if all things go well with extra melees or whatever).

Honestly, I don't think that's normal behavior and is more telling of who certain people hang around. I personally have 0 qualms with a player of any class if they are really good at playing that class while knowing all the mechanics very well in a fight. I think if the game was balanced around such limited focuses, the majority of the playerbase would end up less satisfied with the game, and sorry, just because you feel that you are a more hardcore player doesn't entitle your preferences to a a greater degree of consideration than even the most casual of pleebs you'd likely hate to even be associated with. Square is making some adjustments to some classes, and I think that's good, but I think it's clear they do not want to only balance classes around the desires of 1337 hardcore gamers™ either... Which is probably also good.

[ForteNightshade]

I feel like you're disregarding that 1. Most players aren't hardcore players and the game won't survive off the small number of hardcore player subs alone thus Square must have balance feel appealing to casual players as well. 2. The ease of play advantage ranged dps have vs. other melee and even casters. I'm sorry, but being able to attack from almost any distance while being optimal in output is going to cost you ceiling dps. Maybe stop playing with people who would rather kick you off their teams than have a 1% less higher damage ceiling (if all things go well with extra melees or whatever).

Honestly, I don't think that's normal behavior and is more telling of who certain people hang around. I personally have 0 qualms with a player of any class if they are really good at playing that class while knowing all the mechanics very well in a fight. I think if the game was balanced around such limited focuses, the majority of the playerbase would end up less satisfied with the game, and sorry, just because you feel that you are a more hardcore player doesn't entitle your preferences to a a greater degree of consideration than even the most casual of pleebs you'd likely hate to even be associated with. Square is making some adjustments to some classes, and I think that's good, but I think it's clear they do not want to only balance classes around the desires of 1337 hardcore gamers™ either... Which is probably also good.

... you do realize this is worse[ for casual players, yes? The damage discrepancy is so high right now a Black Mage could literally jump off after phase one of Titan and still beat every single job outside of the melee. All the melee could do the same. A perfect Dancer or Red Mage will straight up lose to an above average Monk. In fact, lets look at how insane the numbers are.

Summoner is currently the highest ranked job in the "weaker" category on Titan, pulling in 13,436 at 99%. Monk at just 60% is pulling 13,515. Black Mage at that same level is at 13,312. That means a stellar Summoner with near perfect logs is weaker than an average Monk and barely beating an average Black Mage or Dragoon. Now think about that in a pug setting, where you have no idea the caliber of player you'll get. If you insist on bringing a Black Mage, said Black Mage doesn't even need to be good; just average, and they're already better than every other Range or Caster DPS in the game. Do you really think that's good for a casual or midcore setting?

[JowyAtreides]

... you do realize this is worse[ for casual players, yes? The damage discrepancy is so high right now a Black Mage could literally jump off after phase one of Titan and still beat every single job outside of the melee. All the melee could do the same. A perfect Dancer or Red Mage will straight up lose to an above average Monk. In fact, lets look at how insane the numbers are.

Summoner is currently the highest ranked job in the "weaker" category on Titan, pulling in 13,436 at 99%. Monk at just 60% is pulling 13,515. Black Mage at that same level is at 13,312. That means a stellar Summoner with near perfect logs is weaker than an average Monk and barely beating an average Black Mage or Dragoon. Now think about that in a pug setting, where you have no idea the caliber of player you'll get. If you insist on bringing a Black Mage, said Black Mage doesn't even need to be good; just average, and they're already better than every other Range or Caster DPS in the game. Do you really think that's good for a casual or midcore setting?

Casual players don't notice nor care about subtle differences which result in a clear vs enrage scenario. The content casual players run very rarely scrutinize each and every class and obstruct roles from participating simply because the majority of it is ran through duty finder. I'm yet to see someone leave an expert roulette or normal level raid because they had a bard/red mage combo in the party.

The concerns are perfectly valid for extreme, savage and presumably ultimate content, although we're led to believe that classes are periodically adjusted to balance for the current endgame and that any team composition should be good enough to clear. Yes some more easily than others but in a time where people also complain about how easy the game is, why not embrace a challenge?

The problem we have in this game, is that people are judged solely on their dps, but if content can be cleared and you play with friends, who does the biggest dps shouldn't be a problem.

[HyoMinPark]

Casual players don't notice nor care about subtle differences which result in a clear vs enrage scenario. The content casual players run very rarely scrutinize each and every class and obstruct roles from participating simply because the majority of it is ran through duty finder. I'm yet to see someone leave an expert roulette or normal level raid because they had a bard/red mage combo in the party.

The concerns are perfectly valid for extreme, savage and presumably ultimate content, although we're led to believe that classes are periodically adjusted to balance for the current endgame and that any team composition should be good enough to clear. Yes some more easily than others but in a time where people also complain about how easy the game is, why not embrace a challenge?

Your problem is thinking that balance should occur in a dungeon setting. That is not—and never should be—where jobs are balanced. They should be balanced around higher levels of play, so that one can assess the limits each job can reach and observe the discrepancies that arise there. Only by doing that can they address them at the higher levels of play. And this wouldn’t negatively impact the lower levels of play. Conversely, balancing jobs around dungeon content—where you can get by doing the bare minimum—would cause severe issues at the higher levels.

Embrace the challenge of bringing weaker/struggling jobs? I don’t really consider it any sort of challenge to bring these jobs into a party. It almost borders on griefing your team, in my opinion. Consider the casters: it’s inherently better to bring a BLM over SMN/RDM because BLMs are so far ahead of the other two—we’re talking ~1,500 DPS ahead. Even with the battle raises, BLMs are downright better. It doesn’t feel good for RDM and SMN mains to know that their jobs are that far behind another caster. Likewise, with the physical ranged, it doesn’t feel good to know that literally every other job save for SMN and RDM (whom are also struggling) are stomping all over you, and that it would be more useful to bring a third melee or a second BLM as opposed to a job from your role.

As I said before, I shouldn’t feel as if my team would be better off with me rolling a melee job or BLM. I should feel as if I can pull my weight on my preferred job without worrying about costing them. I may not be the best DNC, but I’m fairly competent—and I still feel weak and just bad.

The problem we have in this game, is that people are judged solely on their dps, but if content can be cleared and you play with friends, who does the biggest dps shouldn't be a problem.

If you have this mindset of “as long as we clear, everything is fine”, that’s fine. But some of us don’t like feeling like we’re weak or a hinderance to our party. Some of us don’t raid with the mindset of “well, we cleared so everything is gucci”. Try to understand the opposing mindset instead of just thinking your mindset will suit us all. For me, “we cleared” isn’t enough when I know my group could clear easier if I were playing a different job right now, despite my skill on DNC.

My group aren’t going to ask me to swap jobs—but that’s the static collectively agreeing with allowing me to stay on a job I prefer as opposed to one that would be more useful. However, that doesn’t change how I feel. Nor does it change how people in Party Finder can and will react to the physical ranged falling behind. I’ve already seen DNCs being locked out and criticized for its low damage—and it just makes you kind of feel like crap. Inb4 we start saying to just ignore what the others think: this isn’t easy to do when you start getting locked out of content, or trashed for playing a “subpar job”. It has happened to jobs before when they weren’t doing so hot.

[Yandere-chan]

... you do realize this is worse[ for casual players, yes? The damage discrepancy is so high right now a Black Mage could literally jump off after phase one of Titan and still beat every single job outside of the melee. All the melee could do the same. A perfect Dancer or Red Mage will straight up lose to an above average Monk. In fact, lets look at how insane the numbers are.

Summoner is currently the highest ranked job in the "weaker" category on Titan, pulling in 13,436 at 99%. Monk at just 60% is pulling 13,515. Black Mage at that same level is at 13,312. That means a stellar Summoner with near perfect logs is weaker than an average Monk and barely beating an average Black Mage or Dragoon. Now think about that in a pug setting, where you have no idea the caliber of player you'll get. If you insist on bringing a Black Mage, said Black Mage doesn't even need to be good; just average, and they're already better than every other Range or Caster DPS in the game. Do you really think that's good for a casual or midcore setting?

I stated that I think it's good that Square is adjusting classes. I don't think it would be good however to make make ranged DPS at 100% optimal performance the same as melee or casters at 100% optimal performance (under ideal situations). I think things are at a reasonable middle ground when Ranged DPS generally performs better in fights that are both highly mobile and impossible to have high uptime for melee. I think there could be better balancing between utility vs. personal dps as well.

The point of contention I have is that it's far easier to perform optimally with less restrictions, range being an important one, in which ranged dps can highly bypass it. Caster is in the middle because casters generally have more movement restrictions than ranged dps. Classes shouldn't be balanced around all of them doing 100% damage potential in all fights because it would just leave melee as the most shafted, casters as the second most, and ranged dps would then be just be better overall at that point (there is also considerations of output vs. class complexity that can play into avg results too among each role specifically).

I also do have to consider the flaw in logs. There isn't any real control group. You may just happen to have a lot of poorer performing players or poorer performing groups that make worse relative use of certain classes or certain utilities, or you may have an unproportionate number of classes having support buffs stacked upon them, making differences seem far more exaggerated than what they actually are. Wanting Square to balance around random log results isn't a good way to go about things at all. I do think there are some balance issues recognized though and we are seeing changes, thus why I said I think it's good Square is making some adjustments.

[Sove92]

I think things are at a reasonable middle ground when Ranged DPS generally performs better in fights that are both highly mobile and impossible to have high uptime for melee.

Point me to a fight in current content where this actually happens. Even older can do.

[dinnertime]

I think the biggest joke I face this expansion is that I played BRD / RDM / AST. This whole thing is just painful to watch, how RDM didn't even get touched when SMN did and how we now have 4 very clear benchwarmers is pretty awful.

And as a BRD main, I can't even be bothered doing more savage raiding right now, I don't particularly enjoy thinking "I should probably just level a BLM instead" while I play. I haven't even been able to put myself through leveling RDM, because it just feels agonizingly slow knowing what I know.

Yes, SMN got touched, but it's a QoL change. SMN is still in a bad place damage-wise being 1.2k behind the DPS above it so make that 5 benchwarmers.

[kajv95]

Yes, SMN got touched, but it's a QoL change. SMN is still in a bad place damage-wise being 1.2k behind the DPS above it so make that 5 benchwarmers.

Whew, was almost scared that actually did anything!

Welcome to the bench, buddy.

[Vendalwind]

Im a recently made very happy nin main. Who also plays dancer and smn. And very much yes. All phys ranged need a bump. And smn/rdm do too.