Ranged DPS role is about to be excluded from all content

[Sathona]

black magic hate D:

[Zyneste]

I think the Physical Ranged is the only role that is actually somewhat balanced.

They share the core role identity of Mobility + defensive support via Trouba/Samba/Tact. Their RDPS + PDPS VS RDPS + PDPS is balanced. The additional defensive support they have is weak, but strong enough to use to sway tight spots. MCH/DNC/BRD can and should have the lowest DPS or near the lowest, but they can't be so far of an outlier, that a higher DPS class can replace them even after considering losing the ranged party role bonus. The lower DPS classes need pushed up.

Melee and Caster should intermingle with SMN/RDM being at the bottom portion, but all be within a reasonable amount of damage. Ranged should be just behind them. The role party bonus should be able to push a ranged into the range slot no questions. This means that either the role bonus needs to be increased to compensate to overwhelmingly encourage a standard comp, or the DPS disparity between all classes needs to get much smaller.

[HyoMinPark]

The role party bonus should be able to push a ranged into the range slot no questions. This means that either the role bonus needs to be increased to compensate to overwhelmingly encourage a standard comp, or the DPS disparity between all classes needs to get much smaller.

I would personally go for the latter—increasing the role party bonus is lazy, in my opinion; and it doesn’t really address the issue with the physical ranged being so far behind the other DPS in terms of damage. It just sort of...sweeps the problem under the rug and ignores it, and I can’t really agree with that. Which is why I am against just buffing the party bonus and not addressing the damage discrepancies.

[dinnertime]

Whew, was almost scared that actually did anything!

Welcome to the bench, buddy.

Actually...I just decided to go back to BLM. :/

[kajv95]

Actually...I just decided to go back to BLM. :/

That's fair, I'm inclined to do the same. It's what my gut feeling tells me to do when I'm playing any of the jobs I've typically enjoyed the last few years.

I'll keep your book warm for your return. When do I need to feed the carbuncles?

[Connor]

At the very least I was expecting some kind of potency increases for Dancer and Red Mage, and was disappointed to see that they didn’t get anything.

Not sure about ranged DPS as a whole, I feel like Bard and Machinist are probably ‘working as intended’ so part of me wouldn’t be surprised if they go untouched the rest of the expansion (which would kinda suck for Bard because I don’t find it fun to play anymore). Dancer does feel like it lags behind the others though, it’s really fun to play but I think there’s just too much of a difference in its overall DPS (rDPS?) to make it feel worthwhile. Being at the ‘bottom’ is fine because someone has to be there, but that doesn’t mean that you should feel a lot weaker than everyone else by being there.

Also, I don’t know how much ranged DPS are currently represented in endgame content but I’d imagine that they’re not largely unrepresented because they’ve always been an extremely popular role. I mean, until now Bard has almost always been one of the most popular jobs in the entire game, including at the highest level of difficulty. Which obviously was like 90% because they were a compulsory job, but I think their popularity would have had them just as high in numbers even if none of the utility that made it required existed.

It’s less the case now, but the ranged DPS popular is still very large. Which unfortunately means that in the devs eyes, there are no issues on the job needing addressed. I really hope they do look at the ranged role as a whole though, because I agree that right now it feels like the role is ‘the role that does less damage than casters but you can jump while you attack’.

I’d argue though that at this point in the game the mobility argument is weaker because casters all have way more mobility than they did to begin with. The mobility of ranged DPS is honestly more of a novelty to me at this point, like Ninja’s increased running speed

Basically while I totally agree that the ranged DPS role as a whole right now just feels ‘meh’, but worried that the developers aren’t going to take this feedback seriously
they could just give all the ranged DPS more support abilities aka more Bard songs sorry but I can’t help myself lol

[Hussain]

SE need to realize something which is that the 1% main stat boost will never save us as long as the gap is this big. triple melee>bringing a physical ranged now
saying it's "fine" for melees to outdps physical ranged by +1.5k is insane and saying "physical ranged shouldn't be locked out" is going against what you're implying , having a +1k gap means physical ranged will be locked out cause the 1% boost is roughly ~700 dps. so why bring a p ranged when you can bring 3 melees or double blms? and before you say LB regen , yeah double blm> the 1% from p ranged + the LB regen potential depending on the fight
can't wait for 5.1 without any changes again

[dinnertime]

That's fair, I'm inclined to do the same. It's what my gut feeling tells me to do when I'm playing any of the jobs I've typically enjoyed the last few years.

I'll keep your book warm for your return. When do I need to feed the carbuncles?

I'll still play the job whenever I feel like it so the carbuncles will be fine. I just need a little break from the madness of the balancing right now.

The 5.1 changes for the bottom 5 better be great...

[SaitoHikari]

I want to bring up what I personally experienced over the past four days in E4S.

I got my first clear as a Bard on Sunday in a pug party. Our party comp was Black Mage, Dragoon, Bard, and Ninja. The Black Mage and Ninja died once. We cleared 20 seconds before enrage.

My static runs a Bard/Dragoon/Dancer/Summoner comp. We made it to last phase with only our Scholar dying in phase 1.

My static failed to beat enrage at 0.7%, despite performing much better at a mechanical level.

That said, the paladin and scholar in the pug party made up for those deaths by pulling 1.5k more dps than my static members of the same classes (and it’s also worth mentioning the pug Black Mage still pulled similar damage with a death as the summoner that didn’t die at all), but that’s not the whole point.

I find that if say, a party of non-meta classes have to perform at a collective 75+ percentile level without any mistakes to achieve similar results compared to a meta party making major mistakes at a ~30th percentile level... It is absolutely unfair and a sign of just how dire the state of the balance is. Most players of the non meta comps are not going to be ‘hardcore’ enough to make up for that difference with their skill level. Those that are could decide to just switch classes anyway.

And it brings up a lot of uncomfortable design and balance questions that I’ll speak of, when I wake up in the morning and make a different thread outlining these concerns.

Mind you, I say all this as a consistent 90+ percentile Bard. I initially made a thread believing that ShB Bard wasn’t that bad and had its advantages. But even I had to face reality, and realized that the thing I should have been most concerned about was the place of all ranged as a whole.

But even that isn’t the big issue anymore. If this performance gap isn’t shrunk big time soon, the balance in this expansion will be a lost cause.

[Lina_Slayer]

SE has been insanely melee biased this expansion, just look at the struggling melee jobs versus a struggling caster:

SAM: Huge damage buffs, NIN: Huge damage buffs, MNK: QoLs that resulted in a big dps gain, SMN: lol I guess you are now slightly easier to play?

I'm convinced we BLM mains are lucky that we got released broken or else we'd be like everyone else bowing down to our melee overlords.