Ranged DPS role is about to be excluded from all content

[BarretOblivion]

Yeah physical ranged DPS will need a buff once other casters get theirs. Its important however too keep in mind that in SB we had the opposite issue where it was physical ranged dps that were meta and most casters weren't favored in the top 1%.

You can't make all phyisical ranged as strong as casters because they have better party wide buffs than casters (minus MCH) so if you overtune them it will be SB all over again.

MCH is the exception and honestly should be doing as much as what SMNs do once they get buffed.

[SaitoHikari]

Yeah physical ranged DPS will need a buff once other casters get theirs. Its important however too keep in mind that in SB we had the opposite issue where it was physical ranged dps that were meta and most casters weren't favored in the top 1%.

That was literally only a thing because of community perception and the fact that piercing meta existed. Piercing meta no longer exists, so party comps are a lot more free-form nowadays. What I mean by community perception is that casters lacked significant buffs that could contribute to inflating other party members' numbers. All for the sake of a ranking on a third party website. SE doesn't balance around padded logs, and that's why the neglected classes of Stormblood weren't really touched until later on - as they were actually fine design-wise, only they weren't part of a community-enforced meta for reasons outside of the game itself. (Though I admit RDM was really left behind at the end, their situation in SB is nowhere near as bad as their current situation and the bottom 5 in ShB now, where the gap between classes has now become so wide to the point where one can no longer doubt that class composition is absolutely a bigger factor over player skill in determining whether or not your team can beat enrage.)

Now, the problem is that the DPS gap between the top rdps class and the bottom is about a 1.5-2k difference, with a 1k gap that separates the top five from the bottom five for no good reason. It's no longer a problem of community perception since FFLogs overhauled how contribution is credited so that padding isn't really a thing anymore, it's a straight up design problem within the game itself. Ironically, had they kept their old display, people wouldn't have pushed for Ninja and Dancer buffs at all, because both would have been considered meta by the community for, again, a purpose outside of the game itself.

[Machi_Machiavelli]

"Let's take BLM as the comparison point since they also have the same ranged advantage"

What?

[HyoMinPark]

Not to be a a## but you are 100% exaggerating, range can NEVER be replaced many mechanics demand that role of range class or you wipe lol.

Double BLM is seriously being considered for the speedkill meta. The physical ranged aren't strong enough, and healers can easily just take over ranged mechanics like Black Smokers in E3S. Which is the only real "ranged mechanic" this tier has.

[Cetonis]

What are Black Smokers? Sounds like a mechanic you won't even see on a speedkill to me.

[MaelleRiou]

Summoner's got a QOL change, not a buff. They're still going to be in the bottom half of DPS and over 1000 DPS behind black mage.

The physical ranged and 2 casters that aren't black mage are all kind of crappy right now.

[HyoMinPark]

What are Black Smokers? Sounds like a mechanic you won't even see on a speedkill to me.

I mean. Fair enough. i was just pointing out it's the only "ranged mechanic" this tier has. There aren't really any other valid ones to keep a physical ranged in the meta as ValkyrieL was implying (versus just doing double BLM).


EDIT because I left this out of my last response and don't want to dedicate another point to it.

To me this is just proof we need to get rid of dps buffing groups stuff, and balance all the classes best they can be. So you can bring the play style you enjoy. but I'm sure people will cry about that for some strange reason.

Removing buffs would just mean that the highest damage dealing jobs are now the most viable and belong to the meta. Any DPS that deal lower damage would be considered weaker and non-meta; and, as is currently the case with the current weak jobs, allow for less mistakes/mishaps compared to the highest damage dealing jobs, which would have more wiggle room. There would still be a meta: it would just be a selfish, personal damage-centric meta as opposed to a meta with utility aspects, as has been the case in the past.

Removing utility isn't really the solution here, in my opinion - adjusting the heavy tax the bottom 5 jobs have is. Plus, I have no desire to play a BRD or a DNC with zero utility. It would just be a generic DPS that attacks at range with nothing to really distinguish it from the other damage dealers.

[Rasikko]

Well i can't warm this bench myself!

~Red Mage main

Don't worry, we dancers warm that sucker up right with you every 2 minutes.

[Shihoru]

Class balance doesnt effect casuals. If youre not effected it doesn't mean nobody is.

If your group is willing to replace you because your role is so lethargic that none of the 3 classes in your role can outplay just having 3 melee and 1 black mage EVEN after losing the 1% stat buff for not having a physical ranged then there is an issue with class balance. I'm sorry.

In optimal play, right now, physical ranged (and non-blm caster) are dramatically outperformed, much more due to the recent melee buffs removing the dispairity between goon and sam and pulling ninja up, warranted by its high CPM/ping requirement

MCH and BRD will continue to get worse because 0 raid buffs + linear scaling with battle voice is worse than Dancer's multiplicative scaling with Crit and balance. MCH less so because lack of literally any party utility (the shield is redundant with BRD/DNC).

People are under the assumption that because you can hit the boss at all ranges that your ceiling should be much lower, but the reality is that there is barely any IF ANY content in the game right now than penalizes you enough for being in range to push you out of max melee. I play MCH at max melee or closer 95+% of the time, and I barely ever utilize my mobility. So because my mobility exists as a tool I can use, I have to be inherently penalized for playing the same positioning as a melee who may have 1 positional but 95% similar uptime? The result is, for fights where you dont need to utilize that mobility, you just don't play ranged at all, which essentially comes down to all of the fights that BLM/Healer can substitute for ranged for mechanics.

Ranged mobility is as much a necessity for the whole team for mechanics centered around ranged mobility than it is for the ranged player themselves to be penalized for it. That movement is worthless in the grand scheme of things. It may gain a handfull of gcds over some melee greed that is required in most fights.

If they want to make my class worse for having mobility, then give us a penalty for being at range. There is no excuse for there to be a 1.5k+ disparity between jobs when played optimally. Give ranged similar melee scaling while barrel stuffing the boss with a penalty/fall off when leaving max melee and a true north button with charges to account for heavier damage at range. They won't do this though because mechanics are centered around having some ranged to complete them, so instead we just get penalized for existing and its stupid. P.ranged have busy rotations and priority systems and spend a lot of time staring at hotbars with a high skill ceiling that feels unrewarding because of the mobility DPS penalty that hardly ever is warranted penalizing for.

The big meme is I do less damage and still need to bait puddles in ucob, so I guess less damage gets me more responsibility in ultimate. Makes total sense.

[Aiscence]

If ranged is performing better at low level because of the mobility, that's nice, we should see that in fflog, at 25% how high we are:



Yeah right, nevermind, it's the same.

People have to understand that ranged tax is a bad thing. Ranged have that mobility to do the mechanics instead of the melees and casters that wont move anyway in uptime strats. Even during SB, where MCH were outdpsing most other dps, triple melee was a thing on some fight, losing 2/3 GCD is a low price if the dps is way higher.

YoshiP literally said during the last liveletter SA, and you can see it in the transcript:

As for samurai's DPS, samurai’s burst is designed to take advantage of party buffs from other party members. However, we agree that its DPS is low compared to that of black mage, another pure DPS job. Black mage was balanced around being the only magic ranged DPS without Raise and party buffs, and we believe samurai should do a little bit more damage as it is in a similar situation, so its potency values will be slightly adjusted in patch 5.08.

So I have to raise the question: MCH has the EXACT same things as them, they have an aoe mitigation , but with two times the CD of an addle and feint. and even that SAM balance still make it be behind the other 3 melee.

And dont talk about difficulty, if a job is better at high lvl, people will play it, that's it. There is no reason why a monk should be that high or higher than a sam or mch, they have so much more comfort with their kit now that even positionals arent a problem anymore.

It isn't a problem in savage, even if a 95% mch was literally a gray monk for a while, but Ultimate is coming, and by looking at what they said, ranged wont get a change. That means no change before 5.2. But if we look at the past, jobs didnt get changed before .4, and mch was only buffed during 4.5 where NOTHING was relevant anymore.