Ranged DPS role is about to be excluded from all content

[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.

[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.

[Connor]

Asking this seriously now (lol), but to what extent would more utility abilities on ranged DPS resolve this issue? I feel like if ranged DPS had the same level of utility they did in Stormblood. Even if they kept the personal damage the same as it is now

Ranged DPS has usually ‘justified’ its spot with support after all. While this naturally meant that it was entirely required, I’m sure they could have removed Refres and Tactician and added different utility oriented role skills instead.

If we look at utility on the ranged DPS role right now, Machinist has like none, Bard essentially has one utility skill (the others really aren’t worth mentioning in terms of making its utility justify its raid spot). Dancer is amazing in the utility area, but then it’s pDPS is too low for that utility to actually make it worth it. I want to say that Dancer could use some more support abilities too, but that would be pretty excessive I guess lol

If Bard had some support songs, Machinist had abilities like Hypercharge and Dismantle/Rend Mind, and Dancer got slight pDPS adjustments (or increases to utility if they really wanted), would the DPS gap between ranged and melee/Black Mage be less of an issue? Obviously though I’m not suggesting the return of Refresh/Tactician or other skills that would make the jobs required for any raid.

Idk I’m obviously extremely biased in terms of this, but I feel like making the ranged dps more of the ‘support DPS role’ it’s sold as would solve the issue of the DPS gap quite easily. Otherwise, pDPS increases could easily invalidate casters, particularly Red Mage and Summoner (not so much Black Mage). If ranged have higher DPS then we’ll probably end up in a situation where Red Mage / Summoner get pushed out of parties for one of the ranged, if not purely for the convenience of no cast times.

But if the ranged have utility, then Red Mage and Summoner have higher DPS (which I feel is justified purely on the basis of them both casters), then wouldn’t it be a more equal playing ground in terms of what jobs to use for the raid? Summoner and Red Mage would have their own utility so you can justify using them instead of ranged if you want, and I feel like they’re probably pretty good in terms of their utility anyway (at least Summoner is lol).

Basically, I think that if they used utility to close the gap for the ranged role with melee / Black Mage, then used pDPS to do the same for Red Mage / Summoner, then balancing the roles against each other and not just within themselves would become easier. Though, I guess because of my own bias towards wanting to be a ‘support-like’ job I’m not exactly looking at it objectively (though is anyone really?). It’s probably more likely that pDPS boosts across the board for all jobs across the board except melee/Black Mage would balance things out more easily than stuff like making ranged a more utility oriented role again. Though, part of me wants to say that this would just be a ‘band-aid’ that doesn’t actually solve anything, but maybe that’s just the bias talking again

[Shihoru]

None, because adding utility to the job adds to the complexity of the job and the responsibility of the job and should NOT tax your DPS. DPS should be a preferential choice on party utility and everyone should have that utility and you chose between it when deciding on your composition. It should be a question about your role and your responsibilities and which ones you wish to assume and how much you enjoy playing your class.

[Absimiliard]

I find humor in people referring to the SMN changes as a buff. That didn't raise their DPS at all. All it did was give them a small quality of life change by making one of their more egregious flaws a bit less cancerous. Granted, the change will probably improve DPS for inexperienced summoners by way of not penalizing them as heavily for having a dot fall off, but skilled summoners shouldn't be seeing gains.

[Ziggurat8]

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

[Kabooa]

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

No. It would just make people angrier.

[Aiscence]

A test server would have worked IF they were decided to do changes, but they are not the kind of people doing regular balance change and can let some job be half dead for an expansion.