Ranged DPS role is about to be excluded from all content

[Zyneste]

I'll place my wager on lower CPM for Summoner by boosting Egi Assault's potency and giving it a shared "Charge" that 1 and 2 share with a shorter cooldown but higher maximum charge.

My money was on them leaving both with seperate charges, but doubling the potency and doubling the cool down with 2 Ruin IVs procs per use. Less OGCD windows used for the same effect, while fitting more damage into burst windows. Having both share though would fix the issue where the aoe isn't worth pressing except for the ruin IV proc. [Plus titan shield during downtime should really generate a ruin IV proc. Let them optimize ahhhh]

[Akiudo]

For actual informations sake
In E2 (as its the best fight for maximum cpm across classes evenly)

Top NINs have ~51 CPM (with lower skill speed than me, i need to step up my game!)
Top MCHs ~46
Top BRDs ~46
Top SAMs ~42-47 (really odd wide gap is the only one inconsistent across classes at top ten, different SkS means a lot tho to what SAM fillers in their rotations.)
Top MNKs ~43.5
Top SMNs ~42
Top DRGs ~39
Top RDMs ~37
Top BLMs ~ 31

not arguing the point you made here, but taking the statistics you pulled here because i would like to add one thing to them, and that is that it's not just about cpm but their actual distribution during that minute that at least makes part of the difficulty. NIN obviously is an anomaly, the whole "ranged vs melee vs caster" debate set aside but as square allready stated they feel nin is to busy and promised adjustments theres that.

But its not just pure cpm that make the difficulty, the very fact you don't know when you get your proccs (and you get a lot of them) demands on the fly adjustments, empyreal arrow gives you a guaranteed procc, also with 15 seconds cooldown it is short enough that delaying it even a little will cost you more than one during the fight, now every empyrial arrow you press the milisecond it gets ready may eat a procc for either bloodletter or perfect pitch if you don't watch that stuff, EA while bloodletter active? 150 potency lost, EA at 2 stacks pitch perfect while the next server tick comes up before you will be able to fire it ? technically a loss, Using Barrage "correctly"? (so it doesn't eat a procc, Apex arrow gets used beforehand as it has higher priority, dots are kept up even if it means a delay) Congratulations, theres a big chance you in fact will delay it so much you will in the end miss a Barrage, just that at the time you delayed it for 3 global cooldowns the first time you had no idea that would happen 10 minutes down the line.

Not saying thats bard exclusive, or that no class has other things to watch out for, but its not simply "bard has among the highest cpm", the very nature of their randomness makes you basically constantly watch your bars while keeping server ticks in mind

[Vendalwind]

not arguing the point you made here, but taking the statistics you pulled here because i would like to add one thing to them, and that is that it's not just about cpm but their actual distribution during that minute that at least makes part of the difficulty. NIN obviously is an anomaly, the whole "ranged vs melee vs caster" debate set aside but as square allready stated they feel nin is to busy and promised adjustments theres that.

But its not just pure cpm that make the difficulty, the very fact you don't know when you get your proccs (and you get a lot of them) demands on the fly adjustments, empyreal arrow gives you a guaranteed procc, also with 15 seconds cooldown it is short enough that delaying it even a little will cost you more than one during the fight, now every empyrial arrow you press the milisecond it gets ready may eat a procc for either bloodletter or perfect pitch if you don't watch that stuff, EA while bloodletter active? 150 potency lost, EA at 2 stacks pitch perfect while the next server tick comes up before you will be able to fire it ? technically a loss, Using Barrage "correctly"? (so it doesn't eat a procc, Apex arrow gets used beforehand as it has higher priority, dots are kept up even if it means a delay) Congratulations, theres a big chance you in fact will delay it so much you will in the end miss a Barrage, just that at the time you delayed it for 3 global cooldowns the first time you had no idea that would happen 10 minutes down the line.

Not saying thats bard exclusive, or that no class has other things to watch out for, but its not simply "bard has among the highest cpm", the very nature of their randomness makes you basically constantly watch your bars while keeping server ticks in mind

Thats absolutely true.
As DNC I've repeatedly been frustrated with the extensive amount of rng triggering your skills. I think I even mentioned the rng procs as a source of ranged difficulty in an earlier post. One of my personal beefs with RNG as a style is it makes me stare at my cast bars more than i'd like watching for the random procs haha. And like I said yeah I don't think CPM is a good measure at all for difficulty. I just happened to dig into it while I was trying to find out if Dogempire's statements about 2nd 3rd and 7th placement were true. He happened to be right. and I just because of it became interested in looking at the top players CPM's as a whole.

[Vendalwind]

I know you're trying to make yourself seem better than everyone, at least on a subconscious level, by talking about your apm and how easy bard is for you compared to playing ranged, but nobody cares. Literally nobody on here cares that you play ninja and find bard easy.

False. not once was I trying to brag, float my own boat, or lift myself up with comments about my skill. Not a single moment. The CPM segment was a moment of just pure investigative interest, that if you didn't notice led to me realizing one of my earlier assumptions was in fact wrong. Additionally I can play the troll card here a bit since you keep calling me out and I'll respond in turn.
You seem to care. Care so much about me being a NIN main that you've decided my opinion is so biased its invalid. What impressive ability to shut people out that is!

Second of all, not all melee classes are designed like ninja and require you to play the keyboard just to do a rotation. It's cool that you enjoy your class, but it doesn't give you the right to call other classes easy just because you play the one with the most inputs. I can agree with someone who says that the classes with more inputs shouldn't be at the bottom, but I can't agree with someone who claims an entire role is easier to play than a different one, especially the one that makes YOUR job easier by handling mechanics for you so you don't lose any uptime, that's just arrogant and shows how little you know of the other roles.

Fine disagree, just stop personal attacking me with false accusations of strawman and then basically all the above. Did you not notice that I play a class at 80 in every role available in the game? (except Caster on this character) And despite that I still frequently say I dont have enough experience with these classes to really have an opinion? you possess a funny idea of arrogance.

Snip the rest.

Not here to seem cool. Im here cause I care about the balance of the game. I want ranged buffed, but I also want to dismantle false logic that is routinely spread to ruin what I hope the game balance will be like.
I'm here to talk about the game, the balance, and how ranged DPS need a buff. I'm also here to talk about why people argue against it, and to generally combat what are, in my opinion, foolish or misguided notions of balance. One of the first posts of mine you decided to attack was literally not me saying ranged should be weaker, but me explaining why mobility itself is such a massive boon in light of people underestimating it's its ability to reduce difficulty.

Even if i spoke in some too divisive absolutes my intent was solely to shed further light on why mobility is such a boon.

If you wish to continue with an actual valuable conversation, perhaps you could touch on what elements ranged possess that are inherently difficult? literally exactly like Akuido did?
Please do that instead of making assumptions in a passive aggressive form of personally attacking me.

[SaitoHikari]

I mean, you’re coming in here from the perspective of a class that even SE considers problematic enough from a gameplay standpoint to overhaul it next patch, using said class as a bludgeon to talk down the difficulty of an -entire role- (and inadvertently coming off as defending the ranged tax even if that is not your intention - at this point, it cannot be interpreted in any other way besides meaningless curiosity), when most other raiders know enough to realize that Ninja is a bit of an outlier design wise. Plus, it’s not as if Ninja is one of the top tier classes hat this thread was created in response to in the first place.

I mean really, this train of thought doesn’t contribute any real value towards analyzing the balance of the game, and yet the topic keeps circling around it. This pure investigative interest managed to derail the thread over the past three pages, and I’m not sure anything of value actually came of it, when most of it beyond the numerical CPM itself was personal interpretation of what it actually meant for class difficulty. And not necessarily the balance.

[CKNovel]

Did you not notice that I play a class at 80 in every role available in the game?.

There is many different shades of "playing" or at least pushing the job at its top in this case.
I too, "play" all the jobs in order to know they abilities and know what they are capable of. I too, can vaguely play Ninja, Samurai, Summoner, Dark Knight... But all I could play is far from being optimized, being the best way to play, synchronized with any comp.

On a very low level, I agree with you, ranged are from far the most easy jobs to pick up as they were stripped from utility. The mobility in a newbie's point of vue is gold, you can move away and still damage, why should you pick a mage or a melee job? Obviously they should have a ranged tax, that's obvious and any game designer who would neglect should really question their abilities to balance a game.

I've said it earlier and I'll gladly repeat it:
Ranged jobs are the most easy to pick up, but they are one the most difficult to optimize.

You have extra responsabilities, extra opportunnities to take care of.
Melee and Caster won't have these, the mindest about mechanics is always "I need to move first then I can DPS when I'm at range/stationnary".

I'll be taking an interesting mechanic: UWU Ifrit's nails.
In short the 2 most distant players will spawn aoes under their feets. Each nails must be hit by 2 aoes.
The responsability will obviously be on the ranged as first and a healer/caster.
The non-physical ranged will only have to worry about their own aoe and the nails, you can cast before but I highly doubt you can cast during the mechanic apart with instants.
The physical ranged, however, needs to keep up its rotation and dps, that's an extra layer of difficulty and must be rewarded not punished because you are the job for... the job.

There is little of these "big responsabilities" and I wish players would be given more choice as to how handle others mechanics because that's the only scenario where mobility actually is usefull in those scenario with tight DPS check and precise mechanics.

[SaberMaxwell]

I'll be taking an interesting mechanic: UWU Ifrit's nails.

This is a bad example, mainly because it highlights Physical Ranged's strength at being able to continue their rotation throughout a baiting mechanic like Ifrit's Nails with relative safety. TL;DR of this post is your point that Phys Ranged have to keep their rotation going while Casters don't is incorrect, and the fact is that they do need to keep their rotations going which means they need to understand their mobility options as a Caster very thoroughly and plan accordingly, and even then they need to take gigantic risks to just not get caught by eruptions.

A better way to tackle it might be the amount of mechanics a Phys Ranged is expected to handle: in UCoB, they're the designated fire baiter no matter what. In both Twin and Adds phases. In UWU, they're one of the designated eruption baits, as stated, but they're designated for every set of eruptions, whereas the caster usually bows out after the first mandated eruption bait for them. Summoners at the time, who had the mobility of casters, could keep going however. Phys Ranged are also expected in many parties to take a Thermal High from Garuda all the way to Ultima, and to eat one of Garuda's attacks away from the party and then navigate their way back to said party.

The responsability will obviously be on the ranged as first and a healer/caster.
The non-physical ranged will only have to worry about their own aoe and the nails, you can cast before but I highly doubt you can cast during the mechanic apart with instants.

You highlight this as though it's a boon for a caster to not be able to cast during this. In the first case, you're wrong: every second casters aren't casting, they're losing substantial levels of DPS, so yes, they'll be keeping up a rotation through this phase, but they need to be slidecasting / instant casting as much as they can through it; this also means they need to have an intimate knowledge of their slidecasting threshold and they need a large amount of foreplanning to maximize the use of their instant casts. As an example, there is a strat specific to Red Mages, where the Red Mage will melee down a nail by themselves so they can enter Redoublement > Verfinisher during this phase. Even while doing this, I found myself needing to tempt death to hit the last slidecast needed to keep 100% uptime through here.

The physical ranged, however, needs to keep up its rotation and dps, that's an extra layer of difficulty and must be rewarded not punished because you are the job for... the job.

Which leads me here. As a Red Mage, you're no less expected to keep up your rotation, doing so is just much more dangerous. In keeping my rotation going through careful allocations of instant casts and slidecasting, I am still keeping my rotation going; I never did UWU on the other casters, but I'm sure Summoners had their methods and kept their rotations going, and Black Mages probably had to stock their Triple+Swift for that same baiting mechanic. It's just significantly more risky to do so. Not doing so, however, is a gigantic loss in damage for Red Mage, both in current damage output (no DoTs, no autos, no damage going out every second that a damage spell isn't landing) and in future output, as not casting means no mana generation, which delays and hurts melee combos going forward through the fight, and in long fights like UWU mistakes like that can cascade.

[Vendalwind]

snip

Your comment did make me consider a certain aspect of ranged difficult i hadn't given much credit to. And a funky but off kilter idea.
Effectively mechanics end up as the fight specific adaptations ranged have to make. Melee and casters probably optimize this way just as often. but for less mechanically complex events (such as head avoidance in E2)

Ranged don't make melee jobs easier. They suffer the least drawbacks, however, from movement based mechanics, and thus are given that responsibility. Unfortunately that responsibility tacks on some fight specific difficulty, and that's where ranged have to adapt for fight specifics.

As far as those mechanics go tho: Ranged don't somehow magically make melee easier, or caster easier by doing the mechanic. They(melee/caster) could do the mechanic they'd just lose more. You aren't EVER making a melee's job easier, you are just minimizing the loss that comes from mechanics because as a ranged you have a skill ceiling that enables you to perform at 100% uptime during those mechanics., and if you are good, that minimization reduces the impact of a mechanic to effectively zero.

As consequence tho Ranged do get saddled with extra difficulty from raid mechanics being assigned to them in bulk.. Perhaps in some way they should be rewarded for that? but the question is how, and is the ability to keep the rotation going during them the reward? From this arguable standpoint you could definitely make a case for ranged needing to be able to perform just as high (dps) as any other class. It seems a really weird idea, but if mechanics offered a reward system if a ranged performed them that could actually be kinda cool.

Que weird idea alluded to above. What if ranged had a passive, called counter strike or something, that functioned to give them a damage boost while they were the target of certain mechanics: baited meteors in E1, Black Smokers, tethers, etc.?

And even Tsunami debuffs, and similar mechanics, could trigger this effect for them. It would be interesting because ranged would shine and maybe even out dps melee/caster in mechanic heavy fights if they baited as much as possible. It would very much be a fight specific system tho, and would demand further skill on the devs side for raid design. But i personally would love this. Ranged could sit like 150 dps below the lowest melee normally, and then on raid heavy fights the buff could be enough to push them up significantly into melee and caster output.. this might be a terrible idea, but hey its a random fun insomniac thought i had.

Snip

So much everything you just said. both for caster and melee having to respond to mechanics can mean a lot of foresight and planning. It is gross oversimplification to say melee think "I need to move first then I can DPS when I'm at range/stationnary" because thats definately not how it works. A more correct statement, is at least 10 seconds before a mechanic goes off, a melee or caster thinks, "what can i do to mitigate this loss and and/or still do some damage from ranged or during my movement without F---ing up the other things i have going on?"

all classes can suffer cascading negative effects from a rotational screw up, but ranged is the only class that technically shouldn't ever have to outside of downtime moments in fights. melee and casters have to accept that some loss is innevitable and figure out how to minimize that lost by planning ahead.

[SaberMaxwell]

Ranged don't make melee jobs easier. As far as those mechanics go tho: Ranged don't somehow magically make melee easier, or caster easier by doing the mechanic. They(melee/caster) could do the mechanic they'd just lose more. You aren't EVER making a melee's job easier, you are just minimizing the loss that comes from mechanics

I need you to define terms here. What exactly do you mean by "easy"? My mind jumps to how much more difficult a melee's job would be if they needed to perform liquid hell baits in lieu of a ranged dps of either variety being capable of handling the mechanic. A ranged not handling something that would make the melee's job harder, in my eyes (even having to leave melee to do hatches in my brief stint in UCoB as a DRG was painful), meaning the ranged is making the melee's life easier.

Speaking as a caster, if I can have my DNC run a mechanic for me, it makes my life much easier to have her do it. Liquid hells, again, come to mind: they're a mechanic that as a caster, if I have to handle them I'm losing damage with no question about it. Having them run them for me means I get to stand still and keep casting while they enact an entire extra mechanic that I now don't have to think about.

because as a ranged you have a skill ceiling that enables you to perform at 100% uptime during those mechanics.

Minor nitpick, but that's not what a skill ceiling is. They have a tool kit that allows this, but the skill ceiling itself isn't what allows the uptime. Terminology is important.

and if you are good, that minimization reduces the impact of a mechanic to effectively zero.

Whereas if a Ninja had to handle it they'd need to plan extra around their rotation, figure out what can go where and how with planned downtime, making their job harder. Ergo, not having to do that means their job is easier, unless your definition of 'easy' contradicts this, but I'll have to wait till you have the chance to define your terms.

Que weird idea alluded to above. What if ranged had a passive, called counter strike or something, that functioned to give them a damage boost while they were the target of certain mechanics: baited meteors in E1, Black Smokers, tethers, etc.?

It's a unique take on the situation, although my question becomes: Why would casters be excluded from either baited meteors or Black Smokers, since they're expected to handle those mechanics for the melee as well? Actually if you wanted to be really cheeky, you can even have melees handle those mechanics with no downtime, you just have to be really quick about it.

[Myon88]

So in case anyone hasn't noticed, the #1 ranked speedrun for e2s is currently held by a group forgoing ranged in lieu of double black mage. Now that we're past week 8 it looks like people are finally able to gear up their alt jobs (aka: getting a second set of blm gear), so we should start seeing a lot more experimentation with these compositions soon. I think it's safe to say the predictions the OP of the thread made have now been bourne out.