Ranged DPS role is about to be excluded from all content

[Endariel]

Soft enrage: Boss builds up to a point they overwhelm you, hitting harder and faster with each passing second, slower teams can potentially get through the last percent or two before it's too much.

Hard enrage: Boss insta-kills as soon as they hit a certain time limit, no way to mitigate/counter or try to play through it.

That's the difference, so no, a soft enrage doesn't mean you could do 4 healers 4 tanks as you would still wipe as the percentage would be way too high for you to finish it off before being overwhelmed.

There should be an enrage mechanic, I'm just stating why I've never been a fan of hard enrage as it's always been a poorly conceived mechanic which forces the very thing we see, exclusion and elitism. It's difficult to blame players for the exclusionary mindset when Savage has such a strict enrage timer that taking anything less than META is seen as a handicap.

Hopefully it's a lesson for the Devs and they think about using more soft enrages than hard "Times up, start again" hard enrages.

Edit: In fact there are all sorts of clever ways they can implement soft enrages, such as removing your mana regeneration and greying out your ethers/mana regen skills, boss resistances growing to the point they become invuln, stacking, unremovable healing debuffs to the point you can no longer be healed and so on.

I see no difference whatsoever as you can set the endpoint of soft enrage at the same time as hard enrage and both will instakill you at this point.
If anything, hard enrage is easier to deal with than soft

[WalxAtNite]

I wouldn't worry about it, especially since ranged physical is likely to get a buff in 5.1

This was going to be my next question. Is BLM going to be nerfed or is everyone else going to get buffed?

And do the devs not have PTR or anything for their patches/expansions? You'd think something being THAT overtuned wouldn't have slipped past the PTR/beta testers.

I'm not new to Final Fantasy, but I am new to the 14 world and the people behind it. It's fascinating. Love the Live Letters and such! I'm still getting a feel for how things work, but coming from WoW (and I was a mythic raider in WoD before I threw in my Loktar Ogar), I know the feels when you're excluded.

I just really hoped such things wouldn't happen here. But I appreciate your explanation and it does help! Thanks again!

[ForteNightshade]

This was going to be my next question. Is BLM going to be nerfed or is everyone else going to get buffed?

And do the devs not have PTR or anything for their patches/expansions? You'd think something being THAT overtuned wouldn't have slipped past the PTR/beta testers.

I'm not new to Final Fantasy, but I am new to the 14 world and the people behind it. It's fascinating. Love the Live Letters and such! I'm still getting a feel for how things work, but coming from WoW (and I was a mythic raider in WoD before I threw in my Loktar Ogar), I know the feels when you're excluded.

I just really hoped such things wouldn't happen here. But I appreciate your explanation and it does help! Thanks again!

They already announced the Range will get "a slight buff" in 5.1. Whether that will be enough remains to be seen.

And unfortunately, no, they don't have a PTR. Which is one reason job balancing can be all over the place sometimes. A bigger problem is they have a tendency to balance around the casual minded players and not the raid scene. Perhaps the best example is back in Stormblood when Yoshida outright said they didn't balance Bard and Machinist with Dragoon in mind despite Dragoon providing two buffs (Piercing and Litany) that made Bard hilariously strong.

[HyoMinPark]

This was going to be my next question. Is BLM going to be nerfed or is everyone else going to get buffed?

And do the devs not have PTR or anything for their patches/expansions? You'd think something being THAT overtuned wouldn't have slipped past the PTR/beta testers.

I'm not new to Final Fantasy, but I am new to the 14 world and the people behind it. It's fascinating. Love the Live Letters and such! I'm still getting a feel for how things work, but coming from WoW (and I was a mythic raider in WoD before I threw in my Loktar Ogar), I know the feels when you're excluded.

I just really hoped such things wouldn't happen here. But I appreciate your explanation and it does help! Thanks again!

It’s unlikely that BLM will get nerfed. The developers have a general aversion to nerfing things, even when they should—this has been well-established throughout the history of the game.

As for PTR, no. We don’t have anything like that despite repeatedly asking for it to avoid problems much like this one.

[WalxAtNite]

It’s unlikely that BLM will get nerfed. The developers have a general aversion to nerfing things, even when they should—this has been well-established throughout the history of the game.

As for PTR, no. We don’t have anything like that despite repeatedly asking for it to avoid problems much like this one.

They already announced the Range will get "a slight buff" in 5.1. Whether that will be enough remains to be seen.

And unfortunately, no, they don't have a PTR. Which is one reason job balancing can be all over the place sometimes. A bigger problem is they have a tendency to balance around the casual minded players and not the raid scene. Perhaps the best example is back in Stormblood when Yoshida outright said they didn't balance Bard and Machinist with Dragoon in mind despite Dragoon providing two buffs (Piercing and Litany) that made Bard hilariously strong.

I... I am at a loss for words. How does a game like this one not have a PTR?! In their defense, it's a damn good game considering.

Well, I have a ways to go before I'll be ready for any high-end raiding, so fingers crossed that BRD will be half as desirable as BLM.

As far as casual vs. raider... that issue exists everywhere and probably won't ever go away. Casuals make up the majority in most MMOs, so that's *usually* who the devs tend to favor most. Balance would benefit everyone, though. That's a fact.

[HyoMinPark]

As far as casual vs. raider... that issue exists everywhere and probably won't ever go away. Casuals make up the majority in most MMOs, so that's *usually* who the devs tend to favor most. Balance would benefit everyone, though. That's a fact.

Balance would favor all, yes—but it would have to still be done around the high-end. High-end is honestly the only place in this game where balance matters, as other content is simply designed and tuned far too low by comparison. Balancing around dungeons would negatively affect raid settings, where things are done far differently. But balancing around raids will allow said balance to trickle down into the more casual content. One has to think about trickling down—trickling up doesn’t work. As ForteNightshade mentioned, SB BRD was an excellent example of what happens when raid balance is ignored.

[CKNovel]

I... I am at a loss for words. How does a game like this one not have a PTR?!

PTR wouldn't help, PTR aren't used to balance but to test functionnalities and make sure they work correctly as well as collecting feedback.

If SE had a PTR it would probably be located in Japan which would be unplayable. If the PTR also include the story/savage raiding, that would spoil it or give spoilers to trolls.
I'd also point out that back in... May? There was the Media tour where big bois streamer could try the job a good month before anyone else. Everyone pointed with their finger that the Dancer would be broken as hell. Saber Dance was 30% critical and Direct it, which is now 20%.

Dancer is now extremely underwhelming and would probably have been average keeping the old values.
There was also feedback about the MCH Hypercharge and the Queen very slow to boot up. Hypercharge remained the same and is a major problem.

[Katie_Kitty]

This was going to be my next question. Is BLM going to be nerfed or is everyone else going to get buffed?
You'd think something being THAT overtuned wouldn't have slipped past the PTR/beta testers.

FFXIV's producer/director plays black mage so no the job is not going to be nerfed because it's the chosen one. With that said, based on what I've seen I think the other jobs were more undertuned rather than blm being overtuned (except monk, monk needs a nerf)

[Endariel]

FFXIV's producer/director plays black mage so no the job is not going to be nerfed because it's the chosen one. With that said, based on what I've seen I think the other jobs were more undertuned rather than blm being overtuned (except monk, monk needs a nerf)

That's so wrong considering BLM was underwhelming in stormblood and was outshined by basically everyone

[HyoMinPark]

That's so wrong considering BLM was underwhelming in stormblood and was outshined by basically everyone

It actually wormed it’s way into speedkills in Alphascape, where it was finally doing respectful damage for a selfish DPS job. Unfortunately, it still had a stigma attached to it; so people often chose SMN over BLM. But if you want to see BLM outshined, look at Creator: MCH was doing more damage than it, and BRD was right up there with MCH.