Ranged DPS role is about to be excluded from all content

[ForteNightshade]

I'd like to bounce on this.
Remember Zurvan? Remember "skip Soar"?
What if an EX trial like this would happen and the balance is similar to what we currently have?

Simple, the lower jobs would be locked out.
Locked out jobs in content that must be farmed.

I hadn't thought of Zurvan, however that's a good example. In fact, it wasn't uncommon to see Warrior locked out because Holmgang required very precise timing to cheese Demon's Claw. And this was back when Warrior was the God tier tank of legend. If it was getting locked out, Dancer, Red Mage, Bard and co wouldn't have a chance in hell.

Soft enrages

A soft enrage wouldn't change this mentality though. In fact, it would only encourage it since you'd want the highest damaging jobs to better secure those DPS checks lest you risk the boss getting buffed. What makes you think people would suddenly want a Red Mage to "help out the healers" with a soft enrage mechanic? Not only would that lower your overall damage output, thus risking not making the check but it'd have the same impact now: a crappy parse for the Red Mage. Another issue is these soft enrage checks would need to be balanced around the weakest potential comp. Which means a DRG/MNK/BLM/BLM comp would be even more invaluable.

Basically, your suggestion does precisely the opposite of what you're intending.

Especially since 95th usually means playing extremely well, almost perfectly, and in a BiS set or close to it, and 60th percentile is basically sloppy play but still above average with good gear.

I should not be able to straight up die and still out-DPS the Dancer in my static who parsed orange. And yet... I have simply because I play Dragoon.

[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.