Quote Originally Posted by Jonnycbad View Post
Range deserve a DPS tax because:

1) Unlike melee, they can have sustained 100% uptime while still handling mechanics (melee have to move out of range (e.g. Temporary Current, or other point-blank AoEs, costing them occasional partial losses of GCDs and Auto-attacks). Melee also have to content with positionals and losing partial amounts of potency when mechanics force them to certain sides of the boss. True North helps, but for certain fights it simply isn't available enough to prevent missing positionals. Ranged on the other hand can hit from any angle.
This tax should more or less equal the jobs out; if the melee has 100% uptime it would do more than the ranged, but in a fight where they're forced to lose uptime the numbers should come closer. Certainly closer than the gulf we have now. Not to mention most strats emphasize melee uptime anyway; you mentioned temporary current but that's nearly one of the only mechanics this whole tier that melees lose uptime on, and if you're smart about it you hardly even lose 1 gcd from it, 2 in the fight in its entirety.

2) Unlike casters, ranged do not have to cast spells and can DPS on the fly while running, dodging, etc. Casters sometimes have to interrupt a cast to move out of the way, and since casters don't have auto-attacks, it's lost DPS.
Only caster not suffering the "tax" is the most mobile one atm, humorously.

Therefore since Ranged do not have any real moments where they are disengaged, they should have overall the lowest damage potential of the 3 DPS subtypes.
When compared with 100% uptime, and not with a gulf as large as it is now.