Concept for a Magic Melee DPS

[Vendalwind]

Since you've persisted Here is my ripping as promised, The pointless forum keyboard warrior has arrived. (Don't kink shame me!)
*Edit (WOOF this post was long. Moments like these let me know I need to re-evaluate my priorities. Thus I'm banning myself from the forums for 3 days. feel free to rip me up too. I find it fun, which is probably a bad thing...anyways just don't expect me to keep up till say friday at least)

This isn’t actually true, it may be true of ranged physical dps. But caster have historically hit on higher than melee dps do to the fact that cast times are a genuine mechanic like being in melee range.

False. your statement is based on cherry picked moments where casters dealt the highest damage. the true statement would be: Frequently the balance of the game has actually given the highest damage spots to casters, but this is nto always the case

Black Mage and Summoner were top 3 for all tiers of Heavensward except creator where Machinist was number 1, followed by SMN, MNK, than BLM. NIN and DRG had very potent utility and actually were the bottom 2 in that expac.

Potentially false. Objectively based on a time when rDPS was harder to calculate, and DMG utility is still effectively DMG IE you don't actually know with 100% certainty that DRG was contributing less damage than BLM MNK or SMN. You don't actually know. Maybe someone at SE knows but no players actually know for sure. How interesting tho that you note MCH being higher tho which dismantles your first statement " casters historically etc."

Stormblood was the same, SMN and BLM top tier dps over melee with red mage being lower than MNK and SAM but on par with dragoon. Even in ARR, BLM was a top tier dps. So historically, Casters have been the strongest role and in cases where that wasn’t true with MCH in 3.4/5(but was technically still a caster) it was reinstated immediately in 4.0 so this idea of melee being assured 2 slots because they are some how more challenging to play do to being in melee range isn’t true at all. The only reason melees were assured two slots prior to 5.0 was that disembowel was required for any serious group since ranged physical dps needed it and Nothing quite competed with ninja’s trick attack until patch 4.4 when Black mage got buffed so hard. Groups were cutting ninja for DRG BLM SMN BRD comps.

Oh so you admit that melee needed incentive to be brought along? Such as utility? Hmmm so since that utility is gone dont we need incentive? interesting perhaps that incentive is currently damage? Everything i said btw was PERSPECTIVE in case you want to try to tell people falsely those statements were somehow facts. And again you persist with Cherry picking. It is true that BLM generally has held the top spot. I personally don't agree with that being the case for the future, but thats an irrelevant feeling i have on the matter. But again you can't make a conclusive statement about intent with that only in mind. Where I can make a fairly conclusive statement when I say all raid fights have been designed with two melee in mind. Whether or not that was the intended party comp the fights absolutely were designed FOR 2 melee.

Likewise in 5.0, the only reason why you think melee are assured 2 slots is because SE over buffed the role but this game has always been designed with bring what’s good for you.

Wrong and wrong.
It is not the only reason. I thought i made it pretty clear that i think melee are assured two spots because of relevant raid design and class distribution.
Lets look over the count historically for each role by the end of ARR which was the first fully planned cycle of the game.
Healer had 2
Tank had 2
Melee had 3
Ranged had 3

Today
Tank +2
Healer +1
Melee +1
RANGED +3

you tell me which role deserves new classes the most? Cause to me its pretty plain its melee and healer. And jsut because SE decided later to differentiate between cast bars and physical mobile ranged that for some reason they deserve the next new class. Because even within their roles their ratio to slot in raids is the most overcrowded currently. (yes when i say currently i am referring to this current patch set where MNK, DRG, BLM is favored that may change shortly)

The duty finder match makes 2 melee and 2 ranged because in ARR there were 3 melee dps and 3 dps that were ranged.
That’s the ONLY reason why.

Objectively false. You present that as the sole reason. That is so incorrect its ridiculous. of course there are other reasons whether they are accurate or not.
I presented many
Developers original design
Balance of Roles
Satisfying the most varied amount of players fantasy (IE gameplay fantasy)
Accommodating for more battle styles
Creating rigid guidelines by which content can be created and to help players know what to expect.
Or how bout: what you literally just said above? because melee bring good damage its designed that way? honestly for all we know they could have made the choice to give melee high damage AND THEN decided that groups should be limited to no more than 2 melee.

Proof of this is evident when you look at the fact that ranged had cast times in heavensward because SE truly classified all ranged as range but now the distinction has been made where physical ranged and magical ranged are subsets of the dps role.

Again objectively false. Correlation does not imply causation. Thus for all you know that change to the party finder may have been for entirely different reasons that you are incapable of seeing. I can personally think of at least 3.

Notice the raid finder matches you 2 melee(4 jobs) 1phys R(3 jobs) and 1 magical(3 jobs) this is because of it didn’t have this distinction, you would have 4 melee and 6 ranged possibly matching you with jobs that are missing certain role actions. you should also consider the duty finder would let you take 3 ranged all of which can be bard, raid finder is the one with a distinction and that came about in 3.3.

Again. accommodating for wait times and more fun anyone? there is a reason party finder is separated from duty finder so where content actually matter people can pick and choose.

So this idea that melee was designed to have 2 slots isn’t true, there were just more melee than ranged physical and caster jobs during ARR and even then, it was usually just a product of buffs such as piercing, slashing, and trick attack

*late edit in brackets {additionally you are wrong here cause at any given point in the games history there was more or equal Ranged than melee. at release 2 melee 3 ranged. Later 3 ranged 3 melee. Later 3 melee 4 ranged. Later 4 melee 5 ranged Ranged distinction created 2 roles. Later 4 melee 6 Ranged the disparity is now at its worst. So your staement about ARR is literally false. during a realm reborn there was less or equal melee to the ranged role. and ONLY in 4.0 when the roles split could you even then say there was more melee than ranged, but still from the perspective of the ORIGINAL game casters and ranged are all RANGED and there are more RANGED than there are melee.}
But you don't actually know that. Neither do I which is why i tried to compromise. You provided a few good reasonings, even if some of them had some statements that were too strong to be completely true. YOU do NOT know that melee wasn't designed to have two slots.

Tl;dr history has taught us this about the jobs
2.0 and 3.0 there are 3 melee and 3 ranged and both have equal representation (ranged magical and ranged physical aren't distinctions and don't matter)

Incorrect 3.0 had MCH upsetting what you just said. and since then ranged have always stayed a step ahead (in terms of class selection), and took an extra step over melee when dancer was released.

ALSO TLDR you're incorrect frequently. (TL;DR's kinda belong at the end of the post or they don't really sum up or do a good job. additionally in the context of a debate they don't actually help anyone, they just sound snarky)

4.0 is where the distinction happened, abilities like addle and refresh distinguished magical and physical ranged from each other as separate subsets. this is where the idea that ranged should do less than melee really took form but that only applied to ranged physical. the reason for this is because of 2 things
1. Ranged physical had more utility than any other role
2. ranged physical no longer had cast times that were designed to keep them inline with casters

(this is THE reason why ranged now do less as a design choice, it's because they have NO cast times, not simply because they can hit from a ranged spot. if what you are saying was true, then casters historically would also be weaker but casters has on average ALWAYS been the strongest and hardest hitting role. this changed when Red mage introduced hyper utility to the role and SMN's utility now had to hold wait in comparison to it and BLM but even then, all 3 on average hit harder than the other roles but magic damage isn't very strong in this game when compared to physical damage so this is likely the reason why they were on average very high up)

The above segment is probably the most accurate thing you've said thus far. But we still don't know it as the only reason for sure.

3.0, 4.0 and 5.0: Melee dps have historically had 2 slots because of the utility they brought, Disembowel gave dragoon a guaranteed slot for years until now and, Trick Attack is the most important raid buff in this games history. to this day jobs rotations are designed to accomodate it and lets not forget, NIN held a huge dominace do to it's enmity tools that no other job had in 3.0, and for a portion of 4.0.

I understand NIN in this, but DRG utility was effectively just DMG so uh..... didnt DRG during that whole time bring really good dmg? thus is an anecdotal example of melee slots being guaranteed by the......... damage?

5.0: all 3 subsets of dps have largely unique contributions thanks tot he role action system. furthermore, the party buff system means that SE wants at least 1 of each subset of dps represented in any given raid. thats it, the 4th slot is whatever your group wants to double down on, if SE wanted melee to fill that last slot. melee would have 2 party buffs for a total of 6 party buffs(Vit Dex Min Int and 2 Str) but thats not what it does, it's 1 per role. as long as you take at least 1 melee, the raid is performing as intended

Who is to say they may not one day divide melee into two types? semi ranged/hybrid and full melee? SAM MNK and DRG could be true melee. NIN, this new Mage Knight, and even my proposed Beastmaster Could all be considered Hybrid melee with just a little bit of tweaking. TCJ is effectively a 5-7 second cast time move. All of our ninjutsu are ranged and have an element of complexity similar to cast time. Perhaps in the future this hybrid melee role will lose positionals entirely but gain some other feature of complexity. NIN could have its throwing knives enhanced and altered. Shadowfang as a dot could be placed on a ranged combo instead of melee combo. The fact that it's been done once before actually only validates my points. It could be done again in the future as more melee is added. And then we WOULD have a set squad. 1 Melee, 1 Hybrid, 1 Ranged, 1 Caster.

Also since you said historically again.
Historically in 2.0 2 melee 2 ranged was the way to go for sure.
In 3.0 that was still true even tho the balance shifted slightly cause of the MCH add
In 4.0 that was STILL GENERALLY TRUE but different reasons and incentives were provided to make it occur. So.... maybe do you think the devs put those incentives in there to keep things stable.... like they designed? Oh look that's a different PERSPECTIVE on the events of 4.0 and the reasoning behind them.

In 5.0 were now at a full dis balance with 2 more class options available to the ranged group that has now been broken into two categories (became 2 catergories in 4.0.) Can you not see how how melee feel like they deserve the next class option? AND in point of fact (uh oh numbers coming) DRG at a whopping 58000+ parses and MNK at 39000+ are the most played classes. Thus melee need to be subdivided more than any other group of players right now. (both population and parse logs suggest this) I as a NINJA a HYBRID MAGIC MELEE that DUAL WIELDS should be the most worried about having aspects of my class eclipsed by a new DUAL WIELDING MAGE knight MELEE. I as NINJA the current LEAST played class coming in at only 16000 parses, and even less before 5.08. But I'm happy about this new idea. Why??? because it's creative and would only make the game more fulfilling and customizable.

feel free to check fflog statistics on older tiers as thats where i got the information on dps metrics.

I mean sure? except you.... didn't actually really use these metrics in your discussion much. you just kinda toss it in here as if validating your argument via appeal to reputable source.

My final point. If melee had grown at the same rate as ranged it would be clear that 2 spots belonged to melee. Currently that isn't the case. But why shouldn't it become the case? Why are some people here, you and katie included, So butthurt about the idea of a new melee class releasing? What exactly makes you guys so frustrated that you feel like attacking the work the OP did and his creativity? Cause the way you all are justifying cutting into his content is disgusting to me. Let the man, or woman, discuss the class and how he wants it to operate. and let other people express opinions about what they think could be done with it. WHO REALLY CARES if some of its style clips into another already existing job. People will still play that job.

Right now the game enables 1 of each with a free 4th spot. And Im happy with that for the moment given the current spread of classes. But I honestly believe 2 melee is the optimal design and I also believe that devs also have that in mind both because and despite the perspectives we both shared. I Do see the merits of having a continual free 4th slot. But melee as a role has seen the least growth of any role now. Thus I think the future of the game should move towards 4 roles, or just 2 melee and 2 ranged within the dps.