Concept for a Magic Melee DPS

[Vendalwind]

Yeah no. Melee have enough. And I refuse to accept your suggestion of a baked-in 2 melee standard comp

Fine refuse. But fair is fair. Two ranged two melee, as the game was originally designed. What if i refuse to accept your refusal? Kek. Melee have filled two slots in 8 mans since the beginning of the game. 4 melee (2 tankz 2 dps) 4 ranged (2 healers 2 ranged).
Original cast was 8 classes perfectly fitting that system. Raid design pretty much always operates best with no more than two melee. Ive zaid before i want hybrid beast master melee based on ranjeets playstyle to be the next job. But i like this mystic knight dual weilder too.

Also to the guy who said swords has already been overdone.... and listed off some classes. Calling a nins knives the same style of implement as drk's greatsword is like calling a lance the same as a bow and arrow.

Pld is sword and shield type.
Ninja is two knives
DRK is a greatsword or claymore.
Redmage is a rapier.
All of those weapons and the styles involved are distinctly different. That said if mild realism is the goal the mage knight should use a long sword and a shorstsword/parrying dagger as dual weilding two swords of the same length is exceedingly difficult and unweildy

Anyways like i said healer needs the next new job. After healer what role then would you give the next job to and why? Whats your rationale? Another tank? Cause another phys ranged or caster would just make their role slots even more congested. Or perhaps you just dont want anymore classes added? I really dont get why people dont like having more choices added to the game. As if that somehow diminishes their favorite picks value.

From a selfish standpoint i dont want another melee. Cause it means more competion for my raid spot as a NIN. But to me both evident in the games original design and current ratios melee is the next best role choice for a new class beyond healer.

Chemist/apothecary really should be the next release tho i hope.

[Katie_Kitty]

Fine refuse. But fair is fair. Two ranged two melee, as the game was originally designed. What if i refuse to accept your refusal? Kek. Melee have filled two slots in 8 mans since the beginning of the game. 4 melee (2 tankz 2 dps) 4 ranged (2 healers 2 ranged).
Original cast was 8 classes perfectly fitting that system. Raid design pretty much always operates best with no more than two melee. Ive zaid before i want hybrid beast master melee based on ranjeets playstyle to be the next job. But i like this mystic knight dual weilder too.

"The game started a certain way because it only had certain classes" and "encounters are designed to have no more than two melee" do not mean anything and it certainly doesn't mean melee automatically have a right to be privileged over all other jobs for all time. Going by your own logic, since encounters are designed such that ranged can easily take a melees spot for any and all mechanics, that means melee are not needed at all and a 4-ranged comp should be standard. Additionally, the only reason why people use two melee now is because the shitty job balance in this game made melee the most powerful classes. Take that away and suddenly your nonsense about how "the game was originally designed" just looks stupid.

[Rai_Takara]

"The game started a certain way because it only had certain classes" and "encounters are designed to have no more than two melee" do not mean anything and it certainly doesn't mean melee automatically have a right to be privileged over all other jobs for all time. Going by your own logic, since encounters are designed such that ranged can easily take a melees spot for any and all mechanics, that means melee are not needed at all and a 4-ranged comp should be standard. Additionally, the only reason why people use two melee now is because the shitty job balance in this game made melee the most powerful classes. Take that away and suddenly your nonsense about how "the game was originally designed" just looks stupid.

Uh, melee is inherently designed to do more dps than ranged on purpose because of uptime. If you can take 4 ranged as optimal the game balance is bad. Double melee, 1 ranged, 1 caster is ideal comp and should be encouraged for the sake of raid balance/design.

[Vendalwind]

"The game started a certain way because it only had certain classes" and "encounters are designed to have no more than two melee" do not mean anything and it certainly doesn't mean melee automatically have a right to be privileged over all other jobs for all time. Going by your own logic, since encounters are designed such that ranged can easily take a melees spot for any and all mechanics, that means melee are not needed at all and a 4-ranged comp should be standard. Additionally, the only reason why people use two melee now is because the shitty job balance in this game made melee the most powerful classes. Take that away and suddenly your nonsense about how "the game was originally designed" just looks stupid.

Your answer is devoid of logic and you didnt answer my questions at all about what role beyond healers you would like to see added.

[Wayfinder3]

Uh, melee is inherently designed to do more dps than ranged on purpose because of uptime. If you can take 4 ranged as optimal the game balance is bad. Double melee, 1 ranged, 1 caster is ideal comp and should be encouraged for the sake of raid balance/design.

Fine refuse. But fair is fair. Two ranged two melee, as the game was originally designed. What if i refuse to accept your refusal? Kek. Melee have filled two slots in 8 mans since the beginning of the game. 4 melee (2 tankz 2 dps) 4 ranged (2 healers 2 ranged).
Original cast was 8 classes perfectly fitting that system. Raid design pretty much always operates best with no more than two melee. Ive zaid before i want hybrid beast master melee based on ranjeets playstyle to be the next job. But i like this mystic knight dual weilder too.

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.

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.

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.

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. 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. 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. 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.

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

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)

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)

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.

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

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

[Vendalwind]

snip

Effectively these are just differing perspectives on the history of the game. What your saying makes a lot of sense. I dont deny that, but your reasons are all assumptions based on events, not facts (like the one concerning the changes to the duty finder)

So I get what your saying, and see that it is understandable, but i read into those same events in the history of the game with different reasoning and come to a different conclusion. At the end of the day its what the developers want and choose to design. But for me personally both raid design and health of the game has me desire an equal 4 ranged 4 melee party comp. Regardless of damage or utility or utility that just adds damage of each role type.

[Wayfinder3]

Effectively these are just differing perspectives on the history of the game. What your saying makes a lot of sense. I dont deny that, but your reasons are all assumptions based on events, not facts (like the one concerning the changes to the duty finder)

So I get what your saying, and see that it is understandable, but i read into those same events in the history of the game with different reasoning and come to a different conclusion. At the end of the day its what the developers want and choose to design. But for me personally both raid design and health of the game has me desire an equal 4 ranged 4 melee party comp. Regardless of damage or utility or utility that just adds damage of each role type.

I mean, these aren't perspectives, Dragoon and Ninja are the 2 melee you're referring to that have always taken up the 2 melee slots and thats clearly attributed to the utility they had. the first time this was challenged in patch 4.4, it was proven that there was no disadvantage or punishment for doing 1 melee 1 ranged and 2 casters. these aren't perspectives, this is literally how the game has always been. FFXIV has a meta and it's very easy to look back and see trends as to why things they way they were. you're claiming that this game was designed with a specific comp in mind, despite that not being endorsed officially until 3.3 when the raid finder was implemented. duty finder has never required a specific comp to this day beyond having 1/2 tanks, 2 healers, and 4/5 dps. you can go look at older patch notes for mid heavensward to see what im referring to regarding the raid finder and to this day, the duty finder doesn't require 2 melee.

on the subject of fight design, this also isn't true. the fights are designed to accommodate 4 jobs in melee range but i'd argue only 3 of those are required to be to melee jobs (2 tanks and 1 melee) that 4th puddle can go to a caster to help them keep up cast and reduce movement and this is what would happen if you brought 2 ranged 1 caster and 1 melee or even 2 casters, 1 ranged, and 1 melee. my point here is that accommodating something and determining what something is design specifically for aren't the same thing, you can't say that having 8 puddles, 4 of which are in melee range are designed that way because the devs WANT you to have 2 melee, you can say that they are designed that way INCASE you brought 2 melee. You can do puddles in E2s without a melee, just put a ranged in a melee spot. the reason 4 spots are in melee range is so groups that wanted to take a 2nd melee wouldn't be completely boned by cucking their tanks.

Even if i were to meet you half way and say that this is my own reasoning. you also can't dismiss katies position by using your own perspective as fact, but then tell me my different perspective is just my interpretation. either my interpretation is the right one and most expert players will reach the same conclusion as i have, or both of our perspectives are logical reasoning by which you can't use either to refute katie. you're going to need something more concrete than your personal feelings on what the health of the game should be when we're talking about the growth of something that has already happened and calming it as fact.

[Vendalwind]

Man here I was ready to let this one go. but oh well time to argue.

I mean, these aren't perspectives,

Yes. Yes they are, and by stating thats how i viewed Katie's perspectives I thought it was pretty clear I meant for mine to viewed the same way. IN FACT i said it:

Effectively these are just differing perspectives on the history of the game.

Dragoon and Ninja are the 2 melee you're referring to that have always taken up the 2 melee slots and thats clearly attributed to the utility they had.

False on two counts. MONK didn't begin with utility, and actually I'm referring to the ORIGINAL CAST. which btw didn't have NIN. NIN wasn't implemented till 2.4

the first time this was challenged in patch 4.4, it was proven that there was no disadvantage or punishment for doing 1 melee 1 ranged and 2 casters. these aren't perspectives, this is literally how the game has always been. FFXIV has a meta and it's very easy to look back and see trends as to why things they way they were. you're claiming that this game was designed with a specific comp in mind, despite that not being endorsed officially until 3.3 when the raid finder was implemented. duty finder has never required a specific comp to this day beyond having 1/2 tanks, 2 healers, and 4/5 dps. you can go look at older patch notes for mid heavensward to see what im referring to regarding the raid finder and to this day, the duty finder doesn't require 2 melee.

Again wrong on a few counts. First It absolutely was challenged pre 4.4 because meta comps aren't what im talking about. Meta is one thing, Im talking about fight design, and general party comp. Not cherry picking the single perfect setup. The game has had, and still has very glaring balance flaws. That doesn't mean it was "designed" with the meta comp in mind. In fact mentioning previous meta comps is literally entirely in consequential to the subject at hand.

And of COURSE the duty finders weren't locked to two melees. cause that way more options and freedom is enabled and people can play around with other comps, makes the game more fun and more customizable and free, but again the state of the party finders and their imposed limitations has no correlation to the games intended raid design and party comp design. (note it was also made that way to aid wait times)

on the subject of fight design, this also isn't true. the fights are designed to accommodate 4 jobs in melee range but i'd argue only 3 of those are required to be to melee jobs (2 tanks and 1 melee) that 4th puddle can go to a caster to help them keep up cast and reduce movement and this is what would happen if you brought 2 ranged 1 caster and 1 melee or even 2 casters, 1 ranged, and 1 melee. my point here is that accommodating something and determining what something is design specifically for aren't the same thing, you can't say that having 8 puddles, 4 of which are in melee range are designed that way because the devs WANT you to have 2 melee, you can say that they are designed that way INCASE you brought 2 melee. You can do puddles in E2s without a melee, just put a ranged in a melee spot. the reason 4 spots are in melee range is so groups that wanted to take a 2nd melee wouldn't be completely boned by cucking their tanks.

You literally just proved my point but just offered a differing perspective. Here let me go through the exact same order of analysis you did but conclude different things at each step with a different couple pieces of anecdotal evidence:

The fights are designed to accommodate 4 jobs in melee range so I'd argue the fights are designed with 4 melee specifically in mind. However of those 2 melee spots other classes could be used because they can stand wherever. If it was designed SPECIFICALLY so that two melee could be brought then it was literally designed FOR TWO MELEE, regardless of whether you think the Dev's wanted 2 melee as the standard comp. In titan the boss attack zone and area are specifically built so that even if half the stage is gone melee can still fight. That is melee design in mind during the party splits N/S. During Leviathan the party is split in two, and each side accommodates one melee and needs one ranged for black smokers. But using your logic since 4 melee can technically do black smokers I guess that part of the fight wasn't designed with two ranged specifically in mind? I would argue that it was designed ABSOLUTELY for 2 ranged and two melee. And on your puddles from E2 again using your logic I guess the fights design is such that no melee are needed at all? cause your right. Technically every single mechanic can be done even with 4 melee, and even easier with 4 ranged, but the fights are absolutely made with 2 melee slots in mind. This is very true of old raid tiers as well.

It's not "INCASE" you brought 2 melee. its designed that way FOR 2 melee. See how thats a perspective? I very seldom argue with objective fact, because very few things outside of rough quantitative analysis are fact. I NEVER declared my arguments as fact, and the only things that you should read that way are the numbers moments such as the ratios. Historical analysis is ALWAYS a perspective. ALWAYS.

Even if i were to meet you half way and say that this is my own reasoning. you also can't dismiss katies position by using your own perspective as fact,

I literally did not do what you say i did above.

but then tell me my different perspective is just my interpretation.

SIGH I literally said, and i'll quote the exact same moment again

Effectively these are just differing perspectives on the history of the game.

THESE. I SAID THESE. I MEANT MINE TOO. you are the one trying to spit out things as "fact" and shut down other opinions. this bigheaded close minded belligerence prevents growth and any chance of compromise being met. If you can't relax and compromise there is no point in even discussing things with you. The general pattern of forum arguing where people ignore opponents true points and ONLY attack small discrepancies or weakness is unhealthy discourse. Instead people like to continue to bring up piles of information and just ignore the othersides information. Its bad.

You had good points. I SAID that, but your points are not the only conclusions that can be reached from the evidence you provided. I didn't combat them at the time, because to me it didn't matter, I was sufficiently satisfied with my understanding that your perspective is backed up too. But since you continue to try to falsely trash my arguments I now continue with yours:

either my interpretation is the right one and most expert players will reach the same conclusion as i have, or both of our perspectives are logical reasoning by which you can't use either to refute katie.

Or my original interpretation is right? HMMM? Because mine most certainly was logical reasoning too.
Logic as used in english is not so clean as it is in computer science, because the logic often tries to force connectives of contextuals.
This is nto a black and white issue, but you are trying to assign it binary conclusive results.
It's also possible both of our interpretations are right at different moments and some designers leaned one way, and other leaned the other.

you're going to need something more concrete than your personal feelings on what the health of the game should be when we're talking about the growth of something that has already happened and calming it as fact.

Again.... I didn't claim it as fact.
Also everything you have said has been BASED PRIMARILY ON YOUR PERSONAL FEELINGS. for moments when we didn't base arguments on feelings please refer to the ratios i provided and the link to logs you provided. the rest was anecdotal events or moments analyzed with feelings on the subject and event in question.

[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.

[Rai_Takara]

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

Have you accounted for raid DPS via buffs? AST, for example, has at least 1000 DPS added to the party via buffs not shown on the metrics because it was not tracked back then. On top of that, utility like you mentioned with shadewalker on NIN for example doesn't show on metrics, but it was too good.

Aside from that, there are only 2 fights that taking 1 melee over two was beneficial. O9S and to a lesser extent Ultima Weapon Ultimate (though none of the top 10 kills by time in SB had 1 melee). The rest have run double melee and sometimes even triple melee for the most optimal damage composition. I think that's the right direction. Make ranged player mechanics to justify their lower damage input but always put melees ahead because uptime is hardest for them, especially with positionals. Black mage shouldn't be as high as it is anyway. It's pretty mobile now compared to before.