So...is the Ranged Role gone? Are we in a Reverse HW?

[ForteNightshade]

??? no. if people want higher dps theyll choose sam regardless of safety or whatever. most groups honestly don't care since melee have been dealing with uptime since arr. if the melee has more than 1 brain cell mechanics are nothing to worry about like that


also bard wasnt immediately best dps ever in TEA because of double dot. wasn't world first done with a dancer?

You do realize there are fights where specific strats are needed for those mechanics, yes? The standard strat for O12S was brutal on melee yet very few groups wanted to adjust because the uptime version was much riskier. With M/F, you simply lost damage with zero way to mitigate it. Eden's Gate largely avoided melee downtime but that's one tier. If Machinist did capable damage to Samurai there is zero doubt PF would begin ostracizing it. They did with Ninja and Dancer during 5.0. Even statics were opting out of Ninja because it was objectively inferior by much a wide margin. And ask any Samurai main how Stormblood felt. Dragoon and Ninja dominated the melee scene simply because they were better at nearly everything.

And no. The WF group ran Bard.

[Karshan]

You do realize there are fights where specific strats are needed for those mechanics, yes? The standard strat for O12S was brutal on melee yet very few groups wanted to adjust because the uptime version was much riskier. With M/F, you simply lost damage with zero way to mitigate it. Eden's Gate largely avoided melee downtime but that's one tier. If Machinist did capable damage to Samurai there is zero doubt PF would begin ostracizing it. They did with Ninja and Dancer during 5.0. Even statics were opting out of Ninja because it was objectively inferior by much a wide margin. And ask any Samurai main how Stormblood felt. Dragoon and Ninja dominated the melee scene simply because they were better at nearly everything.

And no. The WF group ran Bard.

You're having me think : maybe they do plan in Verse fights so heavy on mechanics and movement it will bring melee and casters down by 1000 rDPS (and so on par with range).

Hence the absence of change on ranged's DPS. Cause yeah they're in the gutter for the first tier (1000-1500 behind)

[Lastelli]

You're having me think : maybe they do plan in Verse fights so heavy on mechanics and movement it will bring melee and casters down by 1000 rDPS (and so on par with range).

Hence the absence of change on ranged's DPS. Cause yeah they're in the gutter for the first tier (1000-1500 behind)

And yet all speedkill parties include a ranged dps. Either they're wrong (unlikely), or people saying ranged suck are missing something.

[ForteNightshade]

You're having me think : maybe they do plan in Verse fights so heavy on mechanics and movement it will bring melee and casters down by 1000 rDPS (and so on par with range).

Hence the absence of change on ranged's DPS. Cause yeah they're in the gutter for the first tier (1000-1500 behind)

And as Lastelli noted, you could count on one hand the amount of speed kills running double Caster in every single fight combined. This idea the Range are on the cusp of being replaced is simply a myth. It hasn't happened this entire tier including an Ultimate fight where Black Mage, and especially Summoner, were absolute monsters. Of course, I do still think the Range are doing less than they should but they aren't being excluded nor will they come 5.2.

[Karshan]

And as Lastelli noted, you could count on one hand the amount of speed kills running double Caster in every single fight combined. This idea the Range are on the cusp of being replaced is simply a myth. It hasn't happened this entire tier including an Ultimate fight where Black Mage, and especially Summoner, were absolute monsters. Of course, I do still think the Range are doing less than they should but they aren't being excluded nor will they come 5.2.

I reply to you but also Lastelli : nowhere did I say they were being replaced. I just said the second part of your post : they are behind. Not that they are left behind. Nuance.
But they're objectively behind rDPS wise for no specific / valuable reason.

I do not fear them being replaced. Like you both said, a quick look at comps and they're still there. It's just that it bothers me to see discrepancies when there are no valid reason for them to exist in the first place. Maybe I'm a maniac but when you see something uneven, you even it. Maybe it's just me.

[Kabooa]

Pretty sure the majority of progression teams will still be bard, summoner, dragoon, and something else.

[Karshan]

I fully understand how uptime is important.

But you base all your reasoning on a "what if", I see fflogs : with all uptime impacts taken into account already (I insist, this is measured, in fight, with mechanics that force downplay on melees sometime), they are still far behind.

Again, I agree they shouldn't have the same pps output on paper, and for it to be leveled by fight design. But guess what : it is not leveled enough and even if a melee has 96% uptime and a ranged 100%, in current state the Sam will outdo a bard.

It's not a risk anymore when there are strategies build to take that into account and all people (melee, range, caster, helicopter...) manage 97%+ uptime

[Myon88]

Now that SE has taken steps to contain certain 3rd party tools, I imagine some groups will opt to mark their bard instead and make them stand in key spots for mechanics like TEA trines.

So hey, they may not be able to dps, but at least ranged will have a niche in 5.2 as being a movable waymark

[Cetonis]

The reason why ranged isn't getting excluded from speed kills is because there are few if any serious competitive speed kill groups. Ultimate more or less replaced them as "something to do", and the payoffs for group coordination just get smaller and smaller as they nerf party buffs and utility tools, make no-buff jobs like Samurai top tier, continue to not challenge healing at all, etc.

So it feels less like a collaborative group activity where effort expended leads to noticeable improvements, and more like just doing some PF farm hoping for unusually good luck. And it's not like there's ever been a reward outside of sense of accomplishment, and groups that still want to do it might just speed run TEA, but you'd want the 1% vitality there.

The odds of a group being so motivated to competitively speed run Savage that they'd kick their ranged or tell them to learn BLM are just really slim for a bunch of unrelated reasons, regardless of what the numbers are on paper.

[CKNovel]

Ranged Role is not gone, but SE still see them as "Casters without Cast".

It's actually funny that they share their views about the RDM underperforming. Its buff should raise it around the NIN/DRG.

As Yoshi-P mentionned that "It's not fun to play efficiently", it actually gives the idea that they think Ranged Uptime is much higher than Melees, that melees waits 5 seconds between mechanics. On top of that, the job balance is actually a huge mess, the SMN situation proves it, SE ignored the fact that the job was doing so much damages 2 weeks before TEA release and did not nerfed it at TEA release, making it a valuable asset. During my TEA prog, we were able to skip the last tank buster & hand of pain consistantly (most groups with a SMN do it today I think?) and I'm sure if we replaced our SMN with a BLM, we could not skip it. That was saving a lot of mana, cooldowns and time over the progress.

As I said months ago, ranged role is still balanced as a support DPS with... No support. If all ranged had a Dismantle-like ability and a tiny refresh they would have been an incredible asset. Support is not always rDPS, it can be survival for the team and it often feels good to reduce incoming damages when I play tank. Survivability could be a good way to buff the Ranged Role.

Right now it really feels depressing to play ranged on EX/Savage with Pugs. All the ranged role brings is 1% stats and nothing else compared to the other DPS. No matter how hard you push, you could just play Melee and bring much more while doing less and this is my biggest concern.

With my static, ranged still feels like bringing nothing but uptime to the Melees or bait mechanics but at least the DPS is not an issue.

More DPS, more utility beyond the rDPS. Ranged DPS definitely needs something that makes them a valuable asset, because 10% every 120s ain't one.