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

[Lastelli]

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.

My party doesn't have a SMN and we easily skip that last tankbuster.

Anyway, the fact that all parties still have one ranged after so long means that having one is optimal. I really don't see what the problem is. If they buffed ranged dps again they would just tune endgame content around the new potential dps, making the change neutral and, therefore, pointless. Are people really just sad to be at the bottom of the dps chart even if they're wanted in pretty much any party?

[Cetonis]

Anyway, the fact that all parties still have one ranged after so long means that having one is optimal.

As per my prior comment few groups care are doing serious speedruns of Savage (the top Levi kill is 5.0 ffs) so looking at those charts doesn't necessarily tell you anything.

At the most charitable, you could say that having a Dancer is optimal by a mostly-slim margin at the top end with a group that's maximally stacking buffs. That's DNC-specific though. The other two ranged are getting blown out by DNC in speedkill contexts, then DNC falls back closer to them in less-ambitious groups.

I don't think SE can or should do much of anything, given the designs, about DNC outpacing the other ranged at the top top end. But they could afford to close the gap a little, especially as it relates to working around downtime which DNC is extra strong at.

As for the ranged being behind overall, obviously you'd rather have your game be more balanced instead of less balanced, so clear gaps like this should get some work. I don't think ranged should equal other roles, or else you'd hard lock double ranged (because why not take the mobility if everything else is equal). But they can be closer than they are.

[Lastelli]

As per my prior comment few groups care are doing serious speedruns of Savage (the top Levi kill is 5.0 ffs) so looking at those charts doesn't necessarily tell you anything.

That doesn't really matter, though. If having a ranged dps was a strictly inferior choice, by now we'd at the very least see a lot of no-ranged parties on fflogs. If virtually all parties do include a ranged, it's because people see value in them.

I'd go even further and say that if substituting the ranged with another caster or another melee was indifferent, then we'd see some parties with no ranged dps. But again, that's not the case.

Also, speedrunners did try different party comps before 5.2. Trust me, I checked fflogs rankings frequently back then. And even then, before the ranged were buffed, most comps included a DNC.
Someone did try triple melee comps in eden 2 and 3 and got good results...but at the end comps including a DNC were still on top by a few seconds (before the buff). The role buff is probably more powerful then people realize.

I do agree, however, that DNC is clearly superior to the other 2 ranged...to the point where it's stupidly close to melee dps in TEA, but that has more to do with how beneficial downtime is to DNC, given how perfectly everything lines up with quad step and devilment. They can't do anything to DNC to fix this...but what they can do is give the other 2 ranged some tools to capitalize on downtime. I thought they learned their lesson with ultimate coil and uwu (SMN was and still is op for a similar reason)...but I was probably wrong.

A bit hasty in your reading, friend:



Ranged lacks the utility they used to have.

Also, I'll point some flaws in your reasoning:
1) SE don't tune around the endgame, it was proved again and again and is the reason why ranged dps are lower.
2) If any change would be neutral, no one would mind if Casters are put behind and melee/ranged would deal more dps, right? Oh, that already happened...
3) Your point of view is limited to endgame and I assume Savage and Ultimate. There's dungeons and EX, despite how easy it is, it's much better if you can speed it up. EX is the same, it's often tried by casuals who don't mitigate, the more mitigation/utility around survival your job has, the better. Felt that when I would play tank in Hades EX. On top of that, there's also Relic based content that will come with 5.25
4) During 5.0 my comp was MNK/RDM/MCH/DNC, we had all the 1% from each role but due to our comp we had quite the handicap. But going Melee/2 Casters/1 Ranged brings no handicap despite the "mobility" they should be lacking. If a comp goes 2 ranged, they should be allowed to play 2 ranged without feeling a huge gap in DPS. The fact that Troubadour/Samba/Tactician don't stack also brings a new handicap.

As for the "sad" part, remember that the ranged spot only exist for the 1% stats. That's the sad part.

Don't think in "DPS" only, ranged jobs were just not stripped of their DPS, they also lost valuable utility. Overall, the ranged job lost so much that they bring little for the group and that's why there are so many complaint around the ranged role.

I don't care that ranged dps lost some utility. I'm analyzing the current situation, and the current data tells us that ranged dps are not excluded from any kind of content. Being that the case, it's very likely that having one is optimal. If having one is optimal, there's no point arguing about their dps. Were they buffed by X, the devs would just increase the dps requirement for content by X = no difference at all.

Also, their AoE damage is very good, making them a perfectly viable solution for dungeons...assuming anyone cares about completing their dungeon 2 minutes earlier and dropping a job for it. If that was the case, everyone would be running BLM and WHM.

To conclude, my opinion is that double ranged comp should be actively discouraged. The current balance assures that you don't want more than one ranged in your group. That's perfect to me. And while Troubadour/Samba/Tactician do not stack, they're still the strongest defensive cd available to a dps and you can use them twice as much with a double ranged comp.

[CKNovel]

My party doesn't have a SMN and we easily skip that last tankbuster.

Anyway, the fact that all parties still have one ranged after so long means that having one is optimal. I really don't see what the problem is. If they buffed ranged dps again they would just tune endgame content around the new potential dps, making the change neutral and, therefore, pointless. Are people really just sad to be at the bottom of the dps chart even if they're wanted in pretty much any party?

A bit hasty in your reading, friend:

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.

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.

Ranged lacks the utility they used to have.

Also, I'll point some flaws in your reasoning:
1) SE don't tune around the endgame, it was proved again and again and is the reason why ranged dps are lower.
2) If any change would be neutral, no one would mind if Casters are put behind and melee/ranged would deal more dps, right? Oh, that already happened...
3) Your point of view is limited to endgame and I assume Savage and Ultimate. There's dungeons and EX, despite how easy it is, it's much better if you can speed it up. EX is the same, it's often tried by casuals who don't mitigate, the more mitigation/utility around survival your job has, the better. Felt that when I would play tank in Hades EX. On top of that, there's also Relic based content that will come with 5.25
4) During 5.0 my comp was MNK/RDM/MCH/DNC, we had all the 1% from each role but due to our comp we had quite the handicap. But going Melee/2 Casters/1 Ranged brings no handicap despite the "mobility" they should be lacking. If a comp goes 2 ranged, they should be allowed to play 2 ranged without feeling a huge gap in DPS. The fact that Troubadour/Samba/Tactician don't stack also brings a new handicap.

As for the "sad" part, remember that the ranged spot only exist for the 1% stats. That's the sad part.

Don't think in "DPS" only, ranged jobs were just not stripped of their DPS, they also lost valuable utility. Overall, the ranged job lost so much that they bring little for the group and that's why there are so many complaint around the ranged role.

[Cetonis]

I'd cite the fastest Levi clear being 5.0 as evidence that there's little to no serious competitive speed running going on. Also the number two Eden time has a Bard when it would very obviously be better if you just slotted in a Dancer. Yet they didn't bother. Heck, there are barely any ASTs up there still.

This isn't a sign of numbers being wrong or misleading, it just means the speed running competitively is all but dead. Some groups will try to do their best with what they've got, but they aren't so hardcore as to kick their ranged or make them / wait for them to learn BLM. Or even, in some cases, make them learn Dancer. Nobody cares enough to do that.

It just doesn't make sense to lead with an assumption that lots of groups are doing their absolute best to get the top possible times at any cost. There's no evidence to back that up, a couple groups trying some comps out late in 5.0 does not a large-sample scientific experiment make.

[Lastelli]

I'd cite the fastest Levi clear being 5.0 as evidence that there's little to no serious competitive speed running going on. Also the number two Eden time has a Bard when it would very obviously be better if you just slotted in a Dancer. Yet they didn't bother. Heck, there are barely any ASTs up there still.

This isn't a sign of numbers being wrong or misleading, it just means the speed running competitively is all but dead. Some groups will try to do their best with what they've got, but they aren't so hardcore as to kick their ranged or make them / wait for them to learn BLM. Or even, in some cases, make them learn Dancer. Nobody cares enough to do that.

It just doesn't make sense to lead with an assumption that lots of groups are doing their absolute best to get the top possible times at any cost. There's no evidence to back that up, a couple groups trying some comps out late in 5.0 does not a large-sample scientific experiment make.

True, but at the very least I'm backing my reasoning with the observation of player behavior.

Meanwhile, how do you prove that people would be better off swapping their ranged for a caster or a melee, exactly?

[Cetonis]

True, but at the very least I'm backing my reasoning with the observation of player behavior.

Meanwhile, how do you prove that people would be better off swapping their ranged for a caster or a melee, exactly?

I'm not attempting to prove that. Just saying that it's oversimplifying things at best to just point at the speed rankings charts given all the red flags there.

I don't think there's any mystery to the role bonus - it's clearly a 0.95% or so loss of damage across the board, it's not all that complicated. So you can figure out very directly that bringing a DNC is a good idea if chasing E1S and E3S speed kills.

With E2S and E4S that appears at first blush to not be the case. However, it's hard to quantify the value of including a 2m burst job into a buff stacking scenario, because the DNC itself is going to add to the rDPS production of other jobs in a way that fflogs has no capacity to measure.


My point is that this is very DNC-specific, and that presents a conundrum. If you can't bring a DNC, it seems very unlikely that bringing a BRD or MCH will be better than finding a high-skilled SMN/BLM. But, a situation where BRD=MCH=DNC at the top end of speeds would be bad, due to how much faster relatively DNC is going to fall off with less-perfected groups.

But DNC isn't optimal for a dummy fight (E2S) by very much, if it is at all, so there's not really any space there to i.e. bring BRD/MCH closer and just-into viability range without getting to the level of DNC.

What there *is* room to do is to bring DNC up a little more, to where it rivals other jobs in an optimized group, so that you can raise BRD/MCH up but still clearly behind DNC (blocking off the double ranged option), which will get closer as group quality falls.

[Myon88]

Looking past the actual dps difference between the ranged and non-ranged, I think it's important to examine the reason why it exists in the first place.

If you buy the argument that maintaining melee and casting uptime is difficult, then it looks like the reason the melees and blm are overtuned is to compensate for the fact that most people will not play them perfectly. Conversely, you can think of it as that on these jobs you are rewarded for playing well. The dps tax that these jobs suffer is expressed naturally through gameplay (being unable to hit the boss), and you can erase it with enough skill.

So the question is, why is there no equivalent for the ranged jobs? In the current state of the game, you are not rewarded for being a great ranged player in a similar manner. The dps tax that ranged jobs pay is a glass ceiling that's hard coded into the amount of damage you do.

The only explanations for this are,

• The ranged jobs are just designed badly with no way to express your skill (meh)
• Ranged jobs are intended to be the entry level 'beginner' jobs. They're designed to punish you the least for mistakes in exchange for lower potential (oof)

I don't know about you but neither of these sound like good news for the prospects of the role. Maybe they're designed like this on purpose to cater to the demographic that enjoys these jobs casually, in which case the expert players that enjoy ranged are just out of luck.

If it were up to me, they'd need to give the job back a strong niche and source of difficulty that would justify returning their lost dps to them. For example, a hellishly difficult and nuanced rotation that's actually possible to flub even if not moving. Or go even harder on the support aspect with enough support responsibilities to actually tax your multitasking ability. Some of this was the case back in Heavensward, but given how they've spent the last 2 expansions trying to move away from that, I don't think the role is going back in that direction anytime soon.

[Adventica6]

The more people that cry for buffs the happier I will be, so keep it coming. You want us to do sam/blm levels of damage fine by me.

I play what I enjoy, not what does the biggest damage (casting is boring as hell).

[Aiscence]

Tbf, I dont know why people wants to force the "two melees", if there is all 3 dps roles, I dont know why bringing a second ranged should penalize a team that much, compared to bringing another melee or caster.

Machinist is easy to pick up but not as easy to fully optimize and keep that high apm without any drift, on top of being highly depending of raid buffs to do his damage, which BLM and SAM dont depend on as much. So mch should have less dps than a job having rezzes and raid buffs just because we can "move" ? I felt way more comfy playing SMN than I did playing playing MCH because of the mobility and the lack of intensity in its gameplay.

Lots of other jobs could just do the ranged movement, even tho they'll lose 1 or 2 GCD and still outdps the ranged contribution in any content.

i'll even more double down on the fact MCH should be on a BLM or SAM lvl, if a team have all 3 roles already and they want a greedy job? why isnt mch a valid choice? just because they can move? As I said in multiple other threads, ranged, because of the mobility are doing -more- mechanics than others, to let them have more dps and we are punished for it?? In which world is that fair? Because we are doing well our job, we are getting punished? Imagine IRL you did more studies, leading to you doing more stuff than others but being paid less because you have an easier time doing it ?

And to answer other questions, double ranged was taken because casters were really bad, which isnt the case here (outside of rdm being a bit low), even if the ranged were buffed (accordingly to how they should be, not overbuffed), people would actually have the choice to play -what they enjoy- and not feel like having only one ranged is mandatory or dps will become an issue. Thus, when double ranged were taken, it was because the other jobs were trash garbage to play and felt horrible on top of having bad dps. if a job has an horrible gameplay but have good dps, it'll be played anyway.