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

[Eliadil]

Now, I'm not saying that MCH NEEDS to do SAM levels of damage. To be fair, the difference between MCH and MNK/SAM should be 300-400 at most so as MCH isn't encroaching on Melee DPS' weakness to mechanics. 500 if you want to push it just because of new Tactician.

even a 500rdps difference between MCH and SAM would just kill SAM, as the class is way, way, way more difficult to pull off, and peoples would just ditch sam because a machinist would be a much safer bet on every level, and would remove the need to adapt to uptime strat (seriously, have you seen the uptime strat for sam on just E4S ? You gotta dash on Titan's cart at the moment he pushes everybody, and the fight is full of stupid stuff like this just to be a tiny bit ahead of BLM).

Ranged cannot be that far ahead because it would just render every melee useless or would just mean you're hurting your team by having one. Just look TEA as an example, when peoples saw that most of the fight had double target, the first thing that became known was "you're throwing the run if you don't have a bard in your team. You need the double dot".
Just with this fight alone, bard went from bottom rdps class (so one that by following your logic nobody would want) to one of the most wanted class for the current high end content. And with the next Ifrit/Garuda fight you can bet that it will be exactly the same.

Iirc MCH had a vuln up debuff before, maybe finding a way to give it back would be better than just "increasing its dps to top-melee level". At least it doesn't make melees useless.

[SpeckledBurd]

Iirc MCH had a vuln up debuff before, maybe finding a way to give it back would be better than just "increasing its dps to top-melee level". At least it doesn't make melees useless.

We live in a world where people are much more cognizant of how much rDPS a job is doing is the thing. The primary metric people are using is the raid contribution of each job instead of just the person damage. So if Machinist was given that buff and Bard and Dancer had their support buffed back up to that level, if they came within swinging distance of the melee we might still see double ranged comps rearing their heads again.

[HyoMinPark]

Just look TEA as an example, when peoples saw that most of the fight had double target, the first thing that became known was "you're throwing the run if you don't have a bard in your team. You need the double dot".
Just with this fight alone, bard went from bottom rdps class (so one that by following your logic nobody would want) to one of the most wanted class for the current high end content. And with the next Ifrit/Garuda fight you can bet that it will be exactly the same.

The TEA example is actually not quite accurate. While BRD is very strong in Living Liquid and Brute Justice/Cruise Chaser, its potency and overall contribution drops after those two phases. Enough that it isn’t even the best physical ranged choice when one considers the entire fight. DNC is actually the highest performing of the three, with BRD being second, and MCH being last. You wouldn’t throw a TEA run simply because you don’t have a BRD in your group.

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)

I doubt that. It’s more likely that they stubbornly don’t see the physical ranged as an issue in terms of potency even though all three could stand to have a slight buff. The developers have long made it known that they don’t care about damage potential and potency to the extent the playerbase does.

They also just buffed all three in 5.1. I wasn’t expecting them to buff them again in 5.2. It’s likely that they want to see how the role fairs in Eden’s Verse before considering adjustments. I’m sort of on the fence about it, because, on one hand, I can see where the role needs some TLC; on the other, I don’t want panic buffs to happen, and for us to see the role become broken (hello, late HW).