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

[Aiscence]

That all said, I do believe the Range should be buffed so bringing two of them isn't such a massive loss. However, putting Machinist at Samurai levels makes it better than Samurai is every facet. It offers better utility, free mobility and now equal damage. Why would you ever consider Samurai? In fact, this pretty much makes Dragoon and Ninja the only melee groups would even look at because of their utility. Monk doesn't offer enough and Samurai is, as I said, a worse Machinist in this hypothetical.

For me a mch should be under a sam, dont get me wrong, but it shouldnt be under everything else either. Like if your team had a DRG, a BRD and a SMN (random pick): you have all 3 roles, thus last pick should be up to your heart content, and yet, if you bring a mch or a dancer, you will handicap your team more than bringing any other job in the game even tho you already have a baiter. That's where my point is, if you already have all role bonuses, if you take any jobs instead of the mch, you will have buffs, rezzes, and 600 to 1k5 dps more dps easily. In SB, brd was the most OP dps in the game technically, even tho their pdps wasnt the highest (even tho respectable) it was bringing so much no one ever wanted a mch, and it was competing against caster for the last slot, that's something I dont want to happen here, it just dont feel right that as long as you have all 3 roles, bringing a second ranged just make you lose that much.

[ForteNightshade]

Because of how his burst works, you try to align turrets and WF to align on raid buffs, with awkward gauge management on top of your two "strong" gcds, but with every drift you lose quite a big part of damage because you are not aligned anymore without hope of getting back into it. SAM and BLM are doing good damage on their own, buffs are giving them "more", but arent doubling their dps (compared to the average they have, outside of them) for the duration of their burst, which lead to them being a huge component of mch's dps, even though less than in SB. just compare a death of all 3, BLM can just get back into their rotation, sam the same, but MCH's dps will just plummit hard because of that (on top of being ultra punitive because of the loss of ressources, like smn).

Buffs are not doubling Machinist's damage; they aren't coming close to that. If so, you'd see a massive difference in their output based on comp. Ninja and Dragoon would all but be required to bring a Machinist. That has never been the case so far this expansion. Furthermore, if you miss a Xenoglossy in raid buffs, you're going to see a much higher damage loss. Samurai also can have drift issues hence why they have to eat a certain number of Sens depending on their SkS.

Stormblood was another thing, job had different tools, some had less mobility, brd was clearly too strong (which i will come back to it later), etc. O12s FO was badly designed too, but you seem to forget how, during 4.4, mch was so bad some were apologizing and thanking their group for letting them do the prog as one, a sam actually bringing more in a meta comp than them. And during SB, there were double range, triple melees, etc used to speedrun. About panto, that strat was actually a -cheese- strat, the ranged or caster were supposed to do it. And speaking of ultimate, I cleared all three of them: Ucob liquid fire bait could be done by a healer or a caster, they were the one taking the range spot if they had to do the neurolink anyway, melee had to leave the melee too for those anyway. UwU eruptions were anyway done with ranged + caster or healers. TEA had literally nothing to bait outside of a tornado and one super jump which basically bring the boss to you, so even a melee could technically do it and only barely lose 2 GCDs at max.

First and foremost, the highlighted portion is flat out wrong. Not only was Machinist's overall damage good, it offered Hypercharge. Which was better than anything every other DPS offered except Dragoon, Ninja and Bard. The only reason it was dropped into obscurity is due to ping issues—made worse by the gear that tier having SkS. Summoner also being incredibly strong made it a lock for the fourth slot in terms of speed meta (unless triple melee worked). For parse runs though, you wanted Machinist, Red Mage or Summoner in that order. The other slots were obviously the big three. Samurai was nearly worthless in Stormblood; at times doing less damage than even Monk despite having no utility. Given how FFlogs worked back then, no serious group brought Samurai over Machinist. Most wouldn't even bring Samurai, period. M/F being the sole exception.

Healers only took the spot for Range if you were running Red Mage. Even then, Red Mage could usually do the first without too much issue. TEA is significantly easier to manage with triple range. You can basically make your melee do absolutely nothing instead of having more people move around. Regardless, my initial point is all these mechanics couldn't be done by melee without a massive damage loss.

For me a mch should be under a sam, dont get me wrong, but it shouldnt be under everything else either. Like if your team had a DRG, a BRD and a SMN (random pick): you have all 3 roles, thus last pick should be up to your heart content, and yet, if you bring a mch or a dancer, you will handicap your team more than bringing any other job in the game even tho you already have a baiter. That's where my point is, if you already have all role bonuses, if you take any jobs instead of the mch, you will have buffs, rezzes, and 600 to 1k5 dps more dps easily. In SB, brd was the most OP dps in the game technically, even tho their pdps wasnt the highest (even tho respectable) it was bringing so much no one ever wanted a mch, and it was competing against caster for the last slot, that's something I dont want to happen here, it just dont feel right that as long as you have all 3 roles, bringing a second ranged just make you lose that much.

We ultimately agree in that regard, though likely not on the amount. Looking at E2S since it's more or less a dummy fight, you could bring Machinist closer to Dragoon. Bard and Dancer could roughly be where Red Mage is now, or maybe a little closer to Ninja. This still accounts for their superior utility (Tactician and friends is much better than Feint) and free mobility without killing the melee in an uptime heavy fight. Keep in mind, I'm assuming Summoner will come down enough to be below Monk in this example.