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

[Aiscence]

Tbh I think option 2 would be way easier and interesting to implement. You'd just need a couple of mechanics per fight with forced downtime for the melee and a lot of movement. Option 3 would require to rework ranged dps rotations, because currently there's literally nothing in their rotation to differentiate between skilled and mediocre players (this is particularly true for MCH).

I mean, compared to melee having one opener, a fixed rotation, etc. you should know ranged are harder to optimize? You probably play them by habit and dont realize it anymore. if you just look at mch, there's 5 different opener depending of your team comp, knowing the length of your turret to be sure of optimize its duration under buffs (ninja/vs no ninja, not using the easy "just do it at 80"), always have to check your drill/AA duration to know if you can land an HC, big braining to keep 50 to WF if you arent using the easy BStab strat just to gain one more HC use on a fight. it's a whole lot more optimisation that in the end, doesnt reward a lot for the amount of things you actually have to think about, compared to other jobs.

in the end, that's a whole lot more than most jobs ever have to care about, you can ask most melee main and they'll be like "lol melee actually being hard", it's just a matter of being used to the job so no, ranged arent as easy as what people think it is to optimize them and you probably had to be more wary of things as a dancer on TEA that you would ever be as a melee.

[Kabooa]

I mean, compared to melee having one opener, a fixed rotation, etc. you should know ranged are harder to optimize?

Every job has its challenges.

[Lastelli]

I mean, compared to melee having one opener, a fixed rotation, etc. you should know ranged are harder to optimize?

You talk as if it wasn't the same for ranged dps. MCH in particular has a pretty fixed rotation with some slight possible deviations because their resources can be used flexibly. But this flexibility makes the job easier and more convenient, not harder. You can even let drill and anchor drift as long as you don't miss uses and nothing changes in terms of potency per second. FFlogs data also tell us that compared to other jobs, the difference between the median dps and higher percentiles is much lower for MCH. With a few reasonable assumptions, this tells us that the role of optimization is smaller (=good play is less rewarded).

How would that be easier than simply increasing the Range's damage? Take what they have now and throw 500-800 more rDPS on them. Bam, you're pretty much done. There is nothing interesting about mechanics that force downtime for melee or tanks. Lemme tell you, Hello, World 2 without uptime strats was not fun. I got to sit on a marker and do absolutely nothing—to the point I was legit happy whenever we wiped on those pulls.

If you just buff potencies, you raise dps across the board and you're not giving anything to reward good play. You're rewarding mediocre players as well, which defeats the whole purpose.

[Aiscence]

You talk as if it wasn't the same for ranged dps. MCH in particular has a pretty fixed rotation with some slight possible deviations because their resources can be used flexibly. But this flexibility makes the job easier and more convenient, not harder. You can even let drill and anchor drift as long as you don't miss uses and nothing changes in terms of potency per second. FFlogs data also tell us that compared to other jobs, the difference between the median dps and higher percentiles is much lower for MCH. With a few reasonable assumptions, this tells us that the role of optimization is smaller (=good play is less rewarded).

If you let your drill and AA drift, it leads to them not being synched anymore during raidbuffs, which means a loss in optimisation. You get shorter windows to be able to HC because AA or drill are not where they should or making them be the last GCD of your WF, which doesnt work most of the time on our servers.

And it is smaller, but it's still super important if you want to hit those high percentile, and you cant allow any little mistake, be able to know when to summon your first turret to be able to summon a 100 one during the maximum raidbuff time but still have the last hit touch at its peak, etc. Like it's so bullshit for the so little gain I didnt even bother this tier to try to optimize (I even let a friend play mch for TEA, even tho i never wanted to swap from mch in the past).

Even worse when you were seeing a 95% mch during 5.0 having less dps than a high grey monk

[ForteNightshade]

If you just buff potencies, you raise dps across the board and you're not giving anything to reward good play. You're rewarding mediocre players as well, which defeats the whole purpose.

You're also punishing melee players which has the adverse effect of making the role less desirable as a whole. If the mechanics were bad enough to see a noticeable decline in damage or simply were just irritating, you'd begin seeing them locked out. So now it's double Casters dominating and we're back to where we started.

Buffing the Range is simply balancing the jobs across the board. You aren't rewarding mediocre players but simply bringing three jobs up so they do closer damage to the remaining seven.