Ranged DPS, choose a weakness that would justify a buff

[Cetonis]

It would unequivocally be bad for double ranged to have the same damage output as other comps. That's a non-starter, because then double ranged would be optimal since why would you not just take the mobility when there's no downside. So ranged should be behind by some noticeable amount, even if the current gap is perhaps a bit larger than it really needs to be.

In that light, for the ranged overall, while a small buff (1-2%) would be relatively harmless, Dancer in particular is fine (re: just barely good enough to warrant having a ranged) once optimized. Arguably, BLM and SMN are too strong, moreso than the ranged are too weak, if anything. Ideally-ideally DNC would be more than just-barely good enough, but it's not technically a problem right now. Good enough is good enough.


The MCH-DNC balance appears to be fairly healthy as well, with MCH plainly outpacing DNC in sloppy groups. It's really just BRD that's in a bad spot with no real strong suit outside of certain add scenarios. In the spirit of the thread -


Weakness: Inflexible support (constant song buffs, hard 3m cooldown buff) is difficult to derive optimization value out of. Even though it's numerically a fat number, it lacks the scaling that you see in other jobs with strong damage support. This is a big reason for the worst-of-both-worlds spot that Bard is in.

Fix: In my dream world I'd scrap its current damage-support profile and replace it with something flexible, such that it derives value from optimization, because in theory it'd be easier to balance if it was more like other jobs in that sense.

Namely, instead of current BV and current song effects, I'd make BV a 2-charge, 80s cooldown that gives the party (10% crit / 5% damage / 20% DH) depending on the active song. This would actually be a nerf overall on paper, but in practice an optimizing group may be able to derive more value out of it than Bard's current setup. And it's a better design anyway (Bard would feel more support-y if the player had to think about their support skills ever, and is also severely deprived of meaningful decisions atm).


Weakness: Bard is still punished by downtime to an outsized degree relative to MCH/DNC. Part of this is due to the above, but they're also a more sustained-damage job in general.

Fix: I'm a fan of 20% Raging Strikes and a second EA charge to raise up the burst a bit and bonus out long downtimes with an extra 15s of cooldown to reset. In tandem with doing the above it might be a tad too much, especially if we don't give the other ranged a percent or so, but assuming SE is far too lame to address the support situation, I think it's a reasonable buff route with a lot of incidental benefits.