The Failure of the ranged Physical balancing

[Delphinus]

Look I get why they are on the low side, being able to move and DPS is a huge benefit but players are smart and know how to position themselves in caster and melee situations to easily overtake ranged physical jobs. Lets get real here, Machinist needs some hard buffs to damage, simply allow bard to get buffed by its own songs, and dancer is hitting a sweet spot right now so its fine however if anyone has complaints please chime in. I was hoping for some minor adjustments in 5.21 but clearly the devs are continuing to ignore ranged DPS and playing favorites with the jobs they prefer. not trying to be mean, just keeping it real.

[deadman1204]

Someone being good at their job doesn't mean another job should be buffed. Classes are based aroudn general gameplay, not optimal. This is why all ranged are lower dps

[Eloah]

MCH I think does need a buff since they are supposed to be the selfish version of the Ranged, with "no" utility. I dont know where they place in the grand scheme of things but they should be equal to DRG/RDM in terms of potency. With DRG and RDM being 3rd in their respective roles. This is just a reletive estimate, based on prospective output.

[Delphinus]

So we should just shut the hell up and be told to be happy at the bottom of the barrel because we can move? if thats the case bring back cast times, ill take them over being useless bottom tier. I love machnist, its alot of fun but I shouldnt be holding my raid back playing the job I enjoy.

[zonol]

Been saying this about mch for months. I would also take back cast times for mch. Like I said many times before. Mch needs buffs and s.e has been ignoring this for a while. Look how long it took them to work on mch. I won't be surprised if they take another year or 2. Buts it's whatever. Square enix could have easily atlease say they read our complain about mch and they are looking into things. Like they do with everything else. They do not care. The only time they cared was because people stop playing the class. So I say we just stop playing mch. Let's see if they even care after that.

[Rilifane]

Someone being good at their job doesn't mean another job should be buffed. Classes are based aroudn general gameplay, not optimal. This is why all ranged are lower dps

I agree that a caster/ melee good at their job should be ahead of a physical ranged because both require a lot more optimization.
But even an averagely played caster/ melee is ahead of a well played physical ranged. This is escpecially true for DNC/ BRD but MCH also gets steamrolled even if the melee/ caster only plays above average. rDPS and utility is all well and good but BRD and DNC are FAR behind in rDPS and that includes all buffs they bring.
BLM is one of the most progress-unfriendly classes and requires a lot of thought to play well, there's a reason the dps bar spans almost the whole chart on most bosses but I don't think it's okay that I'm ahead of our BRD in our first kills, where neither I nor we a as a group had done much to optimize and play somewhat BLM friendlier. And with every consecutive kill this gap will only widen.

Even in progress, even on average gameplay level, SMN, BLM and some melees are still always ahead of physical ranged by a noticable margin.
On an average and in a non-optimized setting, physical ranged should shine. But they don't. They are STILL behind despite melees and casters getting punished for every disengagement and every bit of unforseen movement.
That's what people are not okay with and I fully agree.
Quite frankly, I should suck in progress. But I don't, I can focus more on playing mechanics correctly than playing optimally and I'm still ahead of our physical ranged, including the hard-hitting MCH.

[Wiccan026]

People who keep claiming that ranged DPS does not need a buff, haven't looked over current statistics.

Summoner is currently beating the selfish caster BLM, apparently they don't have to worry about their raise tax. While it is true for a summoner to play at this level they have to know when to move and when to use their abilities but because of how their kit works they actually don't have to just stand their and turret like they use too... they are far more mobile than they were once upon a time.

Honestly ranged DPS was in a better state when they were treated as a full DPS support job and had more buffs. At this rate they should probably find a way to maybe even redo something to that degree... again trying to find true balance in any game is hard... but really at this point there doesn't seem like there's even a reason to bring along physical ranged DPS>

[Renkei]

I think they should give ranged casting stances again for increased damage output when they don't need mobility, the way that they got gutted and then bloated them didn't make any sense, the damage difference should only be a couple thousand, currently i believe if they cannot find a way to increase the skill ceiling of ranged jobs it will end up being a lot of trouble.

I do not agree that an average melee dps is ahead, Please read the follow.

Legend : Job : Minimum DPS - Maximum DPS, ( " = - " Skill Ceiling Disparity ) N= Number of fights, Data-pool, E5S-E8S, All RDPS

SMN 15,613.84 -18,277.44 = -2,663.6‬ N=25,678
SAM 15,493.26 -18,238.72 = -2,745.46‬ N=22,991
BLM 15,533.46 -18,232.88 = -2699.42 N=13,234
MNK 15,198.62 -17,758.58 = -2,559.96‬ N=12,881
DRG 15,054.07 -17,588.03 = -2,533.96‬ N=27,996
NIN 15,157.65 -17,527.45 = -2,369.8‬ N=17,170
RDM 15,027.03 -17,464.81 = -2,437.78‬ N=14,067
MCH 14,875.23 -16,622.81 = -1,747.58‬ N=17,821
DNC 14,237.44 -16,573.73 = -2,336.29‬ N=16,270
BRD 14,303.41 -16,188.50 = -1,885.09‬ N=15,770

Summoner shouldn't be as broken as they are right now the Nerf wasn't anywhere near enough, No Job with Raise should ever be top DPS like that, it's Non-sense that the last patch didn't have balance adjustments to address this properly.

I think there is polarization in balancing because all job's cannot possibly do the same damage output, Some jobs are in fact advantaged, and we have also have had multiple expansions where the meta was double ranged DPS and Casters, i think the biggest issue is that Ranged job's utility was for the most part gutted with the introduction of Dancer to prevent heavy front-loading.

What most people do not realize is in the current balance of the game if SE cannot find a way to increase the skill ceiling without marginalizing range, instead of making or introducing more mechanics to range they were gutted in previous expansions to prevent bloat, In order for them to increase the damage output of range they no doubtingly will have to introduce a risk to reward system into their kit in order to increase this, but currently the elephant in the room hasn't been addressed (SMN) so unfortunately we are far from proper balance, but this isn't something you should blame on melee jobs,

My Solution

REINTRODUCE RANGED CASTING, IMPLEMENT ABILITY THAT NEGATES CAST TIMES FOR THE NEXT 4 ABILITIES "CAST" FOR RANGED, GIVE IT 2 STACKS, AND A 80 SECOND COOLDOWN EACH STACK

But then we'd run into an issue where ranged would be out damaging Melee, Undoubtedly the only thing they could do is buff the disengage options of melee, Balance isn't all black and white, If all ranged did the same damage as melee jobs, then what would even be the point of melee having positional attacks when ranged like MCH out damage all the way up to average.

Take this data for a grain of salt as it has SURIVIOR BIAS

TL : DR : BRD BUFF and Rework, SMN NERF, DRG Minor Buff, RDM very Minor Buff, Ninja Minor Buff. MCH/BRD Please make the job more difficult so they can be rewarded that's the only issue and the reason they cannot buff range right now.

[deadman1204]

Yet another one of these threads.....
they're like flies

[Darian]

The topic keeps showing up because SE wants ranged physical to be the support role but as others have said the tools to fit said role are lacking for BRD and MCH.
IMO. BRD needs Nature's Minne @60 second recast, rework The Warden's Paean into some kind of single target dps buff with timers adjusted of course and MAYBE up songs.
With MCH they need to decide what this job is supposed to be. If it's meant to be selfish with 0 utility (Let's be honest, no one is looking at Tactician as a make or break Ability) then it better bring 3rd/4th place dps or else the community will continue to look at MCH as the ranged role buff which is terrible design because it's fighting for the same role slot with jobs that actually bring utility. If they want to keep MCH as the highest physical ranged only then it really needs some DPS utility back.

I would stay away from adding cast times again... The community hated that time so much that these forums were full of multiple 100 page post raging about it and how it ruined bard. Plus, they would have to rework all the ranged physical skills to match the new style and it would just turn into ranged physical having too much utility for the higher dps.