A summary of healer issues

[Semirhage]

I'm not debating balance, I'm inferring what I could reasonably believe SE's balance policy to be based on role distribution and developer comments, which is admittedly still spotty especially in RDM's case. Either way I don't think it contradicts my original assumption.

I thought your original point was that melee's favoritism wasn't nonsensical, which it -absolutely- is given Square's systematic stripping of role-specific difficulty from them. "Range" isn't an advantage when there are five square yalms in the entire arena unreachable from max melee, which mechanic design never forces the whole party into (or makes the boss untargetable and forces downtime on everyone if ranged classes could possibly get a single GCD of uptime that the melees couldn't).

Advantages are only advantages if the game lets them be advantages. Square has spent all of Endwalker insisting that Range is an advantage large enough to justify a huge DPS cliff between melee and non-melee, while designing an expansion's worth of fights that let you punch bosses from the next city over and pretend that's not "range".

[Shurrikhan]

I thought your original point was that melee's favoritism wasn't nonsensical, which it -absolutely- is given Square's systematic stripping of role-specific difficulty from them.

Not in agreement with Tear here that range is an meaningful advantage outside of whatever context (the content) makes a difference in uptime for self and party, but...

The difference in difficulty between something like MNK and SMN/MCH isn't just having to move around for positionals, though. There's a fair bit that remains even after enlarged hitboxes.

What's more spotty is the RDM<>SMN situation.

[tearagion]

I thought your original point was that melee's favoritism wasn't nonsensical, which it -absolutely- is given Square's systematic stripping of role-specific difficulty from them. "Range" isn't an advantage when there are five square yalms in the entire arena unreachable from max melee, which mechanic design never forces the whole party into (or makes the boss untargetable and forces downtime on everyone if ranged classes could possibly get a single GCD of uptime that the melees couldn't).

Advantages are only advantages if the game lets them be advantages. Square has spent all of Endwalker insisting that Range is an advantage large enough to justify a huge DPS cliff between melee and non-melee, while designing an expansion's worth of fights that let you punch bosses from the next city over and pretend that's not "range".

It isn't nonsensical, even discounting the lack of an uptime struggle, there's still half of the dps jobs being melee, and melee jobs having more playrate to consider. Having 2 of them being preferable in a party is healthier for pf. Not saying I agree, but it's not without sense.