Quote Originally Posted by Renathras View Post
In a game design space where DPS >>>> all, you CANNOT have Jobs overly distinguished (within a role) by damage, otherwise one will always be brought over the others.
Again, though, that's literally what happens if you make jobs that are less difficult and more reliable have the same on-paper damage as jobs that are more difficult and less reliable. Since, even if both the individual and their party went through all the effort of optimizing the latter, there'd be no reward, so the 95+% of players would be obliged to pick the easier job for the sheer damage increase it'd bring.

We should be balancing around maximizing the breadth of competitive jobs --in what content actually needs optimizing-- for reasonably skilled but imperfect and in-progression players, not BiS parse speedruns.

Same reason they made Healer effects bigger. It's not to help Healers, it's to allow the mass arena combat encounter designs to work.
Except mass arena combat encounter designs already work even without the range increase. They just require moving in and out or split-grouping, both things with higher skill ceilings than just both healers launching their CD-AoE heal from center-stage and hitting everyone no matter the timing.

There are 4 DPS slots. Not 2 Melee, 1 Ranged, 1 Caster. They're all DPS. You want one of each for the % bonus, then one wildcard slot. That slot shouldn't be reserved for Melees.
Except, there is no difference to raid design between physical ranged and any job that can maintain a few consecutive GCDs of uptime, as literally every non-melee DPS is capable of.

There are, for all intents and purposes, just two DPS Roles despite the five Armor Classes. Physical Ranged haven't brought any unique capacities since Shadowbringers launched, and even those utilities have been mere awkward tack-ons since Stormblood rather than anything interestingly leverageable or an element of the jobs' own gameplay.

We have 4 Tanks, 4 Healers, 5 Melee DPS and 6 Ranged DPS. No, BLU does not count.