The unrewarding state of physical ranged

[lulunami]

The following are rDPS at 99th percentile.

E9S (Cloud of Darkness)
BLM, SAM. SMN is the lowest of the non-rangers but not by much.

E10S (Shadowkeeper)
BLM and SMN at the top. SMN is the lowest of the non-rangers.

E11S (Fatebreaker)
BLM and NIN near the top. SMN and SAM near the bottom for non-rangers.

E12S-1
BLM and SAM at the top. SMN and NIN are the lowest of the non-rangers.

E12S-2
BLM at the top with SMN, SAM, MNK trailing. DRG at the bottom for non-rangers.

The kill time at the 99th percentile for each boss and each job's damage rotation idiosyncrasies combined with uptime/downtime determines the rDPS numbers. The variance between the DPS jobs are still not that much, although BLM is always on top. The potency nerf on Tri-disaster really hurt SMN from ever competing against BLM.

The problem with the rangers are how unfun they are to play. The passive job role party buff is the biggest reason to bring them. Unless you are required to use Troubadour in a fight, there is almost no reason to bring them. However that is conundrum of most ShB job changes. They are balanced but boring to play.

[Grimoire-M]

Site that must not be named nonetheless was linked here.

99th percentile is unrealistic in terms of comparison. 75th is a bit more honest if you're worried about tuning at the top end, and while it generally it holds true to what you've noted there is some amount of shifting. Notably by the time you go down to 30th SMN, SAM, and NIN are the clear winners, and that covers most Savage clears period. I think that's more important to take note of. Those three have clear cut burst windows and excellent mobility options in their respective roles as well as minimal friction (less positional requirements and clear-cut disengage tools for NIN/SAM, flexible instant-casts and a lot of free damage compared to other classes for SMN) that make them easier to execute in most situations, and that's in spite of being considered 'execution heavy' by most players, they're still more accessible by the numbers. The important thing to note though is this doesn't change the overall position of Ranged DPS at all, in fact when you start comparing the overall statistics you see that these three and any of the top five DPS can be about a quartile behind on the ranged DPS and still be ahead overall. SMN in particular has the highest minimum damage output at the low range on most fights.

I think that's the real problem I have with the ranged tax. At that low end the stat bonus is barely breaking even, and we have to take into consideration that these logs already filter out non-clears, while Savage itself filters out players who don't know the basics of their job or aren't up to the challenge in general, which ups the competency curve a fair bit. There's a reasonable argument to be made that if you suck at ranged you're better off swapping to a caster DPS instead, Which isn't something that should be possible given how it could affect pugs.

[Myon88]

99th percentile is unrealistic in terms of comparison. 75th is a bit more honest if you're worried about tuning at the top end

SMN in particular has the highest minimum damage output at the low range on most fights.

You should only be looking at 99th percentile metrics for comparison because that shows you how each job performs at their intended ceiling. 75th is not 'top end', and if you are falling there you are making frequent errors. The people performing even lower than that are barely playing the same game at all.

I don't really like the idea of balancing jobs based on how they perform at the lower end too. You're basically asking SMN/SAM/NIN players to pay an 'idiot tax' because of low performing players benefiting from their high performance floor. Conversely, jobs like BLM get a difficulty rebate - their job has to be overtuned because the people bad at black mage are really bad at black mage. That's not a very satisfying way to balance the jobs to me, it's basically a caste system with jobs split into 'expert' and 'beginner' jobs. I'd know which one I'd want to play in that case.

It's also important to note that how jobs perform when piloted poorly is not the only factor behind inter-job metrics at low percentiles. The worse the clears you look at, the more you find things like red mages getting embolden-shafted by having extra casters in their party, poor usage of uptime strats that hurts melees and black mages, poor coordination of burst damage that punishes bards and dancers. I'd be careful about drawing conclusions from that data in a vacuum.

Besides, if you rag on summoner you can't really justify any numerical buffs to the physical ranged at all. Unfun gameplay is one thing, but raw numbers are another, and between their mobility and general 'ease of use', they are everything people love to hate about summoner turned up to 11.

[Jirah]

The problem with the rangers are how unfun they are to play. The passive job role party buff is the biggest reason to bring them. Unless you are required to use Troubadour in a fight, there is almost no reason to bring them. However that is conundrum of most ShB job changes. They are balanced but boring to play.

BRD is alright, SHB removed the mana concern and the straight arrow buff bar but still retained its play-style somewhat, DNC is incredibly safe and non threatening constantly rivals MCH for being the easiest job however DNC is better structured and has support while MCH is just a heavily padded ogcd gcd cluster fudge but worst of all of all it has fan support so there is little to no promises to improve it so theyll just add a AOE and call it a day

[Payotz]

The thing about physical ranged is that they pretty much took out what made physical ranged "physical ranged". They basically turned the DPS utility jobs into beginner DPS jobs, and I personally don't like what they've become.

It used to be a role that handle mechanics so melees don't have to disengage and casters don't have to move.
It used to be the job that has utility with mitigation, CC with Heavy, Silence, Blind or Knockback or resource generation with MP/TP.
There used to only be two jobs in the role, so the idea was that if you like the RNG proc based gameplay with more party dps you go with BRD, and if you like the static 60-90 minute rotation that hits a lot harder with personal dps, you go with MCH.

In my opinion, the role should NOT designed with the usual class design of Selfish>Middle of the two> Pure support, at all, because they can't actually turn MCH into a pure DPS due to it being the easiest DPS in the game, and if you add damage utility on MCH as it is, then BRD gets absolutely shafted just like how it was on launch.

There's really only a couple of ways I can think of that can give Physical Ranged back their identity and make them rewarding:

1. Bring back Utility. Reintroduce old utility back to the role like Palisade, and reintroduce job specific mitigations that aren't the same reskin of Troubadour. Have Dismantle and resplit it into Rend Mind and have them back into 60 seconds cd, and maybe introduce the old SB BRD Troubadour that mitigates based on the song that is playing, and maybe for DNC have two abilities that has Curing Waltz affect the rest of the party and maybe add regen or shields on top of the Curing Waltz heal. Maybe even just subtle buffs like Peloton being usable in combat as well. Obviously this is just a suggestion, but the main point is to add more utility to the job, re-establishing it as THE Utility DPS.

2.Bring back Mechanics that will benefit from a Ranged Physical handling it. Notable examples would be BJ/CC Superjump, O11S Panto baits, or maybe even just positioning, like painting the Siren on O6S, Taking a kind of Prey/Flare mechanic from the party, or just plain applying a heavy on an add like in T7. This will add a LOT more gameplay to Physical Ranged, add more responsibility to the phys ranged player and will also justify their mobility and a spot at the party aside from just a 1% buff that you can't control.

3.Adding back resource management to the game.Look, I hate TP as much as the next guy, but TP management being non-existant in SB does mean that Physical Ranged has less responsibility because they don't pop Tactician or a TP song anymore. I doubt that they're gonna reimplement TP back into the game, so let's focus a lot more on MP management. Lessen the impact of Piety to Healers so there's a reason for Physical Ranged to be in the party. Maybe have an ability add 5000 more mana to the party. Maybe have it so that mana costs get reduced for either healing or damage spells for 10 seconds. Something like that.

I honestly think physical ranged damage is fine right now, the only real problem is that they don't have any gameplay that supplements their lack of damage compared to other roles. They just need something more than an uncontrollable 1% dps and the occasional interject in the raid in order to feel satisfying. Hell, we can see this right now with Tanks and Healers despite them being dumbed down. Even with lower DPS, Tanks still have the responsibility of boss movement when fights allow it, and Healers have the responsibility of balancing healing and dps in fights such as E11S during early prog. I honestly think that this mentality can work for physical ranged.

[Dogempire]

The Shadowbringers ranged role is just a failure as a whole, honestly. Ranged offers literally nothing impactful that other dps jobs can offer.

Mitigation? Casters and Melee have it too

Damage utility? Other jobs have it

Raising people? That'll always be a caster thing

MP support? Removed in Shadowbringers launch

TP Regen? Removed in the last expansion

Extra healing? Monk offers that too

The ranged role needs something impactful to make it worth taking other than some welfare 1% party stats buff.

Heck I wouldn't even be mad if ranged dps at least were the only dps jobs with a mitigation skill, but nope, even Black Mage, you know, the greedy dps job with no utility, has a damage mitigation skill.

[Platinumstorm]

Just want to say that I love how bard plays in Shadowbringers. I have played bard since 1.x and love the current iteration from a gameplay flow.