There's a huge Physical range shortage in PF and Statics

[Rika007]

But then DNC, BRD, and MCH will be stripped further to craft the new job. This game doesn't need more jobs, it needs more refinement of existing jobs.

New jobs will never not happen. Yoshi-P has commented on it that while making them is hard on the dev team, he knows they are a selling point for the game and a big reason people get hyped for the new expansion. The moment new jobs stop coming is the moment we know the game is dying.

[Aikaal]

New jobs will never not happen. Yoshi-P has commented on it that while making them is hard on the dev team, he knows they are a selling point for the game and a big reason people get hyped for the new expansion. The moment new jobs stop coming is the moment we know the game is dying.

I,d be down to only have 1 new job and multiple job reworks like MNK. SE is kinda hit and miss on that. MNK was a hit, SMN was a miss.

[Elleia]

I was a BRD main for Stormblood and cleared O12S with it as well as progging UWU. I love the job back then. I play more casually now and wanted to try something different, but now I am leveling BRD and it feels a lot less busy than I remember.

In regards to the mobility tax, I remember most fights during savage and prog, I was stacked with the group, unmoving. If you were too far away you'd miss healing, and there were only a handful of mechanics I remember that you could actually bait to make the phys ranged jobs actually feel like they were there for a reason.

I do think the mobility tax is too high. I agree that there should be some tax, but not to the extent it currently is. Also SMN is the most mobile caster but does much more damage than p ranged, and is either equal to or better than RDM at this point. So they aren't even all that consistent when it comes to the mobility tax.

[Zacheris]

Release a Gambler/Corsair job with AST's stormblood card system next expansion and I gaurantee you you'll never be waiting on a phys ranged again.

[Alpheus]

Release a Gambler/Corsair job with AST's stormblood card system next expansion and I gaurantee you you'll never be waiting on a phys ranged again.

My dream to have my magic marksman gambler pirate class back <3
Just rename MCH's current Wildfire into Detonator (an XI Weapon Skill as well) and give hypothetical XIV COR Wildfire back along with Leaden Salute. Hell even the chance of seeing Last Stand's weapon skill animation in HD would be amazing. Buffing with dice instead of cards since AST has that which shouldn't be an issue since technically XI CORs buffed with dice but the gambling system was essentially truncated solitaire-esque Blackjack.

[CKNovel]

In regards to the mobility tax, I remember most fights during savage and prog, I was stacked with the group, unmoving. If you were too far away you'd miss healing, and there were only a handful of mechanics I remember that you could actually bait to make the phys ranged jobs actually feel like they were there for a reason.

I do think the mobility tax is too high. I agree that there should be some tax, but not to the extent it currently is. Also SMN is the most mobile caster but does much more damage than p ranged, and is either equal to or better than RDM at this point. So they aren't even all that consistent when it comes to the mobility tax.

You never disconnect from a boss for more than 10 GCDs, 15 if you're playing extremely safe.
Ranged should be balanced around that, not around players that greed and gets weakness debuffs.

SMN not only has insane mobility, but also has control over its casting phase.
I don't want to throw difficulty into the equation, but its rotation is quite forgiving and on rail. You can hardly make a mistake that results in a big dps loss.

[Elleia]

You never disconnect from a boss for more than 10 GCDs, 15 if you're playing extremely safe.
Ranged should be balanced around that, not around players that greed and gets weakness debuffs.

But even a melee who loses out on a bunch of GCDs still looks far more damage than the ranged physical jobs. It would make sense for ranged physical to be closer to melee in high mobility fights where melee are forced to lose GCDs, but that isn't the case. They still beat out ranged physical jobs by a lot.

In high uptime fights where melee lose little to no uptime, yes of course they should be doing more damage than ranged. As it stands, if it weren't for the 1-2% buff for bringing a ranged DPS, you might as well bring another melee or caster.

[Hypn0tyk]

I think the biggest issue facing ranged is that the are desired as exactly 1 per 8 people. Nobody wants 2.

Every other role either requires 2 (tank/heal) or is a desired team composition (double caster or double melee). The primary reason ranged physical jobs are still 'worth' a spot in their group is due to the 1% stat bonus from just being a ranged physical job. Without that, many groups would not bring one at all. As it stands their damage is much lower than what other roles can output.

If an average group had players who wanted to play MCH DNC NIN SMN as their favorite DPS jobs, their damage would be nearly 5% lower than an average group who brought MNK RPR BLM BRD. A substantial difference and means the difference in not beating the enrage checks on bosses.

I am not a game designer by any stretch, but the numbers you can find on fflogs show pretty clearly all 3 ranged physical jobs at the bottom of the chart. If there was a reason to ever bring two of them, then a lot more players would be playing the role.

MCH is a pure firepower job that has the lowest damage contribution of all DPS right now.

It really is a numbers/potency issue that I think could be tweaked to make the contributions much closer so that a double ranged physical composition is not a 'hard mode challenge' because of the lower party damage.

[Sequora]

I feel like the ranged tax needs to be reduced. No one wants to play a class that’s just blatantly weaker with no upsides. MCH is in such a bad spot. The ranged physical version of SAM and BLM, but significantly weaker. It should like 1-3% weaker. Make sure that DNC and BRD are competitive with their damage plus their raid damage utility.

While we’re at it, let’s get rid of caster rez and rebalance those jobs as well.

If SE wants role diversity, increase the bonus again.

[Quuoooote]

I feel like the ranged tax needs to be reduced. No one wants to play a class that’s just blatantly weaker with no upsides. MCH is in such a bad spot.

The underlying problem with MCH (and also phys ranged as a whole) is that, paradoxically, the ranged tax is pretty irrelevant at this point, but phys ranged also need to do the lowest damage out of the DPS roles. Imagine a world where MCH beats out jobs like MNK or RDM in terms of damage in order to compete with the other selfish DPS jobs; you would practically be griefing yourself by not bringing a MCH to the table since it would have full uptime on top of insane DPS. That would bring us full circle to "why play a melee class that does less damage than a phys ranged, it's blatantly weaker with no upsides, etc.".

BRD and DNC aren't really any better off despite how good their rDPS numbers might look right now. Since both jobs have abysmal aDPS, stacking a party with two of them will see diminished returns when compared to a party with two casters or two melee. I think this is definitely intentional on SE's part, and is a balancing decision meant to discourage parties from using them both/limit phys ranged DPS. MCH is just in a particularly awkward spot because it can't be designed to provide crazy rDPS like BRD/DNC as long as it's meant to be a selfish DPS job, and it also can't compete with the other selfish DPS jobs without making them irrelevant. Because again, if MCH was pulling aDPS numbers close to SAM, there would be zero reason to bring a SAM that requires melee uptime versus a MCH.

The root of the problem is that the ranged DPS tax has been rendered obsolete by various gameplay/system changes over the expansions, but the phys ranged role has never received any meaningful changes to compensate. In Stormblood we had Palisade, Refresh, and Tactician on top of the free movement, which were meaningful and beneficial to a party. You'd want to bring a phys ranged to your party not because they provided a passive 1% buff to the party, but because they had useful tools that were necessary to succeed, and that justified their lower DPS when compared to the other DPS roles. Now that those utilities have been stripped away and melee/casters have been receiving more and more QoL changes for uptime maintenance, there is no justifiable reason for the phys ranged to do so much less damage. If SMN is allowed to have nearly free movement with a raid buff and a raise while doing big boy caster DPS, why are all of the phys ranged cursed to live in all other jobs' shadows?

... Well, that's easy. If MCH did as much damage as the melee jobs, why would you bring a melee over a MCH with ranged uptime?