My long-standing gripes with MCH and physical ranged in general

[iiTzSeb]

It's been a VERY tiring and unrewarding experience playing MCH. Not because of kit design, honestly MCH’s kit is one of the better designed kits in the game and arguably the most comfortable rotation out of all the jobs (just my opinion from leveling everything to around 80-90). No, the problem I have with MCH is that the job checks absolutely NONE of the boxes when it comes to desirable qualities for a job in a raid comp. It's become so undesirable lately due to lack of buffs/lack of attention from the dev team that I (and many others on here) have actually been turned down from PFs and statics even with high-end achievements/performance on the job JUST because it’s not BRD/DNC. I’ve even been PERSONALLY bait-and-switched by being brought into a static for a prog under the impression that it was fine for me to play MCH, just to be asked to swap to a different ranged then being removed from the static because I didn’t feel comfortable swapping (If you’re reading this you know who you are and you should be ashamed.)

Back to the topic/upcoming rant, I feel MCH's current state of existence as the worst/least desirable DPS job in the game can be attributed to a handful of factors when it comes to raiding:

- It occupies a "selfish DPS" role in an emergent gameplay meta where raid buffs are king and selfish roles are typically best as a 1-of pick for team comps
- It occupies the singular ranged slot in any given party thanks to the ongoing double-melee meta where the ranged slot is almost EXCLUSIVELY relegated to raid buff jobs
- It lacks the personal DPS to justify giving up the buffs of a BRD or DNC
- It isn't even remotely close to competing for the "selfish" slot of a comp because SAM and BLM ECLIPSE MCH in damage
- Being EXTREMELY ping-dependent to the point where it actually becomes nigh-unplayable on high ping

Some people at this point are probably reading this and thinking “but wait, if you enjoy the job isn’t that enough reason to play it? All jobs can clear all content you know!” Yes, you are technically correct. However, that is a pro to EVERY JOB IN THE GAME. But unlike every other job in the game, this is MCH’s ONLY PRO AMONG MANY CONS.

Though, MCH's problems have a very simple solution: simply up the potency so that we have a level of damage that allows us to be a desirable pick! The issue with that solution? Well... as we can see in the "DPS Roles" section of the OF currently with the SAM mains doomposting about how bad their job is all because of how good NIN has become: if a job that hasn't been doing so well in damage suddenly starts competing with jobs that are almost ALWAYS doing well in damage it causes people from those jobs to complain about something that THEY perceive to be an issue, even though these things are literal non-issues in a PVE scenario where potential teammates getting buffs only HELPS future team comps. Seriously, SAM went from competing with BLM for being a top DPS job to competing with BLM and NIN for being a top DPS job. These people aren't complaining because their job became BAD. They're complaining because now someone else is ALSO DOING GOOD. Similarly, non-WAR tank mains become vehemently belligerent when WAR mains complain about not having any damage. They start spewing impertinent tripe like “UHHHH WELL BLOODWHETTING HEALS A LOT SO WAR SHOULDN’T DO DAMAGE” when a tank’s personal mitigation/healing should have NO BEARING on the tank having good damage or not, ESPECIALLY when a tank like WAR who wields a massive TWO HANDED AXE is doing so little damage that it feels more like a Botanist with anger issues than an axe-wielding Marauder. (bring Deliverance back btw) This is the SAME issue that MCH faces but with a PLETHORA of other jobs' players thanks to the propagation of this problematic design concept of "ranged tax" by non-ranged players.

For those not yet familiar with ranged tax, it's the concept that ranged jobs should inherently do less damage than casters or melees because they "have full uptime all fight." What this design concept fails to take into account is the emergent gameplay of the raid community and the design approach of almost all commonly-used static and pug raid strategies.

In most raid tiers (Savage and Ultimate) the strats have been mostly designed around uptime because when it comes to raiding in FFXIV, damage is king (big number give the dopamine and makes the suffering end quicker). Even more specifically these strats are typically designed to optimize melee/caster uptime and reduce their personal responsibility down to simply dodging basic AOEs and resolving team-wide mechanics. Any time there's a fight mechanic that requires heavy individual movement it's almost always relegated to the physical ranged jobs because, of all jobs, OURS is the one that can do the horrendously tedious things without having to stop pressing buttons. The tradeoff of being able to have full uptime regardless of distance is that physical ranged is made to perform almost ALL of the mechanics that involve any sort of movement beyond max-melee range. Movement mechanics that make us run a small relay race during the fight should be OUR justification to have our damage be on-par with the other roles similar to how melees get good damage because they have to move one pixel to the side to hit a flank, then one pixel back the other way to hit the rear, and sometimes… SOMETIMES weave True North between GCDs to cheat a positional or two (really difficult, I know.)

So why is it that we have:
- The most mechanical responsibility of all DPS roles
- None of the bulk/health/self mitigation skills of the other DPS roles
- None of the damage of the other DPS roles

Is the benefit of being able to press buttons throughout the entire fight REALLY so powerful that it justifies THIS MANY CONS?

If melees get more damage because of:
- Positionals (fewer to deal with each expansion)
- Limited range (more ranged poke skills added each expansion and fights becoming more catered to melee ranged uptime each expansion)

And casters can get more damage because of:
- Cast Times (more instant casts each expansion to the point where even BLM is somewhat mobile now)

Then why can't ranged get equal treatment because of:
- Having to perform all of the tedious movement mechanics and baits that nobody else wants to do
- Dying to unavoidable raidwide damage due to being made of glass and toilet paper
- Having NO personal mitigation skills

When do we stop pretending that physical ranged are living some mythical “easy life” or that they “have it good” when there’s literally almost nothing rewarding when playing them? Given the most mechanics by default, the least health of everybody, the weakest party buffs (melee/caster buffs are almost always stronger), AND having the least damage of all DPS? Whose entire existence is simply to make the other 2 DPS roles’ lives easier and give the party that +1% role bonus? That sure sounds like a rewarding role to play, yeah totally. Even FURTHER less appealing is MCH which SOMEHOW ended up becoming the WORST of the physical ranged, despite being the “selfish” pick of the category.

Now for suggested MCH changes. No more of these pathetic potency buffs that hardly make a difference and only come once in a blue moon while other jobs get buffs every single patch. Give MCH’s skills the potency they deserve for once, stop making MCH struggle to keep up with BRD/DNC when it shouldn’t be balanced around their damage numbers in the first place. A gun should do FAR more damage than a bow or two oversized bracelets with spikes taped to them. Bring the filler combo GCDs up by 20 each, bring drill and its clones back up to 700, bring wildfire to 250 or 300 per GCD so it actually feels like a meaningful 2 minute cooldown button rather than a tedious obligation, bring Heat Blast to 200, bring Gauss Round/Ricochet up to 140. Also, stop loading all of our damage onto Queen without improving the pet AI of the game. We’re sick of summoning Queen in fights with multiple bosses just to have her fly to the boss we WEREN’T EVEN HITTING.

And for the love of god can we get a chat command to toggle the lunchbox off? We already have petsize commands for SMN, just one chat command for the lunchbox please Yoshi P.