Fight Designs & Class Balancement - Why everything is wrong and favors Melee Fantasy

[Aikaal]

This isn't about trashing on Melee DPS. I used to be a melee in Stormblood back when Tornado Kick Monk was a thing. However, I find the game more and more frustrating to optimize and enjoy. I just can't. I'm heavily considering dropping my sub after I'm done with this tier and helped my group get their gear.

So here's the logic why Melee DPS do more damaged than Ranged Physical & Caster. Melee Uptime. You will lose melee uptime so it'll balance out. Fair right? Alright, let me put a P8S example here;

My group gets Gorgon first, on Car 2 mechanic. Myself, as a Summoner ends up using Phoenix and losing a few GCDs because the boss goes invulnerable. Now... why exactly does the boss goes Invulnerable? Because he charges, does a KB/Aoe, charges and a KB/AoE. Essentially, melees won't be able to hit the boss for a certain period of time. The moment the boss disengages is went downtime happens. That mechanic was design so people wouldn't feel bad playing Melee DPS. Then tell me why should I do 1k less DPS than Melee DPS on SMN if I can't properly benefit from my perks?

Essentially, there is no advantage to played a ranged physical or a caster. Instead of having a melee/caster/ranged phys/flex, square is forcing us to go melee/melee/caster/physical ranged. Here's the past 2 weeks of all logs on P8S door boss and all percentiles. https://www.fflogs.com/zone/statistics/49/#boss=86


Why would you play a second ranged phys or caster when you're doing 8% to 10% more with a melee DPS? I essentially lose GCDs on my Summoner in certain mechanics because it's a matter of greed vs safety.
Melee have positionals? Yeah, please cut that crap, you're still doing 8% more than other jobs. Reaper does need help but remember that every melee job was buffed (including Monk) because reaper was too strong and now reaper is behind and they are getting buffed. The Crit/DH, on paper, looks nice and it has helped bards and dancers to get a significant lead of SMN/RDM now but the clear winners are Samurais and Monks. Yet, only melee got buffs. Where is the compensation for casters and machinists?

The Crit/DH damage buff was a reaction on people really hating on SE for removing Kaiten and they have effectively made it worst.

They design fights for Melee. They designs stats for melee. They design buffs for melees. They only care about melees. It's fine to give them a lead but can we have a DPS difference between melee dps and caster/ranged of 2% to 3%? Instead of this ridiculous concept that Monk deals, on average, 10% more DPS than machinists. Congrats on your huge Bootshine buff Monks :<

[CKNovel]

This tier, Melee DPS plays like ranged DPS.

If there was no 1% buff to all main stats, the meta would be 4 melees. They already synergize incredibly well with each other.
Another user was right, we're in MeleeWalker. Kinda fits the theme after CasterBringer.

There are users that still manage to claim they can't have full uptime on bosses, it's amazing.

[Aikaal]

This tier, Melee DPS plays like ranged DPS.

If there was no 1% buff to all main stats, the meta would be 4 melees. They already synergize incredibly well with each other.
Another user was right, we're in MeleeWalker. Kinda fits the theme after CasterBringer.

There are users that still manage to claim they can't have full uptime on bosses, it's amazing.

Word and the one mechanic in p8s they would have dfowntime the boss becomes invulnerable because melee definitely would do less DPS if they were to lose 10 seconds of uptime~

[Dzian]

The problem isn’t melee so much as it’s everything else.
However, encounter design breaks everything anyway.

Melee DPS should be strong and hit hard. but they also should have a level of toughness or survivability to eat a couple of hits because they are dangerously close to the boss.

Caster DPS should generally trade mobility for extra oomph to hit even harder than melee. While usually still having some limited level of survival through magic barriers or crowd control. bind, heavy or sleeping mobs to keep them at safe distances. Staying alive means sacrificing damage.

Physical ranged DPS Should hit super hard, have supreme mobility but typically have next to no survival. (often dubbed the Glass Cannon). get so much as a scratch and you're dead.

In XIV though everything has its oomph taken away in exchange for survival and the ability to eat predictable but unavoidable raid-wide damage. However, ranged classes gain absolutely nothing in exchange for that trade. Earlier iterations from previous expansions at least had some support and utility to compensate, but that's all been stripped away in the endless pursuit of braindeaded simplification and it's left the developers with nowhere to go.

They can't push ranged up because that will widen the skill gap. Especially on casters that can slide cast effectively and stuff. That's a big big no no and that goes against the focus on braindead simplicity above all else.

[Naizakane]

My group gets Gorgon first, on Car 2 mechanic. Myself, as a Summoner ends up using Phoenix and losing a few GCDs because the boss goes invulnerable. Now... why exactly does the boss goes Invulnerable? Because he charges, does a KB/Aoe, charges and a KB/AoE. Essentially, melees won't be able to hit the boss for a certain period of time. The moment the boss disengages is went downtime happens. That mechanic was design so people wouldn't feel bad playing Melee DPS. Then tell me why should I do 1k less DPS than Melee DPS on SMN if I can't properly benefit from my perks?

You could have just... held Phoenix until after Blazing Footfalls. You knew it was going to happen at the same time you were planning to summon Phoenix. There's no need to blame melee DPS for your own bad decision.

As for the rest of your post: When Summoner is locked to 3y range outside of weak filler GCDs and has positionals, then you can ask for melee damage numbers. You should actually be doing less than RDM/BLM, too, given that you can cast Summon Physical Ranged Rotation every 60 seconds.

[Housinginneed]

As for the rest of your post: When Summoner is locked to 3y range outside of weak filler GCDs and has positionals, then you can ask for melee damage numbers. You should actually be doing less than RDM/BLM, too, given that you can cast Summon Physical Ranged Rotation every 60 seconds.

I don't think anyone's arguing that ranged dps should do more or even equal amount compared to melee counterparts, but it should not be this big of a gap considering all the gap closers, boss fights with no positionals or giant hitboxes where almost all melee classes maintain like a 97-99% uptime, which makes the ranged tax seem quite excessive.

Also, I think that's a bad design philosophy in the first place. Jobs should not be balanced based on the difficulty of the job itself, since most people except maybe the top parsers are playing what they WANT to play, not the job that does the most dps.
As a Machinist main, is my job easy? yes. Did I ask for it to be? no. Would I still main MCH if it was considered the most difficult job? yes. I like guns, I like turrets, I love engineer type classes in online games.
Seeing PF with MCH/RPR excluded... why should I be punished for playing the job I like the most and have been playing the longest on?

[Aikaal]

You could have just... held Phoenix until after Blazing Footfalls. You knew it was going to happen at the same time you were planning to summon Phoenix. There's no need to blame melee DPS for your own bad decision.

As for the rest of your post: When Summoner is locked to 3y range outside of weak filler GCDs and has positionals, then you can ask for melee damage numbers. You should actually be doing less than RDM/BLM, too, given that you can cast Summon Physical Ranged Rotation every 60 seconds.

Wrong sir, because there's less than 15 seconds after the boss so I never get my full Phoenix. Holding and spamming Ruin III is a massive damage loss in this scenario.

No should "should" and be "expected" to do less. That's a really stupid mentality. If you thin kthat way then yeah maybe melees should get downtime and this mechanic shouldn't make the boss invulnerable to balance the massive damage difference. There is favoritism in this game for melee DPS and we shouldn't pretend it doesn't exist.

[Naizakane]

Wrong sir, because there's less than 15 seconds after the boss so I never get my full Phoenix. Holding and spamming Ruin III is a massive damage loss in this scenario.

No should "should" and be "expected" to do less. That's a really stupid mentality. If you thin kthat way then yeah maybe melees should get downtime and this mechanic shouldn't make the boss invulnerable to balance the massive damage difference. There is favoritism in this game for melee DPS and we shouldn't pretend it doesn't exist.

Less than 15 seconds left? No one's getting their full burst widnow off in that time except maybe MNK/WAR/DRK. Summon Phoenix once the boss is targetable again and fire off Revelation, if there's that little time left then holding until after the downtime window shouldn't turn a clear into an enrage wipe.

Why do you call it favouritism, anyway? Yes melee DPS deal more damage, but they have limitations like not being able to stand wherever they want to, or having to hit the boss from certain directions or lose damage. It's not favouritism, it's a fair trade. Ranged don't deal as much damage in exchange for the ability to be wherever they please outside of mechanics, and an easier time pre-positioning for mechanics because 25y range allows far more freedom of positioning than 3y.

[Aikaal]

Because the only reason at the end of car 2 in p8s door boss to be invulnerable is to not let ranged DPS do DPS when Melee dps can't. And while people think i'm memeing. If Gorgon goes first, car 2 goes at the end where it aligns with Phoenix. I either spam 4 extra ruin III and lose big damage or I press Phoenix and just lose 3 Phoenix GCDs. Which is still better because I can spam elemental primals at the last 15 seconds. This is simply favoritism. If damage was upped for Melee DPS to be compensated for downtime then they would lose DPS to that downtime. But they don't because SE don't want them to feel bad but completely ignores that caster DPS does 1k less than melee DPS.

Not to mention the only reason you still see normal comps is the extra 1%. We would absolutely see triple or quad melee comp if the raw damage was higher without the stat buff. That's how significant the gap is.

Now I wait for SE to buff Reaper and ignore every caster and physical ranged because Reaper just can't be last and next patch they'll buff other melees because nobody wants to be the worst melee despite the worst melee just being better than any physical ranged and caster. THey are very much clear with how they've been balancing in Endwalker that they'll do that. All they need to do is give roughly 5% to caster DPS (a bit less on BLM) and ranged physical and suddenly it's much better. Melees will still do more damage but it won't be a massive gap.

[Housinginneed]

Yes melee DPS deal more damage, but they have limitations like not being able to stand wherever they want to, or having to hit the boss from certain directions or lose damage.

I'm not sure if you've actually raided savage/ultimate because if you have, you'll know that ranged cannot stand wherever they want, melees have their spots, ranged have their spots, EVERY ROLE has specific spots they have to stand at for most of the phases in each of the mechanics. When theres 4 aoes going off the arena, why do you think it's harder for melees to stand next to the boss and dodge aoe's while ranged are standing further away and dodging the exact same mechanic? both have to avoid the exact same mechanic and the only difference is that melees do it closer to boss and ranged do it from further away.
This argument only works if uptime is still an issue, which clearly isn't according to the data.

And yes, positionals, which require you to shift your feet literally for 0.5 seconds to the side to hit and you have what, 1-2 of those you have to hit?
so 97-99% uptime and 1-2 positionals = 10% dps gap, seems fair trade. /s