Is 2 melee 1 caster 1 ranged going to be just expected from now on?

[Videra]

No. MCH should do less than SAM and BLM because of mobility, but more than everyone else because it offers no raid damage buffs.

It should, yes. But SE isn't willing to do that, so the compromise I'd propose is to take notes from HW MCH design to 'justify' the increase to MCH's damage.

[Llynethil]

No. MCH should do less than SAM and BLM because of mobility, but more than everyone else because it offers no raid damage buffs.

Ranged tax is nonsense these days.

Boss hitboxes are so damn huge these days, melee have barely any downtime at all, also SAM has 2 dashes and has way better survivability through shields and self healing than MCH, so the damage should equal out if you take those into consideration.
Same for BLM, they have gotten multiple ways to mitigate movement penalties over the years while hitting like a truck still while again having 2 dashes and a massive shield for survivability.

Always funny how ranged should be taxed, but the other jobs shouldn't be taxed despite having way more tools besides dps.
This isn't HW anymore, jobs have come a long way by now, except ranged physicals ones because people keep the old mindset.

[Lyth]

In an ideal world, all dps jobs would provide the same amount of raid dps. But everyone is motivated by personal interest.

The tax on physical ranged players exists purely because casters will do everything in their power to ensure that distinction remains. Even if the dev team designs all subsequent raid tiers with bosses that have larger hitboxes and reduces the relative contribution of melee dps as a result, casters will always demand that they do more damage than ranged. They'll argue it on the basis of having to stop to cast, and they'll argue it on the basis of support benefits brought by ranged jobs. So that's really where your battle lies. That 'fourth' spot never belonged to you in the first place. You'll just switch over from double melee, 1 physical ranged, and 1 magical ranged, to 1 melee, 2 magical ranged, and 1 physical ranged. In fact, if you had complete dps parity and removed the need to bring specific subroles, people would probably just run pure physical/magical ranged comps anyways.

[SaberMaxwell]

In an ideal world, all dps jobs would provide the same amount of raid dps. But everyone is motivated by personal interest.

The tax on physical ranged players exists purely because casters will do everything in their power to ensure that distinction remains. Even if the dev team designs all subsequent raid tiers with bosses that have larger hitboxes and reduces the relative contribution of melee dps as a result, casters will always demand that they do more damage than ranged. They'll argue it on the basis of having to stop to cast, and they'll argue it on the basis of support benefits brought by ranged jobs. So that's really where your battle lies. That 'fourth' spot never belonged to you in the first place. You'll just switch over from double melee, 1 physical ranged, and 1 magical ranged, to 1 melee, 2 magical ranged, and 1 physical ranged. In fact, if you had complete dps parity and removed the need to bring specific subroles, people would probably just run pure physical/magical ranged comps anyways.

Which is why throughout most of HW and StB the meta comp and most taken comp was double melee double phys ranged.

Sure buddy.

[Ayche]

Before Reaper you might had been able to make a case that the three DPS roles are somewhat evenly weighted, but no more.
Especially if 7.0 slots in another melee dps into the mix, it will be quite decided.

[ZiraZ]

I would only agree with removal of dmg tax if SE is going the big hitbox bosses route 100% on all end-game content with no exceptions.
Before the savage dungeon came out I would have agreed to bring the dmg tax to a minimum or just remove it, but after clearing the 2 bosses and progging a little of the 3rd on DRG and MCH and it was a day and night difference, I think melee does in fact have to work far more when the bosses don't have huge hitboxes, positional exist and getting out that extra GCDs in melee without dying takes effort & mastery of the mechanics because you will be doing far more dangerous uptime strats, and that basically at any point in time SE can go back to doing small hitboxes on savage bosses without any warning and without adjusting the job numbers.
So basically tax needs to exist if they are doing to be this inconsistent about their design philosophy.

[Rithy255]

Ranged tax is nonsense these days.

Boss hitboxes are so damn huge these days, melee have barely any downtime at all, also SAM has 2 dashes and has way better survivability through shields and self healing than MCH, so the damage should equal out if you take those into consideration.
Same for BLM, they have gotten multiple ways to mitigate movement penalties over the years while hitting like a truck still while again having 2 dashes and a massive shield for survivability.

Always funny how ranged should be taxed, but the other jobs shouldn't be taxed despite having way more tools besides dps.
This isn't HW anymore, jobs have come a long way by now, except ranged physicals ones because people keep the old mindset.

Ranged tax Makes sense to a extent, In the case of samurai, I could see a world where the idea of it doing the "same" damage as Machinist is fine, Keep in mind Samurai has to still do positional, Even if the bosses hit boxes are bigger Machinist has the entire stage, Machinist has a better raid wide mit (faint only does 5% on magic damage) (also still has second wind for self healing), I think Mach should generally be a bit behind samurai, Still, just nothing near what it's like currently (hopefully we can all agree that mch is far too behind and should have at least the 3rd personal highest dps)

We're talking 1-2% behind not current Levels of machinist, to "compensate" you could also give Machinist (not raid damage buffs) a extra form of Utility in something, as well. But I do not think MCH should be strictly ahead of Samurai.

If we're talking BLM here, then BLM should actually be ahead of samurai, its mobility isn't great compared to melee dps/Ranged dps, BLM generally is one of the most punishing jobs for mobility still and it's a struggle, the only other Job that struggles like BLM is arguably RDM depending on who you ask, Also it's "barrier" is strong but less frequent then samurais self mitigations and has no way of self healing, to be fair BLM self barrier is pretty strong for what it is.

[Lyth]

...

It's worth remembering that the way that we evaluate dps has changed since early Stormblood. Historically, your dps contribution was your own dps. So when DRG provided a 100% uptime damage buff to ranged, that permanently belonged to the ranged, not to the DRG that provided it. It's also worth remembering that the entire 'bow caster/gun caster' philosophy of Heavensward was built to offset the complaint that 'casters' had to do more work.

The delineation between physical and magical ranged dps benefits casters, not physical ranged. If you eliminated it and merged ranged into a single category, you'd have no way of justifying why a spellcaster should do more damage than a physical ranged because they'd all be members of the same group.

[Videra]

In an ideal world, all dps jobs would provide the same amount of raid dps. But everyone is motivated by personal interest.

The tax on physical ranged players exists purely because casters will do everything in their power to ensure that distinction remains. Even if the dev team designs all subsequent raid tiers with bosses that have larger hitboxes and reduces the relative contribution of melee dps as a result, casters will always demand that they do more damage than ranged. They'll argue it on the basis of having to stop to cast, and they'll argue it on the basis of support benefits brought by ranged jobs. So that's really where your battle lies. That 'fourth' spot never belonged to you in the first place. You'll just switch over from double melee, 1 physical ranged, and 1 magical ranged, to 1 melee, 2 magical ranged, and 1 physical ranged. In fact, if you had complete dps parity and removed the need to bring specific subroles, people would probably just run pure physical/magical ranged comps anyways.

Lmao. Play Black Mage in any extreme or savage fight and come back to me and say Ranged and Magic aren't different categories.

[wereotter]

Ranged tax Makes sense to a extent, In the case of samurai, I could see a world where the idea of it doing the "same" damage as Machinist is fine, Keep in mind Samurai has to still do positional, Even if the bosses hit boxes are bigger Machinist has the entire stage, Machinist has a better raid wide mit (faint only does 5% on magic damage) (also still has second wind for self healing), I think Mach should generally be a bit behind samurai, Still, just nothing near what it's like currently (hopefully we can all agree that mch is far too behind and should have at least the 3rd personal highest dps)

We're talking 1-2% behind not current Levels of machinist, to "compensate" you could also give Machinist (not raid damage buffs) a extra form of Utility in something, as well. But I do not think MCH should be strictly ahead of Samurai.

If we're talking BLM here, then BLM should actually be ahead of samurai, its mobility isn't great compared to melee dps/Ranged dps, BLM generally is one of the most punishing jobs for mobility still and it's a struggle, the only other Job that struggles like BLM is arguably RDM depending on who you ask, Also it's "barrier" is strong but less frequent then samurais self mitigations and has no way of self healing, to be fair BLM self barrier is pretty strong for what it is.

Based off boss arena designs for savage, the devs have admitted that ranged tax, though, isn't really much of a thing these days. Most bosses have hit boxes so large that only very rarely do melee jobs have to disengage from the bosses, and even then only for maybe 1 GCD. So to that end, the did announce that they're going to be adjusting job damage to reduce or possibly eliminate the ranged tax in the next patch. Remains to be seen what they think the appropriate discrepancy is.... but I would say that casting and melee jobs should be about even for damage with ranged being maybe just slightly behind for those few instances where they do have to go where other jobs would either have to adjust swifts or lose casts or disengage. Maybe balance ranged to the damage level of a melee who sometimes misses positionals or a caster who stops casting for movement phases rather than using instant casts to reward the other jobs for good planning