We can clear any encounter without a range physical and their mitigation. One can whine all we want about the damage meta, but damage is the only thing that matters at savage level. Tanks and healers already have way enough support tools to ensure that we survive most things, and fights are designed to be clearable by most if not all comps anyway (in theory).

Are some of those tools appreciated? Sure. Are they mandatory? Absolutely not, perhaps in ultimate at best (to be debated).

We're not in a pre Shadowbringers meta anymore where party resource support is still a required part of any fight encounter due to non neutral rotations that ate more MP and TP than the jobs could regen and where support teamplay actually mattered. This has been nuked out of the sky.

Yet we consistently see jobs with heavy party support used as excuses to get subpar damage outputs, rphys being the prime example of it, but not only: it also has applied to red mage for ages, and now summoner is also affected by it. Yet we still have melees with decently appreciable support like Arcane Crest or especially the elephant in the room which is Mantra. Do we want to also nerf their damage output just because, or are they immune of that treatment just because they're melees in meleewalker?

Don't get me wrong though, I actually appreciate the party support buffs (Minne and the Wrench) we got recently to give back to rphys some semblance of role identity, but I'm not delusional enough not to see that it was made to shut us up about the range tax and other damage issues.

Fact of the matter, SE decided to remove a whole part of gameplay that wasn't part of the damage meta, and now have to deal with the consequences of that decision. Nobody will find any solace in it until you either reintroduce something beyond just damage and individualistic teamplay, or just balance every DPS jobs around their rdps ratings for good.

I am not making this thread to talk about subjective difficulties of play, that horse has been beaten to death already, and if that's really a problem, then make our bland rotations engaging and intricate again to shut everyone up, I dare you.