From Meleewalker to Meleetrail

[Rychu]

Copium that them adding a new caster has them realize how fucked the role is with the current fight design, but I doubt it. Also feels bad to be a phys ranged, insane that they will still only have 3 job options for another 3+ years

[WiccaP]

As a mch main, it does kind of suck. They've acknowledged that physical ranged needs to be reworked, and adding a ranged physical would have given them to rebalance and really look at the role and how it fits into current game play. And sometimes it feels like they know what the problems are with the role but don't care enough to fix it

[Rychu]

Yeah honestly I wouldn't be surprised if they consolidated the phys ranged and caster role into one Ranged role just so that people would stop asking about it. Maybe bring back the idea of some phys ranged have cast times but make it like pvp bard and machinist where they can move through the entirety of the cast to provide some uniqueness from casters. Idk im just spitballing here

[WiccaP]

I've been a mch main since HW with dragoon being my alt, and there's a lot about the old kit that I miss. I didn't mind being a gun mage, I miss the utility and turrets of past iterations.
I've level almost every melee, except monk, and melee downtime is overly exaggerated. Almost every melee has a ranged attack and while its a drop in dps its negligible in the overall. I find ppl who complain the most about downtime are the players who run out of melee and never once use their ranged ability. And this became even more apparent with Endwalker and the massive hit boxes.

[Duskane]

I'm a little bummed its not a new phys range just to even out roles 4 range 4 caster but then we would have gotten a phys range every other expac
HW,ShB,DT
so I'm alright with a new Scouting DPS

[WiccaP]

They could have still done scouting gear with ranged physical. Ninjas already share some gear pieces with the role as they are both dex based. I'm all for scouting gear but we just got a melee last expansion. So 2 back to back expansions with melee.

[Shurrikhan]

They could have still done scouting gear with ranged physical. Ninjas already share some gear pieces with the role as they are both dex based. I'm all for scouting gear but we just got a melee last expansion. So 2 back to back expansions with melee.

They're literally adding a Ranged in Dawntrail, and they added a Ranged in Shadowbringers. There are still more Ranged DPS than Melee DPS.

• A Realm Reborn 2.4: 3 Melee vs. 3 Ranged
• Heavensward: 3 Melee vs. 4 Ranged
• Stormblood: 4 Melee vs. 5 Ranged
• Shadowbringers: 4 Melee vs. 6 Ranged
• Endwalker: 5 Melee vs. 6 Ranged
• Dawntrail: 6 Melee vs. 7 Ranged

"But they just added a Melee last expansion!!!"

There is at least as much distinction between SMN/RDM and BLM as there is between SMN/RDM and BRD. There has been no more reason to categorize Physical/DEX-Ranged separately from "Magical"/INT-Ranged since StB than there has been to separate consider Maiming-Melee a separate Role from Striking-Melee.

Every job in the game uses Aether, and all but WAR and MCH use what is obviously magic. That Bard summons portals to simultaneously fire off several aetherial arrows is not particularly different from Red Mage's summoning and firing off several aetherial swords. You have, across the 6 Ranged jobs...

• Magic and Range (Higher rDPS, but less mobility and utility),
• Magic and Range,
• Magic and Range (less throughput for greater effort),
• Magic and Range (slightly more mobile, but slightly less utility),
• Magic and Range (slightly more mobile, but slightly less rDPS),
• and Technomagic and Range (slightly more mobile, but slightly less rDPS).

Nothing of consequence is unique to or tightly correlative with whether their magical ranged attacks are classified as "Physical" or not.

[Valence]

Copium that them adding a new caster has them realize how fucked the role is with the current fight design, but I doubt it. Also feels bad to be a phys ranged, insane that they will still only have 3 job options for another 3+ years

I mean, I understand their reasoning since there hasn't been a new caster DPS since Stormblood. But yeah, feelsbad to be rphys those days. I do hope they seriously fortify the role in meleetrail copium, else it's gonna be a disaster.

I've been a mch main since HW with dragoon being my alt, and there's a lot about the old kit that I miss. I didn't mind being a gun mage, I miss the utility and turrets of past iterations.

What I do miss the most is the ammo system (because who needs a non branching bland melee combo on a job that had a following of proc/priority enjoyers? what did we do to you square enix??), and the old wildfire that was a semi rng burst cramming all we had for 40% of our total output which was literally the job identity. Wildfire those days more like a static mildfire.

[Lyth]

I really hope that they eliminate the arbitrary subdivision between ranged subtypes so that we can put these complaints to rest. There are six ranged jobs currently (excluding BLU) going on to seven next expansion. There's never been a lack of options for players who want to play at a distance, and it's always is the predominant playstyle in any MMO. Rather than pushing for eight ranged jobs, we really should be adding in more supports, which I hope will be in the next set of additions.

[Renathras]

I really hope that they eliminate the arbitrary subdivision between ranged subtypes so that we can put these complaints to rest. There are six ranged jobs currently (excluding BLU) going on to seven next expansion. There's never been a lack of options for players who want to play at a distance, and it's always is the predominant playstyle in any MMO. Rather than pushing for eight ranged jobs, we really should be adding in more supports, which I hope will be in the next set of additions.

This is the worst of possible takes.

Caster and Ranged appeal to different types of people, as does Melee. They aren't the same. We saw that when people got furious over BRD having cast times. The Melee all operate in more or less the same BASIC way. They stay in range of the boss, have at least two positionals (I can't think of a Melee that doesn't, though Positionals have also been way toned down, this used to be a lot more), and are all about keeping uptime on the boss by keeping in range (which is somewhat laughably easy with current boss hitboxes).

Ranged, on the other hand, are all about mobility and keeping their GCDs rolling while being able to flex into mechanics that others can't easily get into, while Casters are about maintaining their casting uptime (which is even a thing for SMN, though much less so than RDM and BLM). If anything, the existing homogenization is already bad, since Casters (other than BLM) have lost any semblance of MP management, and MCH has lost the Ranged's sub-role of Support/buffer, which it had back in SB.

We should be more differentiating them, not combining them.

It's also highly limiting to party composition to force MMRC instead of MRCX, the latter of which people seem to prefer since they can build around what they and their friends have instead of having to recruit people/force people to change Jobs.

This "suggestion" almost always seems to come from Melee mains, but you never really see other people supporting the idea of mandatory 2Melee comps...