From Meleewalker to Meleetrail

[Valence]

Hey if all ranged had cast times I'd be down.

How about NO? I don't want to play a caster, thanks.

Give me iajutsu like moves, or some pvp cast times SPARSELY, I'm game, but don't turn me into an actual caster.

And tbh it's not gonna happen due to the backlash it would generate, like back in HW. They learned the lesson, but people are quick to forget.

Honestly I'm of the opinion that casters should be casting more, although Endwalker's fight design often forgets it has players who don't have infinite movement options.

Agreed. Rphys rotations should make up for it by being more complex and engaging like they used to be.

they're instead gonna crack the caster role in half along the lines of "raise caster" and "damage caster."

That's already kinda the case and it's the stuff of balance nightmares.

because otherwise they get completely dropped from meta as has happened for almost two entire expansions in a row.

Only Endwalker. Casters have strived in ShB and were able to match the top group of damage dealers (aka melees), with perhaps the exception of RDM that has always lagged behind historically since its inception, but was still able to out damage any rphys job period, until EW/today (rip RDM, always in the grave). Anyway, welcome to the mobility tax hell, SMN friendos. I'm sure you like it as much as we do.

Program Loop and Panto are absolute nightmares in TOP, Abyssos was relentless in its hatred of casters, and I can see a few mechanics in Anabeisos that would be frustrating but I got to melee this tier and lemme tell you its been blessedly easy as melee.

That's a bit rose tinted. Savage Pantokrator was already a mobility annoyance for every caster in existence (healers included). And that's not the only mechanic of before ShB/EW. The only savages were mobility was less of a thing in my opinion happened before SB.

You also have to take into consideration that every caster had a lot less mobility tools, BLM included (esp BLM). How did people cope with it? They just did, and had not full uptime, but those days, it frustrates people just to think about it.