From Meleewalker to Meleetrail

[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.

[Supersnow845]

^i think that they need to fix this by actually going back to magic and phys ranged being distinct, not throwing them together into “ranged” and then balancing all ranged against the melees

[Shurrikhan]

^i think that they need to fix this by actually going back to magic and phys ranged being distinct, not throwing them together into “ranged” and then balancing all ranged against the melees

They could, but at that point, what excuse do they have for not again making Maiming the more bursty Melee, Striking the more sustained Melee, Scouting the bursty and high-utility but with even lower sustain Melee, etc.?

Honestly, it kinda feels like the biggest problem was half-assing Scouting Melee in order not to piss off the Ranged classes that already had more choices at the time (3 vs. Melees' 2), or never developing a third sub-role of Ranged and then opening up the Gear Classes to increase available crossover and fine-tuning ("customization" if any of it in this game [still] actually had permissible gameplay impact).

There's no reason why DEX and INT shouldn't be at least partly relevant to, say, MNK and SAM, STR and INT to NIN, INT and MND to BRD, DEX and MND to RDM, etc.

[Supersnow845]

They could, but at that point, what excuse do they have for not again making Maiming the more bursty Melee, Striking the more sustained Melee, Scouting the bursty and high-utility but with even lower sustain Melee, etc.?

Honestly, it kinda feels like the biggest problem was half-assing Scouting Melee in order not to piss off the Ranged classes that already had more choices at the time (3 vs. Melees' 2), or never developing a third sub-role of Ranged and then opening up the Gear Classes to increase available crossover and fine-tuning ("customization" if anything actually had permissible gameplay impact).

Sub role gear roles has been dead since they removed the unique debuff each one gave to the boss in like SB, I’ve never understood the desire to maintain the three melees sub gear classes for no reason when they really don’t do anything unique, like how the new class absolutely has to be a scouting class, or you know maybe just delete scouting gear

[SaberMaxwell]

If magical ranged and physical ranged are merged, mobility ought to be equalized. If they're not, SMN should lose a ton of mobility to bring it more in line with RDM and BLM.

You can even see in the job split to this day that mobility is valued at or near as high as pure damage just based on how SMN numbers are almost greater than RDM and BLM combined. Given that RDM and SMN do similar damage to DNC/BRD/MCH, it wouldn't be a stretch to see BLM and RDM vanish again with SMN hanging on by a thread like in Stormblood and (albeit lacking rdm obviously) later Heavensward.

[Shurrikhan]

Sub role gear roles has been dead since they removed the unique debuff each one gave to the boss in like SB, I’ve never understood the desire to maintain the three melees sub gear classes for no reason when they really don’t do anything unique, like how the new class absolutely has to be a scouting class, or you know maybe just delete scouting gear

Even that was never exclusive, though. Scouting, Striking, and Fending all had access to Slashing. Fending and Striking both had INT Down. Etc., etc.

What was originally more exclusive, though, was tactical implications. If you were, back at early ARR with min ilvl, running Amdapor Keep with 2 DRGs, you tended to focus-target and plan a bit differently than with 2 MNKs, or especially 2 Bards/Summoners or 2 BLMs. (Heck, the differences were even larger before level 40, with Double-Bard preferring to kite-circle with an aggressive healer [or a SMN instead, if they could manage it] and a single-targeting Tank.)

Granted, that takes some actual distinctions between jobs... and a bit less leniency (a component of difficulty). Which... would never fly now.

[Shurrikhan]

If magical ranged and physical ranged are merged, mobility ought to be equalized. If they're not, SMN should lose a ton of mobility to bring it more in line with RDM and BLM.

Why would they need to be equalized, though?

No expansion has left Black Mage with the same relative mobility as Summoner. Ever. Despite being in the same Role. Originally, Ninja had far more mobility than Monk, despite being in the same Role.

Is there really an issue with Jobs being different from each other, rather than all following the same template?

You have such a clearer memory of ARR than I do it’s actually funny, I remember the worst parts of legacy, coils then everything after Midas, the rest of non coils ARR is like a hazy bleh for me so I’m always happy to defer to your opinion on this subject

That was partly for HW, to be fair, as we didn't get Fending INT-Down until then. So slight hyperbole on my part. I should have said "Almost never," as Slashing was Fending only until 2.4 and INT Down Striking only until 3.0.

[Supersnow845]

Even that was never exclusive, though. Scouting, Striking, and Fending all had access to Slashing. Fending and Striking both had INT Down. Etc., etc.

What was originally more exclusive, though, was tactical implications. If you were, back at early ARR with min ilvl, running Amdapor Keep with 2 DRGs, you tended to focus-target and plan a bit differently than with 2 MNKs, or especially 2 Bards/Summoners or 2 BLMs. (Heck, the differences were even larger before level 40, with Double-Bard preferring to kite-circle with an aggressive healer [or a SMN instead, if they could manage it] and a single-targeting Tank.)

Granted, that takes some actual distinctions between jobs... and a bit less leniency (a component of difficulty). Which... would never fly now.

You have such a clearer memory of ARR than I do it’s actually funny, I remember the worst parts of legacy, coils then everything after Midas, the rest of non coils ARR is like a hazy bleh for me so I’m always happy to defer to your opinion on this subject

[SaberMaxwell]

Why would they need to be equalized, though?

No expansion has left Black Mage with the same relative mobility as Summoner. Ever. Despite being in the same Role. Originally, Ninja had far more mobility than Monk, despite being in the same Role.

Is there really an issue with Jobs being different from each other, rather than all following the same template?

Semantically I chose "equalize" as a term for quick understabdability to the conversation at large. Of course the problem crops up exactly where I said it does: Black Mage got a massive, MASSIVE damage buff this patch, now one of the top damage dealers in the game, and yet it is still used at less than half the rate of SMN the past two weeks. There are two chief reasons: rotational ease and mobility.

Rotational difficulty is a gimme, its much easier to pick up a summoner and do its rotation perfectly. Mobility wise it is (almost as, lest I be called on another technicality) mobile as a physical ranged; when making and executing strats there is no learning curve for the summoner's casting to account for unlike BLM and RDM.

In TOP the past two weeks, SMN doesn't just double BLM, but BLM and RDM combined. This makes sense particularly because p1 of top is actual hell for casters, but SMN instead only needs to align its rotation so its casting can happen during a downtime spot of p1, rare as those are.

Same with DSR although that content is aged and SMN only outperforms RDM and BLM combined, not RDM+BLM twice over.

I submit that the sheer mobility advantage is a major contributing factor to these patterns. Therefore if all ranged were clumped into the same 1% buff, with no change to move RDM and BLM closer to the middle mobility-wise, the jobs would become enthusiast-tier and little more.

[Shurrikhan]

Semantically I chose "equalize" as a term for quick understabdability to the conversation at large. Of course the problem crops up exactly where I said it does: Black Mage got a massive, MASSIVE damage buff this patch, now one of the top damage dealers in the game, and yet it is still used at less than half the rate of SMN the past two weeks. There are two chief reasons: rotational ease and mobility.

Rotational difficulty is a gimme, its much easier to pick up a summoner and do its rotation perfectly. Mobility wise it is (almost as, lest I be called on another technicality) mobile as a physical ranged; when making and executing strats there is no learning curve for the summoner's casting to account for unlike BLM and RDM.

In TOP the past two weeks, SMN doesn't just double BLM, but BLM and RDM combined. This makes sense particularly because p1 of top is actual hell for casters, but SMN instead only needs to align its rotation so its casting can happen during a downtime spot of p1, rare as those are.

Same with DSR although that content is aged and SMN only outperforms RDM and BLM combined, not RDM+BLM twice over.

I submit that the sheer mobility advantage is a major contributing factor to these patterns. Therefore if all ranged were clumped into the same 1% buff, with no change to move RDM and BLM closer to the middle mobility-wise, the jobs would become enthusiast-tier and little more.

Sorry if that came off as a nit-pick; I had thought you meant "mobility ought to be equalized" much more literally across the then-merged Magical Ranged and Physical Ranged... not just that they should follow more equal criteria for how much mobility is permitted relative to each other when having equal or greater utility, ease, and rDPS (since it seems like even Caster itself doesn't have any consistent balancing criteria).

I fully agree that SMN is presently overpowered, and would like to see its mobility come slightly more at-cost and with less ease of optimization. I'd also like to see RDM's Verraise come a bit more at-cost (such as by capping Dualcast at 4s cast time reduction, or as an indirect consequence making RDM's gauges more interesting) and its rDPS be increased to SMN's.