Gamespot interview with Mr. Ozma... Very disappointing

[Renathras]

Am I the only one that misses the days in MMOs where people actually used ranged attacks, like when Onixia was flying around in Vanilla WoW and even the WAR tank pulls out their autoattack stat stick bow to do chip damage to her?

Every Job in this game besides MNK has a ranged attack. And even there, for long disengages, you can use Howling Fist/Enlightenment for that (even if it's clunk as hell and a DPS loss VS FULL UPTIME to do so, it's still damage while disengaged IF fights actually had extended disengage times). A lot of Jobs also have DoTs they can slap on the enemy to do damage, or have other disengage options (for example, NIN has Ninjutsu and Phantom before they need to revert to Throwing Dagger; and if they DID have super long disengages, Hellfrog can be used once they generate enough Ninki from Throwing Dagger, giving a pseudo-ranged "rotation", too).

Just give MNK a slightly more accessible ranged attack and we can go back to times where using ranged attacks makes sense. Right now, they may as well not be on anyone's bars other than Tanks for pulls, and PLD practically doesn't need that since Holy Spirit exists.

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I dunno, I thought those were neat times in MMOs. Would be neat for that to come back.

[Shurrikhan]

Am I the only one that misses the days in MMOs where people actually used ranged attacks, like when Onixia was flying around in Vanilla WoW and even the WAR tank pulls out their autoattack stat stick bow to do chip damage to her?

Every Job in this game besides MNK has a ranged attack.

Yes and no? I can't say I'd particularly enjoy having nothing to do but deal near worthless white damage for a phase or, more likely, my number of job/role choices being significantly reduced for the given fight, but I would enjoy a bit more phasal distinction short of consequences like those.

Note also that in early WoW, the ability to switch between classes was at a minimum, so it made sense not to worry so much about bringing the best classes one could for the given situation. Try that in XIV, though, and unless you similarly gimmick out the fight to offer roughly equal (dis)advantage to ranged jobs, you'd just bar melee from that fight (especially under the current relative value of LBs). Different community environments have different degrees of lenience in encounter design.

A quick note: if we consider a ranged attack as potency that can be contributed regardless of range limitations, Monk also has a (limited-use count) ranged attack, of roughly 156 effective potency per GCD. It's just that it's capped to 2.5 GCDs at a time (with up to almost 4.5 GCDs disconnected from target when including SSS) before you need to get within at least 10 yards. So, not a ranged attack insofar as would meet your needs here, but enough to meet the needs of XIV encounter design.