Physical Ranged (Also SMN) "Freedom of Movement" Tax

[CrystalAurora]

Just looking for some actual reason as to why the development team is insistent on
physical ranged being the most underwhelming part of every party

Have extra movement has been a meme ever since the skill of the player base has increased along with bosses not having any sort of forced downtime at all unless you just aren't good at the game.

This will be the first expansion since Stormblood in which you can run not only Double Melee but Double Caster without losing damage. However if you try to run double physical ranged you are accepting the fact that your damage is going to be severely hindered. This only makes it harder for statics and party finders to form and there is no beneficial reasoning behind making physical ranged so weak in comparison.

The 1% party bonus is literally not implement to encourage party diversity... It actually discourages it since you don't have complete freedom over what DPS you want to play in a specific group.

1% Party bonus and ranged tax is a band-aid fix to a problem that has not actually existed for the last few of expansions.

DNC and BRD should receive significantly higher personal damage to bring them closer to the melee so that they can carry the load without relying so much on their team and then WHEN their raid buffs come into play they are within 1-1.5% of them at the very least.

MCH should be at bare minimum the 4th highest personal damage class behind SAM, BLM, and VPR and be within 1-1.5% of these jobs. MCH doing over 12% less than SAM in personal damage is ridiculous and has been since Shadowbringers.

Stop balancing the game around people having egos over the fact that their job is 'Harder' to them and let people play the job that they enjoy playing without feeling bad or lowering their clear chances just because the balance team decides that they should.

DPS jobs should not have more than a 2% difference between them if possible.

[Akonyl]

It feels baffling how the physical ranged jobs are essentially "support", but nowadays that support is mostly in the form of dps, and even *with* that party dps, we come out lower with overall damage contribution than dedicated selfish dps. At times, it seems like the only reason to take a phys range is for the party composition buff, not for the actual merits of the role.

The ranged tax has felt extremely odd ever since full melee uptime became the norm. If the role really needs to be taxed because of freedom of movement, tax it through difficulty of the job, not a hard limit on their dps. Or, keep the dps tax, but in return give us actual, meaningful party utility beyond dps buffs that don't even compensate enough.

[Ruminous]

It feels baffling how the physical ranged jobs are essentially "support", but nowadays that support is mostly in the form of dps, and even *with* that party dps, we come out lower with overall damage contribution than dedicated selfish dps. At times, it seems like the only reason to take a phys range is for the party composition buff, not for the actual merits of the role.

The ranged tax has felt extremely odd ever since full melee uptime became the norm. If the role really needs to be taxed because of freedom of movement, tax it through difficulty of the job, not a hard limit on their dps. Or, keep the dps tax, but in return give us actual, meaningful party utility beyond dps buffs that don't even compensate enough.

We're hitting the point where even the comp buff is becoming irrelevant because other jobs can simply push their dps higher to compensate. Phys ranged design is using ARR logic in Dawntrail class design. That needs to change. It's not a case of they need to do more damage. Yes it would help, but more damage has to come at the cost of something. Thus the design of phys ranged as a role needs to change. Casters and melee aren't bound by the old class design anymore, so why should phys ranged be?

[Valence]

Just looking for some actual reason as to why the development team is insistent on
physical ranged being the most underwhelming part of every party

Have extra movement has been a meme ever since the skill of the player base has increased along with bosses not having any sort of forced downtime at all unless you just aren't good at the game.

This will be the first expansion since Stormblood in which you can run not only Double Melee but Double Caster without losing damage. However if you try to run double physical ranged you are accepting the fact that your damage is going to be severely hindered. This only makes it harder for statics and party finders to form and there is no beneficial reasoning behind making physical ranged so weak in comparison.

The 1% party bonus is literally not implement to encourage party diversity... It actually discourages it since you don't have complete freedom over what DPS you want to play in a specific group.

1% Party bonus and ranged tax is a band-aid fix to a problem that has not actually existed for the last few of expansions.

DNC and BRD should receive significantly higher personal damage to bring them closer to the melee so that they can carry the load without relying so much on their team and then WHEN their raid buffs come into play they are within 1-1.5% of them at the very least.

MCH should be at bare minimum the 4th highest personal damage class behind SAM, BLM, and VPR and be within 1-1.5% of these jobs. MCH doing over 12% less than SAM in personal damage is ridiculous and has been since Shadowbringers.

Stop balancing the game around people having egos over the fact that their job is 'Harder' to them and let people play the job that they enjoy playing without feeling bad or lowering their clear chances just because the balance team decides that they should.

DPS jobs should not have more than a 2% difference between them if possible.

It's not the first expansion. It has been the case in early ShB and in early EW. 10% discrepancies isn't unheard of, actually it went above that back then.

The only reason people didn't do it was because of the 1% party bonus "muh parses" and a slightly lowered vitality for the whole party.

I do agree that without extremely specific mechanics directly targeted at the role, it will remain in limbo, since you can't either buff it on par with melees/BLM/PCT else nobody would play melee anymore. It's not a solvable conundrum.

[CKNovel]

This has been an ongoing feedback since early ShB but somehow it keeps getting ignore.
I don't exactly see the problem of allowing 2 ranged comp with no BLM (Or picto today) doing as much damage as a 2 melee comp.

For the past years we've had massive hitbox, more and more melee tool to maintain uptime. Even when looking at VPR or RPR who have very powerful ranged attacks to maintain their damage output.
Secondly, looking at the current EX, we can maintain a perfect melee uptime, absolute worst case scenario we lose 2 GCDs.
Third, when a content actually forced the melee to disconnect, the ranged were still lagging behind but in exchange it was the caster who were shining, as it turns out it wasn't the mobility that gave an edge, but the range.

If ranged are taxed, then BLM and PIC should be taxed as well or everyone should be around the same level. PIC is also a job with crazy utility that mirrors the overtuned state of SHB's SMN, one of the job that suffered a rare nerf.

[Corwin_Sunchaser]

I do agree that without extremely specific mechanics directly targeted at the role, it will remain in limbo, since you can't either buff it on par with melees/BLM/PCT else nobody would play melee anymore. It's not a solvable conundrum.

Maybe they should add a % party buff to force groups to have melees in their ranks? Wait a minute...

All jobs should have a similar dps output within their role (Tank, DPS, Healer) so playstyle would be the main reason you choose to play a job.

Also, at what point the damage output of the rphys + % party buff become less impactful than taking another melee or PCT/BLM? I'd say we are not that far...

[Tunda]

there are people who will be made if anything change in summoner + range kit because they are too bad at the game so they pick these un skilled jobs and WANTS TO CHANGE VIPER SO THEY CAN FEEL GOOD ABOUT THEM SELVES HELL NO

[Connor]

I wish physical ranged dps could be actual ‘supports’ and not ‘dps with the same support as everyone else but a tiny fraction of the dps’. Frankly I wouldn’t care if Bard/Dancer/Machinist all did 1 dps lol, as long as they had interesting and varied ways of supporting the party.

Pictomancer are clowning on Dancer/Bard so hard right now it isn’t even funny. Better support, equal/more party healing, much easier to use party shield, and they have super high dps too.

But don’t worry physical ranged dps, you get the super amazing super balancing and valuable…Enhanced Glorified Role Skill (Troub/Shield/Tactician). Very supportive, very fun, nobody will ever underestimate physical ranged again…

[CrystalAurora]

It's not the first expansion. It has been the case in early ShB and in early EW. 10% discrepancies isn't unheard of, actually it went above that back then.

The only reason people didn't do it was because of the 1% party bonus "muh parses" and a slightly lowered vitality for the whole party.

I do agree that without extremely specific mechanics directly targeted at the role, it will remain in limbo, since you can't either buff it on par with melees/BLM/PCT else nobody would play melee anymore. It's not a solvable conundrum.

No one playing melee anymore because of physical ranged doing damage is just not true at all. People will always play melee as long as they aren't significantly behind in damage like physical ranged is currently in due to them having 6 different fun options with somewhat unique gameplay.

Not only that but my main point is that the difference has just been simply laughable, anything more than a few percentage ahead is awful balancing.

Majority of the player base will not play a job they simply don't enjoy. Players are just being punished currently because their favorite job happens to be a physical ranged or caster that isn't PCT or soon to be BLM when they inevitably get major buffs.

[Valence]

Maybe they should add a % party buff to force groups to have melees in their ranks? Wait a minute...

All jobs should have a similar dps output within their role (Tank, DPS, Healer) so playstyle would be the main reason you choose to play a job.

Also, at what point the damage output of the rphys + % party buff become less impactful than taking another melee or PCT/BLM? I'd say we are not that far...

I mean you're preaching to the choir, I'm a literally job commie when it comes to skill floor and ceilings for everybody and damage output for everybody.

But as soon as you mention flattening the damage output all across the board, casters and melees start to freak out real bad somehow.

No one playing melee anymore because of physical ranged doing damage is just not true at all. People will always play melee as long as they aren't significantly behind in damage like physical ranged is currently in due to them having 6 different fun options with somewhat unique gameplay.

Not only that but my main point is that the difference has just been simply laughable, anything more than a few percentage ahead is awful balancing.

Majority of the player base will not play a job they simply don't enjoy. Players are just being punished currently because their favorite job happens to be a physical ranged or caster that isn't PCT or soon to be BLM when they inevitably get major buffs.

I was mostly referring to challenging content, savage/ultimate in particular. You'd still see melees, but a lot of groups could just go for 1 melee and 3 ranged because they wouldn't have to bother with melee positions. Is it a bad thing by necessity or just more freedom though, idk?