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

[Valence]

That's really what it comes down to doesn't it? Everyone has support options now that are equal or greater than the "Support" role, even if their damage is good. The support rDPS offers isn't even that unique to them anymore because another role has a variation of it (which is typically a 45/90/120s buff or 10% debuff).

But the devs haven't taken the time to properly adjust the numbers with the same philosophy they reserve for this role, so we're the only ones to suffer.

It doesn't even concern rphys exclusively, fact of the matter is that every role has started bleeding over into the other roles identities over time, and one of the big current hot debates is healers vs tanks on healing tools. When it comes to rphys, it leaves us without identity combined with the loss of resource management gameplay, but that's nothing unique although I do agree that's a problem of homogenization of roles (on top of job homogenization).

Here in the case of the ranged tax it's more a problem of balance regarding job constraints I feel, which is outdated and flawed to the core in my opinion.

[CrystalAurora]

We are honestly at the point in which an already competitive job in Samurai is more likely to get buffed than MCH even if one is clearly suffering far more.

My opinion on the 1% party buff is that we only think it has a good reason for existing because Square randomly put it in the game at the start of SHB and we have just accepted it. It gives them an easy way out of having to put in extra work of balancing and allows them to avoid solving things that they believe to be issues between the DPS roles.

The funny thing about the 1% being there is that it COULD be a good thing. It should encourage them to make Physical Ranged a lot closer to Melee/BLM/PCT since there wouldn't be much to complain about because you will have to take a Melee DPS and a Caster no matter what and that last slot can be a filler DPS. But instead its used to pretty much force you into taking only one physical ranged DPS if you want to clear comfortably at lower I-Levels.

There was never a time in Stormblood that I saw any particular role completely getting locked out without it existing. The fact that it does exist should give them more reason to even out the damage a lot more between DPS not less.

[Galvuu]

There was never a time in Stormblood that I saw any particular role completely getting locked out without it existing. The fact that it does exist should give them more reason to even out the damage a lot more between DPS not less.

Actually, in late HW and early SB, the meta comp actually had no casters. I don't mean "no casters in the flex spot", I mean 0 casters- it was 2 ranged and 2 melee.
Not that it matters to this discussion. HW and SB matter less than ShB and EW, since the design we have in DT is much closer to that. Just an historical remark.

Despite thinking that physical ranged need help and all three could use buffs, I really wonder if some people in this thread every played PCT/BLM.
There's a reason why those two jobs have the highest variance between percentiles out of all jobs by a very wide margin. It's really not so simple as "casters have all these tools and can run around all they want". Most people can't do that at all- hence the huge disparity.
(Funny enough, 3rd and 4th are RDM and... RPR. RDM I understand, since it also has cast bars, but I wonder what's difficult to execute in RPR...)

[CrystalAurora]

Actually, in late HW and early SB, the meta comp actually had no casters. I don't mean "no casters in the flex spot", I mean 0 casters- it was 2 ranged and 2 melee.
Not that it matters to this discussion. HW and SB matter less than ShB and EW, since the design we have in DT is much closer to that. Just an historical remark.

Despite thinking that physical ranged need help and all three could use buffs, I really wonder if some people in this thread every played PCT/BLM.
There's a reason why those two jobs have the highest variance between percentiles out of all jobs by a very wide margin. It's really not so simple as "casters have all these tools and can run around all they want". Most people can't do that at all- hence the huge disparity.
(Funny enough, 3rd and 4th are RDM and... RPR. RDM I understand, since it also has cast bars, but I wonder what's difficult to execute in RPR...)

I am not talking about "the meta comp" though I am talking about people going out of their way to lock out an entire dps role, it was not common at all.

As far as the execution goes it really does not matter. Good play is good play and bad play is bad play, I am not going to bring down an entire role or uplift certain classes because of subjective difficulty. The RPR example is perfect for this in that its not a heavy execution job, there are just people who literally probably don't even know that you're supposed to fit two enshrouds into raid buffs every 2 minutes. You can't balance around performance like that but what you can balance around is high level gameplay or you will just end up where we are now, punishing people for playing the job they simply enjoy playing.

[Galvuu]

I am not talking about "the meta comp" though I am talking about people going out of their way to lock out an entire dps role, it was not common at all.

As far as the execution goes it really does not matter. Good play is good play and bad play is bad play, I am not going to bring down an entire role or uplift certain classes because of subjective difficulty. The RPR example is perfect for this in that its not a heavy execution job, there are just people who literally probably don't even know that you're supposed to fit two enshrouds into raid buffs every 2 minutes. You can't balance around performance like that but what you can balance around is high level gameplay or you will just end up where we are now, punishing people for playing the job they simply enjoy playing.

I am all for balancing for the upper echelons of play... if that means balancing for the 80% or 85% percentile. If there's a job that, theoretically, can do 30k rdps and adps, but is so mechanically intensive that only 10 people in the world can execute that, and everyone else can only scratch 20k dps then, in practice, the job does 20k dps.
Reductio ad absurdum used to illustrate a point- obviously the thought experiment does not apply in practice, no job in XIV is this difficult. But there's a huge gap between the top 5% of BLM and PCT and everyone else. Some of it might simply be explained by groups being flexible and supporting their casters, a luxury most casters don't have (I basically play in the pf 95% of the time). The other part might simply be the punishing nature of jobs whose damage is gated behind gcds.
I did not play RPR this expansion so I won't comment on it- I was genuinely wondering what's happening there. These large differences in performance cannot be so easily explained by "doesn't keep uptime" or "doesn't know the fundamentals of the job", especially in the BLM/PCT example, because the gaps are consistent between the 25% to 50% percentiles to the 50% to 75% and even to the 75% to 95%. This seems to imply that the skill floor is low, the skill ceiling is high, the jobs are inherently punishing/fragile to strats and mechanics or a combination/all of these four.

I end every post on this reminder, but I'm not against buffing the ranged jobs. I'm only arguing against the notion that every job gets perfect uptime/perfect burst "for free", because I know of two where this isn't the case (although it can be mitigated if your party helps or you really crunch it, which are two things you cannot count on consistently for 90% of the playerbase), and using some percentile data to try and illustrate the point. I agree that the current balance needs a lot of work.
This entire discussion applies to the subclass I most frequently play, caster dps. I will use this entire argument against SMN- I do not want a world where SMN is doing BLM or PCT levels of damage (with the added burden of rez tax which, while sometimes overtaxed, should definitely be there). In fact, if they stick to the design of current extremes, I actually think the rez might not be overvalued, because you can clear these extremes with 10 deaths, and having that caster rez really helps a lot. I definitely felt its absence when I went in with Picto or BLM- but that's another, tangential discussion for another topic.

[CrystalAurora]

I do not want a world where SMN is doing BLM or PCT levels of damage (with the added burden of rez tax which, while sometimes overtaxed, should definitely be there). In fact, if they stick to the design of current extremes, I actually think the rez might not be overvalued, because you can clear these extremes with 10 deaths, and having that caster rez really helps a lot. I definitely felt its absence when I went in with Picto or BLM- but that's another, tangential discussion for another topic.

I can definitely agree that SMN and RDM shouldn't match the contribution of BLM and PCT but as you've said my main point with not only these two classes but physical ranged is just that the gap is way too much to justify in recent time.

It needs to be kept within a few percent of each other or the DPS checks will be really wonky on final savage door bosses when it comes the difference in you bringing a BLM/PCT or not. We all remember how P8S was incredibly tough before the nerfs if you decided to bring jobs like WAR, PLD and RDM vs GNB, DRK and BLM because of the former being so overly taxed.

This could change if they do less body check mechanics this savage tier but often times it seemed like an extra battle rez often lost value later on in a tier since if someone died you either had a healer up that could comfortably swiftcast rez or you were dead because a pair mechanic or immediate healer check was up next.

Once again however, if there needs to be a gap then that's fine it is just at uncomfortable amounts right now.

As far as physical ranged goes I will just use MCH since its the easiest one to put in a reasonable spot since it has no raid buff. It just doesn't even look right seeing said DPS under jobs that aren't named BLM, VPR, or SAM when it comes to raw Personal damage.

[Aurora428]

Actually, in late HW and early SB, the meta comp actually had no casters. I don't mean "no casters in the flex spot", I mean 0 casters- it was 2 ranged and 2 melee.
Not that it matters to this discussion. HW and SB matter less than ShB and EW, since the design we have in DT is much closer to that. Just an historical remark.

Despite thinking that physical ranged need help and all three could use buffs, I really wonder if some people in this thread every played PCT/BLM.
There's a reason why those two jobs have the highest variance between percentiles out of all jobs by a very wide margin. It's really not so simple as "casters have all these tools and can run around all they want". Most people can't do that at all- hence the huge disparity.
(Funny enough, 3rd and 4th are RDM and... RPR. RDM I understand, since it also has cast bars, but I wonder what's difficult to execute in RPR...)

Okay but you've admitted that it was EARLY stormblood. By the end of SB the meta comp was two melee/one prange/one caster and they managed it without range taxing.

All that really needed to happen in the transition to Shadowbringers was the removal of pierce down.

When people talk about the double prange meta, they conveniently ignore the melee that was providing the pierce synergy.

[Galvuu]

Okay but you've admitted that it was EARLY stormblood. By the end of SB the meta comp was two melee/one prange/one caster and they managed it without range taxing.

All that really needed to happen in the transition to Shadowbringers was the removal of pierce down.

When people talk about the double prange meta, they conveniently ignore the melee that was providing the pierce synergy.

This isn't correct either. The best comp in 4.4/4.5 depended on the fight. Some were double caster, some were triple melee (and no caster), some were the usual comp you're mentioning. In fact, the double caster and the triple melee were usually the most powerful in the respective fights they were good at. SB had a very diverse meta with like 4 comps being better in different fights, and many jobs being swapped in and out for different fights (NIN was awful in O12S door boss, for example).
Ranged was definitely taxed back then too (BLM being excluded), but fight design was very different, which is why you had all these wacky comps, and the best comp varied with the fight and even the jobs you brought.
The pierce synergy basically had little bearing by the end of Stormblood's lifecycle, although removing it was the correct decision.
I actually think there's a lot to be learned about studying late SB comps, because that's the most diverse meta in the history of the game, imho.

(Also, for what it's worth, only having one phys ranged slot in SB wasn't a big deal because there were only two of them, so it made perfect sense that there would be double melee/double caster and not double ranged because there were less phys ranged jobs to begin with)

[Aurora428]

This isn't correct either. The best comp in 4.4/4.5 depended on the fight. Some were double caster, some were triple melee (and no caster), some were the usual comp you're mentioning. In fact, the double caster and the triple melee were usually the most powerful in the respective fights they were good at. SB had a very diverse meta with like 4 comps being better in different fights, and many jobs being swapped in and out for different fights (NIN was awful in O12S door boss, for example).
Ranged was definitely taxed back then too (BLM being excluded), but fight design was very different, which is why you had all these wacky comps, and the best comp varied with the fight and even the jobs you brought.
The pierce synergy basically had little bearing by the end of Stormblood's lifecycle, although removing it was the correct decision.
I actually think there's a lot to be learned about studying late SB comps, because that's the most diverse meta in the history of the game, imho.

(Also, for what it's worth, only having one phys ranged slot in SB wasn't a big deal because there were only two of them, so it made perfect sense that there would be double melee/double caster and not double ranged because there were less phys ranged jobs to begin with)

Triple melee was only brought on specific fights that didn't punish having 5 melee party members (including tanks) which was an incredible niche situation that wouldn't exist with the party bonus we have now.

I wouldn't say that's an exactly relevant balance talking point today.

Bottom line: the ranged tax we see today is an extreme overcorrection of a situation that would have not existed starting in Shadowbringers anyways.

There exists a value of damage that movement is worth sacrificing for, and there has been little attempt to even try to reach it. That is what is frustrating people. Mobility is nothing but a straight negative for your job.

Removing the tax doesn't mean ranged does the same damage as melee, it means that the value ranged bring is equal to melee in content where enrage is a genuine threat, which does mean MORE damage than they are doing right now.

5% is pretty huge when you consider how much melee-specific failures you would need to make to straight up lose that much DPS (and how often 5% dps can outright doom early enrages)

[Galvuu]

Triple melee was only brought on specific fights that didn't punish having 5 melee party members (including tanks) which was an incredible niche situation that wouldn't exist with the party bonus we have now.

I wouldn't say that's an exactly relevant balance talking point today.

Bottom line: the ranged tax we see today is an extreme overcorrection of a situation that would have not existed starting in Shadowbringers anyways.

There exists a value of damage that movement is worth sacrificing for, and there has been little attempt to even try to reach it. That is what is frustrating people. Mobility is nothing but a straight negative for your job.

Yes? I said outright that what happened in HW and SB wasn't relevant. But saying there wasn't ranged tax in late SB is simply not true. The top melees and BLM were far ahead of ranged jobs. Actually, by between 15 to 20% in terms of personal dps (even using the piercing debuff, BRDs were at around 8.5 to 8.8k dps in O12S, BLM and top melee were over 10k). And, fwiw, every Alphascape fight except one has triple melee comps in the top 10 fastest kills. Ofc, as I said before, that still doesn't matter much because it's not realistic for the average player to pull that off. But double caster was definitely viable even in the pf.
The ranged damage discrepancy was far more justifiable back then for a variety of reasons. It wasn't as much as an overcorrection as a chronic undercorrection- they kept it somewhat the same and they shouldn't, because fight and job design isn't the same. Again, I'm not saying that ranged aren't overtaxed right now. They are. The entire point I'm arguing is that the tax shouldn't cease to exist and, now with you, that SB was a very complicated meta that was much more diverse and were each role was more challenged than now. Fwiw, I'm not sure your statement that "mobility is just a negative" is true, because the 3rd, 4th and 5th jobs with most logged kills in the new extreme trials are all ranged (DNC, SMN and MCH). Maybe people really like those jobs though.