Quote Originally Posted by Ruminous View Post
Two: phys ranged wont suddenly 'become the best' if they're allowed to be competitive with the melee and casters. Mechanics that define the job will say who is best and who is not, and if yours doesn't align with the situation, then you're not the best. Right now, even if the boss favors a phys ranged job's mechanics, it's still the inferior choice because simply existing as a phys ranged means you do less damage because of an antiquated system that hasn't been updated to the current era.
What do you even mean by "the mechanics that define the job"? Just in terms of pure dps, no matter how people want to paint this, physical ranged are immune to almost any interference. Or, perhaps better put, if anything interferes with a physical ranged job's dps output, that mechanic will interfere with casters and melee just as much. Likely, it will interfere more.
It's obvious the balance is whack right now and both casters and physical ranged need a damage boost, but this trend of pretending we play in some vacuum where simultaneously having free mobility and range doesn't help in the slightest is just disingenuous. Especially with our current NM raids, floors 2 and 3 pose seriously uptime challenges to melees and casters alike.
For better or worse, in the history of FFXIV, there has never been a time where the best comps don't have at least one physical ranged job and one melee job. Even double caster or triple melee have physical ranged presence. This is true right now, and the 3rd, 4th and 5th jobs with highest clear rates are physical ranged (well, one is SMN, but SMN is a physical ranged job in a caster disguise). This whole talk of "might as well replace the physical ranged with another melee/caster" is dishonest, and detracts from actual problems, be it the poor state of balance- which I'm not discounting- or gameplay issues (BRD having sync issues that can be fixed by something as simple as adding a damned Apex Arrow charge is inexcusable imho).

(Also, your first point isn't exactly constructive- this whole thread could be labelled as such, but that does nothing to address the actual current problems)