Concerns Regarding DPS Balance: Physical Ranged, Red Mage, and Summoner

[CKNovel]

Curing Waltz is indeed nice in a pinch but that's about it. I can never get the party to stack up for it and if I'm having to use it, it usually means the healers are dead and we'll die anyway.

Improvisation is straight up basically never usable unless you want the tiny regen. When do you have time to channel it in the vast majority of fights?

You can double tap Improvisation to get the 5% shield, it ramps up to 10% if you keep dancing.
It's very rare to have the possibility to fully channel it but you still have the 5% instant shield anyway.

One thing I also completely forgot to point out is that shields don't take in account wether the attack is magical or physical. I believe "darkness" or "true" damage can be soaked as well but don't quote me on that.

[CaedemSanguis]

I dont see the problem (for smn/rdm), they are bis during prog, and blm/pct are bis when hard dps check/speedkill

[NightHour]

Leaving a job our just because they do like 2% less damage is dumb but the phys ranged are getting dangerously close to the point where subbing them out for another damage caster or melee is a DPS gain even accounting for the 1% they bring

A shoddily played melee with 70% uptime should not be out DPS’ing a physical ranged

Physical Ranged right now are basically "Play Perfect or get out DPS'd by Tanks."

And when I mean perfect, I mean perfect.

If a DPS class has to play perfect to not be out DPS'd by a SUPPORT CLASS something is seriously wrong.





Melee players in particular have this mindset that "Physical Ranged have buffs and utility" "Physical Ranged have freedom of movement" so they should do worse damage.



"Ranged have buffs and utility"

Right, ok... valid point but.......


What exactly is Feint? Mantra? Arcane Crest? Raid utility.

What exactly is Brotherhood, Dokimuri, Battle Litany, Arcane Circle? Raid buffs.


I'd understand being taxed so hard if melee raid buffs were weaker than PRanged's buffs but they're not.


"Ranged have freedom of movement"


Again a very valid point but a moot one at best.

Encounters are designed with melee uptime in mind, very rarely are melee forced off a boss for an extended duration of time to consider this "ranged freedom of movement" a benefit of being ranged.

99% of mechanics can be resolved either in melee range or at max melee also melee have so many gap closers now a days, so this bs about melee being unable to "move" is bollocks.


Also, Encounters are not designed in a way that utilizes this so called "Freedom of Movement", there's not really any distance based bait mechanics that take advantage of this "freedom of movement".





In no world should a 50% uptime melee who can barely hit his buttons properly outperform a physical ranged who's playing perfectly or near perfect.



Square really needs to re-evaluate how it balances jobs and role archetypes.




This is where WoW beats XIV imo - A Well played Ranged player can beat a bad melee and a well played melee can beat a bad played ranged.


On XIV it's A bad Melee automatically beats a well played ranged by default.



I am a strong believer that if the 5% did not exist - Groups would be running double caster

[Valence]

- Ranged have buffs and utility is a red herring when one just has to go open a cDPS chart that combines every party contribution and raid buff use into a single metric to have a general overview of the problem, and rphys are 10% behind everybody else, which INCLUDES buffs. And if the argument is that there is also utility, well yeah, what the above poster said.

- "Ranged have freedom of movement" is reductive and often used as a derogatory blanket statement onto rphys jobs. The correct statement is "Ranged Physical has freedom of uptime", which doesn't include the movement part, since MCH and BRD are part of the 4 worst jobs when it comes to pure mobility with SCH and AST. Everybody else moves better, which allows for better wiggle room in execution (to make up for uptime constraints). Once a non rphys job has mapped out their uptime, they're technically more mobile than any rphys (but DNC).

[NightHour]

- Ranged have buffs and utility is a red herring when one just has to go open a cDPS chart that combines every party contribution and raid buff use into a single metric to have a general overview of the problem, and rphys are 10% behind everybody else, which INCLUDES buffs. And if the argument is that there is also utility, well yeah, what the above poster said.

- "Ranged have freedom of movement" is reductive and often used as a derogatory blanket statement onto rphys jobs. The correct statement is "Ranged Physical has freedom of uptime", which doesn't include the movement part, since MCH and BRD are part of the 4 worst jobs when it comes to pure mobility with SCH and AST. Everybody else moves better, which allows for better wiggle room in execution (to make up for uptime constraints). Once a non rphys job has mapped out their uptime, they're technically more mobile than any rphys (but DNC).

I'd say if Phys Ranged came up by another 5% ish, we'd be in a good spot.

You can double tap Improvisation to get the 5% shield, it ramps up to 10% if you keep dancing.
It's very rare to have the possibility to fully channel it but you still have the 5% instant shield anyway.

One thing I also completely forgot to point out is that shields don't take in account wether the attack is magical or physical. I believe "darkness" or "true" damage can be soaked as well but don't quote me on that.

Improvisation is an ability I'd happily say goodbye to if i could have more personal dps.

[Valence]

Rphys has always been buffed and the gap reduced to 5% overall both in ShB and EW with the successive patches that came after first tier of savage so I wouldn't be surprised to see this happen again, because for some reason this keeps happening... Doesn't solve the problem that rphys' only justification remains a 1% party glorified token, but at least it makes people less grumpy about it.

[Aco505]

A shoddily played melee with 70% uptime should not be out DPS’ing a physical ranged

a 50% uptime melee who can barely hit his buttons properly outperform a physical ranged who's playing perfectly or near perfect.

Uptime numbers of 70 or 50% would mean someone not attacking the boss for 30 or 50% of the time. In this situation, not even the strongest job will produce more DPS than a physical range. This is, I assume, a misunderstanding of the colored numbers in a certain website.

Uptime does not correlate to the colored numbers.

Physical Ranged right now are basically "Play Perfect or get out DPS'd by Tanks."

And when I mean perfect, I mean perfect.

If a DPS class has to play perfect to not be out DPS'd by a SUPPORT CLASS something is seriously wrong.

The best 99th percentile tank in cDPS in the current Savage tier, Dark Knight, only has higher numbers than the lowest DPS at the 10th percentile in the same category.

This is considering that DRK requires specific comps (as many buffers as possible) and kill times to produce such a number, as the other tanks are several hundreds of DPS below in the same situation.

Tanks never beat any DPS rDPS-wise at any percentile either.


Misunderstandings aside, I think we can all agree with the concerns. A short-term solution would be reducing the damage gap so that it's never higher than 5%.

Long-term solutions would involve rethinking the physical range role as a whole, as well as SMN and RDM's role within casters.

[VellAshe]

Misunderstandings aside, I think we can all agree with the concerns. A short-term solution would be reducing the damage gap so that it's never higher than 5%.

Long-term solutions would involve rethinking the physical range role as a whole, as well as SMN and RDM's role within casters.

Bumping this thought process. To make physical ranged more relevant in a high-end mindset, there should be a change in how we review the roles of DPS in the game.
We always talk greedy vs support DPS classes regardless of the roles, and in a perfect situation, we should be able to say yes to the following scenarios:

1. Can 4 'Greedy' DPS classes together clear this fight?
2. Can 4 'Support' DPS classes together clear this fight?
3. Can a combination of both Greedy and Support DPS clear this fight?

If you can answer yes in all scenarios, then it would mean that we've achieved some solid level of balance across all forms of DPS roles.

With the requirement of having specific roles filled out for the 5%, only two of these three conditions are usually met because we don't really have a good 'support melee dps' example. I'm pretty sure all Melees are just significantly strong across the board with minimal party buffs outside of 1/2-minute burst (MNK, RPR, DRG), or are greedy by design (SAM, NIN, VPR). Does that classify them as support melee? I don't think so.

Other DPS roles have significantly easier examples to showcase however; we can call MCH greedy in design, DNC is good for single-target support (greedy support? lol), and BRD is just full support, no greed.

Casters are even easier: BLM, PCT, SMN, RDM in terms of greed - support respectively. (Picto is just both; it's just that universally powerful right now that any class with a Pictomancer is just incredibly buffed.) But their support is still very subjective, and similar to Melee; burst DPS windows, and some mitigation similar to Ranged.

Do we lean more towards their defined roles (Melee, Ranged, Caster) and their utility going into raid, or more into their subjective roles (Greedy, Support)? Can we find a good mesh of both? I feel like that line of dialogue may yield better gameplay relevance for Ranged DPS.

[mallleable]

I've been starting to rethink the 'ranged tax' or uptime tax' as a positioning tax, and I say this as a phys ranged player, but a positioning tax does kinda have a point. Phys ranged have no positioning concerns unlike every other job in the game. They don't need to worry about being at the correct range or on the right spots on an enemy's hit box like a melee. They don't need to worry about standing still or minimizing movement like a magical ranged. They don't have caster concerns or be in range of other players to dish out heals like a healer. And they don't need to worry about being in melee range, and how their positioning will affect the enemy's position like a tank. The only time phys ranged have to think aout their positioning is when mechanics are happening, but that's concern for everyone. Why is there a role that don't need to position in a game where positioning matters?

It's like if there were a multiplayer shooter game that had a handful of damage characters or weapons that can hit their target anywhere on the map while being anywhere on the map, and they don't need to aim -- they would be unbalanceable. I think it would be healthier for the phys ranged role if it had some positioning responsibilities either through things like walking casts or positionals or both. Now, I think it would be cool to have like a mobility specialist job that doesn't have positioning concerns, but not an entire role dedicated to the same specialty.

[BabyYoda]

Bumping this thought process. To make physical ranged more relevant in a high-end mindset, there should be a change in how we review the roles of DPS in the game.
We always talk greedy vs support DPS classes regardless of the roles, and in a perfect situation, we should be able to say yes to the following scenarios:

1. Can 4 'Greedy' DPS classes together clear this fight?
2. Can 4 'Support' DPS classes together clear this fight?
3. Can a combination of both Greedy and Support DPS clear this fight?

If you can answer yes in all scenarios, then it would mean that we've achieved some solid level of balance across all forms of DPS roles.

With the requirement of having specific roles filled out for the 5%, only two of these three conditions are usually met because we don't really have a good 'support melee dps' example. I'm pretty sure all Melees are just significantly strong across the board with minimal party buffs outside of 1/2-minute burst (MNK, RPR, DRG), or are greedy by design (SAM, NIN, VPR). Does that classify them as support melee? I don't think so.

Other DPS roles have significantly easier examples to showcase however; we can call MCH greedy in design, DNC is good for single-target support (greedy support? lol), and BRD is just full support, no greed.

Casters are even easier: BLM, PCT, SMN, RDM in terms of greed - support respectively. (Picto is just both; it's just that universally powerful right now that any class with a Pictomancer is just incredibly buffed.) But their support is still very subjective, and similar to Melee; burst DPS windows, and some mitigation similar to Ranged.

Do we lean more towards their defined roles (Melee, Ranged, Caster) and their utility going into raid, or more into their subjective roles (Greedy, Support)? Can we find a good mesh of both? I feel like that line of dialogue may yield better gameplay relevance for Ranged DPS.

it is simple,

balance the boss damage and health based on party jobs

if we got 4 support then boss should do more damage and have less HP
if we got 4 dps then boss do less damage and more HP
if we got both we should have formula to calculate HP and damage of the boss.

it is really this simple