They forgot Ranged Physical is a role in the game

[Lyth]

???

Tanks and melee jobs are physically unable to get their rotation off if they are forced out of range from the boss. That's a fundamental distinction between melee and ranged. It's also the reason why the 2/2/2/2 format exists. Otherwise players can and will run an all ranged comp.

I'm all in favor of fairness, but I'm not going to let you push the boundaries either. I don't support triple or quadruple ranged comps. That should be genuinely restricted, similar to how they completely prevented LB generation on duplicate jobs in Ultimates to prevent people from running multiple PCTs in the upcoming Ultimate. And before you make the completely ludicrous suggestion of triple/quadruple melee (which no sane player would agree to run), I would support the same restriction on melee jobs.

If you read my post properly, you would have noted that I said 'under target dummy conditions.' Any situation which forces melee downtime is going to skew massively in favor of ranged jobs, and we see that already with PCT. The only difference in what I'm proposing is instead of that ranged job always being PCT, it sometimes be MCH, DNC, BRD, SMN, RDM, or BLM. If you design it well, you will have some higher melee uptime fights that give melee jobs the upper hand, and others which give ranged the upper hand. You'll have some fights that favor burst, and others that favor sustained DPS.

You're fighting a battle on two fronts, and that's just not tenable. Would it really hurt you to let Physical Ranged have a chance to shine in terms of damage without treating them like they belong in a lower tier of ranged jobs? You could then make a better united case overall for Ranged jobs on the whole to have more instances to excel and take the top spot, outside of the PCT dominance that we've seen this expansion.

[Supersnow845]

snip

Casters are physically unable to move for extended periods of time and keep their rotation running that is a fundamental difference between casters and physical ranged. The logic is exactly the same, just like how they have jupiterfied hitboxes and designed every mechanic since junction shiva around the assumption that the melee should never need to move out of melee range they have also provided the casters insta casts. You can’t argue one is fundamentally different from the other because both are restrictions to the design of the ability of the class to maintain uptime. Playing HW BLM on the modern fight design is just as impossible as playing a melee at ranged. They have compensated one with internal mechanics and one with fight design mechanics but the distinction remains, casters are as different from physical ranged as melee are from casters and inherently there is no advantage to bringing a caster in the modern fight design in a “theoretical all goes” DPS design. If all jobs had parity and fight design didn’t change high cast casters would arguably suffer worse than melee because as of right now fight design builds in the assumption of melee but not necessarily casters. An anything goes meta would likely be 2 melee 2 physical ranged or 1 melee 3 physical ranged because the melee aren’t remotely disadvantaged by modern fight design but casters aren’t compensated for in fight design. They instead alter their rotations to fight design

Putting melee a small percentage above then “compensating” the other roles by making it so fight design sometimes favours the ranged role is just a recipe for making everyone angry. Enforcing melee downtime just makes the melees angry (E6 anyone) and allowing for 100% melee uptime basically just encourages the same melee dominance we have now because the playerbase hates fighting for actual uptime. Don’t get me wrong if every mechanic in savage was a junction shiva style actual fight for uptime I’d have no problem with your proposal because then jobs would actually be differentiated by skill, but as we know the playerbase acts like you kicked their puppy when we have 2 GCD’s of downtime even though they are 20+ ahead of every non melee besides PCT. But your problems with PCT raise a question. Arguably PCT already sits in a full uptime fight with the melees, it’s barely ahead in full uptime and most PCT’s you get will be lower (it has the highest IQR of any job in the game), if this is your “goal” so to speak about parity that favours different jobs why do you oppose the location of PCT right now, arguably the easier way to enact your plan is pull all the ranged up to PCT. ( or at least pull the ranged up to PCT minus 1 or 2% putting even its gold parse firmly amongst the melees

And I still don’t know where you are getting this whole “evil caster wants to hold the phys ranged down” my opinion has always been that a job that has no uptime concerns should have a theoretical lower ceiling than a job that does have uptime concerns (notice this is also why I argue for DPS parity amongst tanks and healers not healer dominance) but in exchange said job should have mechanics designed around it that play to its strengths and allow it to contribute meaningfully to the party in its own right (the renald answer). If this involves a superficial change of changing their name to “support DPS” that doesn’t bother me. It’s just like how I’ve always said that I have zero problem with support being taxed (such as putting PCT below BLM and SAM) but the taxes support should also be meaningful (tempra grassa is, star prism isn’t)

[Valence]

If we don't move away from single trial bosses with nothing else to do around on the arena, and introduce more metrics to take advantage on, this debate is never going to solve itself because there is no satisfying solution.

[mallleable]

A pretty simple way to view the balance issue between ranged, and melee is that the pool of non-taxed ranged jobs is way too small. Only two out of seven ranged jobs are not taxed for various reasons, BLM and PCT, and on top of that, they come from the same role. Also melee dps are not subjected to as many balance splits as ranged are. Ranged are split between magical, and physical, rez and no rez, cast times, and no cast time. They're totally atomized. The only balance splits melee kinda have are buff, and non buff -- which they are pretty close to an even split, and are pretty tight because melee is a single role, and with gear type only affecting playstyle, and aesthetics.

So we can give jobs like BRD, and MCH walking casts, and it doubles the pool of non taxed ranged jobs as well as provide options outside of magical ranged role. Four out of seven. I don't have to fully agree with these tax rules, but I can point out solutions that works within the dev's rules. But I also happen to be a huge fan of walking casts as a mechanic because they make BRD, and MCH play better as marksmen. And the thing is that 'marksman BRD' does not have to give up its support utility because generic utility is not taxed in the same way rezzes are.

[Valence]

I wonder what job would remain for me to play once rphys gets turned into casters. Kinda dreadful to think about.

[Connor]

I wonder what job would remain for me to play once rphys gets turned into casters. Kinda dreadful to think about.

You’ll find your job the same place people who like supporting the party do…people who enjoy playing healer…people who enjoyed pre-ShB Bard…people who liked pre-rework Summoner…people who liked release Viper…Monks…

…in a different game.

Also I like that we’re all making the assumption that the developers’ views on phys ranged are magically going to change and they’ll suddenly stop being deathly terrified of the role. Then they’ll give them all this extra dps and everything will be perfect phys ranged live again. As if they wouldn’t nerf every phys ranged into the ground without hesitation if they thought they were coming anywhere close to the other dps. If they were doing more ? ‘FFXIV has reached end of service goodbye everyone’.

As if logic has ever had anything to do with how they balance jobs. The ‘healer strike’ should have made abundantly clear that the devs will not change their stance on certain topics. One of which being ‘phys ranged must always be the de-facto worst dps available’. It does not matter how much ‘logic’ or ‘theory’ you bring, if they don’t want to do something they won’t do it. No matter how much they actually should

[Lyth]

It's a bit odd that having a cast bar automatically turns a job into a 'Caster'. Is RPR a 'Caster'? Is SAM a 'Caster'? The primary assumption that people have are that Magical Ranged jobs are uniquely challenged by having to work around cast times, and that the APM loss by watching your 'Now Loading' bar fill up while dribbling paint from your mouth somehow outweighs actually weaving at high speed. And when you actually question it the separation of ranged jobs into upper and lower tiers becomes absurd.

I don't think the addition of a few walking casts on select Physical Ranged jobs will destroy the role, but it will make more people questioning why a 25 APM PCT simultaneously out-damages and out-supports a 45 APM MCH while not having to give up their mid-combat coffee breaks between burst windows. You just need to systematically remove their excuses until there's no defense, and then players will stop defending it. It was the same way for Living Dead as well, it was only when Holmgang was buffed to the point that nobody could deny that it was unilaterally broken in early Endwalker that Living Dead got rectified. Until then you still had people trying to justify it as being balanced.

And SE can ignore this all they like but they're really hitting turbulent waters in Dawntrail, and they really can't afford to fail at this game given the rest of their prospects. So if their five person job design team has unyielding opinions that are driving away players, well, I'm guessing that they'll eventually agree to toss out the bilge or sink the ship. Either way, they can't afford to drive entire swaths of players off of roles like that.

[Connor]

. Either way, they can't afford to drive entire swaths of players off of roles like that.

They already have though. Healers? Tanks? Monks? Phys ranged? Summoners? Black Mages (possibly)?

They weren’t bothered by driving ‘entire swaths of players’ off all those roles/jobs the past two expansions. Whether it’s by nuking huge parts of their gameplay into the ground (healer dps) or entirely redesigning an entire job with no possible alternative (Summoner).Why would they start caring now?

[Kuroka]

Casting bard during HW was the reason i never played it lol

[mallleable]

Casting bard during HW was the reason i never played it lol

Walking casts were introduced in Endwalker during the 6.1 PVP rework, and only appeared on the PVP versions of BRD, and MCH. The tooltip states "Requires casting time to execute. However, it is possible to walk while casting." They follow similar rules to regular casts, but in practice they play differently. So the idea is to give PVE BRD, and MCH walking casts like they do currently in PVP. Every skill wouldn't become a walking cast, only the filler. I never got to play phys ranged in Heavensward, but I imagine that walking cast phys ranged made today would play very differently than full cast phys ranged back then.

Another thing to consider that actions that increase movement speed like Sprint can almost fuily negate the 'walking' part of walking casts. So in theory, Peloton could be reworked to grant a buff that increases movement speed while casting, that way it can be stacked with Sprint. Tools like Sprint, and hypothetical reworked Peloton can be used in fights with lots of movement.

To me, the mechanic feel more reminiscent of bow, and firearm mechanics that show up in other games. Like how with most bows, you have to manually pull back the string before letting go of an arrow or like when you scope in or aim down sights with various firearms in shooters. It's like they finally figured out how to give BRD, and MCH 'aiming' mechanics.