Pictomancer is not the issue.

[Collin_Sky]

I am not understanding what makes people think there is a ranged tax when Picto, BLM, EW SUMMONER, SHB MCH were all obscenely overpowered jobs at point in their life. it is not the ranged tax at this point. they just cant balance.

I sure hope images make sense you.

[Azurarok]

Wasn't SMN not rez taxed in ShB and manage to be close to the top back then? I thought it dropped significantly going into EW and has been slowly falling further behind since. It's why I've assumed it's based off how easy it is to move/weave rather than having a rez automatically penalizing the job.

Also was ShB MCH ever overpowered?

[Dzian]

I've said before the big problem of job balance comes from survival / encounter design in my opinion. If you follow the traditions for example.

A melee dps hits hard and consistently but has enough armour and toughness to take a some hits or splash damage.. allow them to keep up sustained damage and be close enough to traditionally interact with the boss such as interruptions or breaking armour / defences.

Casters typically hit harder than melee but lack mobility. And there survival comes at a cost of dps. Either by having to stop casting to move or by casting shields or crowd control spells like heavies binds sleeps etc enabling them to keep mobs at a safe distance.

Physical ranged classes are the ones that should hit super hard and they are typically super mobile. But they have incredibly limited survivability. A leaf falling from a tree could cripple them. These jobs always used to be dubbed "Glass Cannons" as a result.

The problem XIV has is due to encounters being so heavily designed around unavoidable raid wide damage. everything has to have the survival of a melee and the cost of that survival is there power in the form of a often dubbed Ranged tax. which makes no sense when encounters are designed around unavoidable damage so there no safety in distance.

Raise on a RDM and summoner should be a non issue. using it already comes at a cost. if someonedies then it costs both mp and damage to raise them and potentially messes up your rotation.. and if no one dies raise offers zero benefit to the party so come at zero cost.

and there is next to no actiual utility in the game as it stands everything is just small % damage boosts so a job like BRD should presently be more akin to a glass cannon Ranger class than a support class without support.

[Mawlzy]

I've said before the big problem of job balance comes from survival / encounter design in my opinion. If you follow the traditions for example.

A melee dps hits hard and consistently but has enough armour and toughness to take a some hits or splash damage.. allow them to keep up sustained damage and be close enough to traditionally interact with the boss such as interruptions or breaking armour / defences.

Casters typically hit harder than melee but lack mobility. And there survival comes at a cost of dps. Either by having to stop casting to move or by casting shields or crowd control spells like heavies binds sleeps etc enabling them to keep mobs at a safe distance.

Physical ranged classes are the ones that should hit super hard and they are typically super mobile. But they have incredibly limited survivability. A leaf falling from a tree could cripple them. These jobs always used to be dubbed "Glass Cannons" as a result.

The problem XIV has is due to encounters being so heavily designed around unavoidable raid wide damage. everything has to have the survival of a melee and the cost of that survival is there power in the form of a often dubbed Ranged tax. which makes no sense when encounters are designed around unavoidable damage so there no safety in distance.

Raise on a RDM and summoner should be a non issue. using it already comes at a cost. if someonedies then it costs both mp and damage to raise them and potentially messes up your rotation.. and if no one dies raise offers zero benefit to the party so come at zero cost.

and there is next to no actiual utility in the game as it stands everything is just small % damage boosts so a job like BRD should presently be more akin to a glass cannon Ranger class than a support class without support.

And there we have it.

[Collin_Sky]

You two have absolutely no idea why ranged tax is a thing lol
It has nothing to do with survivability

It has everything to do with the fact that in Stormblood there was an rphys meta because rphys did similar damage to melees (on top of having insane synergy with piercing debuff) and had none of the drawbacks when it came to freedom of movement for mechanics.

SE is terrified of that happening again and thus rphys just do garbage damage forever now.

[mallleable]

The could kill the 'phys ranged tax,' they just gotta give BRD, and MCH, and the eventual 4th phys ranged walking casts like they do in PVP.

[Azurarok]

You two have absolutely no idea why ranged tax is a thing lol
It has nothing to do with survivability

It has everything to do with the fact that in Stormblood there was an rphys meta because rphys did similar damage to melees (on top of having insane synergy with piercing debuff) and had none of the drawbacks when it came to freedom of movement for mechanics.

SE is terrified of that happening again and thus rphys just do garbage damage forever now.

Meanwhile whenever melees have to disengage from the boss for more than a GCD they throw a fit over it and are given some kind of adjustment for it in the next patch

[mallleable]

Meanwhile whenever melees have to disengage from the boss for more than a GCD they throw a fit over it and are given some kind of adjustment for it in the next patch

And they overcorrected in Endnwalker with astronomically sized hitboxes, but they have absolutely changed course in Dawntrail. Melee uptime feels a lot more fair in Dawntrail. And yet Phys ranged still feels like a useless role.

[ForteNightshade]

Wasn't SMN not rez taxed in ShB and manage to be close to the top back then? I thought it dropped significantly going into EW and has been slowly falling further behind since. It's why I've assumed it's based off how easy it is to move/weave rather than having a rez automatically penalizing the job.

Also was ShB MCH ever overpowered?

Red Mage and Summoner were both quite competitive with Black Mage in ShB. It's Magick Barrier and the Summoner rework that seemed to be the tipping point where they decided both needed to do significantly less for no real reason.

And no, Machinist was never overpowered at any point since early Stormblood. Even that was mostly hold over from how ridiculous it and Bard were in Heavensward. Machinist's one niche back then is it was, technically, better for parsing than Bard due to how logs were pure DPS. But the difference was very small.

[Torashiki]

lmao at the fact that people are up in arms over one job doing 6% more damage than everything else but then say the five jobs that do 10% less damage than everything else shouldn't be touched
just lmao

Raise/Rphys tax is a terrible thing.

I will be honest as a flex DPS player... but the people whining the most about PCT are mostly melee DPS mains angry that they dont have the monopoly on top DPS. And BLM ''mains'' but hate just about everything including their own job. Even if the difference is not that large, its a lot about ego. The idea of a range DPS being on ShB SAM level is just pissing a lot of people off.

And ironically the people who are the loudest about Ranged Tax staying are also melee DPS mains who will have a nuclear baby meltdown if MCH had the potencies that a selfish DPS should have. Which extends to SMN too.

If CBU3 will design fights where combat rezzing is not that good, then Rez tax has to go too.

Range tax needs to be at least lowered, when both encounter design AND strats are basically made to give melee almost 99% uptime. Just give MCH competitive potencies. It will still have this massive issue called ''too many unique GCDs that drift a lot'' but at least it wont be both weak AND wonky.

Its nowhere near as bad as the idiotic balance taxes and biases on other games like WoW, but its something that should change anyways.