Melee's help me out

[Reginald_Cain]

Would machinist and black mage having comparable dps to selfish melees (sam, vpr) ruin the game? Would melees no longer be viable? Would parties ban you? Would the sheer volume of melee options always keep the role alive? As a stormblood player I don't understand why a selfish dps of any role would have low numbers. Back when dragoon gave piercing resistance down machinist could pump really high damage and it didn't seem to bother anyone then. Why now has the dev team decided that ranged dps need such a high damage tax when fights aren't usually designed for them to be at a huge advantage?

[ShadowNyx3]

Nobody cared about BRD/MCH pre-ShB because 1) the role had an actual party function of being emergency resource regeneration when MP mattered and TP existed, and 2) rDPS did not exist as a metric on FFlogs, and therefore there was no visible display for your regular XIV gamer to see "wow this job is kinda OP."

But really, the answer to your question is that this game has existed for too long and people have optimized it to death, the fate of every video game. We have so many tools now and people know so much about how this game works that your average player is aware of these things and will apply optimizations into their gameplay experience. If Machinist was top of the DPS ladder, you would have people locking it into party slots now, just like they locked Picto into FRU PFs.

[Jeeqbit]

I've thought about this, since it's an obvious concern with people playing ranged more due to their ease and lack of positionals (in most cases ie. MCH, SMN, RDM).

However, here's why it wouldn't affect anything:

• Duty Roulettes automatically match 1 melee and 1 ranged in a light party (unless someone queued as a pre-made, that's the only reason you'd have ie. 2 DRG in a dungeon).
• High-End duties have mechanics clearly designed for 2 melees and 2 ranged, so many competent PF leaders set the slots to 2 melee and 2 ranged.
• The 5 percent makes you look for at least 1 melee, 1 magic ranged and 1 physical ranged. And whatever effect they have on LB generation now.
• Of course, you will also want a melee LB3 if it's not needed for a different purpose.

So for all these reasons, I don't believe people would stop inviting melees to their raid parties.

And where was similar concern over people taking only 1 tank, or sometimes 1 healer as well, to certain Extreme trials such as EW EX2? There are even people doing that with Unreal. That seems a bigger likelihood than for DPS jobs.

All they really have to do to solve a problem like this is make an 8% instead and you lose a % if one of them is not of the right role (ie. not taking 2 melee means you lose 2%). Or add key utility to each role that is unique and needed.

[Rongway]

Duty Roulettes automatically match 1 melee and 1 ranged in a light party (unless someone queued as a pre-made, that's the only reason you'd have ie. 2 DRG in a dungeon).

Only High-End Duty finder (Raid Finder) preserves role boundaries. I'm still reviewing patch notes to verify but I'm certain this is true. It's absolutely possible to end up with two of the same job in a light party roulette even when people queue separately. I've been in 2xPCT parties plenty of times in both DR:Expert and DR:Leveling.

[Jeeqbit]

I've been in 2xPCT parties plenty of times in both DR:Expert and DR:Leveling.

Same, but it's very rare so I tend to assume it was due to being matched with premades.

[Voryn]

I think some of the questions can be answered by looking at how things currently are.

Melees are generally stronger, and Viper is especially strong in M6S, but people in Party Finder are not locking out the other dps roles and playing with three melees. They’re still playing with one caster and one phys ranged in their parties.

In FRU when Picto was really strong, some people in Party Finder would lock a spot to be Picto-only and potentially play with two casters on the team, but still have a melee and phys ranged.

If MCH/BLM are balanced appropriately then we’ll probably not have problems with roles becoming completely irrelevant. If they end up overpowered we’d probably see double caster teams or double phys range teams more like with FRU and Picto.

Generally we only see a dps role missing entirely (eg. no caster) in the regular playerbase if the dps check doesn’t matter. I’ve done Extreme trials in party finder where there has been no caster or no phys range on the team, since it didn’t matter that our party wasn’t “normal.”

[Aco505]

Would machinist and black mage having comparable dps to selfish melees (sam, vpr) ruin the game?

BLM should compete with melee damage-wise. As a non-buffer, it should be balanced around this fact.

MCH dealing competitive damage to melee/BLM/PCT would not be an issue for melee specifically but for the viability of DNC and BRD. This discussion already happened in Abyssos and the conclusion is that either SE gives a raid buff to MCH or they rework the way the combat system and damage profiles work.

[Reginald_Cain]

MCH dealing competitive damage to melee/BLM/PCT would not be an issue for melee specifically but for the viability of DNC and BRD. This discussion already happened in Abyssos and the conclusion is that either SE gives a raid buff to MCH or they rework the way the combat system and damage profiles work.

Could you explain why machinist would bully out the other phys ranged? I thought buffing machinist would make them a viable pick for the 4th dps slot and make double phys ranged viable again.

[Supersnow845]

Could you explain why machinist would bully out the other phys ranged? I thought buffing machinist would make them a viable pick for the 4th dps slot and make double phys ranged viable again.

Because this is what happened in abyssos with the casters, if you make one job within a role much stronger than the other 2 it doesn’t encourage you to run the strong one as a fake melee and the 2 weak ones in the true spot it just encourages you to run the strong one in the true role spot and still run two melee

So in this case if you buffed MCH to BLM levels it wouldn’t encourage you to run 1 melee/1 caster/1 DNC or BRD/1 other strong job (melee/BLM/PCT/MCH) it would just encourage you to run 2 melee or damage caster/1 caster/MCH and not run DNC and BRD as MCH can still give you the physical ranged role 1% with higher damage; just as BLM did in abyssos against RDM and SMN

[Aco505]

Could you explain why machinist would bully out the other phys ranged? I thought buffing machinist would make them a viable pick for the 4th dps slot and make double phys ranged viable again.

Think of the PCT situation before 7.2 due to (poor) caster balance. PCT was mostly locked into the caster slot so the flex slot would either go to a melee or a (rezz) caster. Even more so in FRU.

But it's all explained in the post I link in my message, as well as the Twitter thread referenced there.