Okay I'll post there what I wrote for that 8.0 thread in the general subsection then.


Ranged Physical

The role is in the grave right now and has been since SHB released (and potentially SB as well). It has lost all party support identity because everyone and their mothers do party support anyway. Parties are drowning in a sea of mitigation tools, especially on the healer and tank side, but also that every other DPS role brings as well to a lesser degree.

- Solution 1 (easy but boring): mitigation needs to be dramatically weeded out and redistributed to the rphys role as a core of their identity.
- Solution 2 (flesh out enemy damage profiles): respecialize party support so that each tool respects a different paradigm and case scenario: introduce synergies and different types of attacks or series of attacks that favor one type of mitigation or another. Potentially introduce hit nullifiers that can totally absorb a single hit no matter the strength or anything to diversify the system.
- Solution 3 (tentative pvp inspiration): reintroduce crowd control into pve, both on the players' end and the enemies' end, and redistribute corresponding tools to deal with it like Warden's. Improve the UI to clearly show when somebody gets hit by crowd control and requires support. Introduce crowd control nullifiers that do act as wards that offer a layer of protection, namely give back Protect to healers re flavored as a crowd control ward, or as an universal ability for everyone on a cooldown (Purify). I don't think constantly eating crowd control is fun, therefore the need for layers of protection that can break, eventually making players vulnerable and requiring assistance.


MCH

The problems with the job are many:

- Flamethrower plays directly against the job's primary mechanic which is heat generation and needs to be changed. Multiple solutions have been offered over the years, either having it generating heat or consuming heat like a more powerful version of scattergun (but rooting the player in place).
- Autocrossbow has been relegated to a joke skill since it still doesn't regenerate charges (unlike blazing shot), and makes its use in AoE only a gain above 7 targets now if i'm not mistaken (it was 5 at DT's release, and 3-4 before).
- Battery still has no AoE application which is an eyesore, especially when things like Crown Collider literally have AoE visuals. It was less of a problem before the introduction of Chainsaw which is literally an AoE skill generating battery, battery which has no use in AoE.
- Nothing interacts with each other in the kit, it's just about throwing big damage tools on cooldown. It's boring and unrewarding, just annoying when the player misses a GCD and drift at best.
- Tools are all flare no substance: they're just damage buttons that can charge battery for some of them.
- Battery is utterly boring and a gameplay denial where it's just a fire and forget button, and the pet (Queen) is full of infuriating bugs (stops attacking, doesn't use the finisher when changing targets, doesn't dash to the target unless the player specifically uses an ability, doesn't work when the player gets disabled or the terrain changes, etc).

What the job has lost:

- Its primary damage profile which used to be the biggest burst in the game by far (10-15s burst packed with 50% of its damage profile). This was centered around Wildfire, which encouraged skill play depending on what the player was able to put inside and constantly trying to go for the highest number possible was part of the (serotonin) reward, versus today where it just counts GCD hits (boring).
Consider splitting Wildfire into two skills: the Wildfire on a big cooldown that would work like a burst compiling damage like before (like current pvp Death Warrant), and a smaller detonator on say, 30s cooldown, that counts hits like today and could bring up different plays around multi-hit tools (like scattergun/FMF in pvp).
- Heat management (SB profile): one of the only unique resource gauges that wasn't just about building/spending gauge, and instead had the player balance heat to keep enough of it for damage but not to overheat the gun.
Bring back the old Cooldown which was used to dump heat, attach cool effects to it like potency and mobility boosts (3-5s sprint)
- Actual pets to manage and pick from depending on the situation (Rook vs Bishop).
Bring back Bishop at the very least in its pvp version: offers a pulsing barrier on a radius that also deals damage to enemies
- Ammo procs and Reload abilities: it is unacceptable to completely remove what made the job what it was and give the middle finger to everybody that loved it. Ammo was great, and needs to be back. Ammo was what brought skill expression to the job, notably adding a layer of variability in the burst patterns depending on the procs the player would start the burst with. RDM has siphoned some of those concepts notably with the newest formula behind Acceleration, but still doesn't come close at all to an unique playstyle of building up procs and spending them like MCH used to.
Consider introducing different ammo types for different uses in the rotation, or perhaps a quick reload button for ammo and a reload button reloading drill heads
- Damage party support: Hypercharged turrets would debuff the target with a vuln effect for 28ish seconds (tied to turret autos).
Rook could be a battery tool that does this
- Resource party support: Promoted turrets would regen MP/TP for the whole party, at the cost of the job's damage (since the turret would stop attacking).
I am neutral on having to sacrifice damage for this as I don't think the current community is mature enough to handle opportunity cost scenari, as seen with the long threads about damaging gap closers, but still consider bringing back a paradigm in pve where MP and resources actually matter nonetheless
- MP gauge use: Turret Promotion would use the MP gauge to refresh the party. The effect would be doubled by Hypercharge, meaning the player could choose between using Hypercharge for party damage or for party resource support.
A lot of jobs are in a dire need to have their MP gauge put back to use
- Its identity as a debuffer: suppressive fire (melee range stun), head graze (long range silence), rend mind, etc.
Not very useful in a pve paradigm where crowd control is not very useful, like foot and leg graze, but still useful in specific environments like dungeons or especially deep dungeons. If crowd control makes a comeback, this would shine all the better.

Other potential ideas:

- Minor cast times on big nukes like tools or FMF for a more tactile weight behind those, much like for SAM's Iajutsu or RPR's Communio.
- Marksman's Spite, unlocked by specific mechanics to be determined, like something inspired from the old Between the Eyes where its potency is tripled when the target suffers from Bind, Stun or Sleep.
- Bioblaster: inflicts Heavy.
- Air Anchor: inflicts Bind.
- Chainsaw: inflicts Bleed.
- Drill: would be fun to have Guard/Diamondback in pve where some mobs would use it and you could either wait it out or just use Drill to break it (some other jobs would obviously have some tools like this, like PLD's shield bash, etc).
- Reassemble: can be paired with some tools (turns the bind from Anchor into a Stun, turns Heavy from Bio into a Sleep, turns Bleed from Chainsaw into Vuln, autocrits Drill, etc).
- Make Scattergun a multi-hit like in pvp and make it interact with WF that way (uncap WF's amount of potential hits). Same for Full Metal Field.
- More flavor oriented: bring back the unheated variants of shots, and make them heated only under overheat.

DNC

Problems with the job:

- Tillana grants 50 esprit gauge but has no real control over the gauge which leads to annoying overcaps: even if the player delays it to dump gauge, nothing guarantees that a Devilment surge of esprit procs will refill the gauge just after anyway, and delaying means drifting, which isn't recoverable.
- Too simple, not enough skill ceiling. Just press what lights up and use dances on cooldown and you're set. Only optimization really possible is spooling Fans for burst (which also makes the burst funnier and more hectic).

What the job has lost:

- Procs prioritization: procs from Flourish would overwrite normal procs. Whether this is good or bad, I am pretty neutral about it, but it certainly removed skill expression. Perhaps too annoying with gauge micromanagement before though.
- Melee AoE during single target bursts: this is a big loss of range identity for the job.
- Gauge generation from Improv: why??

Potential ideas:
- En-Avant guaranteeing procs on the next GCD (opportunity cost scenario, if the community hates it, then scratch that)
- Starfall grants a speed boost to the DNC and the partner.
- Sabre grants a damage buff between DNC and partner.
- Please introduce one of the most rewarding pvp abilities to pve: Solo Step and Dance of the Dawn. If DotD is too much of an iconic nuke for the burst of the job, then consider using something else instead. Whether the ability just fills up party gauge when the party kills something, or whether it does something else, whatever works.
- Same for Honing Dance, it's too unique to be ignored.

BRD

Problems (where to begin...):

- Empyreal Arrow not having charges, leading to crazy rigid GCD structures making the job infuriating to play at anything else than optimal speeds, else it turns into a clipping fiesta (it's still a clipping fiesta even at optimal speeds). A simple charge would alleviate the problem almost entirely.
- Iron Jaws is a punishing mechanic that just feels bad when the player just loses attention for a handful of seconds and the dots drop at the worst time. Honestly consider removing that skill out of the game or do something else about it.
- Army's Ethos is a bad and clunky mechanic that is supposed to give Army's some meaning, but ultimately only constrains the song rotation to a fixed sequence with no agency whatsoever, and on top of it makes the following bursts insanely tight (at least similar to SB MCH overheat), which meshes very, very poorly with any latency or microclipping. If each song was more defined into when to use them and what for, we could see different song cycles not dissimilar to the summons of SMN (one of the only things that SMN does well). Songs could also benefit from having a very short recast or no recast at all, provided that the player would still want to rotate through them all notably for Radiant's Finale effects.
- Repelling shot is frankly useless/underwhelming and could benefit from more (range, etc).
- Song party passive buffs overwrite each other with multiple bards, which is terrible. Make them stack, it's not gonna break the game, I swear.

What the job has lost:
- Freeform procs attached to dot crits. This actually gave meaning to the gear treadmill and build optimization, and the more an expansion progressed, the harder and more hectic the job became to play, and a lot of jobs could benefit from this design, not just old bard.
- Freeform procs, period: currently procs are way too predictable (every 3s) and this is ultimately boring. The current design of BRD is trying to remove even more of what's left of rng in jobs today and this legitimately makes me angry.
- Like old MCH, party resource support, as in the old Ballad/Army that offered MP/TP party regen.
- Barrage optimization: now we get a free set of Refulgent when using Barrage so that people don't have to feel bad when they don't have a proc for it. It's lame and removes skill expression, but I do not know how to address the drift that we could have before.
- A more unique Troubadour that changed its effect depending on the song being played. If songs could be swapped around, this would generate skill expression.
- More healing tools as seen in 1.0/ARR, and in the opening trailer for ARR.

Potential ideas:
- A more involved party buff gameplay where it's not just about using a song that gives a passive to the party. Perhaps using repertoire would refresh it?
- More song specific abilities, for example Minuet Minne (additionally compiles all healing done during its duration and generated a shield of X %), Ballad Minne (additionally grants party refresh), Army Minne (additionally grants sprint to the party). Lower Minne's CD a little, perhaps down to 60s or something.
- Resonant Arrow detached from Barrage, instead the BRD gains one Resonant stack per combo completion (Refulgent or Shadowbite), unlocks Resonant at X amount, caps at Y for more potency. Can optionally add a minor cast behind for more weight.
- Introduce Nocturne on a short CD for silences (not interrupts), every successful use would grant repertoire.
- Song repertoire mechanics could use more depth than just "refresh an ability that the player spamms".