Thread: 7.4 - Ranged Jobs(And SMN) may potentially face lockouts Day 1.

Now you may be thinking "Oh, but every job can manage in every fight!" and yes, you're correct - it's about the player behind the wheel. But, when it comes to player preference as we've seen multiple times over the years, the path of least resistance is the thing they will always go for in PF, Statics, or whatever majority of the time.

So, why am I bringing up this topic? Look at the data.



The first one is rDPS, or Raid DPS. This is the contribution that is provided to the entire raid through Buffs, personal damage, and all the other stuff put in one bundle. As you can see, the bottom most jobs are All Ranged Plus Summoner.

The reason why is because of the recent changes to RDM and its damage increase gained from Manafication. Also consider that RDM has one of the largest utility belts you can ask for in spot heals, Dualcast Raises, a 10% Magic Shield that's almost equivalent to Samba/Tactician/Troubadour plus 5% Healing, and to top it all off it has Embolden, a raid buff.

Remember how we had PCT be so powerful because of potencies? Yeah. RDM is the new PCT, except it will replace Ranged at every level because of the disparity. Not even the 1% is going to fix this mess until way down the line because the gap's too big. Now, take a look at the next category.



aDPS is the actual DPS output you're putting out as a job - your damage, padded by buffs and everything else, excluding contributions to the raid you are giving. Basically "How Selfish am I?" if you want to put it simply. It's without question that DNC/BRD are expected to have it low, but it is EXTREMELY LOW.

MCH only has good aDPS because it has nothing to offer to the raid other than Dismantle and Tactician, but mind both BRD and DNC are in the toilet by at least 10 percentage points if you compare it to RDM. This is really bad because by not only having the worst aDPS, they are bottom of the barrel in rDPS.

Essentially with RDM's utility and damage, it can replace any Ranged without a doubt on Day 1 and give people what they need on both prog AND kill.

So, how do we fix this? We need to start by taking a good, long look at all the Ranged plus Summoner. The reason I include Summoner in this is because it has been bottom of the barrel for quite a while in Dawntrail and has been considered the worst caster bar none because you'd rather take PCT or RDM instead for prog every tier, and I wish this was a joke.

The general idea has always been that DNC and BRD have really high rDPS because they contribute a lot to the total damage in raid buffs - those days are over. Let's see their reasoning for why they did the changes they did.

Across Patches 7.2 and 7.3, the attack potencies of magical ranged DPS jobs have been increased to address casting difficulties experienced during unique battle mechanics. As physical ranged DPS jobs may attack while in motion and possess damage reduction actions, they seem to boast an advantage over magical ranged DPS jobs. However, in terms of offensive power, physical ranged DPS jobs are lagging behind their magical counterparts, so we have increased the overall potency of their actions.

They are still clinging to the Ranged Tax that we all know and hate. Can move anywhere while doing rotation at Range? Overall lower DPS - even abysmal. This is unacceptable.

Red mage's firepower often suffered when distancing themselves from a target due to battle mechanics. For this reason, we adjusted Enchanted Riposte, Enchanted Zwerchhau, and Enchanted Redoublement so they may be executed at a distance while under the effects of Manafication. Furthermore, we have removed Manafication's magical damage increase effect to prevent potential stress resulting from entering burst phases with Manafication still on cooldown. To ensure red mage's offensive contribution is not negatively impacted by this change, we have increased the potency of Vice of Thorns and enhanced the effects of Embolden.

On top of increasing potency and doing a QoL for Manafication, they buffed RDM pretty hard to the point it can seamlessly handle any burst phase with at minimum 50 gauge. No longer needing to go into Melee for Manafication is alright, but the damage output is different because the Manafication is a free Enchanted Combo. That's what's attributing to RDM being so much more powerful than any Ranged because their overall damage shot up where Ranged got crumbs. SMN didn't even get anything impactful and it's starting to do abysmal damage because of how strict the rotation is during downtime phases in different fights. Even at no downtime, it's getting outdamaged by RDM, and provides next to no real on-demand utility compared to what RDM has going for it.

I know I've been going on about RDM, but that's really the crux of this issue and is going to cement Double Caster until 7.5 or 8.0. We had this discussion all the way back in Shadowbringers during E4S where taking 2 Casters outdamaged the 1%. Now, we're dealing with the same issue, except they are being overshadowed in both support and damage. RDM is essentially Ranged's nail in the coffin since we already have PCT dominating the Caster slot due to its superior damage, utility, and raid buff compared to BLM.

I wanna hear what everyone has to say on this matter because this is serious for an entire role and does not deserve to be ignored.

It has been the case for a while now that its better to not take any ranged phys or SMN if you care about damage. Most teams take ranged phys because they're used to it, they're afraid of losing the 1% or statics that have a ranged phys player.

I have a hard time seeing the difference with how the balance has been so far. And no RDM isn't going to replace rphys spots, RDM is still part of the bottom group of second rate jobs. And it's certainly not gonna replace the second melee either.

If the 1% was breached otherwise, rphys would have been replaced already by a second caster (PCT/BLM) that contributes a lot more to party DPS than RDM does, or even a third melee if fight design actually allowed it. Fact will remain that parties only take RDM or SMN when they think they value the raise enough or that they don't care about the DPS loss.

Massive over assumption. This post is not only misinformed but advocates for the toxic behavior of pointlessly locking out jobs. The devs test the content with the classic ranged caster melee comp. Ranged has problems but only summoner is remotely close to getting locked out but it's so mobile and has a res so Im sure people will use it to learn the fights.

Originally Posted by Reginald_Cain

Massive over assumption. This post is not only misinformed but advocates for the toxic behavior of pointlessly locking out jobs. The devs test the content with the classic ranged caster melee comp. Ranged has problems but only summoner is remotely close to getting locked out but it's so mobile and has a res so Im sure people will use it to learn the fights.

We all remember how well they tested P8S and they had to hotnerf it because MCH couldnt clear and was locked out of pf

P8S was over two years ago. Give it a rest.

Originally Posted by Shyxx

We all remember how well they tested P8S and they had to hotnerf it because MCH couldnt clear and was locked out of pf

Hey man I may end up wrong Tuesday but honestly not being able to clear with a standard comp has been a skill issue with the exception of p8s on release.

As the graph shows the machinist is currently pumping out lots of personal damage compared to all ranged, 2 casters, 1 MELEE and is performing equally if not better than picto at lower more average skill brackets. Machinist is a popular prog choice since it doesn't depend on all its team mates doing max damage to have max value. It can be great at squeezing damage into fights where bard and especially dancer cant. That being said the data you posted has me believing bard and especially Machinist will dominate prog with dancer and bard pulling ahead when people know the fights better.

As far caster it will be a similar story with red mage where it will be beloved for its res in prog and swapped out for black mage or picto because double caster is only nice if melee uptime is sparse this tier but double melee will be insane if the fights end up being full uptime.

A good ninja player is going to be rewarded for playing that job hard this patch.

Personally my favorite thing about dawntrails job "balance" is double caster has been more popular after mostly getting bullied out by double melee since shadowbringers. I wish that last dps slot was more flexible but oh well.

Further if you look at the rDPS, then the range is only ~93.5 to 102.5, or about 5% up and down from the middle. That's... quite balanced? A lot of years ago at GDC I think it was someone from Blizzard talked about how absurd MMO players now expecting sub-3% differences often is, and here we have 5% and seem unhappy with that, it really goes to show how MMOs have evolved from the 50% (no, not a typo) or more differences of older games like EQ1 or DAoC.

I'll be honest, if you cannot clear a fight with a 5% damage difference on a single DPSer, that's not a problem with the class or the fight balance. Sorry, don't know how to put it any nicer.