My Biggest DPS Concern in FFXIV

[@enyaliosares4301]

Ranged tax is archaic and stupid. It''s time to either make phys ranged a proper support role, or make mechanics to utilise thier movement. the other option is to sort their DPS out. The community would cry if they increased their DPS though

[@cross6781]

what I find absurd is that fights up until now are still not designed with a bonus to having the tax at all. the Rphys gain for being ranged is so bad, while melees have to min max all of their cycles to minimize loss, which is a great skill expression, rphys advantage is... not worrying about that? getting lobotomized? bosses have been so big in these last cycles that being ranged is only a detriment/a slot to flex.

[@xxJing]

​@@cross6781It's not unique to FFXIV honestly. I haven't played WoW since TBC but as far as I remember, hunters could not move and shoot. Every other ranged class was a caster. In GW2 there are no ranged classes per se considering that everyone can use ranged and melee weapons and ranged weapons only have burst DPS, they aren't useful at all to just camp. Also because of party buffs you needed to stay pretty close to melee range to maximize your DPS. So FFXIV really is a pioneer in the mobile ranged class category for MMOs. Everyone else basically said "No I don't want to balance this."

[@zemperish]

Well of course people would cry, if you increased the range dps right now without any further changes you would be killing the entire melee role.

[@KiRAyylmao]

Just remove their mobility and let them crank as hard as everyone else Brd gets pvp style cast times Mch can't move during hypercharge or tools Dnc gets 10y range

[@airraid1266]

​@@KiRAyylmao not even PvP has the lockdown for tools, and if PvP doesnt want to do it?! Nah. I think the Devs wouldnt go THERE.

[@HunterMask1507]

As a Viper main, my biggest DPS Concern in FFXIV is having to press buttons, that is to difficult, how do they expect me to clear content?

[@RinBanana]

messed up right

[@jannemakela8107]

Just press the glowing ones, as viper player you should already know.

[@aethon0563]

​@@jannemakela8107 whoosh

[@SaschahiGG]

coming out of a leveling roulette with a whm who did nothing but heal, and a picto standing afk 4 seconds between casts, apparently VERY hard (both mentors of course)

[@hollowgriefband]

​@@SaschahiGG how fake it is

[@cutejustice]

Phys ranged (probably machinist), DRK and healers: 🤝

[@LeicaFleury]

I'm aware of all the ongoing talk about DRK but I'm personally doing extremely well on it. In fact this iteration is much better than the clunky disaster that it was in ShB; relative to EW I don't feel it better nor worse. I'd like to encourage everyone who is wondering what jobs to learn to try them regardless of what the community complains about and decide for themselves whether or not they want to play that. I'm currently doing consistently 2k more dps than our PLD.

[@Noah-gn2gu]

The irony when “buff DRK” is 80% about it “needing” more healing, directly conflicting with the healers begging to heal more. All my healer friends love DRKs.

[@backslash4141]

​@Kawabongahlive prior to the last buffs drk was actively worse than all the other tanks. It had more damage than only paladin, but with none of the utility that paladin brings to make up for it's lower damage. Now it has it's damage back but it's still missing it's own identity. Warrior has bloodwhetting and fell cleave Paladin has extra mit skills and spells that allow for flexible positioning Gunbreaker has continuation making it feel faster and more alike a dps job. Dark knight has.... a fail state on it's mitigation? I still like Drk but it just needs to focus on 1 or 2 things rather than being a mish-mash of leftover ideas

[@bellamango6708]

healers 100% need a total rework as well

[@gamemaster1011000]

@@Noah-gn2gu No it just doesnt survive? Its mitigation isnt very good especially below cap, and the job also *feels* bad compared to the other jobs

[@KalleDemos666]

At the risk of getting toxicity thrown my way for saying this, lets also not forget that the Devs themselves are only doing what the community has been "LOUDLY" asking for, a good reminder is that thread that became popular where a single person couldn't beat the new Raids and blamed the devs for making the fights "As hard as savage", there's definitely a loud part of the community that only wants to focus on doing the bare minimum and that's the road we've been going through in the Job Department.

[@grygaming5519]

Pretty much this and without any evolution in both fight mechanics and the classes themselves the path to least resistance is just dressing up some skills and calling it a day.

[@rainerziehtkatapultenachgo9001]

Meanwhile, the raid scene is almost dead because Savage has become so easy. There are people in PF reclears whom clearly dont belong there, this community is so cringe.

[@Icycrits]

While technically true, it's the developer's job to parse complaints from the player, diagnose the actual issue, and apply it in a way that both satisfies the aggrieved players while also maintaining an interesting gameplay loop. At the end of the day, it is their job and they have the final say into what gets developed and put into the game. Blaming the players for not really understanding why they might not want what they are complaining about is, in my opinion, a copout.

[@KalleDemos666]

@@Icycrits What is a copout is literally saying that the devs are the only ones at fault when the community is literally pulling them in different ways, on the one hand you have people that clearly want a challenge a want things to evolve after 10 years and on the other you got the most casual playerbase that has been complaining about literally everything and has responded in true toxic positivity. Its the players themselves who have this mentality of "You don't need to learn rotations", "You don't need to parse decently in savage", "You're not paying their sub so don't tell them how to play" and the 2 latest issues "Why does Savage get a cute minion? Casual players deserve the cute stuff, not the sweaty ones" and "This raid tier is savage levels of difficulty, they need to make it easier for casual players". Bear in mind that a huge chunk of revenue comes from those casual players so not truly catering to them would make the game lose a huge chunk of the playerbase.

[@xxJing]

@@KalleDemos666 The community shares a single braincell. Especially the part on Reddit. I decided against my better judgement to make a post about a suggestion to make the roulette queues go faster. I simply suggested that you should make the incentive to play healers and tanks permanent because they are always a bottleneck, even when their role is in need. I got downvoted to hell for that simple suggestion. I hardly find that to be toxic or elitist. The replies I got were also "don't fix what isn't broken." They don't even want the game to be made more convenient, they only have a knee jerk reaction to it becoming harder. You leave that difficulty in there long enough and they would just get used to it. Adhering to their demands will destroy the game.

[@twilight1386]

when they are talking about "the 1%", it actually mean phys range. not by wealth but by how their sole existance is the stat boost they gave to the party.

[@breakthecode4634]

Which is funny because 4 meele still clear faster unless your the top 1%

[@SynodicScribe]

Honestly I feel this way about the entire job system in FFXIV as a whole. As someone who's played since 1.0 I've watched the system grow, change, and reduce over the years and now many jobs just feel, boring. I feel this way about certain raid/encounter designs too. I admit, I might simply be old hat and far to used to this MMO to ever be truly wowed by its gameplay anymore. But I can't shake this feeling that Job Design has become far to safe and bare bones to ever be considered inspired or exciting. And PvP is were the interesting job ideas go to die. lol

[@stuartjohns9918]

Agree. What happened to Rphys is happening to every job, just more slowly. I scarcely see the devs addressing it, they will just double down on simplification even more, and spout promises to the playerbase. Please look forward to 8.0... 9.0.. This was the expansion I finally threw in the towel since 1.0, as I just didn't find a single job interesting to play, not helped by an extremely mediocre savage tier to start the expansion. I couldn't bear another prog like TOP with current job design.

[@SynodicScribe]

@@stuartjohns9918 Honestly this was the first expansion in which I couldn't get excited about the Job Actions Trailer. I remember in Shadowbringers when some abilities left me amazed and curious about the future. Now I'm just, apathetic.

[@AzemSP]

Man I will never stop missing Dark Arts on DRK.

[@JadonTheEternal]

I'm holding out some small shred of hope for the future plans Yoshi P mentioned to improve job identity in 8.0 and beyond. It's mostly copium, but I'm still huffing it

[@Kurainuz]

@@AzemSP mee too, this expansion they gave us the same atack but flashier x3 and an atack to our summon, atack wich is tied to gcd while nerfing our mana economy at least gnb got lionheart combo. It was clunky af, but i wish they would have improved on stormblood tank/dps stances, or at least keep and expand dark arts, drk should be the riskier of the tanks but get a lot more of dps.

[@memedreams9291]

I'm mostly a melee player, but I love playing Bard! It's fun to play and I love the class fantasy and aesthetic. But it does suck to feel like I'm putting in a lot of effort managing my songs and doing my rotation just like everyone else just to barely be beating tanks in dps. I would love to see them either double down on rphys being the "support" dps or for them to reevaluate the "ranged tax" going forward.

[@Gloriankithsanus]

Dunno why bard can't just be a healer class. take away like 4 dps buttons and turn them into GCD heals and you're basically already there. It's not like they wouldn't do damage oriented healer classes. Like sage design-wise is definitely a "damage" class, shooting lasers all day.

[@sircyu]

The physical ranged role is perfect for the more supportive utility aspect that is sorely lacking in XIV. Enfeebling Effects are never used above level 50 outside of Deep Dungeons and yet Phys Ranged have 3 of them. A Bind, a Heavy and an Interrupt. They could be useful in various ways and I think the most interesting would be the addition of various outcomes in raids. Some ideas off the top of my head: M1S, the boss is preparing a leaping mechanic so you bind them in place, as they try and leap they tumble, skipping the mechanic and getting a small vuln, maybe 5% for a time. You've cut that mechanic out of the fight so you don't have to do it and gained a bit of damage, but due to skipping it, the enrage timer is much shorter as she moves onto the next mechanic immediately. And this would shift where in the fight cooldowns come up, so it might make 2mins come up during a bad time to maximise the buffs. Shitty implementation of my idea but I hope the point I'm making still comes though. And balance would be tuned around not interacting with these optional elements. Or how about interrupting a mechanic, which causes the fight to play out a different sequence of mechanics. Like M3S, imaging being able to Interrupt one of his drinks, preventing him from getting his damage buff but also changing how mechanics are resolved, which may be harder or easier depending on your team. Probably a bad idea to take this as it is, lord knows PF already can't decided on what to do. Or hell, using heavy during M1's pounces so she only moves half the distance, making the AOEs overlap more to create a well defined safe zone and death zone, imaging on the first boss of Strayborough Deadwalk a Heavy on the boss applies to the minions, make them move slower so they're easier to avoid. Small things. These are all probably terrible ways to implement the ideas I'm talking about and I might not have even conveyed my point correctly but I like Enfeebling effects giving player agency and decision making on moment to moment basis with no clearly defined "Correct Choice" or maybe its just the FFXI BRD player in me wanting more dedicated support roles.

[@chaptap8376]

Look at E8S and how it required all three of those for the add phase. The devs know how to do it, they just refuse to suddenly.

[@pavfeira]

HW really shook up rotations for a lot of jobs. While I didn't personally enjoy "remove p.ranged and turn them into casters", overall I enjoyed most of the creativity like Blood of the Dragon and literally everything SCH got. Contrast this to DT where every change felt allergic to upsetting people. Here's an oGCD that won't mess up your opener. Here's a new demi-summon that takes the slot of your old demi-summon. WHOA let's not let SGE have two DoTs, that's too much complexity. And it just brings me back to an interview from this year where Yoshi-P admitted that they were creatively paralyzed for fear of upsetting people. Fight design was incredibly safe. Here's some massive hitboxes so that melees don't complain (and in DT we'll remove that Noxious Gnash that makes your brain hurt). A modern FFXIV dev team would not put out HW job changes, because they'd be too worried that I dislike HW BRD. Therefore, better to take no risks.

[@LucasBernardesRosa]

I mean, if I was them I would also be very much risk averse. Pretty sure this game along with the Remake sales is keeping this company afloat. They're risking a huge chunk of their revenue if you end up losing too many players because they took the risk to put the channel casts in actual PvE. Even what they did to Viper and Samurai was risking alienating people that enjoy those aspects. Not excusing them, though. There's an inherent risk to stagnating your game design as well and they're certainly moving in that direction. If nothing is done to acknowledge and adress certain pain points like Phys Range tax, Healer rotations and Tank identity, they will risk their revenue all the same...

[@chaptap8376]

They finally removed the giant hitboxes this tier, what are you smoking? Blame them for the problems they're causing now, not things that stopped and hopefully stay this way.

[@Coolguysup]

And yet their changes to SAM since endwalker just made me like it less and less. Idk who those changes were meant for, but shadowbringers SAM was perfect.

[@Jay-mx5ky]

​@Coolguysup contrary to your opinion, i hear from most people that SAM is now the most fun it's ever been.

[@yeahnahmate7]

​@@Jay-mx5kyit definitely is yeah

[@victoriayeats1649]

As a former DNC main, who's switched to healer this expansion, it just feels like you can pick a different job and get all the benefits of phys ranged but with better damage. Everyone has a mit, a buff etc now, so it feels like the support role has been lost.

[@Coolguysup]

Yeah, I have no idea why they gave every dps mitigation. I’m also against melee dps having raid buffs, since it detracts from support jobs.

[@crimsonpotemkin]

I agree in context of bard and machinist. Dancers are still awesome to have.

[@whodistoodis]

I think classes have becoming overall to homogenized. While it would be a balancing nightmare, especially with how many jobs there are now, I wish that the jobs had more zany and unique attributes among them. I joked early on that Pictomancer was taking all the dev time away from the other casters, and its a point I've come to stand by, since Pictomancer has the kind of wild zest and unique playstyle that really feels unique amongst all the play styles.

[@yazcona13]

I miss early summoner 😢

[@LeicaFleury]

@@yazcona13 I miss shadowbringers summoner tbh. Whatever they did to it in Endwalker constituted an atrocity in my eyes.

[@yazcona13]

@Kawabongahlive likr i came in during Shadow near the start as a new player and LOVED summoner. It was tuff but i had my little guys help me fight. Then i didnt play cause i didnt have anyone to play with until dawntrail where me and my lil bro burned through arr in the last 2 months. I have now gone towards red mage and gunbreaker because how much they have butchered my summoner fantasy ToT

[@Coolguysup]

@@LeicaFleuryI started playing SMN late into Shadowbringers. It was really hard to get used to, but because of that it was so satisfying to play well. I really wish I started playing it earlier, before they completely butchered it.

[@dojelnotmyrealname4018]

Paladin died on the altar of homogenization.

[@ghosteeniesmith6219]

combat peloton with a cooldown timer sounds amazing!

[@idgie534]

I like the idea of some kind of combat Peloton a lot, and that could be a fun branching off point for more party utilities for phys ranged. Surely MCH could come up with some fun wacky tools besides 'hurt boss' and 'make boss hurt us less'.

[@SC-cx9ti]

The scholar run was crazy good. I think they had to debuff it.

[@elgatochurro]

scholar has it

[@crimsonpotemkin]

@@elgatochurro they jumped the shark giving it to scholar. It would've been perfect for ranged phys dps jobs.

[@elgatochurro]

@@crimsonpotemkin still on my tactical healer desu ne uwu

[@scaper12123]

As somebody who was playing Runescape during the Meleescape period and is playing BLM in FFXIV now, I sincerely hope you PhysRng players get the buffs and boosts your class sorely needs to be the jobs they deserve to be.

[@tciddados]

Bringing up "feint used to be a GCD attack bards crossclassed so they could move without having to disable caster stance" is one of my favorite "old ffxiv" things to bring up because it's just a combination of so many things that aren't a thing in the game anymore.

[@raphu2272]

i remember that lmao, during HW when MCH had its old wildfire and zhypercharge was a raid buff and gauss barrel

[@iaxacs3801]

I hope they push into the support role of mitigating punishment/ enemy "control". Theres nothing that really helps regain control of a downward spiraling fight. Once one thing goes wrong the answer is usually to just wipe instead of try and take back control of the fight. I would love if they did that but then made the next phys range Job focus on being over stuff like that. Edit: the only real way to have a comeback is healer LB3 or a rezmage going nuts. And those moments are super hype because it saves a pull

[@iaxacs3801]

More as a side tangent to my og comment because this idea would require a major shift but what if a Phys Ranged had: Delay (3-5 minute cooldown): Targets next cast would be extended a very short time frame. People get clipped all the time by notorious short casts from bosses.

[@Robo-Josh]

one thing that has been playing around in the back of my mind recently is that they can take a page out of other MMO's books and give all weapons two classes. Like ARC, SMN, and SCH. Would be quite the undertaking, but would allow choice between a supportive ranged dps class and a more combat oriented one. Give BRD an Ranger class, Give MCH a Sniper (support) class, and give dancer Kunoichi (or some other type of ranged throwing job).

[@vineveer4358]

Squenix has stated that their balance focus for Dawntrail has been fight-design oriented. So if we do see major role changes for things like physical ranged dps, and for healers, we'll likely see that late in Dawntrail's life cycle (7.4 or .5?) or 8.0.

[@blabbblubb3824]

i miss stormblood ninja so badly. i feel with you phys ranges! back than ninja was an aggro/utility sup melee. with shadowwalk you gave the target 20sec 80% off youre generated aggro and smoke to reduce aggro generated from a target... or steam to recover TP from physical teammates. that was so fun and felt nice. ive got so much positive credits from guys for using these even in dungeons... i witsh we would have a true utility melee sup now...

[@toddchang2638]

hi! im a brand new player to the game and i just wanted to thank you for consistently making the type of videos that i always look forward to watching and learning from (despite not understanding a lot of the lingo yet!)! the way you break things down and go into a bit of history about how things came to be, are exactly what im looking for as a new player trying to navigate this massive, quirky, and charming game.

[@Sllandre]

For me, I want to see phys ranged with more damage, but lean more heavily into the focus on proc management. Dancer is my favourite job in the game at the moment, and part of that is due to Tillana working the way it does. It gives an almost risk/reward style of play for choosing when you want to use it instead of some of your other attacks in burst. If they reverted Flourish and the flourished GCDs back to how they worked in Shadowbringers, it would probably be my favourite version of the job as a whole. Bring back dots being what gives procs on Bard, would be another example, and make those procs feel more substantial. Return Ballad to giving a full Bloodletter/Rain of Death, for example. No clue about MCH, though, unless they brought back ammo in some capacity? Maybe making it so that getting the overheat procs were what built gauge towards Hypercharge? That feels a bit similar to Esprit, though, but... Just my thoughts.

[@juno-6]

Damn I forgot how wild the original MCH combos were, I do miss the ammo gauge though, the base MCH weapon having an actual reload animation was the best

[@SpacePirateFromSpace]

I don’t play phys ranged in content higher than level 60. It would be nice to see them buffed though. I think it would be cool for them to get haste/speed themed buffs, and then their support buffs’ strength is determined by how fast they’re going. Or something. Or give them a passive trait that increases their potencies based on how far away they are from the boss. Or something.

[@lolthesystem]

I mentioned it before to my friends and I still stand by the idea that MCH could become the "defensive support" of the Ranged Physical by giving it more shields and/or damage reduction. It would fit thematically (see Sage) and also give it an actual identity. Thinking of the future, we could also make the new kid in the block be akin to MCH in its niche to split the ranged physical role into something similar to the shield healer and pure healer separation. We would have the DPS boosters (desirable in speed kills) and the defensive boosters (desirable during prog). Among the DPS boosters we would have the general support (BRD) and the one-man juicer (DNC) who would have lower personal DPS but higher rDPS, while the defensive boosters would be the shield support (MCH?) and the new ranged physical being the damage reduction support who would have lower rDPS but higher personal DPS. This change would in turn allow for some wacky comps to skip certain mechanics in different ways like we could back in the Eden tiers. Boost the damage to skip a mechanic completely or boost the damage reduction with huge shields to ignore them, choose your brand of fun!

[@renarenacat]

why would anyone want more mits when tanks and healers has too much of them and other ranged class can provide more dmg. its something that blueprotocol(RIP) did and failed. If the game doesn't require to have mits and heals to survive,damage is the only thing ppl want. Only way for a mit focused job to work in this game is if the bosses do so much damage that you "need" that job to survive.

[@lolthesystem]

@@renarenacat I already covered this in my original post: to be able to skip/ignore mechanics in different ways. To give you an example, in E10S you could ignore the orb mechanic by kitchen sinking mits and stacking SCH and AST shields, but it was only viable after people got gear. With an actual defensive-centered support, this would become something "intended" instead of an oversight. That would open up more possibilities for the players other than "Grab the highest DPS jobs in this patch and skip via DPS" like we've had for years.

[@1337penguinman]

Personally I'd rather see them go full selfish DPS with the MCH job.

[@ShinFahima]

​@@1337penguinmanYeah, same!

[@Raiaka]

The channeled skills touches on a really good discussion point regarding PvP skills in general. PvP feels much more open to experimenting with what can be done with skills and toolkits, and there are a lot of ideas present there that I would love to see expanded into PvE job design.

[@TheBorzoi]

I think most roles could do with some sort of reward for playing well. For example, DRK has The Blackest Night which is a defensive ability but if used correctly, they effectively get its cost refunded to be put in to a damaging attack. Of course, they could just have used that MP for the damaging attack in the first place but it feels rewarding when you manage to pull it off. Instead of just 3x Edge of Darkness casts for 9k MP, you've pulled of 3x Edge of Darkness and The Blackest Night for that same MP cost. Not sure how to implement it with physical ranged but I feel it should be something unique to each job.

[@SH4PEZ]

my idea for dps is to split them into pure dps and support dps. like how healers are split between pure healers and shield. make some of them less attack active and more about keeping up a support ability rotation and the others all about dealing as much damage as possible. I know balancing would be hard but if you find a way that the combo works well like they have with the healers I think it would not only give more job identity but make dps choice feel more important.

[@Jay-mx5ky]

Unfortunately, this distinction is already kind of made in the community. "Rdps" jobs vs "adps" jobs. Wanna guess the only difference? The former has a raidbuff. The latter does not. There are raidbuffs on the vast majority of dps jobs for what seems to be no real reason, because outside of it, most classes, especially melee, follow their own rotation. We really need support jobs that have more of an active focus on building and maintaining buff states, but unfortunately that's not the case today...

[@1337penguinman]

They do this for the casters. They could absolutely do it for phys ranged as well.

[@Emuney12]

I'm totally behind the idea of converting Phys Range into more a support role rather than half-heartedly placing it inbetween that and DPS. Having more heals, mitigation, or even abilities similar to Expedient would just make the role feel more impactful.

[@DrNaesir]

I'd love for Phys Ranged to fully become "supportive dps". Give them the ability to Raise people, and build more of their toolkit around supporting the party through buffs or utility. The lower damage output would make more sense if they were bringing resurrection and more utility to the party. I'd even go so far as to remove the ability to raise people from SMN and RDM to make that a niche of Phys Ranged. This would also mean you could give SMN and RDM the damage buffs that would bring them in-line with the other casters.

[@HowlingDoom]

I'd rather them have other interesting ways to provide support rather than just having raise. I'd also like if MCH was designed to be solely focused on DMG like SAM and BLM and actually have the damage to fit that design. I think in keeping DNC and BRD with the supportive DPS role, they already have the right idea, they just need, more options.

[@formy52]

The amount of times I've queued into a roulette as BRD, the entire Alliance Raid just chunks it to something, and I'm just sat here plinking away arrows like "damn I wish I was a SMN right now"

[@Nihonguy]

I think a simple thing they can do is give mch and dnc the ability to esuna as well dancer can already buff the party and machinist can already debuff the attack of one enemy so mch probably should lean into the debuffer role theres no other class that does this so far, like what if theres a skill the inflict slow on mob to help in dungeons to help with mitigation? Theres so much they can do to give phys range a good reason to be used

[@GEMINIVice1]

Being supportive doesn’t have to be exclusive to jobs that do physical dmg from a distance All high dmg output jobs shouldn’t be limited to jobs that operate in melee range or are perceived to have no party utility outside of dmg reducing role actions ‘Support/utility’ can be put on a melee (not just talking feint and stun) And in combat raises don’t have to be exclusive to magical jobs only or jobs that can operate from a distance Traditional job design may be safe and easier to ‘balance’ a certain way, but imo a lil’ change up or outright break from that would be nice.

[@harrygraham5810]

Prng would be a good support dps and they could add gambler as a new ranged dps, take roll the bones from wow and make it a support thing cards as main hand,and wehave a zetzer from ff6 job

[@kubanjack101]

Good god the old BRD and MCH sound like actual fun to play. Instead of everything being put into a static rotation like a melee job, they had their own unique way of playing that would take in to account the encounter they're in. I never knew what we were missing until you said that BRD could turn on their 'stance' and get 30% more damage. So that's where BRD's damage went after all these years.

[@sold0ut210]

It was a bit worse than you think, even. In Stormblood, Bard not only helped people recover TP as a physical MP equivalent, it also had its dps toggle for the entire party that cost the bard its MP bar. Then, when Shadowbringers rolled around, they wanted to make Dancer more desirable, so Bard spent the majority of an expansion being a selfish Phys-Ranged like Machinist. They just removed all buffs from Bard under the premise that Dancer has them now. The devs were actively callous to the role then and have not changed their approach since.

[@lizardkip1663]

I personally would love to see them fully commit to the supportive dps aspect of the role, whether they get more passive raid buffs like bard's songs and Dancers standard steps or even cooldowns that don't fully line up with the two minute window that can be used to increase damage during smaller burst windows, I dont think adding more uses to interrupts would help that much since tanks have the same options, giving them more identity as a full on damage support with maybe more defensive utility would be better at giving them a unique identity than simply making their rotations more complex for bigger numbers.

[@jpxenovore]

It is very possible to balance all the fun out of a game. After all, the only way something can be perfectly balanced is if everything is the same. Balance isn't really that important outside of PVP. Just make things fun and iconic.

[@elgatochurro]

imbalance is also fun and not fun... War rn feels like a job youd play because you suck at tanking.

[@DrCaesarMD]

A lack of balance can make your class choice unfun. I play BLM, a class that is SUPPOSED to be the "hard to play, highest dps" class. Pictomancer can put in half the effort i do and deal more damage.

[@starmanDNF]

@@DrCaesarMD The reverse is true about DrG/Reaper and Nin/Viper. DRG is more buttons and weaves than reaper for half the dps, and Ninja is now super punishing hard mode viper for half the dps.

[@lonepwolf4781]

I believe that they could make it so the "identity" of phys ranged be the party buffing but because a lot of the non-phys ranged jobs have party buffs they would probably need to remove those and give mch some of them lol but we all know people would freak the fuck out lol

[@renarenacat]

that'll be the way. They could also remove most of the "burst" buffs and put more permanent buffs like BRD or buffs with looong cd like you can only use once or twice per pull to move away from 2min burst meta.

[@Vincent_63]

See the problem is that in order to make more money they decided to cater to a wider audience and so now the people who play for gameplay and a skill gap have to share developer resources with people who want to hang in houses all day. It is what it is. Rip the golden ages of wow and ffxiv

[@Paraguai123]

Golden age was Endwalker and you can't deny that

[@AmbassadorBreadloaf]

@@Paraguai123 I found SHB to be the golden age, but that could be my nostalgia speaking. (still has the best MSQ though)

[@Vincent_63]

@@AmbassadorBreadloaf I consider this the wrath of the Lich King of ffxiv endwalker was cata and now we’re in mists..I’m someone who prefers gameplay and socializing created through gameplay(combat) so that’s the lens I’m using to make these statements

[@misterfoss4220]

HW bard was my favorite ever job. It was so much fun. I loved paying the game and leaning jobs back then. The jobs where just so unique. The constant push and pull of utility and damage within the roles was so cool and fun. I know I'm rather alone in thos but FFXIV HW is my favourite ever game, and it hurts when I think about that there is no way for me to experience it again.

[@o.d.d.s]

i really liked how prange uses their interupt in p1 of dsu. and the liquid hell baits in ucob. even in a fight like a8s they can use their role abilities to slow down the orbs. they have the kit, the fights are just not designed with them in mind. same issue with healers tbh.

[@alexwolf5289]

I was discussing with a friend and we had some fun ideas about unique supports skills we could add to Phys Ranged : Dancer : An oGCD with a big cooldown that could refresh the cooldowns of Roles Actions of another player (So MT could get back Rempart, Repraisal, Voke, etc... or your healer that just respawned could get Rescue, anti-kb and Lucid Dreaming...) Machinist : An oGCD that works like Wildfire, but instead of dealing damage, it would give a shield depending on how much damage you've dealt. This would incensitive thinking about gauge spending outside of Burst Windows depending on which mech you wanna mit. Bard : An oGCD with a giant cooldown that could "esuna" a damage down (or orange vuln up for normal fights). It would allow some mistakes recovery in some fights where Damage Down are worse than death. This might also allow some cheesy strategies in some fights without being too gamebreaking (P1S proved that people would do any DD strat if it's easier, even without this skill existing anyway).

[@KillerChairYT]

I really like how the castbars while moving in PVP feels. I dont even care about the damage output, but i would love to see them appear on PVE skills, JUST for the feel of it.

[@Corvus7159]

I'm in favor of giving phys range more support options. Hell, give them their own versions of Rescue, for example. Grappling Hook, Lasso, whatever fits the job's aesthetic. It may be considered a troll ability by many but it does have its use, and a clutch Rescue is always hype.

[@redgeoblaze3752]

I think the fact that we're more than likely getting a new Phys Ranged next expansion means these issues are going to be completely ignored on the three existing jobs. Maybe they'll make the next one more fun and have better damage than it's predecessors, or maybe it'll just be like Sage where it's basically Scholar with a couple tweaks.

[@maxmuller6791]

even in stormblood omega people wren't save from single target doton 💀

[@NeatNightOwl]

Yes because ten chi Jin exists.

[@tyhjyys]

ff14's jobs can only play one way. just 1 way. sure you can play them "badly" but you can't even do them differently if you tried. they're making sure of that every update. coming from most other modern mmo's this feels weak. fight design is so intrinsically based around classes playing a specific way that i doubt it will ever change. the more time you sink into this game the less it feels like a typical rpg and more a railroad to play the way devs want you to

[@laceylopp7039]

I feel like you want the ability to branch out, and you're upset that jobs don't branch out, when in reality the jobs ARE the branches. You decide how you want to play, and then pick a job that fits that playstyle.

[@tyhjyys]

@@laceylopp7039 so i should pick an entire different job with a different identity if i want to play marginally different by this games standards? that does not fix the problem. might as well play a different game while i'm at it

[@laceylopp7039]

@@tyhjyys Thats just how this game is. And im new but I think thats how its always been, so yeah, you should play a different game then.

[@tyhjyys]

@@laceylopp7039 if you're new do not watch these kind of videos. brother, the honeymoon phase is over. this game pulled people in 3 expansions ago and has changed dramatically since. these kinds of videos are the result. you see them everywhere now. enjoy it in your own way without outside opinions lest you become so jaded like the rest of the community

[@gramt4685]

@@laceylopp7039 They are not branches at all. There could be a single job for each role and nothing would feel different. Jobs are now skins that Square Enix is selling for 40 dollars every two or so years.

[@Noah-gn2gu]

I think a lot of people need to ask if it’s really the job design or the content not playing into unique aspects of jobs. Ranged not utilizing mobility? Fight design. Ranged not having more utility? Fight design (foot graze, etc). The same goes for every role. Job homogenization is only skin deep in actuality and there are a lot of nuances to jobs. You just never see them because fight design doesn’t draw them out. They’re intentionally homogenized for raids but jobs can be wildly different outside of raids. It’s the (lack of) content that’s 90% of the problem.

[@Auesis]

Yup. Here's a bigass list of things not being used for anything in current DT content: - Stuns (Melee and Tank) - Slow (Melee, Tank, PRange) - Interrupts (Tank and PRange) - Heavy (PRange) - Bind (PRange) - Sleep (Caster + Healer) - Esuna (for non-fail states) (Healer) Then you have the rare out of role exceptions - WHM can Stun, BRD can mini Esuna, NIN can Bind and Heavy, WAR can kind-of bind with Holmgang but obviously you'd never do that. There should be both more variety in exceptions and more reasons to do all of these things. Let's use M1S as an example of what could be, using only what we already have in the game (obviously not all actually suggested for this fight, it's the first savage of the tier): - When she dashes for the four-way and two-way cleaves, tiles are also dropping, and without doing something she'll fly to the end of the room. Middle tiles safe? Bind so she doesn't move. Half-room safe? Heavy her so she only moves part way. - The clones literally spawn asleep right now. Instead, they could spawn immediately awake and targetable, and you have to put one to sleep so you can do their mechanics one at a time. Delay them too long and they enrage. You can even make it so that the first clone's mechanics cleanse the sleep on the second, so the timeline of the fight doesn't change. - During the tile breaking phase, the clone is targetable and occasionally should be stunned or interrupted for some other telegraph besides the current two. If you use Arm's Length when it hits you, the Slow affects it and means it hits one less target by the end, leaving another tile safe (in this imaginary fight, you might need that extra tile for something else). - Esuna is easy - there's excuses to put dots on basically anything scattered through the group. Doesn't have to be raidwide. Maybe you sometimes *don't* want to Esuna (maybe some party members need stacks of a debuff and others need them removed). Endless ways to put these somewhere. If they both give us reasons to use all these tools, and scatter the more popular ones through more jobs, encounters would feel so much richer and without any overhaul needed.

[@FaelonZ]

I agree, there needs to be something they're actively doing in the raid, more stuns and silencing required, more party utility, baited things on the wall etc. And rotationally we all know the devs are pretty close to running out of ideas with jobs and most likely don't know what they're doing when it comes to designing them, which is why they are glued to player feedback for changes at the beginning of an expac. There needs to be a change, the 1% is becoming less and less enticing to require one person to be in ranged jail all tier.

[@Barcia14]

Hoping PRanged will get anything meaningful in 8.0 is honestly just foolish. It's clear that the direction the game is going is that of taking away any meaningful player decision-making

[@shellbow5451]

I felt this as a partial dnc main, loved your suggestions! Battle peloton would be so nice

[@Strider_Shinryu]

I do like the idea of Ranged staying as a more simplified job to mechanically play but giving them more responsibility via use of unique supportive tools. Whether that support come via actually support tools or via a requirement to better use the tools they have (interrupts, binds, etc.) doesn't really matter as much to me. And yeah, I'm actually surprised Ranged didn't get Combat Peleton after SCH getting their in combat speed boost in EW (and even PCT having it attached to Smudge now). It doesn't need to be a long lasting buff, or even a major speed boost, but it just seems an obvious omission.

[@MrCarlWax]

Hot take: Phys range doing less damage than other roles is irrelevant. You are forced to bring each role because of the 5% buff. So the only balance that matters is the one between the roles. Anyone demanding mch should do as much damage as sam and blm does not underarstand this fact and how it would make dnc and bard useless.

[@MrCarlWax]

There is less than 3% difference between dancer and mch in rDPS If this is what is deemed significant then I'll give up trying to argue. Especially in a tier where there is no dps check

[@AssassinAlex]

The moment I touched MCH in pvp and saw the walking castbar, I thought it was genius. I am very surprised no PVE class implements this mechanic yet. I assume the next expansion, which will most likely have a new phys range will either use the heavensward cast style with a "free walk" buff phase or do something similar to what you suggest.

[@SokiHime]

Ranged Phys should have retained their caster aspects: The strength in it is that they have the flexibility to go between high mobility or higher damage. I know FF14 is against making players make decisions, but that is a cool design. If they won't do that, they should probably design bosses in larger arenas with more movement to make the ranged tax actually make sense.

[@mrblackjacker32.03]

Taking too notes on feedback from the forum has been a major mistake from Creative Studio 3's point of view. So right now, we have rDPS, healers and DRK in a bad spot because combat design and overtuning specific jobs but those three scenarios are different in their own

[@jacklawson9210]

I feel like we've forgotten as a community their warning at the start of the expansion. "We're isolating fight design as a variable, and changing only that, we're going to do the same thing for classes in 8.0" Right now, *the* most important feedback we could be giving is on fight design, which you do dedicate a significant portion to! (I especially like your idea of high mobility mechanics that can be baited, so that phys ranged's mobility matters). But hearing the constant discussion of this, and dark night, and healers, it just feels like bad timing, when the devs gave us that very specific warning.

[@vaan_]

The Dawntrail job guide listed that the new capstone ability for a certain job would give it a new rotation. That job was Summoner. Why would you believe anything these developers say?

[@KenHayesVideos]

@@vaan_ The new rotation was from one of the most popular jobs to bottom 5 as people realized there was no point in investing into it.

[@MrLightlike78]

I think I do remember this being said. Upping the difficulty of battle content this expac, getting the player base comfortable with that before they make any drastic (we'll see) changes to jobs. I understand the dooming cuz..yeah 8.0 is along ways away. However, I'm holding out hope for exploratory content revitalizing the player base. I feel having such a long period of time without some long form grind battle content hurts the game as whole. Hell, I'd like to see a boost to relevant tomestone caps. Having all the freedom to access all the jobs on one character is awesome..now let me gear more than one at a time.

[@chaptap8376]

@@KenHayesVideos That was Endwalker. Dawntrail just kept the same boring rotation with a few new animations.

[@MrAhds]

wild considering we got the most uninteresting raid tier to date

[@Moostelle]

i, strangely, feel like the ping-fueled fire that was SB MCH had some of the best ideas in this game's history. granted, i was a pretty passionate MCH main for the second half of the expansion, so i've got biases, but the complexity and depth in managing heat, procs, and ammo is something i've been missing since the SHB rework. i think some tweaks to the numbers involved with heat management and how wildfire worked, as well as some very slight oGCD trimming, could've left the job in a pretty healthy state. tightly managing all of those factors, getting all of your disparate parts to work together in just the right way to see those huge wildfire damage numbers, and constantly splitting attention between all the different mechanics, made me feel like an engineer. i felt like a mad genius, tinkering with all her complicated little contraptions until the sleepless nights all paid off, in the form of a hundred different gadgets setting off explosions all at the same time. the job fantasy was incredible, even if a little disconnected from what Machinist is in the rest of the series. this isn't me saying that SHB's changes to MCH were bad - quite the contrary, i think it's one of the biggest successes in job design in a long time, assuming the goal was "simple, easy to pick up DPS job that still has interesting decision making." i just like to imagine a world where my beloved trainwreck was tuned up, instead of cleared away. pre-7.05 Viper came close to matching that feeling of spinning lots of delicately-balanced plates, but... well.

[@Thundawich]

The issue is just fight design overall. Its an mmo with hard enrages balanced around tight DPS checks. There isn't really room at the moment to intentionally drop DPS to increase utility within the party. I mean look at builds for supports and look how much they try to not use tenacity/piety because damage is the only thing worth focusing on. Wanting a res on your caster is about the best you can do within drifting into unclearable territory. Until fights can't be cleared unless you intentionally drop DPS in party composition, gearing or skills/spells, there is no room for 'supportive' dps. There isn't even any room for supportive supports, of course bard is having an identity crisis.

[@RyuNoZero]

16:50 This reminds me to Ragnarok Online's Sage! Infact FFXIV PvP holds up the Job Fantasy better than PvE. As for me, as Samurai Main, I just want Kaiten back, I mean Direct Hit Kaiten with Tendo at lvl100? That be just Perfect but as for now.. Kenki is just a Shinten Gauge and I am contemplating doing a Shinten Drinking Game.. as lethal as this might sound.

[@AaronthePedantic]

I feel like phys ranged do have an identity specifically for midcore players. The phys ranged jobs are fantastic for casual savage players to be able to help with reliable low-risk damage and massive mobility. They’re fantastic roamers for certain open ended mechanics such as the heart towers on M2S. I realize that ease of play with low reward doesn’t offer much value to many of the hardcore players and it can be very boring to play an easy job in casual content, but I do think it has a place. That said, I think there is room for difficult phys ranged jobs and more utility.

[@RickNightmyre]

Most of the job changes are not only due to feedback from casual players (it's too hard), but also from hardcore players (it's not optimal). The reason homogenization began was because buffs were not properly aligned when stacked or that X situational skill was a dps loss, even positionals are being reduced, not because it's hard, but because it loses uptime, as with large boss hitbox too. Im not taking the blame away from the devs, they should be able to filter feedback properly, but I remember back in the day people complaining about the same things they now want back in the game its as the saying goes: "given time, people will optmize the fun out of the game"

[@scoliosisking6143]

I can totally relate to that destructoid reviewer tbh - heavensward is my favourite final fantasy game and I may or may not have a love of ishgard that borders on paraphillic

[@Bupernox]

Even as a casual player the channelling concept from PvP interests me greatly. Keep the mobility but saddle it with a small handicap to play around. My biggest issue with phys ranged is that it feels weightless and directionless, and ultimately very unsatisfying to play for someone who enjoys the oomph and restrictions of melee and casters.

[@NeollaNoila]

Make them a pute dps but with some half cast gcd and full cast burst. For MCH, make Drill and Saw a half cast and reward 123 combo with a free ogcd like viper, or make drill saw and anchor need action to prepare and share a same resource, letting you decide whether to gain Queen faster or Deal more damage.

[@DaereonLive]

As a Machinist main (together with Gunbreaker), I've always semi-jokingly told my friends they should give Machinist, being a tool user, shock paddles. Let a Machinist raise a party member instantly (no cast time), but it has to be in melee range and it has a cooldown of like, 3 minutes? I don't know what would be balanced, but a long cooldown, cuz the device has to recharge. Plz Squeenix, make me happy :)

[@KingOfAceZ1]

Unironically a really fun idea. Needing to be in melee range would make this not trivial to use but can serve a good niche if healers are pressed. I think leaning into these miscellaneous utility bits would be a cool thing for rDPS

[@200000adam]

I would love a support dps direction, I already play dnc because of that

[@pinkfurret_]

i think what stands out the most to me is that phys ranged feels kinda like... not the easy job, but like, it feels sorta like the easy option? run around at range with no castbars in exchange for less damage. and that just.. really feels like a poor way to frame a whole ass job type. while most raid groups appreciate the extra mit and/or 1% bonus from all roles, i feel like that logic can really easily just turn into something like, why bother with a phys ranged, just get another caster instead. that being said for most high end content i feel like can be run fine either way, but it's just, a really poor sense of self for the role god i really wish there was more specifically ranged bait stuff. or specific dps role stuff. i do melee picto for m1-4s, minus m3s, but like, i cant really say like.... fake melee or real ranged, it's the same mechanics just with a different spot or support buddy. i think the one thing is collecting hearts in beat 1(?) of m2s so i don't have to participate in the stack at the end. great for role flexibility within dps, but like... you mentioning ranged baiting things makes me miss that kinda thing also, i never played during HW, but like, maybe caster ranged should come back, though i'd want them to balance between it not just being a static thing that Happens every 60s/120s, but also not something that feels like, well just keep it on Always yknow. maybe a stacked skill with a cooldown? somewhat like hammer phase in picto maybe, but lasting longer than 3 gcds. maybe on bard, though not necessarily

[@Jon_the_Wizard]

I feel like the problem is that they turned Bard and Machinist into Bow Mage. If it was only MCH that played that way I think it would have been more widely accepted.

[@GottiEss]

after 6 years as a red mage i switched to viper, pictomancer broke me, it was bad enough I could never touch a blackmage no matter how well i played but then they released picto who was overpowered, easy to play AND flashy, gonna take a bit to get used to close quarters combat but i do like seeing my character do legit damage now.

[@Aiscence]

I still miss the old hw/sb mch. But their metric is only how many people play the job anyway. Dozen of posts on the forum (Hi lynn) about mch problems, how to make it better ,reduce the latency problem .. being ignored and learning during EW he wasn't even aware of those problems. So many people lost their jobs for very bland version of jobs that are maybe very fun for people now playing them, but the niche they were filling before were lost and never replaced. There is no more "fail condition" to any job to actually keep you engaged, heck, you don't even need to know how to play your job well anymore with those dps check and the community always gives the feedback it feels way better like that as "dps check are boring" so why would they even try. Most people that enjoyed those jobs left anyway, so most of the feedback they get are generally from people that began during shb/ew and a few rare cases, so most of the feedback is already of people only knowing the post unification

[@Xxiev]

15:59 no they dont they had aggro managment till ShB The thing we call aggro today is not aggro, its a disgrace

[@Alex-xv6me]

A channeled weaponskill that gains extra potency with abilities you weave in DURING the castbar would be awesome. Just a one-off idea I had.

[@Corvus7159]

Unfortunately their spaghetti coding won't allow for something like that, and it'd also be a nightmare for players who have ping issues.

[@rachuwul]

3:08 What the heck that’s ME

[@reizakloise6461]

Aside role design, encounter design are now practically everyone does the same thing but on different spread positions. Ranged not needing melee uptime or managing casts or keeping everyone alive, obviously became braindead. Definitely need baited mechanics or adds that can be heavied or bound (thus giving meaning to the role actions) are needed

[@hi5GamesLP]

as a SMN main that was forced by the game to switch to PCT my stance towards Phys ranged is to delete them all and replace Phys Ranged duties with SMN.

[@zanarethnaisha2011]

What I think they need to do is determine if Support DPS is a real role anymore. If it isn't feasible tokeep that title they could scrap Bard and turn it into Hunter or Sharp-shot. Removing the songs and applying skills that deal damage in a full rotation. Empyreal Arrow would need to change what it does (either potency or letting Barrage work with it putting it into their burst phases), could increase potencies of the DoTs or even add a third (E.x. burning arrow, which was a ground aoe fire puddle in the past before removed. They could make it single target burning DoT on the target instead.) One interesting mechanic is they could try to implement is the distance idea they have in PvP already but for targets on certain skills (Empyreal Arrow and Refulgent arrow would be good for this i think, Dealing more damage the further you are away from the target). This would change how players position in general for healing purposes and may even change later mechanics. They could add a passive that makes burst shot/Refulgent arrow hit twice, Changing Barrage to use 5 arrows instead. During Boss mechanics they could have more Randomized aoe attack patterns around the bards Preferred distance, (if implemented), making them have to adjust and move to dodge as reactionary play. Kiting on fights would also provide a roll easily that was taken from Ranged Phys. (I don't know DNC or MCH so i can't really say how they would change, They could make dancer a healer and the supposed new ranged dps could do something else damage wise) The support side of Bard if removed could be changed to a healer role and they just make an entertainer class that sings and heals/buffs/debuffs. (Like FFx-2 Songstress dress-sphere) If they decided to keep Support DPS as a thing, they could remove all personal buffs (ones that only affect that player) from classes that apply them and increase their potencies of skills just slightly to help rebalance. Then they would have to rely on Phys ranged for the buffs. Which would make support dps more important to raids. It really wouldn't change combat mechanics themselves, just what you need on the team. This would require a big change though from on Vipers though, as they were built for this content right now. Bard songs could be increased potency on what they do and Dancers could possibly be given maybe 2 Dance partners to use to help overall to counter the lack of personal buffs (i don't play dancer so i'm not sure how it all works). MCH could technically drop the Support side and just be the Phys ranged powerhouse, dealing the most damage of the three to make up for no party buffs if in a party (I don't play MCH but this make sense, they use guns. Guns should feel like they hurt the boss). This wouldn't change casters much either I believe as most casters buffs are raid wide or they have to stay in it (Blm leylines). Picto would still stand out as the strongest class by far without changes but they could reduce potencies of it's skill or Raise potencies of others to match the damage output. overall, The support roll would still be the lowest DPS of the DPS classes but would make others rely on it's role outside of the 1%.

[@Jay-mx5ky]

The problem is what it was meant to be a support dps was much different earlier in ff. As a support dps (aka NIN pre shb), you were giving people tp, you were reducing aggro from the healers, you were giving most of your aggro to the main tank, and you were giving out trick attack for damage. These days, being a support dps means you have a raidbuff for damage, and maybe one other single target damage boost. It's only about damage, and there's no other real responsibilities dps jobs have nowadays, especially the ranged dps who has the least burden of the entire party.

[@zanarethnaisha2011]

@@Jay-mx5ky I do miss those days, I kinda liked having TP and managing that on ninja. Though sadly i don't think we will go back to those days so finding ways to improve on what is already there is what's mostly being talked about. Removing the personal buffs that just do Damage increase for the user (Hunter's Instinct on Viper for example which gives 10% damage increase to the user's attacks) and buffing the percentages of buffs from the support classes would help make them feel more important. songs for example could increase Wanderer's Minuet from 3% crit-hit rate to 10%, Mages Ballad to 3-5% damage boost for the party instead of 1% and Army's Paeon Direct Hit rate to 10%. of course I'm not sure how balanced it would be as i'm not a math guy, but for those that Parse, They would notice a difference with having a support and not having one. If Damage is the main thing they wanna focus on, then supports need to feel like they are contributing to the parties damage, not just there for the 1%. Of course this is talking about phys Ranged. Melee support wouldn't really need to change much as they already provide raid buffs that could just be increased by another percent or two.

[@Jay-mx5ky]

@@zanarethnaisha2011 I actually think so many raidbuffs are the problem. Buffing them would only emphasize your performance in the 2m window. I think the majority of 8 man raidbuffs need to be removed from the game in favor of more emphasis on these single target buffs, like old Dragon Sight, AST cards, and Dance Partner, and we need to enhance their effects so that the choice in who you're buffing at any given time is actually meaningful. That's not to say they shouldn't exist, but they should be exclusive and distinct to support style roles like BRD or DNC and not just given to every other dps and healer just to press.

[@Goosey_Loosey]

i agree that phys ranged needs help and is struggling, i hope they make changes to it to get it out of the gutter. i'm the opposite to the player base in a lot of job design though, i actually struggle to do the rotations of most dps jobs in the game and find the difficulty to already be fairly high, i also disagree that jobs should be made unique just for uniqueness sake (i also disagree that jobs aren't unique outside of tanks and healers, i can see why people complain about homogeneity on tanks and healers but not for dps)

[@TigeriPlaysGames]

obviously doesnt solve the problem, but i think it'd be neat if they spiced up phys ranged LB a bit again. give bard healer LB back and let it be clutch sometimes, give mch its snipe from PVP as, effectively, melee lb - as things currently stand letting the lower-damage mch lb instead of a melee having to interrupt their own personal dps for it would even be a slight gain overall. and hell, then you can even redesign the visuals of the phys ranged lb 1 and 2 to better fit dnc lol (or just give it caster lb)

[@Teru91333319]

I want to say that I wish it was a bit more clear that this was a video more geared towards phys ranged dps rather than just a general outward look into the dps jobs as a whole. Because while I DO like the way DRG feels now, it was an absolute farcry from a fundamental rework that they sort of touted that it would be. So while you are focused on a specific group of dps's issues, I want to think about the problem with jobs at large I also just want to say this because it's been brewing in my mind and I REALLY hope you catch my thoughts here in the sea of comments: I don't think it's entirely coincidental that the last time they had significantly uprooted jobs in a comprehensive manner was Stormblood. You could argue Heavensward was the real last time, but I think Stormblood is more significant because of one thing specifically: Ultimates. I *strongly* believe that CB3 is very very shy from ever uprooting jobs in a way that they once did because they want the ultimates to still have their relative feel that they did on launch, especially because as it's universally agreed and accepted that ultimates are one of the game's lasting content you can go back to again and again. I wouldn't be surprised if they had some seriously innovative ideas for DRG's rework that ended up falling flat because in the process of their rework project, they found out that the job fell apart in lower level content. Which *would* normally just be brushed off if it was level 50 and 60, because who actually really cares? Except we do care about ultimates, starting at level 70. This is also why I think no matter what, they try their hardest to make sure newer jobs are at least functional by level 70, without regard for the balance of them. See: PCT topping every ultimate's damage charts... and if not topping, they're just about at the top. And this isn't relative to how strong PCT is right now, it is just blatantly 10% better. Reaper was boring at 70 but dealt ludicrous damage as well in Endwalker. It's a very clear trend. And if you really boil it down, they have both the feedback of the community yelling aloud that they want the design of jobs to never be too complicated, plus the desire to keep ultimates playable, in stark contrast to older savage content or extremes. And at this point, level 70 to level 100 is 30 levels, right? That's 15 different buttons or features that they will refuse to touch or modify in any way. I think the only counter argument to this would be the fundamental rework they did for MCH in Shadowbringers. That was a fundamental change from what I understand of it. Beyond that though, it's very clear and obvious to me that from Shadowbringers on, it has been a systematic process of just adding new things on top of what already existed. New finishers, enhanced abilities, upgraded potencies, etc etc. But nothing fundamentally **new** besides new jobs. This is getting really long so I want to offer what I REALLY hope they'll do. Which is a sort of prestige system from 8.0 and on. Yoshi P has already said they're very very reluctant to just go above level 100, and while not sharing ideas on what that would look like, I could see split skill trees eventually being something they land on. Letting you fundamentally swap out abilities or choose ones that let you modify your gameplay. The important part of this being it is **ONLY** from level 100 and on. So you leave everything before it stay in place, while letting players have the new experience of a potentially different job feel once they reach 8.0 content. I really hope something like this gets put in place for 8.0 because frankly, while Dawntrail is promising, and absolutely has the potential to be the new Stormblood in terms of raid fights and combat content being fun and thrilling; I can see myself stop playing in 8.0 if the jobs don't get any considerable changes.

[@Jay-mx5ky]

Shadowbringers was the last time they did big system changes and fundamental reworks for jobs. In shadowbringers, they got rid of TP, aggro management, and the tank/healer/dps stances which uprooted 90% of most jobs' playstyle, most notably NIN, whose entire identity was being the big party support dps with big damage and was meta at every point up until then, and DRK, whose stances manipulated your mp regen/drain and buff management, and who was one of the biggest TP drains on the party thanks to blood weapon. I think deleting TP from the game was good overall for the health of the game, but there were so many actions across jobs where support and identity actually meant something. And I'm not saying the balance of the game isn't mostly benefitted from it, but fun and balance should be a scale that's equally important.

[@ehko9989]

I swear the pvp job design team and the pve job design team need to meet each other at some point. Ever since pvp was overhauled back in 6.1, I was always hoping that pvp would end up being some kind of proving ground for the pve job changes. Like said in this video, physical ranged are very different between the 2 game modes, but there are also some cool differences in other jobs like BLM with the superflare mechanic or GNB with bloodfest functionning as a pseudo-BLU. I don't think most players hate these ideas and if implemented in the appropriate way in pve they could be a good breeze of fresh air for some jobs.

[@shadecr559]

While I do believe that Phys Ranged lacking in terms of contributing, I think thats it's more or less the most prevalent issue we have as of DT. Like we had so many small things removed that in my opinion felt like a whole new experience with every role you play. I get that the focus nowadays lies more on the content itself, but it's not like Square does not dare to try and adjust things if it meant for an easier experience for both new & veteran players. Like Rinon mentioned, I'd like to see if we slowly introduce more jobs for each of the roles again to enhance the experience Let me give you an example: Tanks - -> Introduce Abilities that reduce Enmity generation. Gamify Emnity Generation as an excess Resource & apply positive Re-inforcement. -> Limit those as oGCDs for DRK or GNB (might need to adjust for their kits) phys Range - -> Grant them Abilities that focus more on buffing allies or debuffing enemies accordingly. -> DNC already has their Dance Partner, where Peloton should be unique to this class -> MCH should get Abilities that reduce the resistances of enemies (similar to NINs "Trick Attack"), that decreases in effectiveness until it needs to be refreshed -> BRD should provide HoTs or Heals, but also get AoE Damage Mitigation Abilities that weakens the next attack I could go on with the other roles, but essentially making smaller adjustments that do not entirely change the current raid gameplay would certainly benefit from a fresh player experience. Then again, it probably would be a much bigger hassle to balance this additionally with new classes to add with with new expansions.

[@pyrosianheir]

I will never shut up about just reducing the ranged tax by 1 or 2%. Just give us that much, that way all of them, especially MCH, can be a bit stronger existing as a raid.

[@thunkredwaters]

thanks for reminding me TP used to exist LOL, but in all seriousness, good video. i liked your last one where you interviewed the phys ranged raiders & i feel like you've given us phys ranged players some much-needed attention & talking points. i know the previous video got me actually able to verbalize to my tank friend what feels WRONG about phys ranged rn. i swapped to viper for starters with post-msq & i still can't tell if i regret it or not. i felt like enough of a traitor when i swapped off bard to go dancer in shadowbringers XD

[@OfficialDjTalksick]

We need to scream in the 14 forums and get this game fixed It used to be my game and my only game I wanted to play I have more enjoyment starting an alt and replaying the older content leading up to post ew But even now that isn’t even fulfilling enough anymore The game has gotten stale and dawntrail exposed it Rewards suck, quest structure sucks, many things still feeling like an afterthought like helms for the newer races even when modders can do it, the longer and longer patch cycles when 4 hours of msq 3:30 hours of it being cutscenes while the other 30 minutes are the actual content I’m just frustrated I really want to play ff14 especially with my friends again But it just feels dead like subbing to 14 is just to fund squares failures

[@Nazuiko]

I strongly disagree with the idea that its impossible to rework Machinist and other jobs that sorely need it before the next expansion. Yoshi-P saying they wanted to keep jobs as they were and then make the big changes in 8.0 is convenient, because it means players wont end up like Astro was where we spend nigh 3 years wondering when we'll learn more about the rework they talked about, but instead can just deliver the updates when theyre ready. Ninja got a rework in 5.1, Paladin in 6.3, MCH got Dismantle and Paladin's Bulwark returned, Viper and Monk got reworks in a *mini patch* mere weeks after expansion release. There isnt any reason it would take 3 years to design a rework to a job and the state of the game right now needs changes much faster than that; most of MCH's problems existed for a long time now, Red Mage and summoner have been in an awkward state for years. Id like to see some more subtle updates in 7.2, if not full scale changes no later than 7.3

[@Mesarthim]

I started in 3.2 so I never really got to play HW MCH or Bard much at all. Jobs only started getting mostly maxed (ones I did not play) until stormblood.

[@fujiyamapanic]

13:25 I would rather have more interesting fights. All dps seem to be more or less the same. I played Redmage and I am basically a melee/ranged/caster and it doesnt matter much where I am. I wish we had fight designs that required our role to be relevant. Like in E8S in the add phase, us having specific job actions like stun, silence, etc was interesting. A fight in which a volitile target needs to be put to sleep by a caster or some approaching bomb shackled by a ranged dps or slowed down would be a great thing. The fights are also all just very coordinated dances. Which can be very boring. It says a lot when I can play the entire phase 1 of TOP with one hand, without touching my mouse or turning my camera. But it also is probably difficult making interesting fight without making them too hard or giving them dps checks so low that the high end player dont feel fulfillment from their own performance. Having a middleground is good. Lost Arc had very dynamic fights, where the boss did a "pool" of skills over a certain percent tile of his health. There was also far more boss movement and aggro management. It was an actual encounter with an enemy. The current fight are just huge target dummies that often are just walls without even having any directional requirements. I keep simping for e8s. Where The boss made you look away, made you pull the boss to the edge to slide over the ice to the other side of the arena, not falling off, to dodge laser beams, made you run far out or in, as a ranger even giving you the option to remain outside, as you could still attack from far away outside the donut axe/scythe kick atacks. E8S was an insane example of how well designed a fight could be so it really pisses me off watching these limp ass morning cartoon kpop dance choreographic fight designs... that's just boring af.

[@Alpacalips]

Great video as always

[@N-1a]

Heavensward bard felt bad to play with higher ping. Machinist was fine, because it was designed for casts and could have kept them. I feel like giving ranged dps cast bars would make them essentially casters without the name. The free movement is the thing that makes them unique... at least more so. Having more mechanics and support abilities, with more defined role, would probably be a nice idea. Though, I'd probably keep raises to casters, since it fits their job fantasy better.

[@praedythkm6988]

Personally i think if they do add a 4th, which is very likely, they need to copy the caster role and have a 50/50. Do the support stuff you mentioned for BRD and DNC, increase the amount of support they have and make them feel more valuable to the team, but then for the other two the need to lean more towards HW job design and make them deal good adps. If you do 4 support, the role will struggle in the next expansion having the 4 being locked to one slot, they need to be able to compete for the flex dps slot and right now they are the only DPS role that doesn't have a single job that can. If I play Picto/BLM I can still play with a RDM/SMN, the same wont be true for ranged if they all lean the same way of low aDPS. Its the only role right now that truly brings nothing to the table bar the 1%. Their mit is slightly better, but on a longer cooldown and when fights are like this savage if it wasn't for the 1% people would just take an extra melee since they have feint anyway.

[@nannerhannah3268]

Phys ranged should be more support, giving each one a version of expdiant would be awesome.

[@vegekusononi1943]

I have always though of MCH to be braindead and I don't mean that in a rude way but that is how I find its playstyle when I do its rotation, its filler then burst before repeating. I do find it relaxing in casual content if I just want to shoot things really hard but at the end of the day I find more satisfaction when playing BRD or DNC. Mostly Bard is what I play cause I like micro managing my Dots, songs and OGCDs. It keeps me engaged and makes me want to improve. Same said for dancer. I used to hate Stormblood Brd with a dying passion since the dots were the only thing that proc your song buffs and I always wished they had a shadowburst ability where you spread the dots around the target which would increase the chances of those procs in dungeon runs. ShB bard made me fall in love with its rework and alterations which made me find it to be a very fun class even if I was synced to a level 50 dungeon. Also for Ninja.. #BringbackShadowFang

[@Raika63]

Personally, I would love the return of some kind of bow mage playstyle. A Ranger? A Sniper (just steal some from the MCH PvP gameplay)? For what it's worth, I suspect we'll see some level of overhaul to the role with the next expansion - we're due for a new phys ranged, afterall.

[@mattg6106]

Ranged Phys. DPS have three role actions that are almost pointless. Maybe those should be changed to have secondary effects that are actually useful. And since they are considered as 'support roles' (give MCH some support pls) for the most part, their support utilities (damage buffs, defensive buffs, heals etc.) should be increased to be more meaningful. There shouldn't be the question of, "is it even worth having a Ranged Phys. instead of double caster?" outside of niche scenarios. Right now they are just kind of existing as a PCT buffer...or being left behind as MCH.

[@Len923_]

"casters have cast bars too" ... *summoner walks by, tossing spells around like a Phys Ranged*

[@juanpablo-co6zw]

I can't get out of gray city, so phys ranged is a good way for me to do savage. Melees carry while i pew pew

[@reloadpsi]

Make ranged characters hit harder at full health and do less damage the lower their health is. Really give them a strong incentive to use that mobility.

[@TgarMask]

I think dps party buffs should be exclusive to ranged dps. You are the combat support. Melee DPS should focus on big numbers. Take skills like battle litany and brotherhood and give them to the ranged dps. That way they have a tangible and clearly defined benefit over melee. Let the melee's keep their selfish buffs and let the range class have the party buffs

[@lockheartmac]

i never knew rdps had that channel-and-move skills, they look so fucking cool lol

[@Koko-Katori]

I just want WIldfire and Hypercharge to last 2 seconds longer, so I can have an easier time playing at higher ping. Or change it to be Stack based not timer based.

[@antho8691]

From my opinion, the more job they will release, the more they will have to streamline everything. You can't have good balance with that much jobs (2 per expacs) with lots of job individuality that casual players can handle (the core of the game is switching jobs easily, you can't switch easily if each one requires you very different timing and logic, except if you are some sort of hardcore gamer)

[@aelspecto]

You know the role is fucked when the traits and role actions are garbage. On that note, square should really decide if interruption is going to be a thing that matters or not, as the skill bars are getting bloated and placing the interruption for that one duty in a realm reborn gets dumber and dumber by time.

[@raymond314]

Phy range is a DPS role, the current attitude in the game is that only DPS matters. You can add more support skills to phy range but if this support is not required to clear, then people will still flock towards max damage classes. If you make the phy range damage comparable to other class and still give them support buffs, then noone will ever bring melee/casters. This video makes it sound like phy range is getting the short end of the stick while other DPS roles are the most fun thing ever, however all DPS roles are the same, they all just do DPS with the exception of SMN and RDM because they can Rez. The problem with ranged phy is that they can do everything that other DPS can do but better in almost every way, EXCEPT their damage numbers are about lower compared to melees/BLM/Picto. If melees did less damage then why would anyone bring melees? They too have no identity if following the rules of this video and this is evident because second melee can just be replaced by Picto. Also melee right now is there to force a focus on uptime strat creating more chances for strat optimisation (which is actually a negative for players as it is more restrictive).

[@bl3ckc4t]

i personally like the free movement of the range dps jobs, playing them since i started earlier this year, but then again i´m not one who plays savage or ulitmate content, just the normal ones and i see them from a casual view from do i want to focus on dps mch, do i want to have a bit of a support role with it brd/dnc. though i can see it that a few extra things could be added to make these job do a bit more than now