(06-22-2015, 05:28 PM)Manari Wrote: Apparently that is "working as intended" for Bard because they can give mages some MP back slowly.
My understanding of game design is that melee damage dealers should always deal more damage than ranged damage dealers based on risk vs. reward.
A melee character is going to more at risk, given how most MMORPGs heavily feature enemies that have close-range damage skills, AoE or otherwise, that force melee characters to play it safe or risk dying. In return for skillful play that risks death, they come out with dividends. FFXIV:ARR had a perfect example of this in the PGL class and MNK job: you had to occasionally take risks to keep up your most important buff, or else your damage would fall off significantly.
Contrast this with ranged characters. Typically, you have two types of ranged damage dealers: the casters/channelers, and the instant damage types. Casters and channelers are generally designed with a higher DPS ceiling, since they also incur risks. If they don't plan well ahead of time, they have to break their casts/channels, resulting in damage falloff. Ranged instant damage characters, on the other hand, are the safest damage dealers. They are typically mobile, there's never a moment in they cannot deal damage as they have no melee range requirement nor a time requirement. As such, to balance out the fact that they are constantly contributing and the skill floor is much lower, they typically deal less DPS on average.
End result: ranged having less DPS output potential than melee is always a case of "working as intended" unless a game is designed such that risk does not increase with proximity to an enemy or unless extra mobility does not make one class safer than other.
EDIT: I'm not touching Machinist with this post. If it's underpowered, it's underpowered and will eventually be addressed/fixed.
![[Image: 1qVSsTp.png]](http://i.imgur.com/1qVSsTp.png)
