(01-10-2014, 02:11 AM)synaesthetic Wrote: Â Why bother having different classes if every class does exactly the same thing?
Because classes do the same thing (i.e. DPS, Healing, or Tanking) in different ways.
If a fight heavily favors ranged over melee - or even melee over ranged - that is a failure in encounter design. Â It is not a legitimate reason to buff one class to do far more DPS than other classes.
And forcing a player into an asinine playstyle in order to milk the max damage from their spec isn't good class design - it's just annoying.
There is a middle ground. Â Other MMOs have found it. Â But I've legitimately never seen an MMO tune around "risk" a player takes by playing their class the way it's meant to be played. Â If that's what's going on in FFXIV, then I'm really disappointed, because that, quite frankly, is terrible class design. Â They should fix their encounters to be equally challenging to both ranged and melee, not try to paper over it with buffs to one class that's taxed more heavily in encounters designed to be harder for just that particular class/role.
![[Image: hFalP38.jpg]](http://i.imgur.com/hFalP38.jpg)
