In Dawntrail, the Physical Ranged Role is definitely one where SE decided to play it safe as far as changes go.

I reached out to Nevren Niht from Malboro who is a one of the best players in the world across all 3 jobs in the category to get some of his thoughts on the upcoming changes to the role in all levels of play! He broke it down in parts for both the general playerbase as well as for players that invest time into optimization play. Here’s what he had to say:

General Overview

As a general overview, Phys-Ranged jobs seem to maintain their design philosophy entirely, continuing and expanding ideas from Endwalker to Dawntrail without significant or fundamental changes to how these jobs work and what type of rotations we can expect.

All Phys-Ranged got a buff to their mitigation ability - Tactician, Shield Samba and Troubador all got raised to a 15% instead of 10%, Second Wind was also buffed from 500 to 800 potency and traits were used to either buff abilities or change how they worked.

As an overall effort to reduce button bloat and similarly to other jobs, Phys-Ranged players will see some of their hotbar skills be merged into a different skill or include follow-ups on the same hotkey. It is also important to note that the media tour build can be outdated by the time we get information and the design or tuning of a job may change slightly or significantly until we see the release version. These views are also based on the complete level 100 flow of each job and not the leveling experience.

Bard

For the majority of the playerbase, Bard will likely feel very similar and they can still use the same ideas and muscle memory built from Endwalker to play the job. I don’t think any significant rotation changes will be needed and the only change that will likely be more noticeable is that Army’s Paeon (AP) lost it’s priority versus Mage’s Ballad (MB), so the structure of song timings is changing for everyone and the early cut off is going to go on AP instead of MB this time around, similarly to how it was before Endwalker.

Bard Optimization

For people looking to optimize, the extension of buffs to 20 seconds actually adds some interesting things to figure out. Since Raging Strikes (RS) also lasts 20 second now, it is possible for us to align it with buffs entirely this time allowing us to stack the 15% of RS with party buffs. The other change I would highlight is the ability to activate songs without a target (although it still requires combat!). This will definitely allow Bard to keep a more cohesive song structure in fights where there is downtime and will likely allow Dawntrail Bards to apply these to new fights as well as older Ultimates, especially in situations where downtime is not enough to reset songs! As for practical uses in new fights, we will have to see how the design is done and how we can better take advantage of this!

It’s hard to say where job balance will end up for Bard but I predict that it will maintain its spot as the Phys-Ranged with the highest ceiling in terms of damage. Keep in mind that very often, it needs a certain team composition to achieve those targets similar to what we saw in Endwalker. Bard’s ability to work with a good or even catered composition is unlikely to be beat. It’s utility in team compositions is likely to be the same too, I think it will be one of the two picks for Phys-Ranged optimization along with Dancer, both for speeds and parsing.

Overall I feel like Bard updates are okay, definitely on the safer side which can feel a bit underwhelming if players were seeking fresh new things to sink their teeth into for the new expansion but overall I'm feeling like Bard is going to be a very similar Job with a similar feel. For players that felt Bard had a lot going on at all times, I think it’s unlikely to change, unless new rotation alignment allows better pairing of skills to make monitoring easier but for people pushing the job it will likely feel the same! You are still monitoring Refulgent Arrows, Bloodletters, Song timings, DOTs, Apex Arrow and Empyreal Arrow.

Dancer

Dancer, much like Bard, seems to keep most of its structure and design. Tthe core idea of the class will remain the same and players looking to play it on a more casual basis are unlikely to notice many changes at all, it will likely feel as freeing and kinetic as before, with all it’s Bells (Feathers?) and Whistles!

Dancer Optimization

For people optimizing, it seems feather generation has no changes, so we will still be gambling sometimes and praying to the twelve for those stubborn feathers. Similarly to how it was in Endwalker (assuming potencies keep the ratio we are seeing), we don’t like Standard Step that much and the overall design actually indicates Square Enix got that memo. The highlight of Dawntrail Dancer ends up being the reduction of Standard Step with a new ability joining the flock (hah) - Finishing Move that gives Dancer the same effect of Standard Finish, but activated by Flourish (60sec ability). As such, Dancer can effectively skip Standard Step entirely during the fight under normal circumstances and just use flourish to keep the partner buff going.

While very similar, Dancer design seems to have gotten improved and given more room and tools for players that want to push the job in optimization, allowing them to essentially keep Standard Finish going without any extra steps, which can also help feather generation and management!

I predict Dancer will still be the strongest of the three Physical Ranged DPS for most situation, setting itself as an excellent choice in progression with all of its utility and movement tools. Additionally, Dancer provides a huge boost to your partner which really adds up if the gearing up process is done around them. Its versatility, ability to feed buffs, and streamlined rotation making it not nearly as hard to maintain as Bard but doing comparably or even better depending on the situation set it up to be likely the strongest choice for optimization.

Machinist

Machinist, out of the three Phys-Ranged, had the most changes. While these changes affect Machinist rotation and flow, they do not change the design philosophy unfortunately. As long as the job is not overpowered in terms of tuning, it will maintain all its strengths and problems from Endwalker (and Shadowbringers). Let’s break it down:

For people playing Machinist on a more relaxed approach, Machinist has gained a second charge of Drill and a follow-up to Chain Saw (Excavator), giving Machinists FIVE tools instead of three. Additionally Machinists got a weaponskill called Full Metal Field with a potency of 700 which cleaves for 50%! This essentially means the flow of Machinist is likely to be changed in Dawntrail, with many more options for fitting tools in bursts and helping the job feed buffs as much as possible easily and without much planning.

Machinist Optimization

For people pushing Machinist, things become more interesting as well with these tools. Machinists will be able to pair them with their heat blast windows (soon to be Blazing Shot) and increase their burst even more, especially when you consider Barrel Stabilizer no longer gives you heat. It just activates Hypercharge so you can likely pool heat from before to make this job stack even more for it’s burst.

The new Machinist design is very interesting, opting for more personal skills than queen skills, which is a welcomed direction for the job and is likely to feel more fun than before and stay as a very strong progression pick, as it doesn’t depend on other jobs for it’s damage output and definitely shining in early prog or when consistency for the dancer partner is still not there. Machinists can absolutely carry damage in those situations and with the addition of Dismantle, it also makes it very useful for Mitigation.

That said, Machinist’s issues seem to linger from before and the longest complaints remain unanswered both from a functionality standpoint. With Wildfire remaining sensitive to ping, even after the efforts done in Endwalker and Hypercharge clipping for people unable to double weave it’s 1.5sec GCD, Its still going to feel the same and for the sake of optimization, Machinist is totally dependent on potency that it can likely never achieve, for the sake of role balance.

Being a selfish (nDPS based) Physical Ranged DPS means it continues to take the spot of either Dancer or Bard but it still offers no substantial gains and the only field where it could potentially overcome the other two jobs (even if minimally) would be buff feeding, but it is also unlikely that the potency choices get it that spot for too long or ever judging from history. The job remains shackled to the Physical Ranged DPS overall balancing, meaning it cannot hit numbers that melees do. With many cool ideas coming to Machinist, it’s definitely a let down that we aren’t getting a change in design philosophy but maybe in the future!

Q&A

After Nev gave me his thoughts, I had a brief Q&A with him where I asked some follow-up questions based on his thoughts and my perspective as a party finder only player with mostly progression experience on Dancer (I am a healer main primarily!) and I think that he had some interesting things to say!

Dancer’s Identity with Standard Step

Sonicrida:

I'll start with dancer since it's what I'm most familiar with. It's subjective for sure but I've always felt like the dance mini game was maybe the most unique and iconic part of the kit and in general I find it awkward when moves become rarely if ever used once you get replacements (looking at cure 1). Do you expect potency changes to return it to it's "almost always use on cooldown" status similar to how some other jobs have their basic damage gcds doing more than formerly equivalent/competitive skills like sage? To me it sort of feels like a betrayal to remove the "dance" from anything but the 2 min windows and openers.

Nevren:

This is a very fair point. I think they ran into an issue with the 2 forms of dancer damage that make its identity I think. Dancing doing no damage feels a bit awkward and the finishers being the only damage gcd would make it have a lot more peaks and valleys and also from an optimization sense center things too much around the finisher being a crit or not much like ninjas hyosho. The other form is feather building but because standard takes 5 seconds which amounts to 3 gcds every time we standard, we can’t build feathers so that’s the main issue with going all in on the dance side in my opinion.

If dances were made to guarantee feathers, maybe it would work and become more cohesive but as it stands, because we have to 1234 so many times to get feathers and they’re pretty RNG adding having to manage esprit and saber dance, standard ends up feeling like a chore in the middle of us building our damage tool just for the sake of keeping our partner buff up. I think that’s exactly why they’re giving us tools to further reduce it. I think another version of dancer is definitely possible though more centered around dancing steps but it would need a rework!

Sonicrida:

This makes a lot of sense to me and I could see something like guaranteed feathers or perhaps dance steps themselves have some amount of potency assuming they are the correct steps anyway. Definitely a good point to bring up with the feathers because I do think that feather gen (And to a lesser extent esprit gen) are super important to the experience too.

Machinist’s Value In Party Finder

Sonicrida:

On the topic of machinist - do you feel like their value as a consistent selfish damage dealer is underrated? A lot of the hype for machinist is around dismantle and while raid design seems to be less and less focused on dps checks as a huge factor in clearing especially beyond week 1, I find as a party finder player that it's still pretty likely that you'll see enrages every now and then due to how party finder operates. Anecdotally I always see machinists doing pretty well whenever they show up in parties. It makes me think that the damage output they have themselves matters a lot when things are more shaky even if I can understand it being a less appealing choice in optimization play.

Nevren:

I totally agree! MCH's reallly shines in these situations more than in any other. There is a chance for Machinist to be one of the stronger feeders for optimization when playing in that way but it hasn't been the norm. Dancer still achieves higher feeding capabilities on top of buffing other jobs, especially a SAM or NIN that combined will surpass the machinist most of the time, so the point of view of total party damage machinist still doesn't hit this threshold either but if the party struggles to stay alive and the machinist is consistent absolutely, it can make the difference!

Machinist’s True Potential

Sonicrida:

Could you elaborate a little more on the "potency is can likely never achieve". Are you referring to the struggle that higher ping players have with Hypercharge/Blazing Shot windows?

Nevren:

What I meant by potency it can never achieve is in regards to melees, for instance, Machinist would likely need to have almost comparable damage to some melees to be a strong contender against dancer and bard in terms of party damage, but because XIV balances the roles within themselves but also between what they "should be" as a role, Machinist ends up getting limited by a more support oriented role (Physical Ranged DPS) and it can never get the damage values it would need to be on equal grounds because even compared to the lowest damage melee, they maintain a significant gap.

Looking at 6.4 values here because 6.5 just skews things with how little people continued playing and pushing their jobs there's a huge discrepancy but this shows pretty well the divide between melees and ranged even in medians:

cDPS is also good to look at these things but its shows the same type of philosophy where ranged characters are offered a more supportive role and melee characters are much more focused on damage (also due to their minigame with positionals)

Bard is extremely interesting because its range is huge from the bottom to the max it's probably the class with the biggest disparity after black mage which makes sense they are similar in terms of how hard their execution is with the addition of bard needing a team composition to reach these maximums abut machinist gains very little from others so it ends up being in this awkward spot where it's the "samurai of the ranged" but it's damage is not comparable and it also has the lowest ceiling out of the 3 Physical Ranged DPS

So I really think machinist needs a rework and join the buff team like the other two or it needs to get unshackled from the Physical Ranged DPS limits and start hitting really hard, probably around monk level or so to be considered on equal footing. Doing that could create problems but could also create other interesting ways of doing team compositions where maybe double phys-ranged would not be such a loss and if some fights were designed around that idea then we could have something interesting for players to sink their teeth into as well.

Maybe a team oriented for a SAM would not be the same team oriented for a Machinist, for instance and maybe a Ninja Machinist would make a lot of sense but also a Dancer Sam, opening options and such but I’m rambling haha

The other option that I would put probably first would be to really give it a skill analogous of Mug for ninja, maybe with the queen, everytime she touched the boss she would apply a vulnerability to the boss and make the team do more damage, that would open MCH to rDPS and give it a buff along with dismantle, it could really be interesting

The Hopes and Concerns of Bard Players

Sonicrida:

For Bard especially since I have little context on the job and the players that enjoy it (or wish that they could), what would you say were some of the hopes coming from DT in Bard aside from the songs during downtime which I did hear a lot about. Are there any big desires that people have for it? Or perhaps any issues with it that weren't addressed?

Nevren:

Yes, definitely. I think Bard feels a bit bloated right now and I would have loved to see it be streamlined a bit better, maybe simplifying it a little bit or make it so it needed less babysitting. I think it's a very interesting class but it's extremely hard to execute compared to most jobs in the game, disproportionally so and as it stands without good execution it can fall off immensely too which is another thing to consider.

I hear a lot from more casual players that Bard is in a bad state and does no damage when you can see it has the highest ceiling of any Phys-Ranged by far and it's not even close. This goes against highly optimized dancers with multi partner runs and it still doesn't hit close, because Bard gains a lot from a comp that can maintain it's feed, for those maximums we're talking about usually a double Dark Knight, sometimes even double Samurai.

Even in normal circumstances where catered compositions aren't like that it does extremely well and the strongest of the two ends up being picked over any interruptions that the fight may have, how long they are and how that affects Bard. So usually for fights like P9 and Athena 1 Dancer takes precedence but for all others Bard reigns.

I think more casual players don't really have that perception because unoptimized Bards don't really do that much damage, so to them it feels like the job is weak when it's just really hard to execute if that makes sense.

So Bard requires constant monitoring of possible procs for Refulgent Arrow, needs to cut Mage's short depending on Wanderer's time left (at -43 left on Wanderer's or 43s / 34s / 43s), drifting Mage's for Army's Paeon means AP will continuously get shorter the more Army's gets extended and for Endwalker AP gets Bards more damage. Then during Mage's it can't overcap Bloodletters. During AP it needs to ensure it has 3 for the burst each of them has a 15sec cooldown, then the dots have to not fall and to refresh them in Mage's it needs to use the 1 minute Apex Arrow shot at -7s on the dots to ensure it's not gonna proc Refulgent Arrows before refreshing (since Iron Jaws can also proc Refulgent Arrows).

On top of that it still has other oGCDs that can't really drift, one of them is sidewinder and the other one empyreal arrow, that includes a natural drift throughout the fight. This makes it a very hard class to execute since there's so many things to monitor at all times to a point where an optimal bard may have very little vision outside of peripheral vision and a few glances. It must stay in alert to ensure all this does not drift and pay attention to possible procs

I think this creates a job whose execution for even an intermediate player is really hard and would've liked to see some changes in that sense to make it more streamlined at least!

Another way to do Bard, I think, that could be really interesting would be using it's idea for radiant finale that just gets stacks right now according to song played so naturally they will have three aligned every burst window, but it ends up being just a buff. They could make it so bard built these codas with arrows and used it to alter add or change songs in a way that interlaced with it's attacks or even Apex Arrow gauge maybe making a more symbiotic relationship between the songs and arrows with less emphasis to keeping DoTs up and have those DoTs just be part of the songs automatically or have the codas apply them for instance. It would likely feel fresh and it would be an interesting and different way to use it's fantasy

For New Bard Players Interested in Optimization

Sonicrida:

What would you say to bard players looking to get into higher levels of optimization play in DT?

Nevren:

For Bards getting into opti i fully recommend a lot of patience and making sure they do it step by step. It's completely normal and expected that all these parameters won't just start working and focusing on one thing until it's time to move for another one is really good in my opinion. For instance I would start by making sure song timing was there first and just focus on having that and the dots rolling. If those two never fall or drift then that's already huge progress, then starting to pay attention to empyreal arrows on top of that and after that step, etc! The rotation for Dawntrail may be a little different honestly. I still haven't looked super into what the rotation is likely to be, but we know that it is likely that song timings will keep the same cutoff, just an easier one since it's Army's paeon being cut this time around (we think!)

Closing Thoughts

I really enjoyed my time talking with Nevren about the role and it gave me some great insight into the changes since I really do enjoy at least 2 out of the 3 jobs in the role(One day I will give you a proper shot Bard). The playerbase is full of opinions and if you have any thoughts about these and what you would like to see from the role, chat about it in the Studium Discord! See you all next time! - Sonicrida