Playing safe is physical range’s bread and butter, as they don’t have to be right up on the enemy’s hitbox. They may not do the most amount of damage, but where they fall short in DPS they make up in buffs and support. At the Dawntrail media tour, we were able to get hands-on time with the three ranged classes and were left with a bit of a mixed reception. They add a couple of quality-of-life improvements, but there aren’t any colossal changes to the formula.
This article is based on play of an in-development build of FINAL FANTASY XIV: Dawntrail and content in the final version is subject to change.
Final Fantasy XIV: Endwalker Melee DPS Impressions
The physical range that originally had no competition back in the day, Bard sees a couple of quality of life changes.
Bard and Reaper share something similar: they both pick up very few modifications. For Bard at least, the largest attraction is that your songs no longer need a target to activate. This is a massive, overdue change that endgame players have been clamoring for, as if there was any form of downtime, it could throw off the song rotation in the most unfortunate of ways.
Battle Voice has been increased from 15s to 20s and Blood Letter has an upgraded version called Heartbreak Shot. There’s consolidation of buttons, like Wanderer’s Minuet turns into Pitch Perfect when used, Barrage turns into the level 96 skill Resonant Arrow, and Radiant Finale turns into the level 100 skill Radiant Encore.
As you can tell, the main focus is making the songs be usable even when there isn’t a target, along with a couple of new damaging skills. Battle Voice’s increase in length is also a surprisingly appealing change that caught us off guard.
Introduced in the first major expansion, Heavensward, Machinist has gone through a couple of sizable reworks, but the job has been in a good spot since Shadowbringers, at least mechanically, so it appears Square Enix isn’t looking to reinvent the wheel just yet.
Similar Red Mage’s Manafication, Barrel Stabilizer will no longer give the job fifty gauge, but instead will allow Hypercharge to be used once without consuming any resources within a thirty-second time window. As someone who sometimes overcaps his gauge on Machinist a lot more than Red Mage, this is a fantastic change, although once more in comparison to Manafication, I do wish there was a better visual indicator to identify when this is activated, although it will likely still be used almost immediately after triggering Wildfire.
Outside of that, there are now two charges of Drill, and Gauss Round and Ricochet have upgraded versions at level 92 along with Heatblast having a cooler animation. Chain Saw has a follow up attack called Excavator which not only increases Battery Gauge, but deals the same amount of damage, and upon using Barrel Stabilizer, will turn into Full Metal Field, which has your character go buckwild with machine guns and missiles. Machinist has picked up a quality of life change in Barrel Stabilizer all while having its burst be even more busy somehow.
The overly simplistic, yet highly-versatile Dancer was first introduced in Shadowbringers and it became one of the most popular in Raids. In Dawntrail, not a lot has changed. Dancer is to be considered the Summoner and Reaper of the expansion in that it retains almost everything it had before.
The moderate additions are simply that there’s a new attack called Last Dance that procs after Standard Finish. There’s also an upgraded Saber Dance that’s only given when Technical Finish is achieved. And finally, Standard Step has an upgraded skill called Finishing Move that’s a single button refresher, but it can only be used whenever Flourish is activated. This in particular can be useful if you need to change party members mid-fight, but even then, those are in niche situations.
And that’s basically it. Dancer plays and feels like it always has, and maybe that’s for the best.
