Why Arent Melee Used Anymore

You answered why they aren't used as much. Other ways are easier and more efficient. Why ask a question to which you already know the answer?

What goes around comes around.

I am sure your Perfidien and Ploutons would love some dead melees !

He answered your question. What do you want? "With melees the fight takes 10 minutes and without it takes 8. 8 is less than 10 so we go with that" ?

Because most melee are as dumb as ***bricks.

He answered your question pretty well, actually.

Short answer: gamers are lazy. People generally use the easiest, most efficient, or least risky strategy. People want to complete content, not fail over and over or take twice as long as necessary. So, they take optimal setups to endgame. It really is that simple.

More people in range means more healing, erases, possibly losing a lot of dps when a melee dies, etc. If you want to go melee to stuff, make your own group. Or you could sit in town and complain on the internet, gamers do that, too.

There doesn't need to be a complicated, detailed answer to this. If a setup is more efficient, people will flock to it and ignore all others. That is how this game is and has always been. You can complete any content in the game with melees, ranged, or magic. But if one of those options is safer, more efficient, and requires less work, why would people attempt others? The playerbase is dwindling, so if content can be completed using less people and resources, it's a better choice to do that. Melees require healing and status removals and constant vigilance. Ranged/magic or pet setups do not. As people have mentioned, try sending melees in to Perfidien or Plouton. You're not going to have a good time.

As I said, you can use any setup you'd like and you'll still be able to clear content fairly reliably. But people want the most efficient option every time. This is the same playerbase that required SAM and MNK as the only DDs for the longest time for Delve. It's the same playerbase that TPed in full AF3 set for BLU and continue to think that magic damage is good for TP and that Hagondes is the go-to set for all your melee needs.

There's never been much allowance for diversity, either through stubborn and religious following of the accepted strategies, or through complete ignorance of the benefits of others. Eventually this meta will deteriorate and something else will take its place. It's the same pattern that has happened time after time after time.

Was that detailed enough for you?

melee are not used for a variety of reasons such as they can NOT die or the run is ruined (Perfidien/Plouton), current endgame relies on large, AoE attacks that decimate front line fighters, and the almighty Magic Burst is the new way to make big numbers and mobs go boom as a consequence. thanks to SCH you don't even need a melee to make the SC for you! the bigger question is why are people so intent on trying to do things less efficiently?

Probably because they don't want to level or gear up a mage or support job :P

Melee are still used for a lot of content like high tier battles, gotta have mages somewhere.

During the abyssea area we discovered the cap on physical damage is much lower than the cap on magical via Primeval Brew. Essentially its how the games math works when the user stats get high enough; favoring magic over melee.

I think there's a few reasons.

The major one is they made Magic bursting extremely potent earlier in the year.
They made it so Perfidien/Plouton depop if anyone dies.
They made adjustments to hate/enmity. (tripled total cap, lowered hate generated from damage) that means a PLD can tank.
Stacking multiple GEO bubbles is broken. You can stack ~4 GEOS and the GEOS and other nuking classes perform extremely well. You can stack GEO bubbles for melee too but the GEOs can't really nuke to that.

Melee are still used for the majority of content, not sure what you are talking about. Vagary heavily favored mages but how long did Vagary even last? Almost every player I know did it once for clears and never again, maybe two-three LSs do it occasionally on Asura that I know of.

Escha just works with any strategy really, depends on how you want to deal with it.

Melee still reign supreme for Delve, Skirmish, Battlefields, Unity, etc. The content the common person does basically.

they're going to find it harder and harder to get anything done as the playerbase continues to dwindle then. as I cannot recall the last time I was something other than GEO in group content, I get it; people want to do something more "fun", but at this point there is so much easy to get gear out there, not to mention that you cannot do anything without tripping over piles of XP, that I really have little pity at this point.

The problem with melee strats is they require a lot of support. As you lose players you lose the ability to bring those extra support roles. It becomes far easier to beat content with jobs that don't require the jobs that you're missing.

I go melee to plenty of things. Yeah, they suck in Vagary for various reasons, so you just don't go melee to Vagary.

There's still plenty of content that melee is good in. I go NIN to a lot of things.

Maybe that's because I refuse to level BST, though.

I don't know man. As a lifetime BLM (10 years) I don't agree. In fact one of my hugest complaints returning to the game is that BLM is really only desirable in Vagary, at least on my server that's pretty much the only /sh you'll see that includes BLM.

Otherwise ya, mostly buff jobs, silly lil pet jobs. From what I can see FFXI got GOT by a damage parser add-on. Nowa days if the 6 people is not the exact 6 in question, people won't even go. Worse yet (for returning players) everyone "else" seems to have every job leveled to 99, which also seems to be expected of anyone wanting to join an event.

Pre-parser days I.E. TOAU era was much different in the idea that no one knew which job could do what in crap gear, you just took along A person and let whatever happen. Everyone came dressed to impress and busted out their biggest numbers. Anymore you can simply parse every action and the idea of someone simply doing well because they play well or enjoy that particular job is far far gone.

But on my server, I disagree. Black Mage is a black sheep and only vagary seems to care.

Optionally, go solo. Unless there's a required minimum then call your trusts and "TRY" anyways. You never know what you could do until you quit relying on support,DD,cor's and brd's. The social aspect seems pretty well deadened too. Solo wouldn't really be boring as no matter what group,linkshell,party.. no one really talks anymore.

Play your way, get rid of the old blueprints, make new ones and re-enjoy your game.

That's debatable. People love pet jobs in Rala and Yorcia is still not too kind to most melees.

Square Enix has never been good at balance. It's unfortunate but true.

In their defense, FFXI is much, much harder to balance than other games, because of the flexibility of the system. Subjobs and combat-swappable gear add a tremendous amount of complexity and depth to the system. This is why you have people tanking as non-tank jobs, BRD/SCH nuking, etc.

I mean, they still get it wrong all the time, but it's worth noting that it's not as simple as balancing games that use the Holy Trinity approach like FFXIV does.

who cares OP, game is a shell of it's former self anyways, ride out the remainder of it's life with whatever sickening jobs SE makes best next

SE, at the very end, seem to want to have jobs that were otherwise trash through the majority of the games lifespan have their time in the spotlight, I'm just glad it's happening now, and not when the game was like, you know, good, and whatnot

Only if you have grapes. I need to make some wine.

It's much easier to skillchain + Magic Burst these days, so Samurai is clearly the better option, unless you know a good Scholar. My main job is DRK, and I ain't used it regularly since Delve. It can be used in high tier battles like Tenzen, but THF is much easier to use and most have it leveled for farming. Rudra's Storm and Evisceration can be used frequently, and you don't need /sam for that.

Heavy DDs like WAR, DRK and DRG suffer with /dnc as a subjob, and would rather use /sam (or /war), but those subs don't provide enough defense against strong attacks. /nin favours MNK DNC THF and COR in battlefields which require it (like tenzen or ouryu), and again, two handed DD suffer compared to one-handers using /nin.

There's also a problem with the amount of mobs at any given time. In the past it was beneficial to use heavy DD to kill 10+ mobs at once (ex. big pulls in dynamis), and it was efficient to do so. Much of the content is restricted to 6-18 players, so when you have instances where you can sleep a small group of mobs, then -AGA them with mages, it's much safer and efficient.

Damage Dealers can use -damage taken sets to survive, however, mobs can do a lot of strong AoE and status effects, which requires someone curing your HP and effects. The strongest fights in the game can easily kill a DD while the WHM is focusing on the PLD. Sadly this means you're most likely to take mages, and sam/rng/thf for skillchains, staying out of range, and treasure hunter. SMN has niche purposes, but requires the best gear to be considered a top DD.

To be considered a top DD on two-handers DD like WAR DRK or DRG, you need a Mythic 119 (or well augmented Alluvion weapon) and know the job entirely.

BST is powerful again, I'm sure Magic Bursts will continue so mages have their place. At the moment melee DDs have issues because they cannot skillchain like a Mythic SAM. And then you weaponskill and interrupt the SAM, who gets mad at you because he's trying to set up Magic Bursts.

The main problem is the type of mobs we fight. They are either 1) too damaging with AoE/status, or 2) damaged easily by magic bursts. You don't find many mobs which are completely resistant to skillchains and magic. I wish they would make more melee-friendly content, for high-end players, so we are not forced to play on the back-line while the PLDs have all the fun. Sorry for the long post, I'm just a tired Corsair,

Melees are still used. Skjalf uses melee jobs for events. Skjalf also likes to melee on White Mage and usually always does as much, if not more damage with melee auto-attack hits and weapon skills. ^o^

I have to disagree. There's plenty of new weapons that can compete with 119 Mythics. Such the alluvion weapons (with the right augments) or new weapons from new content released in the past half year. The time when people thought you needed mythic/relic/emp weapons to be a great player or top DD is over. You don't need a Mythic to be a top DD, but hey what do I know? I'm just a 10+ years FFXI casual veteran. lol

You 100% do not need a mythic to be considered top-tier DD anymore. And any job at haste cap and properly geared can self-SC just fine.