Morning in Vana'diel: How Good is RNG?

Morning in Vana'diel is your daily dose of FFXI and all things Vana'diel. Give us your thoughts on the interesting topics of the day! Is Ranger the most neglected job in the game? Is it the new Dragoon? Is it time that people take notice of it's strength in almost every aspect of the game? Ring thinks so.

So I have been playing my RNG a little more lately, and after I do some gear tweaking I would like to play it a lot more. The reasoning is simple: RNG is incredibly powerful. You might not really realize this anymore, because everyone bases damage off of their XP parties instead of things that have real defense and require real gear choices. Why do I say this? Because I can’t stop from pulling hate off of the tanks while fighting Odin.

Odin provides the perfect example of the difference between were most people judge gear and most people use. In an XP party, RNGs are at a general disadvantage. They have to constantly reposition themselves, they have to constantly be using a ranged attack macro and they can’t really get any consistency going. In a fight like Odin, a RNG can put themselves in position, even if it is at a sub-optimal range, and just fire away. Melee on Odin are the ones that have to constantly move in and out and can not take full advantage of their greatest strengths.

I often find myself pulling hate at Odin and that is not because I am being aggressive or stacking abilities, it is just through general damage done. There are many different fights were RNG can really take advantage of that but for some reason melee are still preferred, but this is mainly because of TP accumulation problems. I think that if SE creates more mobs especially HNM were TP is less of an issue (Odin has different moves, but the main concerns are the HP related moves that he does so TP is far less of a concern) so that more jobs can shine. Or they need to at least fix the issue were ranged attacks give more TP than equivalent melee attacks.

Whatever is done, I think it is time to reconsider the relative strength of RNG. If you ask a RNG they will tell you that this has been the case for a long time and that people are just ignorant. I definitely believe this is true for the most part. And I think it is time for the damage output of RNG in all situations, not just XP situations, to be considered.