Knowing Nasomi, he probably really did parse the numbers in a sweet spot on a cluster that had the new code active and then parsed numbers on a normal cluster without the new code. You get a dps buff under the perfect circumstances and those circumstances aren't going to be realistic in a lot of situations. In exp parties, you're forcing a rng now to hold tp until he or she can ensure the sidewinder/slugshot either kills the mob or brings it near death while standing 8-11 away(depending on weapon) or suffer a massive dps loss.

The more realistic scenario post change is that a RNG is sitting in their sweet spot, pops off a ws's, the mob chases the rng and forces the other melee to chase the mob thus increasing the time to kill the mob. As a rng, this would probably make me deny every party that has a PLD(trash exp job). Decked out DD's/nin with cor and brd will keep hate better through pure damage allowing me to sit longer in a sweet spot.

The question shouldn't be about how much of a dps buff you get in a sweet spot. The question should be how realistic is it to be able to maintain being in a sweet spot. If I only do more damage 20-30% of the time at the start of a fight, pull hate, then its not really much of a dps buff vs pre distance mechanic where the only hinder was whether or not i'm farther than 25.0 to do damage.

Honestly it sucks. I'm still only lvl 29 and I can easily pull hate off the tank with just regular arrow spam. Previous to this change that wasn't a problem, I'd take my licks until they got it back under control and we'd keep going. Now I rip hate everyone runs to me, once it's off of me i have to back pedal to my optimal distance again only to rip hate back again after 3-4 arrows. I know it's low levels and what not but it's a completely different party dynamic now for me. I'm afraid I just straight up won't get invited to good exp parties once I hit 55 because usually those parties stack dd's and beat on birds.

edit: Weaving ranged attacks inbetween melee attacks was overpowered on this server for a number of jobs as well. Maybe if he made the auto attack timer start counting down when the ranged attack went off, it could fix the too much damage part.

Hanging up my RNG after 61 levels. Without an enmity - bonus in the sweet spot, I don't think it is worth it to piss 5 other people off in exp parties by pulling hate from merely shooting normal arrows. Barrage and Sidewinder are guaranteed hate pulls, you literally just indirectly broke RNG's ability to do consistent dmg because of hate builds. You might as well shoot an arrow every 10 seconds.... Second and third order effects are usually only a hindsight 20/20 thing. Best thing we can do now is hope he realizes it kills the job's ability to serve as a DPS in an exp situation. We shouldn't expect to force everyone in a party to chase a mob every fight when we use a weapon skill or a job ability.