I was under the impression that MNK dps is still comparatively high among the three melees? If it's not high enough that dropping monk is better opted in favor of NIN, then I'll concede that.
Printable View
The personal DPS of MNK is very nice, on average the highest individual DPS (BLM can destroy it with luck and/or Foe's but the luck thing requires very good luck) but NIN will be able to do roughly 95% of it and then give the group Trick Attack. The tricky thing at i180, when people started getting their numbers to base what jobs are good or not around, is that NIN's sub-stats were so bad in i180 we thought its personal DPS was garbage, now we're seeing it's low 1500s on a dummy and that's crazy good for what it also gives to the group.
We'll have to see in 3.1 if whatever they throw PLD is enough that MNK + PLD can become a part of the top-end meta but I highly doubt it since the devs have made DPS the whole point of the game and there's virtually no way even if PLD did DRK levels of DPS, it + MNK could beat out what a NIN brings.
Part of that just falls into the trap that monk straight up does not play well with anyone other than the fact they are the single highest dps. On the other hand, if NIN was not given the opportunistic scenario of having a warrior do SE (and considering most compositions, a warrior is a given), they'd do less than what's listed, compared to monk who can't necessarily "do less" than what they are now, unless all of those numbers are also with ninja (and therefore not DRG) in the party lineup, or again give another class like MCH or a to-be-hammerman an application of blunt resistance, and then MNK can opt out of dragonkicks for bootshines instead for a consistent dps increase.
I'd also like for them to move away from having hard DPS checks that gets to the point that you're taking away from both tanks and healers to add more dps, now that you mention it. They'd have to make it less appealing for the tanks/healers to find means/the need to dps, and well... actually let the dps roles be the primary concern for meeting the dps checks.
I actually find the focus on hard DPS checks pretty interesting though.
The thing about tanking and healing alone is that traditionally they are pretty binary, you either pass or you fail (either you die or you don't) and getting better and more geared at it just means you spend more time twiddling your thumbs. DPS on the other hand has no ceiling and more is generally always better.
Tanking and healing are really boring to me when they don't have that kind of continuous progression that DPS has - it's very satisfying seeing a boss die faster and faster as you get more geared. They would have to design some mechanics for tanks and healers that bring that same sense of linear progression.
That feeling could still exist without such a heavy emphasis on DPS checks for encounter difficulty, though. Whether there are DPS checks or not, tanks and healers that want to can contribute the same DPS. The difference between the present endgame and that of ARR is that high tank and healer DPS is essentially *required* to progress in the HW metagame. Used to, it was something you could as you got more comfortable/better geared.
As long as it is not just a DPS check which makes it difficult then it is fine. In Destiny the crota raid was only difficult because of the fact it was 2 levels above the players, once you met level you could effectively solo the encounter which is just laughable and a showcase of poor encounter design. The first raid in that game even over geared is still fun and a "challenge" because of the mechanics of the fights not because the enemies are hard to kill.
I haven't tried machinist but honestly levelling a job that is just as lacklustre as bard is not very enticing...
MCH is a tremendously boring class to play outside of Wildfire or AoE situations in addition to having a glut of worthless skills, and what skills it does have seem like neutered versions of better ones so as to not provide too much competition to BRD. Bad bad bad design just like with DRK.
I'm surprised there are so few people mentioning this. I recently got MCH to 40 and found the turret damage was lower than it should have been. It also wasn't affected by Hawk's Eye. I didn't try out other cooldowns.
A large percentage of MCH's DPS is from the turret, especially for people who aren't at the top of the skill curve. For that to be nerfed out of a trait bonus and unaffected by one or more DPS cooldowns is a substantial handicap. Maybe MCH wasn't supposed to be lower DPS than BRD but are because of those issues?