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I'm trying to decide whether to make a Ninja or a Black Mage. Both appeal to me really.
Although one thing I do like is single target DPS. Does Ninja tend to do more single target damage than Black Mage?
What are the play styles like, is Black Mage more AoE based?
And finally, I just unlocked the stealth skill "Hide" on my Rogue. Is there any benefit to opening attacks whilst in stealth, like there is in WoW etc? I just can't really see any use for it right now.
Thanks.
Hide is more of a convenience skill for when you don't want to fight. Later you'll get attacks that benefit you if you launch them from stealth to start a fight; later still you'll get a way to activate those bonuses without going into stealth at all (since you can't do so mid fight).
Ninja, in general, is a melee class and thus largely focused on single target damage, though with certain abilities it has decent AoE. It essentially has two 'rotations' you will perform. The first is a standard melee ranged weaponskill rotation, probably the simplest of any melee DPS, with fewer positionals and less complexity than most other classes. However, the second is your Ninjutsu - cooldown-limited spells that you have to manually cast by entering a string of 1-3 different Mudras. Memorizing, selecting, and executing your Ninjutsu properly is one of the most challenging aspects. You have a lot of freedom to move in Ninja, except for brief periods of casting Ninjutsu. You bring some utility to the team in terms of restoring allied TP, helping keep aggro from non-tanks down, and briefly raising the damage your allies deal out (especially tanks); but mostly you're there for a lot of damage, and you do it really well.
Black Mage, by comparison, is a job with a very un-fixed rotation that relies on a lot of on the fly calculations and response to random factors. The core tenet of the class is Ice and Fire stances - as you cast Ice spells you shift farther into Umbral Ice, where spells are cheaper and you regen MP hyper fast; while casting Fire spells sends you into Astral Fire, amplifying MP costs and damage while preventing MP regen. You're also dealing with some random effects that can be played opportunistically that results in a very fluid caster with potentially very impressive single target or multi-target damage (BLM were traditionally kings of AoE). However, being careless can end up with you out of MP and waiting for Astral Fire to wear off before you can do anything again. Unlike Ninja, almost everything Black Mage has requires them to stand still; meaning that finding ways to minimize your movement in fights is key. You bring a couple spells you can use to support the tank with extra damage reduction, but that's about it in terms of utility - you are there to burn things to the ground.
That's a great help, thank you very much!