[4.0.5] Monk vs Samurai

I really cannot decide which one to level and play :(. I already have Paladin/White Mage/Bard. I want to have 1 tank, 1 heal, 1 range DPS and 1 melee dps... Since Bard is a support DPS with medium damage, I dont want to play Ninja cause it will be just another support - medium damage DPS.

What are the pros and cons of these Jobs? I can help by making a template of questions if you dont mind :P

- Who has the best single targer DPS?

- Who has the Best Cleave - AoE? (3-4 targets)

- Who has the best AoE? (5+ targets)

- What is more "annoying" (subjective question I know.. ), heavy positional requirements (Monk) or Having to stay still for abilities that have cast time (Samurai)?

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Who has the best single targer DPS?

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if the skill level of the player who plays samurai and monk are equal, sam is superior, but not for that much

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Who has the Best Cleave - AoE? (3-4 targets)

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samurai by a long shot on that scenario

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Who has the best AoE? (5+ targets)

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still samurai, monk aoe is rather bad, low dmg from arm of the destroyer + tp costy + requires to do 1 single target attack to do rockbreaker(since no raptor form aoe), the only good thing monk aoe has is what is very sustainable if you do not use arm of the destroyer

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What is more "annoying" (subjective question I know.. ), heavy positional requirements (Monk) or Having to stay still for abilities that have cast time (Samurai)?

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samurai has positionals too you know, albeit less punishing than monk ones, if you dislike positionals, you aren't gonna enjoy melees, since all melees has positionals to some degree

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I dont want to play Ninja cause it will be just another support - medium damage DPS

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dunno, i did heard what ninja dmg was almost tied whit monk dps

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Originally Posted by Xau

dunno, i did heard what ninja dmg was almost tied whit monk dps

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I heard that Ninja Damage is about equal to Bard :P since it is a support melee class..

So from your answer, Samurai wins in almost all scenarios :P (I dont mind positionals that much, but Monk is too much to be honest).

MNK has better cleave than SAM. The only AoE in SAMs natural rotation is guren and if you wanna use kyuten that works also. However guren is on a 120 CD. MNK has elixir and howling which are 30 and 60 seconds respectively while also having rockbreaker which is AoE that doesn't break its rotation.

MNK AoE is actually good, since it was the best melee in HW and it didn't lose anything. NIN and SAM are probably better on pure AoE but on cleave AoE I think MNK is still top.

If you want to look at performance, the biggest difference is probably their support options. Monk has a small party DPS buff in Brotherhood and a party healing increase buff in Mantra, while Samurai only has a slashing damage debuff that Ninja already provides but has slightly more DPS to compensate. Both are very viable, with Samurais damage being an obvious draw due to having the best DPS in the game, but with many being swapped out for Monks in the latest prog rounds for the extra survivability that Mantra offers.

Also, for your "which is more annoying" question, you may want to ask more about how well both classes can handle fight mechanics. Some fights make it hard to stay still for Iaijutsu (the cast bar skills) but to my limited understanding of monks, they are punished very heavily if their self buffs fall off and somewhat more so than Samurai if they can't get hit positional skills. Iaijutsu is also very forgiving on when you use it since it doesn't disrupt combos so you can delay it a bit if you need to move.

Again, I can't speak too much about Monk, but I've been having a blast with Samurai.

Monk is good. But SAM is better overall. However Monk brings more if we talk raiding/endgame thanks to Brotherhood.

If you want a pure DPS melee job, SAM outshines the others by far. However what you heard about NIN being medium DPS support is really not true. I would say NIN is right behind SAM, perhaps tied with MNK damage wise. It's true they were doing the least dmg of all melees in Heavensward, but they definitely do a lot more since Stormblood. I would say they're probably the second highest melee dps job atm, but they bring more to the table in group content compared to SAM in the form of Trick Attack and enmity management with Smoke Screen and Shade Walker.

If you go by FFlogs, NIN is pretty much tied with DRG for last since 4.05. Nowhere near the level of MNK and SAM and slightly ahead of DRG at the higher percentiles (95th and above). This isn't counting what it is truly useful for though: Emnity management and trick attack which is still broken (Trick attack alone provides more rDPS than everything DRG brings including disembowel for 1 ranged).

If we go by rDPS contribution (utility included) then it is really close but I think it is SAM > NIN > DRG > MNK.