Questions about being a DPS

First question, are the queue times agonizingly long? Back when I played WoW they weren't terrible but they weren't quick. It was also really hard to join groups made to do non-lfg level dungeons since DPS were so abundant.

Second question, do you feel useful when playing DPS? This is kinda a subjective thing, but it is a concern I have because I feel like I'm being worthless and a burden if I don't feel useful. I don't mean to imply DPS aren't useful, obviously they are very much so. It's just that since there is always multiple DPS it feels to me like I'm not contributing as much.

Third question, are rotations fun to pull off/master? I'm curious since idk how the longer gcd makes DPSing feel compared to something like WoW.

The queues are not agonizingly long. They can feel long if all you’re doing is watching time tick by. If you fill your queue times with crafting, games, chatting, and inventory management, then the wait seems short.

In a game like this, the only true currency is time. If you waste it, it feels bad.

I feel useful as a DPS. Particularly if I have a team buff to drop or if I can interrupt an enemy cast or kill one before they can do a big hit on my tank. I usually tank more than I DPS, but when I am tanking, I always appreciate when the DPS is good because I can pull larger groups and get my dungeon clears done faster (and that goes back to what I said about time).

As for rotations, the long cool down enables you to weave things in between your attacks. You might have an off-grand-cooldown ability to sneak in, you might reposition yourself, you might try to double-weave two abilities, or stop tunnel vision for a second and check if it’s Limit Break time or if you’re too far from your healer (or two close). They are not hard to learn. It’s like guitar - it’s easy to be okay, and takes some work to be great.

I’ve never regretted having a leveled and geared DPS.

1) Depends on what you're doing. The queue times are, obviously, at the mercy of other people playing tank and healer classes. If you're playing in prime-time for your data center, and you're doing something that a large number of people will cycle in and out of (leveling dungeons, level-cap dungeons, etc.), the queue times aren't bad, in my opinion. Queuing for roulettes of any kind almost never takes very long. I've been spamming the lv71~79 dungeons for exp this past week, and I've been surprised that the queues have often been less than 5 minutes.

Unfortunately, if you're doing certain types of older content, queue times may take a while. For example, if you wanted to run through an Alexander raid, you'd be at the mercy of people queuing for Duty Roulette: Normal Raids, which might take a while. That roulette would first fill up the queues for anyone else that queued for other raids before you did, so it could take a while.

2) I do, personally, but I'll admit that without some sort of DPS meter, it can difficult to see your contribution other than just knowing that you're hopefully doing more damage than the tanks/healers. Since Shadowbringers took away all DPSs form of threat control, now I like to watch the other DPS's threat bar and try to make sure I'm higher on the hate list than they are, which directly translates to me having done more damage than they have.

3) Yes and no. At level cap (or 60+ at least), most jobs generally have enough buttons to hit to keep things interesting. Also, the duties get harder, so you're juggling more buttons to push with more things to avoid. However, at low levels (like pre-50, though some jobs really don't feel great until 60+), that answer is a resounding NO! Shadowbringers gutted a whole lot of superfluous skills, and streamlined others. At high levels, this was beneficial to reduce button bloat, but it sure made doing low-leveled content feel like a chore. Also, thanks to power creep, people can just kill stuff a lot faster than they used to, so some of the older content just isn't as interesting anymore.

I usually do my roulettes after work when it's peaktime for EU players. My usual queue time is anywhere from instant to ~10 minutes which is no problem for me. Only times I have to wait long is when I play at like 3am or so when 99% of EU players are asleep lol.

As for contribution, that's where the "evil" parser topic might come up. Combat in this game always looks flashy and feels good, even if you're underperforming. I like looking at my numbers to actually know how I'm doing, and when learning jobs to see if I'm doing something wrong (when another dps player of your job with similar level/gear pulls twice your dps you know that there is most likely something about that job you're doing wrong atm). I started leveling a MCH over the weekend and had a DPS overlay to see if I got the job bc I couldnt tell otherwise. Granted I have knowledge about the game which helps on any class, that actual beginners don't have, I ended up with dungeon runs where I contributed 50% and more of the total Damage dealt so I knew I was playing right (and by the number of commendations I received I feel like many people are actually watching those numbers during duties).

Rotations can feel like sh*t at lower levels (wouldn't even call them rotations at that point lol), but it gets better as more and more skills are added in. Some classes still have a slower rotation with bigger hits while others are constantly spamming buttons with lower individual numbers, but adding up to a quite satifying overal result nonetheless.