Melee DPS

Good day all! I wanted to ask about melee DPS roles. I have Dancer, Machinist, Red Mage, Black Mage, Summoner and Paladin at 80 and already have a good set of gear for them all about 470.. I started noticing that in my FC there are next to no melee DPS whatsoever. So I wanted to delve back into melee and was curious how all the melee is standing right now. I played Ninja when it came out before Heavensward, toyed around with Samurai and Dragoon in Stormblood and never touched Monk ever. So what are the pros and cons of these melee jobs, the strengths and weaknesses and which is more survivable say if I were to want to solo something difficult like Eureka (before the Echo nerf). Which does best on AOE vs single target, which performs best in dungeons etc..Thanks in advance!

If I recall;

Dragoon is in a safe place having really good damage on raid utilities, and that was before it's damage was buffed last patch

Samurai gets the job done but the other Melee jobs DPS is starting to near SAM plus utility (this coming from a Samurai main)

Ninja I hear lots of conflicting info on it but from what I've heard and seen, NIN Deals good damage and utility but is too complicated/clunky to play

Monk is pretty similar to Ninja, with lots of conflicting info. MNK close damage to Samurai plus raid utility but boring to play and/or clunky

I'll give a short run down of the melee.

Dragoon
Arguably the most straight forward, offering extremely high rDPS and decent pDPS. The rotation itself is quite rigid, making the job easier to pick up but does lack in flexibility. There really isn't much downside to Dragoon save little annoyances like Piercing Talon being completely worthless due to Raiden Thrust's existence. Perhaps it's only "hard" aspect is learning the best ways to min/max.

Ninja
While the weakest melee, it does boast significantly high rDPS and surprisingly high burst. Unlike Dragoon, the rotation is incredibly fluid—making it the only melee truly capable of occasional range combat without hindering itself. That said, it is quite a "busy" job, especially in the opener. You have quite oGCDs you ideally want to keep in sync otherwise you'll wind up losing a usage. I'd say it's probably the least beginner friendly but wholly satisfying to play once you get passed that learning curve. If you've played Dancer a lot, the new mudras will feel similar to your Steps, which may make it easier to pick up.

Samurai
Sort of in the middle between the aforementioned two. You have more flexibility than Dragoon but nowhere near what Ninja offers. Since you're only concerned with dungeons and the like, I'll skip what makes Samurai a bit... awkward. In that setting, you'll find it plays quite similar to Dragoon; rigid and straight up. It has no utility to speak of but deals huge damage all up front. With only a 60s dot to really think about. Samurai is what I'd call "comfy."

Monk
Admittedly, I dislike Monk. The rotation feels a bit boring, especially as it has virtually no oGCDs. It does nearly as much damage as Samurai while offering good utility, but I find... nothing flows. So much of the job feels at odds with itself. Anatman is just... bad; Tornado Kick is worthless. You'll find yourself spamming the same handful of buttons a lot. Of course, I'd still say give it a shot. There are things to enjoy about Monk. And it's not too difficult to pick up. I simply can't recommend it myself.

As for AoE, they are all good choices. Dragoon is the strongest but even Ninja can be a straight monster once you learn all the ins and outs. If you're wanting to get your feet wet without feeling too overwhelmed, I'd go with Dragoon or Samurai first.

From what I've gathered playing roughly the four jobs :

Monk is the easy to learn/easy to master melee, limited in its gameplay, that kinda rotates and repeats itself, but it does decent damage and has some nice utility to bring to the party.
Brotherhood is really good to boost physical damage, and boost your own damage as well by giving you a lot of chakra proc, and Mantra is a 20% group healing buff. The job works fine but the over-reliance on positionnals can make it clunky sometimes, and downtime is your worst enemy as you can take forever to build back your ressources if you're not carefull.

Ninja is on the opposite the hard to learn/hard to master job. Lowest raw damage of all melee but has a 5% damage increase every minute for your whole group.
If monk has quick GCDs but not so much oGCDs, ninja kinda has the opposite with a lot of buttons to press to make the ninja do... ninja things. The mudra systems requires you to input a quick series of spells in a specific order to trigger a ninjutsu. Some can be a speed buff, a raw damage spell or one that lets you use your best ability : Trick Attack (the damage buff). Ninja kinda looks like it's easy to mess up, but also easy to get back on track once you know what you're doing. You gotta love pressing a lot of buttons tho.

Sam is... Special. It's easy to learn, but hard to master in high level content. Sam is often disregarded as a braindead job that's not really good, because unlike every other melee, it doesn't have any party buff. So it only depends on its player's skill.
So the better you are, the better your Sam will be. It's a huge "raw damage" job, with a very strict rotation due to the lvl 76 spell. A good Sam can crush every other damage dealer in the game, but it requires an exceptionnal level of play in order to do so, as missing even one GCD will mess your rotation. Sam is the definition of "learn to optimize everything". If you like fight optimization then this job's for you. Or just if you like big 100k in one hit. For casual play, just try to refresh your dot every minute and the rest should go pretty smoothly, as the job is really easy to play if you don't try to optimize everything.

As for Dragoon... Not easy nor hard to play. The job's main rotation is very simple and once you know it it's nearly impossible to drift away, the real difficulty of the job comes to the oGCDs that come with it. If Sam is a job about timing perfectly your GCDs, then Dragoon on the other hand is all about keeping those oGCDs on cooldown, which can make it tricky sometimes. Still, it has probably the best mobility tool for a melee : a backdash that doesn't need a target. Dragoon's dealing decent damage, has a very fluid rotation once you know how to play it and has two really good party damage buff that makes him one of the most popular melee job of this game. If you like spear, jumps, mobility and buffing your party then Dragoon's the job for you.

hope that helped :p

I sincerely appreciate all the input! I ended up picking up Samurai and already got it to 80 and am thoroughly enjoying it.. can anyone explain what the best amount of skill speed is for the Samurai? Seems they may need a little but after watching a few vids and donning the freebie 430 gear I'm already at 1322 skillspeed

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Originally Posted by Seabhacgra

I sincerely appreciate all the input! I ended up picking up Samurai and already got it to 80 and am thoroughly enjoying it.. can anyone explain what the best amount of skill speed is for the Samurai? Seems they may need a little but after watching a few vids and donning the freebie 430 gear I'm already at 1322 skillspeed

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These are the "BiS" builds. Since you aren't doing Savage, I'd aim for something close enough that you feel comfortable with. Personally, I prefer the slow SAM build.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets...#gid=792573206

Sam needs to reach some specific SkS tier in order to perform optimally, I'd recommend going for roughly 685, since it makes you reach a 2.14sec gcd. Tho for now I'd recommend you to not get too carefull about this until you get to ilvl 470, since upgrading gears will usually shift your stats by a lot.

If you want an idea of what to prioritize :
Item Level >>> SKS (to tier) >> DH > CRT = DET

hope that helped ;)

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Originally Posted by Eliadil

Sam needs to reach some specific SkS tier in order to perform optimally, I'd recommend going for roughly 685, since it makes you reach a 2.14sec gcd. Tho for now I'd recommend you to not get too carefull about this until you get to ilvl 470, since upgrading gears will usually shift your stats by a lot.

If you want an idea of what to prioritize :
Item Level >>> SKS (to tier) >> DH > CRT = DET

hope that helped ;)

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It definitely does! With the weekly reset I should be upgrading to 460 augmented faceted fast and then picking up my Augmented deepshadow weapon as well. My question is this, what is tier 685? If I remove SKS gear to try to lower my SKS number to 685 it then raises the GCD higher, not lower to 2.14.. am I missing something there? Also,,.. DH over Crit till 3k then balance them out right? I always went Crit to 3k then balance them with all my other DPS, so yer saying with sammy you need to go all out SKS till 2.14 then all into DH till 3k

The 2.14 is with your Shifu buff applied :D

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Combo Bonus: Reduces weaponskill cast time and recast time, spell cast time and recast time, and auto-attack delay by 13%

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Originally Posted by Seabhacgra

It definitely does! With the weekly reset I should be upgrading to 460 augmented faceted fast and then picking up my Augmented deepshadow weapon as well. My question is this, what is tier 685? If I remove SKS gear to try to lower my SKS number to 685 it then raises the GCD higher, not lower to 2.14.. am I missing something there? Also,,.. DH over Crit till 3k then balance them out right? I always went Crit to 3k then balance them with all my other DPS, so yer saying with sammy you need to go all out SKS till 2.14 then all into DH till 3k

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2.14sec is with the Shifu buff, that you should apply right at the start of a fight. The thing with Direct Hit and Crit is that Direct hit chances go up far quicker than Crit when you begin stacking them. Crit is around 3k for sure, but if you're still gearing I would recommend going for Direct Hit first until you reach a little bit less than 3k (as mentionned in the BiS sheet that someone linked above) then go for crit.

You'll have a bigger return to investment by stacking Direct Hit first for now, but in the end, both should reach around 3k to be balanced (you crit fairly often at this point, Crit/DH as well).

When you've reached this threshold for DH/Crit as well as the SkS tier, just dump all the rest into Det. ;)