Is aggro a good indicator for DPS?

I'm playing as melee DPS and am wondering if aggro depends on DPS only or are there some other factors as well? Often it happens that caster DPS or even bards get a higher aggro on bosses than me, despite perfect positioning and popping all CDs.

Emnity is generated based on damage dealt or damage dealt ± ability emnity bonus

Unless you use enmity reducing abilities and unless somebody else uses enmity increasing ones or heals, having lower enmity than they do means they deal more damage than you.

Not really because of abilities like Elusive Jump and Quelling Strikes which reduce enmity. SMNs will also have their dps split between them and their pet, therefore their place on the enmity table is not an accurate representation of their total dps. The best way to measure DPS is with a parser.

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Originally Posted by BillyBones

I'm playing as melee DPS and am wondering if aggro depends on DPS only or are there some other factors as well? Often it happens that caster DPS or even bards get a higher aggro on bosses than me, despite perfect positioning and popping all CDs.

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It makes for a decent rough estimate as long as you're not comparing yourself to the tank(s), who get enmity boosts. Or Summoners, whose overall damage (and thus enmity) is partially split with their pets. Or Bards or Black Mages or Summoners, who can use Quelling Strikes from ARC to reduce their enmity.

Not really always. Bards and black mages have access to quelling strikes so that reduces their aggro, white mages have shroud of saints and such(yes you can DPS on whm quite well really - I do it often when other healrs want to solo). Not familiar if any other DPSs have anything like it. So the aggro bar really isn't much of an indicator. Also higher gear/weapons can easily outdps you. And simply some jobs are much easier to keep 100% uptime or output so much DPS that it takes a while.

If by melee you mean monk then it takes you a while to spool up your damage to greased lightining III at which point you should start gaining if not outdpsing most. For dragoon I'm not familiar with them but from my understanding they need a lot of positioning to get their rotation going and even one mistake can ruin that.

^ drg is front loaded you start high and even out. If you use elusive at all that throws using the hate bars as a gauge out the window. Asside from that if you keep in mind what is stated above by others they can be used as a rough gauge of dmg comparison.

Side note your determination is kinda low may want to consider some gear adjustments assuming that is within your means. Ramuh ring for drg and just about everyone else is /drool now

The aggro meters can be a rough gauge of your DPS relative to others in your party... but like others have mentioned, enmity modifiers can throw it off.

When you get to 50, another way to get an approximate gauge (without parsing) is to find a level 50 training dummy and see how fast you can kill it. Then check your time against friends at similar gear levels.

dont think it really does.. im constantly watching agro bar if i start to get near max i pop a quelling strike n slow my attacks a little bit so lose the agro XD

I don't think it does either.
One of the main reason for me is that some of the DPS have more instant big DPS numbers and then some DPS are more constant.
In addition to this, all the reducing aggro buff won't help also.
if the BLM has a FIRE 3 proc and it starts with this a mob, there's no chance that the tank will aggro in the the first seconds :)
That's my opinion of course :p

More DMG you do to a mob the more it won't like you. When I dps on BLM I wait till the indicator turns orange facing me then pop quelling, and continue casting. I ain't gonna slow mah roll! And if the cheeky bastard decides he want's ta come my way I'll pop Manawall and light dat azz up!

There's also the issue of where different players' damage (and therefore aggro) is going. A BLM casting a bunch of AoE spells is spreading their damage around between mobs. So is a SMN who cycles between mobs to keep their DoT spells going on each of them. A character who's focusing on just a single mob until it's killed would see higher aggro levels on that particular mob but have little or none on any others.

What hasn't been mentioned yet is that crits have a 1.3 aggro bonus attached to them. So having a higher crit rate means that you will produce more aggro than you actually do dmg. This causes the aggro bar to not be a reliable measure for some dps, like bard who have an innate extra 10% crit chance bonus from straight shot.

I have ~ stable agro rate in trials. But my greed points may be 95 when i lied dead 30% of time or be 5 when my agro was high... I don't understand this mechanics at all...

Contribution in Fates and Hunts are calculated in terms of aggro and not actual damage, so you could in a way say that it's a rough indicator of your contribution to your party