Which Job Would be Right for me?

Hey, so up until now, i've been mostly maining healer jobs, my first 60 being a WHM.

I really want to take up DPSing, but i'm not sure which job would suit me.

All i know is i want to get high numbers, look good while getting those high numbers, and have a bit of utility.

Can someone give me an overview of the DPS Jobs and possibly make some recommendations?

It seems like you like casters with alots of utility + big numbers = SUmmoner is for you. if you don't like that try BLAGE MAGe but SMN has more utility than a BLK MGE

Yeah...Summoner and Black Mage seems like what you will like...Black Mage is slightly easier to play.

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Originally Posted by Mikedizzy

Yeah...Summoner and Black Mage seems like what you will like...Black Mage is slightly easier to play.

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no.. its not.

smn is easier to play in basically all content because of the simple fact that are are much more easily able to move and do whatever it is they are still doing without having to completely alter their rotation or lose everything from not being able to get a cast off in the very strict rotation blm has to follow.

while the conceptually easy. the blm rotation juggles 2 timers that a very strict with little wiggle room to stop casting at all or you will drop either enochian or your astral fire stacks or both.

for smn, you make sure 3 dots are always up, fester every 10 seconds when you have aetherflow up until you have aethereal attunement, pop dreadwyrm trance and cast ruin III for 15 seconds til its time to end it with death flare.

also the only thing smn has over blm utility wise is the raise (which is pretty great). and super virus (which your sch also has if your following the optimal party comp who may or may not get mad at you for putting it on and now have to wait for the antibody buff to fall off before they can use it)

while blm has apocastasis which is a 20% damage reduction from magic (something that has saved my party from a wipe on multiple occasions) and can cross class all the utility arcanist brings besides the raise.

what you really need to know is that....

BLM is a turret dps with higher single target then smn. they cannot really move very freely as everything they do has a cast time (besides scathe which is a weak filler skill you can use to move) and have to juggle 2 strict timers for big sexy hits. their aoe dps took a hit recently with the release of heavensward but it is still very respectable and still the second highest aoe dps in game.

SMN is a Damage over time (dot) dps with a pet. they are able to move alot more freely then most other jobs, including bards and mch while having by far the highest aoe damage in game. they lose very little dps moving at all if any (besides not being able to cast ruin III during dreadwyrm trance) and have that big sexy massive damage aoe attack at the end of dreadwyrm trance as a finisher.

Okay how many buttons is the Summoner open....and how many is the Black Mage...enough said.

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Originally Posted by Mikedizzy

Okay how many buttons is the Summoner open....and how many is the Black Mage...enough said.

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the blm opener has you pressing 11 (12 if you can fit thunder in its again very strict rotation, 13 if you press quelling strikes) different skills (would be more if i counted fire IV 6 times) before you get back into astral fire again.

that's just pressing each individual button once.

for me it goes like this ///precast fire III for pull > ley lines > raging strikes > enochian > fire IV > sharpcast > fire > quelling strikes (if needed) > swiftcast > fire IV x 3 > firestarter proc fire III > convert > fire IV x 2 > bliz III > thunder II if time allows > bliz IV/// end of opener. if you move or stop casting for more then a second or 2 you cant do this btw.

would you like to make any more silly baseless comments?

If you like good looking attacks, nice numbers and utility then you might want to go with either Dragoon, Summoner or Black Mage.
Monks have very little to no utility (just 2: Boosted heals and Int debuff) and I would not suggest you Bard of Machinist because you can throw all you know about the job from level 30 to 50 out the window at level 52.

At level 60, Dragoons are the go to stun dude, has an awesome crit buff for the party and can help Bard and Machinists DPS with their its Piercing damage buff. You can also count an itty-bitty heal boost from Mantra, if you like. Dragoons do good damage and are look real impressive doing it. Oh, and they have 2 gap closers so you keep the action going.

Summoner at level 60 has to manage pets, dots and buffs but its a lot simpler than it sounds. It can raise people, heal (only an itty bit, but it has a healing spell in its arsenal), slow, give malady (enemy healing reduced), bind, stun (if you have the right pet out and can nail the timings), knock back (again, pet trick) and blast things to kingdom come with its level 52 and 60 abilities aside from its DoT play. Oh, and check out its level 3 Limit break when you can, its really cool.

Next is Black Mage, they can slow, heavy, sleep (big thing in PvP), make barriers to ward off physical or magical damage and have a fast move trick in the form of Aetherial Manipulation and a big boom spell in the form of Flare. They also have Swiftcast, a must for any and all casters. But at level 60 something bad happens to them, their rotation gets nasty. If you want to dish out the most damage with Black Mage, you will have to use Enochian and Fire 4. The problem is that the timers on these abilities is very tricky and notoriously tight. I see so many people say, if you move to dodge for over a second, your rotation is busted, sorry. I have it at 60 and as soon as I saw what you have to go through to keep the big damage going, I said NOPE!

Anyway, those are my suggestions. Try them all out to see which one you like best. Keep in mind, that if you choose Black Mage, you have to take it all the way to 60 to see how you like its new rotation. Dragoon doesn't change much but they get new combo finishers that can be a bit strange, but you get them at level 56 so you can see how it feels then. Summoner just has a lot of things to handle, not exactly difficult or tight, it actually feels pretty natural to me, using the poisons, pet control and buff/debuff control.

Again, see for yourself. Hope I helped.

i have both BLM and SMN at 60 , Black mage does much higher single target dps while summoner does much higher aoe dps

however summoner is in my opinion much easier to play than BLM , i play SMN whenever i feel tired and lazy because it takes little to no effort to play

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Originally Posted by Mikedizzy

Okay how many buttons is the Summoner open....and how many is the Black Mage...enough said.

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Openers are braindead easy for every job once you got them into muscle memory, I don't see where this is a gauge for the jobs difficulty. BLM is by far one of the most challenging jobs to play in actual content and do decent with, while SMN is basically what has already been stated: keep up dot's, enter dwt, use D3 and 2 festers during it, delay the third fester until stuff comes up again. Rinse and repeat to get awesome dps.

Maybe im your opinion BLM is easier, but you have to accept the fact that most of the playerbase will disagree with you.

I haven't played SMN since ARR, but here's a sample opener from when I did play, just to give you a feel for the buttons you would have to push.

Pre-cast: Ifrit > Raging Strikes > Fight begins > B2MB (Rouse, Fester, Swiftcast*) > Shadowflare > Ruin x2 > Ruin II (Fester, Spur) > Ruin II (Enkindle) > Ruin > Bio > Miasma (Fester) > Bio II

And that's as far as I know when it comes to SMN, as I haven't had a chance to play with DWT or any of the associated abilities.

*Note: I do not have Swiftcast yet, it was one of those things that I kept putting off because I enjoyed playing SMN far more than levelling THM, so this part of the opener is purely speculation on my part.

I say Ninja.It isn't the top dps but still puts up quite high damage if used correctly.
The animations for the combos aren't as spectacular looking as Dragoons but i still think they look cool.
They bring plenty of utility to the party with their trick attack debuff that boosts damage for entire party for 10 secs.Granted most raids will use a Warrior but for all other content if there is no Warrior in party you have a great slashing debuff that increases dps for certain other members of your party.
On top of this you have Smoke screen which you can use on summoners and BLM to make them feel safer going all out on groups of monsters.Then you have Shadewalker which will help tank hold hate mobs.Goad is one of the most desired buffs in the game.Increases tp regen for 30 seconds on a target.Really handy for large trash situations be it for a Warrior to spam the hell out of overpower or for that bard to spam his main aoe skill.

Also Ninja has a great skill called perfect Dodge that can essentially help you ignore certain mechanics like titans Landslide.Ninja has a great escape mechanism too.Granted it's got a long enough cool down but you can get out of nearly every aoe with that skill on short notice.

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Originally Posted by Metalwrath

Also Ninja has a great skill called perfect Dodge that can essentially help you ignore certain mechanics like titans Landslide.Ninja has a great escape mechanism too.Granted it's got a long enough cool down but you can get out of nearly every aoe with that skill on short notice.

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perfect dodge doesn't exist anymore. it was changed to shade or shadow something or another.

anyways its basically a 20% physical damage stoneskin now with the same animation.

If you like the idea of watching the party frame for situational support as a dps, I'd suggest ninja, bard, mch, smn and blm. You want high dps so that rules out brd and mch since they are at the bottom. The rest have some flashy abilities and unique gear sets so they all look good in their own way. As a healer you might be the most comfortable with smn support: battle ress, debuff and tank buff. Blm gets two kinds of tank buffs (and a weak debuff they shouldn't use) and ninja gets a single target tp giving ability and threat modifiers.

lol that smn vs blm debate.

I'd say Ninja if you like melee or SMN if you want the caster. Both can hit the big numbers, you will see less on the SMN as the burst periods are spaced and in between your dmg is distributed over dots,pets, ruin.

Classes in this game are easy to play, some have more risk attached to them as in you do the wrong thing and you get hit hard. But this isnt something DPS have to really worry about that much outside of savage.

Thanks fOr all the input guys, I tried a variety of DPS classes and I think I like using SMN and BRD the most.

when i main Drg, i feel like i dont wnna play Drk bcuz their rotations of mixing GCD and oGCD are very similar, i rather play something that's rather more different, such as War for tank role, or Sch for healing role

my point is, trying something completely different cud get u out of ur comfort zone and explore new area, it's more healthy i think

May I say if you like big numbers and you said BRD appeals to you. MCH has the biggest opener besides a BLM getting a lucky crit. Though, it requires set up for that big number...

Just go sch. You main heal, want to dps. Look like a bada$$ doing it. Save the raid and have top 10%dps.

Lol i will not argue the smn vs blm but in truth blm is "harder" and gets punished more in situations. Both have pros and cons though
With that said Summoner i think would be good for you and Ninja perhaps as well.
Try them all i say :D

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Originally Posted by KanonShirogane

All i know is i want to get high numbers, look good while getting those high numbers, and have a bit of utility.

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DRG is the first thing that comes to mind for me. It has nothing to do with being a DRG main >.>

It would really depend on whether you prefer ranged or melee, though. If melee, I would choose dragoon as they hit high numbers, look pretty cool while getting them and they do have a bit of utility.

If ranged, the biggest numbers are going to be black mage, don't the get something like 10k fire 4s? I haven't leveled it up from 50 so I'm not exactly sure, but that's definitely the hardest hitting ability. I much prefered blm over smn at lv50, but it seems they have reversed roles at lv60 (blm is sometimes seen as annoying, and they've had their aoe nerfed quite a bit compared to smn who is now aoe king and pretty fun to play from all accounts I've heard)

Monk technically has better dps than drg, but you won't see the same big numbers as drg, and they don't have much utility outside of traited mantra and int debuff as others mentioned. DRG has high burst and provides utility for bards/machinst via piercing down and raid wide dps utility in crit increase with Battle Litany. Ninja has a host of utility moves, but the lowest average dps. They do have some bursty moves so you'll occasionally see big numbers, but they are 50-100 dps behind monks and drgs.

MCH has really good burst as well, though, as others have mentioned, both brd and mch changes a lot at lv52, depending on how long you've played the game it might not be an issue to you. They both provide utility and you have pretty much a guaranteed raid spot as every group needs one or the other for mp/tp regen. Bard is better for groups with 2 casters via Foes Requiem, and Mch is better when there are 2 melee via hypercharge. Of the dps jobs, these are the typically the lowest but also offer the most utility.

So first, you need to decide if ranged or melee is your preference. From there you can narrow down the more appropriate job for you to play.

I still think SMN is harder than BLM I would agreed that the opening will not be as hard as before but..

I would like to says when thing goes wrong SMN will be hit harder than other. Let's say when you accidentally step on an AOE for any reason and got KOed and you got rised, if you are a SMN and you use tri-disaster and just popped aetheralflow before you die,once you rise you just have enough mp to re-summon your pet then you cannot do anything untill your aetheralflow are out of CD, but if you are BLM, and you just used enocian and ragging strike or such and then dead once you got rised you start cast B3 then you can resume your dps nearly immediately, also other will be on their feet quite fast when you compare with smn

And when you play smn you not only pay attention on doing pure damage like blm but you will also be the 2nd emergency riser and healer after your proper healer too.

In the older days without proper tri-disaster it was real horrible when you die as smn due to you cannot put up those 3 dot immediately

Anyway you will feel the class easier when you play it alot :D

I don't think it's exactly fair to say a class is harder or easier based on how they respond to things going wrong. You need to assume things going right and compare how the classes handle in those situations.

BLM is juggling Astral Fire and Enochian while dealing with maintaining MP properly and having to move for mechanics with a rotation that has significantly less movement than it did at 50.
SMN is juggling 3 dot timers and managing resources. The worst stretch of 0 movement they have is the 15s of DW trance every minute or so. And even then, they can take the dps loss to drop a Ruin II to dodge and not really care or notice too much.

Ruin III is 50% more damage than Ruin II. Fire IV is around 300% more damage than Scathe. Blahblahblah procs. You can't assume you'll always have a proc during that string of F4s you have to interrupt because of an aoe. The reason people say Black Mage is harder to play than Summoner is because you need to spend a LOT of time in an encounter, learning positions and timings so you know when to stand where and where you want to be in your rotation at any given time. Knowing when, exactly, you wanna Sharpcast that Fire I so you're sitting on a Firestarter to dodge the next aoe that's dropped on you, for example, is much trickier than just hitting a Ruin II to dodge when the aoe appears and shrugging off the negligible (or 0%) loss in dps.


ANYWAY. ON-TOPIC.

I obviously suggest Dragoon because we have the second-highest single-target dps of all the classes as well as the second-best raid utility out of the melee classes. Nice and balanced. But that's only if you like melee, because ranged and melee play completely differently;;; I can always tell which DRGs in Alex Normal main not-melee when they go booking it away from the boss to spread for Sluice.

The hard part about Dragoon is learning to actually play it properly. The vast majority of the ones in DF play it woefully wrong and are blissfully unaware.