A question about meeles

I want to share one thought that has been bothering me a long time.


Ever since the game come out in 2.0, I've seen this situation in 4 man dungeons:

SMN/BLM+Meele


Tank makes big pulls. Healer can heal it easily and even spread poisons/holy.
SMN/BLM uses areas.


And the meele.... Decides that the better thing they can do is to furiously focus 1 mob out of the 12 mobs that are hitting the tank.

I even imagine that they smile feeling some kind of acomplisment if they manage to get agro from the tank.




Why? Why do they do this? I mean, it should be pretty easy to realize that if the main damage is area damage, if you kill one mob much faster than the others you are just reducing the total DPS output of the party. You should be also using areas, and, if you can't (Because your areas suck/take too much tp, whateever) attack the mobs with more HP.


It could be argued that if you take out one mob faster, the tank recieve less damage,and you improve survival chances, but.... If you see that the healer is even swiching to cleric stance and maybe even outdpsing you with his AOE damage, chances are that there's no need for that, right?



Well, the question is... Why? Because it's a behaviour that I find in almost all the meeles I see. I think I found one that didn't do this, but it's already being more than one year since I saw him.


As a meele, you do this? If you do it, why? If you don't, why do you think that others do it?

As a non-meele, have you noticed this?


Of course I'm talking about Duty Finder, not about pre made groups.

Most common reason I've heard is how TP heavy the AoEs that melee have are. However I think it's simply a case of not seeing the big picture and being able to quick math out that when you use a 100 or whatever potency TP attack that costs 120 TP but hits 6+ mobs its more potency per TP spent than single targeting something down. I suspect that training hall or whatever they'll come out with will have something to hopefully clear that up for the majority.

As a melee, I try to use as much AoEs as possible (Ninja AoE isn't the greatest, but it gets the job done I guess) until I run low on TP, and then just focus on mudra AoE. Why do they do it? Well it's either because they're bad players (not unique to melee by any standards), lazy, or uninformed. It's no different than Tanks not doing decent DPS, or healers not DPSing, it boils down to pure laziness for the most part I'd think.

I usually when playing ninja (my only melee dps), when the mobs are 4 or more, I spam aoe and doton, until I run out of tp, then use invigorate and then continue my aoe attacks, because if I count the potency overall, it's more effective than just focusing on one mob. But when there are only 2 or 3 mobs, I'm focusing on the one that the tank pull 1st with his ranged agro attack. Usually the tank will single agro focus that particular mob in response of my act, and after it dies, I switch to the one that has the lowest hp of the 2. If I see my agro is almost exceeding the tank's when I'm focusing on one mob, I'll switch to another mob.

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Originally Posted by Elvin

Why? Why do they do this?

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Because dumb.

That's going to be the answer to most of your questions about this game and the people who play it.

I tend to focus one target when I dps (except for certain pulls), though I know it isn't always the most effective. To be honest, I do this because AoEing tends to just be spamming a single ability, which is terribly boring, but when focus targeting I can at least stay engaged by maintaining an effective rotation.

This really depends on what dungeon you're running (got a DRG before DD? Yeah, you'll never see AoE out of him cause he HAS no AoE) and what DPS the melee is (DRG and MNK should AoE for 3+ mobs, NIN should Katon for 2+ and AoE for 4+ cause theirs sucks so much). Then there's the TP issues and exactly which pull it is and whether the tank is slowing down to let TP regenerate (right before a boss and tank isn't stopping? I'm not wasting TP I'll need on AoE)

Yes, there are melee who won't AoE. I've also seen SMN who don't know what Bane is and BLM who can't find their Fire II (but can find Freeze...yeah, I've seen some weird things), and BRD and MCH who can't seem to figure out they can AoE in their caster stances.

Lately I'm running into black mages that choose to single target on huge pulls a lot more than melee... Both drive me craaaaaaazy. I don't know why it annoys me so much. FFXIV is srs bsns.

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Originally Posted by Aethaeryn

Lately I'm running into black mages that choose to single target on huge pulls a lot more than melee... Both drive me craaaaaaazy. I don't know why it annoys me so much. FFXIV is srs bsns.

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I just remembered; week or two ago I was telling a (decently well-geared) BLM to AoE a large group I'd pulled (can't remember Fractal or Neverreap), and he insisted he did more DPS using his single-target rotation on the group over AoEing since Fire 4 is more potency than Flare. Said he read it in a guide somewhere. So misinformation may be a culprit here besides just the base stupidity that happens.

It depends on the dungeon, if it's too low level there is a chance that AOE abilities are locked.
I usually AOE a lot as a monk, but if in the middle of the pack there is an enemy that needs to be stunned (Fractal dungeon comes to mind) I am going to concentrate on that before doing AOEs.
And it depends on the other DPS I am paired to... If it's a BLM with terrible AOE, I will probably run out of TP before everything is dead.

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Originally Posted by PArcher

This really depends on what dungeon you're running (got a DRG before DD? Yeah, you'll never see AoE out of him cause he HAS no AoE) and what DPS the melee is (DRG and MNK should AoE for 3+ mobs, NIN should Katon for 2+ and AoE for 4+ cause theirs sucks so much). Then there's the TP issues and exactly which pull it is and whether the tank is slowing down to let TP regenerate (right before a boss and tank isn't stopping? I'm not wasting TP I'll need on AoE)

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basically this yeah.

Monk- Doesnt ever get much in terms of quickly spammable aoe, arm of the destroyer has 50 potency and rockbreaker has a requirement of two attacks before it unless you use a cooldown gained at 50, the rest of their aoe is also on cooldowns.

Dragoon- spammable aoe obtained at level 46, pretty late in the game (benefits from comboing into it)

Ninja- death blossom at 42 (60 potency), has to rely on mudras for any other aoe. (30 second cooldown)

I can't say for Nin but for Mnk you can AOE just fine with current self-tp regeneration skill..the problem is Drg though .. no matter how good your tp management is,you still starve for tp eventually.So when I run as Drg I usually AOE untill tp getting around 200-300 then Invigorate and start doing single target.

I always aoe. Sometimes its too much cus elixir field is op. Tp isnt usually my concern anymore.

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Originally Posted by PArcher

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But it doesn't matter. Even if they didn't have an AOE skill (and they usually have), if they have to attack only one mob the right thing to do would be attaking the ones with more HP ans switch target, never killing anyone much faster than the others

Focus one to death makes zero sense in the situation that I mention...

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Originally Posted by Nephera

basically this yeah.

Monk- Doesnt ever get much in terms of quickly spammable aoe, arm of the destroyer has 50 potency and rockbreaker has a requirement of two attacks before it unless you use a cooldown gained at 50, the rest of their aoe is also on cooldowns.

Dragoon- spammable aoe obtained at level 46, pretty late in the game (benefits from comboing into it)

Ninja- death blossom at 42 (60 potency), has to rely on mudras for any other aoe. (30 second cooldown)

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Rockbreaker is really good and should be used with 2+ mobs in dungeons. And Elixir Field is hawt. It has nothing spammable without Perfect Balance, but I have run into like one monk in the past month that used Rockbreaker.

Dragoon gets Doom Spike at 42, which should be used unless mobs aren't stacked up very well (unless you just used HT and can combo into a Ring of Thorns).

Death Blossom is 100p with the level 48 trait. Still really underwhelming, but it's still worth using as long as TP isn't an issue. (and mudras are 20s cd rather than 30 :x)

You probably knew all of that, but just adding a bit in case someone reads your post and decides they shouldn't bother aoeing.

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Originally Posted by Elvin

But it doesn't matter. Even if they didn't have an AOE skill (and they usually have), if they have to attack only one mob the right thing to do would be attaking the ones with more HP ans switch target, never killing anyone much faster than the others

Focus one to death makes zero sense in the situation that I mention...

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If a melee isn't aoeing anyway, it's not really slowing things down if they finish off a mob rather than constantly switching to higher hp mobs. Say there are 6 mobs, and you're spamming fire2/flare... Then the monk goes and finishes one instead of switching to one of the higher hp mobs. Then you're hitting 5 mobs with fire2/flare, so your dps drops, but you're still hitting those mobs individually for the same amount of damage, and so is the melee.

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Originally Posted by Elvin

But it doesn't matter. Even if they didn't have an AOE skill (and they usually have), if they have to attack only one mob the right thing to do would be attaking the ones with more HP ans switch target, never killing anyone much faster than the others

Focus one to death makes zero sense in the situation that I mention...

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The only real advantage to this is that it helps keep the AoE spammers' DPS high. It doesn't help the healer's healing, or the tank's damage mitigation. The only real argument (which you never made) was that it's better to focus on mosnters with the highest HP since the ones wth lower HP will die from 1-2 AoE skills regardless. Melees are not there to help boost a mage's DPS. They're there to help the entire team. This means making sure mosnters die as quickly as possible to keep the tank alive, and to reduce stress on the healer.

As melee DPS focusing on a single target in an AOE situation, I think that's ok and fair. It is fair reasoning as mentioned that the tank receive less damage over time as less and less mobs will be hitting per gcd.

- Because on the flip side, slow AOE just needlessly keeps the damage up on the tank (its not like the mobs deal less damage with less health).
- As Tank I often wish melee DPS would stop dicking around with AOE spams (edit: on the correct marked target! XD) and burn down mobs quickly by focusing on one so while defensive buffs are ticking.
- With less enemies, as Tank I can also DPS (use DPS skills/stance dance) instead of having to rotate enemies with emnity generating skills.
- As DRG, I may want to keep up Blood of the Dragon so I'd use the AOE skills as filler between combos instead of spamming it and causing the buff to drop.

Only mistake as a melee DPS would be stealing aggro unless its a Monk for example and don't have any hate reduction skill.
- DRG should use Elusive Jump, BRD/SMN Quelling Strikes... etc.

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Originally Posted by Chasely

The only real advantage to this is that it helps keep the AoE spammers' DPS high. It doesn't help the healer's healing, or the tank's damage mitigation. The only real argument (which you never made) was that it's better to focus on mosnters with the highest HP since the ones wth lower HP will die from 1-2 AoE skills regardless. Melees are not there to help boost a mage's DPS. They're there to help the entire team. This means making sure mosnters die as quickly as possible to keep the tank alive, and to reduce stress on the healer.

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Read the main post again, please.

I clearly explained one situation. The one that I find more often, because I'm usually the healer.


In that situation, the healer is healing the tank without problem, swiching to cleric stance, and spreading poisongs/using holy and out-dpsing the meele.

It makes zero sense to "reduce stress on the healer" if the healer decides himself that he can add DPS. (And he does, in fact, add more than the meele)

And of course, the reasoning that makes the right thing to do attaking the ones with more HP is because the ones with lower HP will die anyway to AoEs. Of course. It's obvious. Didn't think that an explanation was necesary.

And yeah, it's true that they`re not slowing down anything. As long as they don't manage to get the agro of that mob, wich can happend if they have more gear than the tank and he has to be focusing in keeping agro in all the other mobs.

But they are not adding anything to the party either.

And yet, you want monsters to live longer so they can pad your DPS. I read the post. It's not a melee's job to pad your damage. It's a DPS' job to kill the hurty things.

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Originally Posted by VisRalis

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If the healer isn't having any issues keeping you alive, why does that even matter? You should be rotating cooldowns anyway rather than popping them all at once. If we're talking about dungeons, geared warriors can already stay in Deliverance for an entire dungeon. A DRG or NIN will switch to single target after burning through a chunk of TP anyway (and it doesn't take very long), and monk using rockbreaker does 130p times the number of mobs rather than 180p snap punch, so his main target will still die pretty fast.

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Originally Posted by Chasely

And yet, you want monsters to live longer so they can pad your DPS. I read the post. It's not a melee's job to pad your damage. It's a DPS' job to kill the hurty things.

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No. I want all the mobs to die faster. But all of them, no one of them.

If we put it simple, assuming that all the actions take 1 second and they have an exact damage output:

If there is 10 mobs with 100 HP each, a SMN doing 10 AoE damage and a DRG doing 20 single target damage, we have this situation:

SMN will kill everything in 10 seconds, alone.

If DRG focus 1 mob, and them other, and them other:

1º mob will die in 4 seconds (20+10+20+10+20+10+20+10)

2º mob will die in another 2 seconds (10*4+10+20+10+20)

3º mob will die in another 2 seconds (20*6+10+20+10+20)

4º mob will die in another second (20*8 +10+20)


There you have, 9 seconds till now. Next second the other 6 mobs will die. All in 10 seconds. The same performance that the SMN alone would have.

So, the meele would be doing nothing usefull.

Of course this is not a real situation, skills take more time, and all that, but what happends is exactly the same.

The problem is not that they are reducing the damage of the BLM/SMN/Healer , the problem is that they are not doing anything useful to the party.

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Originally Posted by Aethaeryn

If a melee isn't aoeing anyway, it's not really slowing things down if they finish off a mob rather than constantly switching to higher hp mobs. Say there are 6 mobs, and you're spamming fire2/flare... Then the monk goes and finishes one instead of switching to one of the higher hp mobs. Then you're hitting 5 mobs with fire2/flare, so your dps drops, but you're still hitting those mobs individually for the same amount of damage, and so is the melee.

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Well this isn't really true.

Going to make up numbers here because I'm too lazy to go shoot things and see what the number should be (and also multiples of ten are easier), but:

Lets say you're fighting five enemies with 10,000 health each. This means the encounter has 50,000 health.

If the BLM is doing 1000 damage per GCD spread across five enemies (so 200 to each), and the melee is doing 500 per GCD against one enemy. If the melee continually swaps to highest damage target the BLM continues doing that much damage each GCD, and the mob dies in 34 GCDs total.

If, however, the melee burns one enemy down, that means that in 15 GCDs, the BLM's DPS drops to 800 as the melee finishes one off there, and every enemy the melee wasn't attacking still has 7000 hp left. In ten more GCD, the BLM's DPS drops to 600, we're at 25 GCDs total now. The remaining mobs still have 5000 hp left. Another 8 GCDs kills another mob and drops the BLMs DPS to 400, and puts us at 37 GCDs with two mobs remaining, each with 400 hp left. It's over in one or two more GCDs, bringing us to 39 GCDs total.

Which is five more GCD or 15 more seconds.

Further, the total Damge per GCD of all DPS involved averages out to 1500 in the case of target swapping. Without target swapping you get ~1200.

In actuality the numbers are much larger, as is the discrepancy and so is the time gap created.

But really, how much of a difference it makes doesn't matter. It makes one, so it's silly to say it doesn't.

Also: To top it all off, you might note that the BLM is doing 200 damage to each target in that example, and the last two mobs have 400 hp left. And it's still going to take two GCDs to kill them both. I.E. the last mob is dying purely from AoE damage and the melee has contributed nothing toward clearing the fight quicker.

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Originally Posted by Aethaeryn

Rockbreaker is really good and should be used with 2+ mobs in dungeons. And Elixir Field is hawt. It has nothing spammable without Perfect Balance, but I have run into like one monk in the past month that used Rockbreaker.

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Amg i use rockbreaker all the time, the crits alone are worth it. If i can or the pull is real big ill pop pb tok and go nuts and probably pull hate. I dont usually have a purificationready though so that suck sometimes. Why not aoe to add to elixir field and howling.

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Originally Posted by Krylo

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I get your line of thinking here, but... Having trouble thinking of how to word this because it's 4am. I'll try to make this understandable.

Using your example, if you're spamming fire2 for 200 damage each on 5x10,000 hp mobs... with 5 mobs up, you're doing 2% of the overall 50k damage per GCD. If one mob dies, you're still doing 200 damage on each of the now 4x10,000 hp mobs. 2% of their combined health per GCD. Your DPS drops, but those 4 mobs still lose hp at the same rate they did before. There shouldn't be any time difference in the overall encounter, assuming that the blm only casts that one spell and ignoring AF/UI etc. I am way too tired for math right now.

Basically, I'm just saying there's no reason for the melee to switch targets unless the aoe the blm is casting at that moment will finish off the mob he's on. It serves no purpose other than to pad DPS for the BLM. People like seeing their big numbers on certain illegal third party programs, though, so whatever's clever.

Late ninja edit: Also changes when you get down to two mobs and the BLM switches to the single target rotation (+flare at the end as long as it's 2 mobs...? Is that how's done now? I quit blm shortly after 3.0).

It's really an issue of TP, spamming Death Blossom as Ninja with Invigorate I will run out of TP in about 30 seconds. That's fine if the pull dies in that amount of time but depending on skill of your co-dps that might not happen. On top of running out of TP you will most likely start the next pull below max TP and not have Invigorate up meaning you will run out much faster, and trying to dps without TP is like watching paint dry.

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Originally Posted by Aethaeryn

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If the melee not switching targets then, basically, the melee might as well not be there, is my point. If the melee is focus targeting the BLM will finish the fight at the same time even if the melee isn't there at all. If the melee swaps targets, the entire fight ends a few GCDs earlier because now the melee is actually contributing.

I don't know how to make that clearer than the two examples above from both myself and Elvin (Elvin's was put in while I was making my post or I'd have not bothered).

I guess, but my whole point was about whether it speeds up the encounter or not. Obviously your overall damage and DPS will be higher with more mobs there, but it doesn't matter. I aoe on my melee as much as is viable anyway (my alt is monk main, and I'm gearing dragoon on this character now), and I switch targets so that I can eek out a bit more damage because big numbers are fun. But it's still not worth getting upset over a melee that finishes off one mob in a giant pull.

Edit again: That's also assuming the melee doesn't use any of his aoe skills at all - like ogcd stuff (geirskogul, elixir field, howling fist, katon, doton). That'd just be a really bad player if they're focusing one mob down and not even using any of those skills. And it's also assuming the BLM stays aoe rotation throughout the entire encounter, which shouldn't be done with 2 mobs left.

Depending on the amount of mobs pulled, I generally find single targeting for MNK/DRG results in better overall damage long term, primarily due to the speed of their rotations. Rapid targeting between a select few mobs, then peeling off when their HP is low enough just seems more efficient, especially TP wise. Hate also becomes an issue, as I often find I start stealing it if I AoE spam for too long. If it's a massive, half-room pull though, I'll switch.

That said, it's painfully boring after a few minutes. So I'm far less inclined to spam them just to shave off a little extra time in a dungeon.

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Originally Posted by Bourne_Endeavor

Depending on the amount of mobs pulled, I generally find single targeting for MNK/DRG results in better overall damage long term, primarily due to the speed of their rotations. Rapid targeting between a select few mobs, then peeling off when their HP is low enough just seems more efficient, especially TP wise. I can't speak for other jobs has I haven't played them. If it's a massive, half-room pull though, I'll switch to AoEs.

It's also painfully boring after a few minutes. So I'm far less inclined to spam them just to shave off a little extra time in a dungeon.

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TP management is important, yeah. If it's just three mobs or something, I don't really care if the DRG isn't spamming Doom Spike. You can't really call monk aoe painfully boring, though... Replacing snap punch with rockbreaker isn't even a playstyle change. If TP isn't an issue, there's no reason not to use it really. If there's two mobs, you can keep demolish up too, but at three mobs you're already 40 potency higher using rockbreaker on that GCD every time.

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Originally Posted by Aethaeryn

TP management is important, yeah. If it's just three mobs or something, I don't really care if the DRG isn't spamming Doom Spike. You can't really call monk aoe painfully boring, though... Replacing snap punch with rockbreaker isn't even a playstyle change. If TP isn't an issue, there's no reason not to use it really. If there's two mobs, you can keep demolish up too, but at three mobs you're already 40 potency higher using rockbreaker on that GCD every time.

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Aye. Shoulder have clarified the boring part is more for dragoons. I think leveling lancer scarred me after so many Impulse Drives in the early goings, xD

Monk is a great AOE in dungeons...

Just alternate your Opo and Raptor skills and always use Rockbreaker as the 3rd (nice with blood for blood and so on up.) And then you have howling and elixir to weave in as well, which have pretty short cooldowns to be fair. You can use invig and the chakra tp skill (forget the name) to keep going.

Only just gotten to HW so able to get the advanced job skills, but traditionally as I levelled monk it makes more sense to burn through one mob at a time than try to hit all of them with aoe spamming. I'll take my experience in AV with the morbol sprouts- they took just a bit more time spamming AotD and Rockbreaker to defeat than just simply doing a full single rotation one by one. The time that one mob is still up make a difference between how much damage the tank is getting per second. A single target's skill is far more potent than the aoes they have, and considering the TP cost of these the tradoff really isn't that great. I have NEVER had to worry about TP cost before doing that, and now that has to be a situational thing and a strategy that has to be worked on with your party.

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Originally Posted by Elvin

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Of course I'm talking about Duty Finder, not about pre made groups.

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Because DF can be an acronym for more than just "Duty Finder", if you know what I mean.

PB+Rockbreaker Spam + Elixer Field + Howling Fist says hi.

I mostly play with my real-life buddies and somehow all of the melee started out with this same mentality too. I have no idea why. It drives me crazy when I'm on BLM because it's so obviously inefficient, and when I'm healing it drives me crazy when they're trying to think for me and protect the tank (especially when I'm just standing there spamming Holy myself because everything is fine).

Things are gradually improving. I know they're doing their best - perhaps it's a side effect of levelling up with newbie tanks or unreliable healers? I've had my share of trauma as a healer with tanks who strictly mark targets, work on one mob at a time and don't understand the concept of passive threat generation, so I get my face beaten in whenever I cast Regen halfway through a fight. If that's happening to DPS who are AoEing too then I can see why some are a little shy.

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Originally Posted by F_Maximillian

Most common reason I've heard is how TP heavy the AoEs that melee have are. However I think it's simply a case of not seeing the big picture and being able to quick math out that when you use a 100 or whatever potency TP attack that costs 120 TP but hits 6+ mobs its more potency per TP spent than single targeting something down. I suspect that training hall or whatever they'll come out with will have something to hopefully clear that up for the rity.

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Please dont reference Ring of Thorns for DRG. 120 TP, 100 Potency.

It's literally the most useless skill DRG has and should never be used under any circumstances. Not even in its combo form.

Rule of thumb is if theres enough TP to AOE with Doom spike, than drop AOE on weak targets. If its 3-4 Strong targets, no, you should be using your single target combo.

If you really want to sprinkle in some AOE, drop it in before or after your rotation and only use as much TP as invigorate will recover.

If your DRG is any good they will be dropping Gerikskougal and Dragonfire Dive inbetween. Which destroys targets.