Fastest and most engaging class

Hi guys,

I'm here to ask/discuss which class is the absolute fastest and most engaging to play at high skill levels.
Some points that come to mind to answer this question is:

Attack/skill/spell speed
Procs
oGCDs
Movement (positioning)

I am guessing the outcome will be NIN/MCH. Looking forward to your thoughts on this.

PS. We are not just talking about burst or openers but the global scope of the class.

Procs are pretty poor in this game, most of the time everything turns out to be damn predictable, I can't say why SE made this design choice.

to me the most engaging job is bard, meanwhile the faster one ninja followed by monk(because of riddle of fire slow down)

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Xau

to me the most engaging job is bard, meanwhile the faster one ninja followed by monk(because of riddle of fire slow down)

---

Bard you say? I was thinking of making a MCH, want something ranged, but there so much negative chatter about MCHs that I may try bard first.

NIN and BRD both have lots of oGCDs to use all the time. BRD often needs to double weave oGCDs, while NIN's speed buff keeps them similarly active.

MCH used to fit what you want, but I'm not sure it does now. It lost a lot of its oGCDs with 4.0, and the change to heat generation in 4.05 means you have much less to think about between Wildfires. After 4.06, it now has a massive 10 second burst of activity followed by 50 seconds with jack all to do, and the one minute cycle happens about the same way every time. With the current rate of heat generation, you don't want to stack skill speed to make it more active because then you're more likely to need to use Cooldown once followed by 2 ticks of Flamethrower to overheat instead of one, which delays your next GCD and negates some or all of that extra speed.

I'd look into MNK as well. Most of the GCDs have positionals, so there's a lot of movement involved, and it's got a solid suite of oGCDs to rotate through.

I NIN mained it for long time after realease, and while it might be what you're looking for mechanically. I find that while the moves of NIN are very aesthetically appealing. When weaving, imo, they tend to not flow as well as say SAM, MNK, or BRD's animations do.

Skill Speed always was, and continues to be a terrible stat for MCH.

Skill Speed in general has always been a pretty poor stat. Typically, once we get all the mathcrafting out of the way, it tends to be -hit EXACTLY x or y and forget it- which is usually more about fitting buffs/dots around a rotation or something like fitting another RA proc chance for Bard. That said OP, if you're looking for engaging your best bet is going to be relying on procs or positionals.

Monk- Lots of positionals, so fairly high movement to keep you active and engaged.
Bard- TONS OF PROCS! Especially if you stack that crit, which you should be doing anyway. The Opener has you wishing macros didn't suck because there are too many buttons to push and continues to keep you busy as the fight goes on since the majority of the time, you're upkeeping your crit buff, your dots and managing crit procs in the form of RA, Rep, and Bloodletter.
Dragoon- Haven't played mine in SB, but if its similar to how it was, there's enough positionals to keep you engaged and two of them are randomish (in the form of which one you get.)

Personally, I play Bard and find it very engaging. Doesn't hurt that you have a lot of support to offer and can tailor your rotation to fit the needs of the party for that particular fight (such as holding onto Foe's+Refresh for a little bit to line up with healer MP needs.) My crit is in the 2100-2200 range before food/buffs come into play so the crits on DoTs happen often, keeping me busy. Its also very fun in dungeons when you can use an enmity cutter and steal rip aggro from a tank due to how much damage you're putting out thanks to procs.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Kwoon

Dragoon- Haven't played mine in SB, but if its similar to how it was, there's enough positionals to keep you engaged and two of them are randomish (in the form of which one you get.)

---

They removed the randomness, tying each of the positionals to one of the combos, and also making it so that now you follow one up with the other.

Anyway, I'll echo what others have said about Bard.
Machinist is misery itself by comparison.

That's a little disappointing... I know they had a lot ripped off already so losing the randomness is a tad overkill. I guess they got that support thing going still though.. so there's that.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by MauvaisOeil

Procs are pretty poor in this game, most of the time everything turns out to be damn predictable, I can't say why SE made this design choice.

---

Because RNG procs and class/job balance do not flow well together. Ask any Machinist, they will tell you all about stale gameplay because of terrible rng procs.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Selova

Ask any Machinist, they will tell you all about stale gameplay because of terrible rng procs.

---

I always found that was more of an exaggerated thing people tacked on when the "99 reasons I don't like MCH" threads are around. It's not as bad as some people make it out to be.

I have only leveled up 4 jobs to 70 so far but for speed and stuff to do, I would put them from most to least as Bard, Samurai, Monk, Black Mage. Monk has the fastest regular GCD, but Riddle of Fire and lack of oGCDs make it not really very interactive anymore with the removal of their second dot. Bard and Samurai both have lots of oGCDs, Bard has a lot of procs (based on song used) where Sam doesn't (based on resource buildup). BLM is a typical caster and not very fast so you wouldn't like it.

NIN for the fastest in terms of how fast you need to press all these buttons. It's also engaging in that you have Shadewalker, Smoke Screen, and Trick Attack to help out the party so you have to know when it's the right time to use it, as opposed to something like SAM where all you have to worry about is your own positionals and oGCDs.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Selova

Because RNG procs and class/job balance do not flow well together. Ask any Machinist, they will tell you all about stale gameplay because of terrible rng procs.

---

There is a difference between "Poor RNG that dictates your whole gameplay" and "tricky and engaging RNG".

Some example : -Non linear gauge gains, less planning, more reaction.

-Free attacks/chances to increase some damage and adapt your rotation accordingly.


Because FF is so predictable, and the high base GCD implies low variance of skill usage between similar length fights, it often sounds like a partition to play with few adaptations. Bosses follow patterns with little to no variance, players follows patterns with little to no variance, and then everything is just a big orchestra.
Most "Reduce cooldown on use" are translated into "raw reduction" due to the exact same GCD beeing used between cooldowns, and the poor influence of skill speed or spell speed won't change things by any margin. Thus, except patch changing gameplay, a job will play roughly the same from expansion start to expansion end, with at most and for a few job, one more GCD weaved into a cooldown.

There are other games with a lot of RNG and it doesn't kill balance.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by MauvaisOeil

There is a difference between "Poor RNG that dictates your whole gameplay" and "tricky and engaging RNG".

---

The hilarious part is, an example of both exists in this very game. Compare how MCH RNG works compared to BRD.

MCH RNG boosts the potency of their attacks, and it's based on a flat rate that the MCH cannot manipulate except by reloading.

BRD RNG lets them launch their attacks more often, and it's based on their own personal critical hit stat AND party buffs. BRD RNG is harder to control overall due to the number of factors being considered (gearing, how many mobs are being affected by DoT, whether or not there are any party members that can boost crit rate). In theory though, Bards can recover from bad RNG later in a fight since most of their RNG revolves around straight-up ability spam (turning a normally time-restricted resource into potentially unlimited and spammable via RNG - a strength no other job can wield anywhere nearly as satisfying as Bard can do now), while MCHs really cannot because their RNG is tied to mere potency increases on their GCDs, of which their GCDs can already be thought of as a time-restricted resource. That's not even mentioning that for Bards, since it's their DoTs that determine the majority of their procs, they get their bonuses triggering independently while the Bard is off doing other things, while Machinists have to do things in a very specific order while praying to the RNG gods.

What I mean is that Bards benefit MASSIVELY from their crits in a very exponential sense, while MCH wrestles with very boring flat RNG that is somehow simultaneously restrictive and makes all the difference in the world for them in the process. Bard straight up feels better because their RNG is designed better. Or, to also put it in simpler terms, if BRD RNG revolved entirely around the way that Straighter Shot/Refulgent Arrow procs (the only RNG Bards cannot manipulate in any way AND requires use of a specific attack to fish for the proc), Bards would be crying bloody murder. Because that's exactly what Machinist is dealing with.

I've tried the suggested classes on savage.

MNK has been slowed down with riddle of fire. I liked the positioning but it does get old fast. It feels its lacking something "extra" to do besides the same 1-2-3 combos and oGCD.

DRG did feel very fast at moments when their oGCDs are coming off cooldown, lots of weaving. But outside these windows you really feel the slow basic skill speed.

NIN has the skill speed buff making sure you are using your combos faster. It has nice spender abilities with 2 oGCDs. A mudra system that kept it fresh for me, although in the end its mostly suiton every 60s and for the rest using shuriken.

I haven't summarized self-buffs and raid-buffs for the rest. I do believe that NIN has a nice combination of speed and being engaging enough to hold interest for the player.

Also I tried BLM and strangely enough this class felt quite fast and engaging. Stance dancing while maintaining the buff and procs felt really good.

Thoughts?