Fear of playing a DPS

As the title says I have a fear of playing a DPS and would like to get over it, I’ll go over my reasons below and I’ll keep as it short and to the point as possible as I’m in a bit of a rush. I’ll also be coming from a dungeon perspective but other types of content are more than welcome in replies. Sorry if this comes off as rude or anything like that but I’m being completely serious and mean no ill will.

I’ve always shied away from playing DPS due to the lack of responsibility, see, when a DPS dies in a dungeon than the pull can easily be completed without that said DPS or that said DPS can be raised in a second or two and act as if nothing happened, if two DPS die than that same pull can be done by the healer and tank alone, albeit slower. Same can be said for dungeon bosses, DPS dies and the fight can be completed by the remaining three, if the two DPS die than the healer and tank could defeat the boss depending on their skill and the healers currant MP. Im saying I feel like deadweight whenever I play a DPS due to my lack of responsibility. That’s why I’m not taking into account raises because fights in dungeons can still be done without a DPS or two, and even if they get raised, what happens if they just get themselves killed a few seconds later? Healer will be outta MP and will eventually die along with the tank. Sometimes fights are lost without those two DPS due to the specific bossses health. I feel like deadweight/useless when I play a DPS in games and thats what scares me.

(don’t confuse this with me not resurrecting DPS’s in content, I raise anyone I see dead ASAP as I’d like to get the content done as quickly as smoothly as possible, also like to perform my job well too)

Meanwhile if a healer or tank dies it’s far more likely that the whole group will die with them. If the tank dies than it’s up to the healer to keep the group sustained while the healer raises the tank, and that depends on pull size, boss health, level, and healer skill. If the healer dies, than the only way the group has a chance of surviving is if a DPS with a raise or heal is present, that way they could raise the healer or spam heals on the tank to make up for missed heals. That’s what I like about playing tanks and healers, the whole groups survival is in those two types of jobs hands, and if they go there’s a high chance the party will go with them, but if a DPS goes the only thing that’ll happen is the run will be longer or be raised a few seconds later, and if two DPS go than sometimes the boss can be killed, sometimes not.

So I’d like to ask you guys, why should I play a DPS? Should I even play DPS or continue healing and tanking? I’m more than willing to hear people out and possibly pick up a DPS.

Bonus question, what DPS should I pick up? I picked up SAM and tried it on some practice dummies and squadron missions, but I don’t think I’m into DPS enough to continue with it.

People rarely say it in chat, but everyone grumbles at their monitor when mr Ice Mage shows up.

If you want a DPS job that can fit in everywhere and do everything, take Red Mage. In 98% of the content they are king.

Play a DPS because you want to be the one that excels at damage output which makes the groups runs go faster. While your characterization of DPS isn't completely wrong, you left out the other side which is that it's incredibly noticeable, and even commendable, when you run across a DPS player that does actually know what they're doing. At least for those of us who pay attention to such things.

As for which DPS to play, that's a harder question. You need to consider the aesthetic/playstyle, if it suits you or not, and further determine which sub-role you'd like to participate in. Samurai is a high damage dealer. Dancer is a low damage dealer but does a lot to support the groups damage. Other jobs are in between, so you need to decide if you'd rather be more of a support DPS or a strictly damage dealing DPS. From there do you prefer melee or ranged, ie do you move around a lot (melee or ranged physical can attack while moving/dodging) or can you manage to work around cast times which limit mobility (casters).

Why DPS?
Most people don't like the responsibility of tanks/healers that you appear to enjoy. DPS do indeed have less responsibility, however nobody likes stuff to take inordinate amount of time either. Your job as a DPS is to make content faster, and there are also some situations where not meeting a DPS check will get the party killed just like losing a tank or healer. As a tank or healer, have you ever said to yourself "Dear god, this stuff is dying so slow." That right there is why people DPS.

For me personally
- I find tanks/healers to be boring (generally DPS rotations are more involved). Performing well at your DPS rotation while also not screwing up fight mechanics can be really satisfying.
- I like the competition aspect. Now that everyone has lost their enmity-control skills, I can now accurately judge my contribution versus other DPS based on where I am on the hate list (unless someone dies, dropping their enmity to zero).
- It's a lot easier to feel the impact of improving yourself as a DPS (stuff dies faster). I mean, stuff dies faster if you're good as a tank/healer too (optimization necessarily leads to more DPS), but since you're weaker it's harder to notice the impact.

Should you even try DPS?
The game lets you be good at everything. Feel free to give it a shot if you want. Don't if you don't want to or don't like it. Keep in mind that low-level anything is boring though, so don't judge a DPS based on the early levels. Whenever I have free time, I like to level everything. By year's end, I'll probably have everything to 80.

Which DPS?
That's really a personal question. I would suggest BLM, but ultimately it's up to you what you find fun (it's just unfortunate that you have to get to lv60~70 before you can really assess a jobs full kit to see whether or not you find it fun...). BLM seems to be the most-powerful non-melee class, and since I hate positionals, that's my pick. Despite that, I've been using MCH the most because I find it enjoyable. You do you. Unless you're trying to get into picky savage groups or something, you'll be fine on literally any DPS.

DPS has more responsibility than players tend to give credit. Not as directly as a healer or tank, but it's there. If a DPS isn't pulling their weight in a large pull, for example by using single target rotations or spamming Blizzard 2, the tank and healer can run out of cooldowns mid-fight. A lot of mechanics in raids are also handles by the DPS, and I would venture to say most of them are. This is a shared responsibility, but a responsibility nonetheless.

Well, lets see. We have the Melees:
SAM: is nice for people who just want to see big numbers on the screen.
MNK: for those who like big damage and constantly have to move their character to hit appropreate positionals. (They are also faster paced than SAM)
DRG: A good all around melee class with a bit of growth potential involved. loads of jumps but be carefull! You might end up face down dead if you jump at the wrong time.

Casters:
BLM: self-reliant powerhouses with a taste of FLAREEE! but do mind, if you dont like to wait long to do another ability, then this might not be for you.
SMN: faster paced caster with pets! Ever wanted to control summons to do your bidding? do you enjoy button smashing? Then this caster is for you!

Ranged Physical:
MCH: Button smashing awesomeness? actually, I got no idea.. I hear its fun tho.
BRD: They sing? Or do they even do that anymore? Im pretty sure they lost most if not all their support effects xD Hey, at least you can move around without having to wait for casts.
DNC: Fun job to play, I suspect even more so if you are super cacual and mostly do dungeons. You can clear some pulls quite fast with their sweet AoE and they are good at buffing other classes too :D

Hybrids:
RDM: Melee caster mage. If you are familiar with healing, then this one got some quick saving powers when your party member dies! a near instant raise can be used to bring them up again in a fast cast. Their playstyle goes into casting spells to fill a gauge used to power up melee combos. So youll be going in and out of melee range quite often.

NIN: Melee Physical caster. Its a job that doesnt really know what it wants to be. It has a party utility that raises everyones damage for 10 seconds on a 60 second cooldown. This ability has been overvalued by many for a long time and finally in this expansion the utility it brings doesnt hold up to their weak damage. They also have casts in form of ninjutsu and at times will have to stand completely still like a caster, if they break this they lose a good chunk of their damage... oops :D But dont be fooled, even if they are a hybrid of melee and caster they cannot actually be out of melee range and still be effective in dealing damage. Also, if you thought button smashing on SMN was hard or MNK was fast? Think again! This Sonic of a hedgehog job will make you develop carpal tunnel syndrome and blister up your fingers in no time with their insane fast opener exeeding 101-116-ish Buttons a minute! (though you will only have that crazy number the first 21-23 seconds of a boss fight.) Averages at 47-49 casts/ability/weapon skills per minute. :D

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Originally Posted by CrashofZenki

DNC: Fun job to play, I suspect even more so if you are super cacual and mostly do dungeons. You can clear some pulls quite fast with their sweet AoE and they are good at buffing other classes too :D

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It’s not necessarily that I’m super casual, it’s that losing a party member is felt the hardest in dungeons.

Lose a tank in a trail/raid? Other tank picks up the boss/mobs in a second while the other tank gets raised almost as quick. Lose a healer in a trial/raid? Other healer raises the downed one, both use lucid dreaming to get back to normal MP levels. Lose a DPS in a trail/raid? Nothing much will change unless you lose 2, 3, or god forbid all 4 DPS, same goes with the tanks and healers.

Lose the healer in a dungeon? Kiss your ass goodbye unless the pull or boss is almost dead/you have a DPS with a raise. Lose the tank? better hope the healer can sustain the group while the tank comes back, but that can depend on pull size, healer MP, healer skill, so it won’t always be possible in every dungeon. Lose a DPS? Lots of damage just got thrown out the window.

Also sorry if a messed up the quote, im still new to the forums. Probably gonna look like a mishmash of commands that I didn’t type right LOL

DPS has responsibility. It's mowing through enemies as efficiently as possible to relieve the stress of the tank and healer.

You're only dead weight if you're terrible at DPS, don't understand your job, or don't care that you aren't actively contributing to your party. Playing DPS properly has a noticeable impact on how well a party performs.

In the higher levels of content, at the younger ages of said content, good dps are arguably some of the most important components of the party.

Where tanks and healers have to work together and share the responsibility of keeping the party alive, their rotations tend to be more simple. Paladin swaps between fight or flight/requiesqat rotations over every 60 seconds. Gunbreaker reliably goes into a frenzy every 30 seconds, with a personal buff every other go.

But dps are typically more complicated. Some of them have exacting rotations that you can lose a hell of a lot of damage by getting it wrong. Some have very inflexible flow to their rotation. The ability to execute your rotation isn't even enough, because no rotation survives contact with the enemy. Mechanics, downtime, forced movement or positioning, all are factors that contribute chaos to your base rotation. The best dps players don't just learn their rotation, they *know* their rotation, and they know their class. Your responsibility is a personal one, to deal as much damage as you can without dying. Because in end-game content, you really have to be on top of your game in order to have your party able to clear. E3S this tier, for example, has a pretty tight dps check. Week 2, before any of our party had weapons, we beat enrage by a matter of seconds in a pull where the only death was a tank death shortly before some downtime.

Yes, dps are less important in more casual content, but in any late game encounter, they are as integral to the party's success as the tanks and healers.

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Originally Posted by Kabooa

People rarely say it in chat, but everyone grumbles at their monitor when mr Ice Mage shows up.

If you want a DPS job that can fit in everywhere and do everything, take Red Mage. In 98% of the content they are king.

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They really aren’t in SHB :p it’s aoe isn’t much better then a white mage at 99 percentile.

Also. It’s st is one of the worst in the game. Embolden doesn’t line up with your own burst. So u tend to not favour, and it’s much easier to end up in a magical group where it’s effect isn’t amazing either.

RDM is one of the weakest jobs currently.

Dragoon / monk / BLM are the kings of dps currently.

And before we say who dies how regularly do u honestly see deaths in DF content it’s not nessercary outside the initial day of content release for most

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Originally Posted by Drayos

They really aren’t in SHB :p it’s aoe isn’t much better then a white mage at 99 percentile.

Also. It’s st is one of the worst in the game. Embolden doesn’t line up with your own burst. So u tend to not favour, and it’s much easier to end up in a magical group where it’s effect isn’t amazing either.

RDM is one of the weakest jobs currently.

Dragoon / monk / BLM are the kings of dps currently.

And before we say who dies how regularly do u honestly see deaths in DF content it’s not nessercary outside the initial day of content release for most

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Yes. In the 2% of content they are weak.

Everywhere else, they're great. Didn't sound like he was raiding. Fates, world quests, deep dungeon, Eureka, old dungeon farming, etc (AKA 98% of the content) the Red Mage is undisputed.

I main DPS, not because I can’t handle the responsibility or stress from playing tank or healer but DPS can kill stuffs faster than tank and healer.
Its that simple for my case.

DPS just have less visible consequences, but they're just as necessary as any other job.
The argument that if a dps die you can just go on and if a tank die the party dies is not all there's to it. If you play tank and pull as much as you can in dungeon you should be able to see the difference between a team with dps taking ages to kill down a pack while you runs out of CDs, healer running out of mp and eventually die being forced to pull less. And a good party where the dps will burst the pack so fast the tank will barely have time to lose hp and the healer will be more comfortable to dps. Making the run much smoother and faster.

So yeah, your party might not die but you can easily end up spending much more time in a dungeon with 2 bad dps than you would with a tank dying a couple of time and wiping the party. Same idea for bosses, sure a tank can solo some bosses, but will take much more time than just wiping and retrying the fight.

Also even if you're missing a tank or a healer you can take on mobs in dungeon pack per pack and still be fine. Dungeons are really the lowest difficulty content and nobody's going to use them to judge the necessity of a role.

End of the day you'd have to get a really terrible tank or healer to make a dungeon not clearable. The difference will always mostly be the time the dungeon will take and that is influenced the most by the dps. A group with bad dps will take around 30 minutes to clear a dungeon, a group with good ones 15 minutes.
The only thing I expect from the tank is staying alive and for the healer it's to keep the tank alive. If they can manage that bare minimum then the dps are the one whose performance will impact the run the most.

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Originally Posted by Kabooa

Yes. In the 2% of content they are weak.

Everywhere else, they're great. Didn't sound like he was raiding. Fates, world quests, deep dungeon, Eureka, old dungeon farming, etc (AKA 98% of the content) the Red Mage is undisputed.

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If your talking 50 trials sure it’s damn strong, I wouldn’t consider that to be 98% of content though and I wouldn’t consider old content a good bases to claim on current.

But In level 80 trials and extremes RDM is weak, he did actually mention them but said also he feels in dungeons is where deaths are more noticeable because u don’t have the same rezz power behind a random group as a planned one.

Old content you may see due to roulettes doesn’t make RDM king. As litterally every job can do that now :p they’ve become even easier this expansion to do.

I'm a bit of a black sheep it seems. I main healer, played paladin, but enjoy playing black mage because the cast times and enochian require me to do more than just play. I need to know a fight. Where to stand, when the phase change is, what mechanics and when. The less I know, the more mistakes I'll make. This translates into dealing less damage. So I enjoy black mage because it's a class that needs to be very aware of their situation.

I don't see why you shouldn't play a DPS. Much in the same way I encourage DPS players to play a tank and healer. So you can see the other side of the coin. So you can see what It's like to play that role. It helps a ton overall in player goodwill and understanding.

DPS also have more challenging skill sets for the most part (few exceptions). When you add in much of the movement involved as DPS, it makes the actual process of dungeons more enjoyable. In other words, you give up a little bit of personal feelgood (which is really all that the whole "responsibility" thing is about, making you feel good about helping the group) to gain a more interesting dungeon run.

Plus, this game does better then many MMO's on putting pressure on DPS. with all the movement and repositioning + DPS checks in progression content. DPS tend to be pretty busy in a dungeon run.

To finish, I'd also suggest that if you want a blend of the two concepts (DPS + helping out the party), I'd suggest one of the support classes. Both BRD and DNC have enjoyable and interesting skill sets, and they benefit the group with party wide buffs and some heals. I play both at 70+, and they are both quite enjoyable and involved.

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Originally Posted by Drayos

They really aren’t in SHB :p it’s aoe isn’t much better then a white mage at 99 percentile.

Also. It’s st is one of the worst in the game. Embolden doesn’t line up with your own burst. So u tend to not favour, and it’s much easier to end up in a magical group where it’s effect isn’t amazing either.

RDM is one of the weakest jobs currently.

Dragoon / monk / BLM are the kings of dps currently.

And before we say who dies how regularly do u honestly see deaths in DF content it’s not nessercary outside the initial day of content release for most

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RDM is good enough for all current content and relatively easy to pick up.

Also, emphasis on ALL content. Hunt train? Be the hero raising people dying to aoes they can't see under 300 players. New eureka grind fest comes out for shadowbringers? Same point, also cozy. New deep dungeon comes out? You're the only job that can do the competitive solo runs.

Edit: didn't see Kabooa already covered this.

I do DPS on big raids and stuff where a tank would need to know special mechanics or a healer might be caught off guard. Essentially i dps as recon and also for fun. Some of them have really cool and enjoyable mechanics and rotations

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Originally Posted by Zerathor

RDM is good enough for all current content and relatively easy to pick up.

Also, emphasis on ALL content. Hunt train? Be the hero raising people dying to aoes they can't see under 300 players. New eureka grind fest comes out for shadowbringers? Same point, also cozy. New deep dungeon comes out? You're the only job that can do the competitive solo runs.

Edit: didn't see Kabooa already covered this.

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while i agree RDM is very good in Solo content, and is great in Deep Dungeons. (although we wont know which job gets the best out of this realistically this time round)

RDM is actually proven at this point so far behind the belt, it can cause a group to not meet current raid DPS Checks :P, are we forgetting a 60 percentile BLM is Stronger DPS Wise then a RDM?

being a Rezz bot doesnt make a job Optimal, Nor Strong. it is ment to be a DPS Role, not a Healer, so telling your RDM to go afk til someone dies for his moment of fame is hardly a Balanced Job, The job can cater to roulettes (due to its massively Overpowered level 50 state compared to other jobs) Solo game play (it was very strong in HoH, however saying its the only job isnt correct, jobs are competing against their own jobs only. as the List does not mix jobs so no. its not the only job which can compete nor is it the only job thats ever reached floor 100) and Fates/Eureka due to a Rezz Spam ability.

also. 90% of the jobs are now Relatively easy to pick up.

servers are being DDos Attacked for past week how do we report this, noticed theres been alot of HUGE Lag Spikes Recently Square usually fixes it when its notice-able, but there's been no twitter feed for this.

It's harder to be good at DPS than it is to tank or heal. There's a reason SE don't allow DPS meters and it's that most DPS players are not good at what they are trying to do.

Tanking is very easy. Healing has a lot of responsibility but it isn't hard. What is hard is optimising your rotations while dealing with boss mechanics.

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Originally Posted by E4EO

snip.

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It sounds like you would enjoy the role of healer or tank more than DD (damage dealer). I find that the damage dealers usually have more complicated rotations than healers or tanks, (not to say that healer or tanks arn't complicated, just different) and that is one of the reasons I like playing them. I also like to see big crits and know I'm smacking the boss good.

As for which dps you should pick, I would recommend unlocking the classes you want to play, and then trying them out in Palace of the Dead. You can get a basic preview of what the class is going to play like; (although due to them removing abilities and adding new ones you wont fully know how the class plays until level 80) This differs with some classes having most of their toolkit at an earlier level than others.