Most difficult DPS class to play?

[skaterger]

I believe some players are hugely exaggerating the difficulty of optimising blm dps while moving. They repeat is as fact without explaining what the difficulty is. It takes some practice but like all classes, because the mechanics of bosses are hugely scripted, once you memorize the fights it's just basically repeating the same thing. It can basically be broken down into the following steps

1. Can I totally circumvent moving totally? Notice how some blm stand away from plumes in titan ex, get assigned the least duties in t8, not stack for thermionic beam in t9 or leave it to other players to break vines in t6. For some reason it seems acceptable to do this which in itself mitigates many of their movement problems.

2. Make a macro for aetherial manipulation and use it when you need to move somewhere after finishing your cast

/macroicon "Aetherial Manipulation"
/ac "Aetherial Manipulation" <mo>

3. Can I use mana wall to avoid moving like Titan ex landslide? If can, use it.

4. If you know you need to move somewhere in a few seconds, try to save a Firestarter or thundercloud proc.

5. If the aforementioned does not proc, use scathe.

6. If I need to move somewhere for am extended period, i.e. shriek in turn 7, then swiftcast flare and transpose to get back mana

7. If I am in the middle of casting and need to move, can I get the cast off before moving? (Usually 2/3 of casting car but depends on your latency.)

So yes, I think blm is far from what people are making them out to be. What I will say however, is that blm suffers the biggest loss in dps if they screw up their rotation, for example having 5 mana short of blizzard 3 and having to stand around waiting for transpose. The basic rotation however, is terribly hard to screw up. This brings me to my next point. There are many more blms than smns, at least on my server, and many can't even do 300 dps on turn 8. Considering that there is little to no movement in that fight, it seems many blms can't even do their basic rotation of 4 to 5 buttons. That is probably why many think it's a hard class to play.

snip

Salty about getting out dpsed by a smn? Learn to play your class better. And it's hilarious you don't even have arcanist levelled. I rest my case.

[Sygmaelle]

Salty about getting out dpsed by a smn? Learn to play your class better. And it's hilarious you don't even have arcanist levelled. I rest my case.

I always love your kind of beein, you know the smartass one. "I rest my case". Yeah I guess you re so clever you didnt think about people havin 2 toons, did you ? it happen that my 2nd one is ... I'll let you figure it out. The hilarious thing is that the face of your avatar reflect perflectly your attitude.

And no, im not beein salty since that without usin X pots at all and not profitin of doubled Foe requiem im outdps'd by a mere 20 big maximum in turn 6 (sittin at 393, highest I saw was our ilvl109 smn doin 410 so thats not even 20), then in turn 7 and 8 I simply outdps both and get totally wrecked in 9 (im at like 330 - 340 there, they are at like 380 - 390) but theres nothing much I can do about it I think, at this point its simply fight design.

It was all about difficulty of playin the job, which isnt very very high as a summoner. Pretty much the only class in the game you can play a la Al Bundy's style, you know, the hand in the underpants.

[skaterger]

snip

Yes the discussion was always about the difficulty of playing the job. You can dislike smn's playstyle, call it stupid or whatever I don't really care as that is your opinion, but when you blatantly misrepresent the job by simplifying it as 3 dots + refresh + bane and fester that's where I am going to call out your BS. This is not an opinion, but a fact that there's much more to optimizing smn's dps than that. It's as nonsensical as me saying that drg's rotation is TT->VT->FT and calling it a day.

Now I'm going to state my opinion why Drg and especially Blm are easy classes to play. This is what you said

Just remember one precise opening rotation and then spam the same ability one bazilion of time while movin if needed.

See here is where you lost me. What classes don't have basic moves and fillers to spam? Smns have 3 dots, SF and Ruin 1 or 2 as filler, blm has F3, F1, T2/3, B3, scathe and flare situational, drg has HT, Ph, Dis, CT, TT, VT and FT as basic moves. The difference is that for drgs, you can and should memorize the optimum dps rotation, and apply it over and over again until the boss dies. Sounds familiar? When you know what you need to do next, there is no need to think and you kinda go on auto pilot. The rotation might be 20+ moves long, but do it long enough and it becomes part of muscle memory. This to me is incredibly boring and mundane, which is precisely the reason why I switched over to smn from blm.

Now if you are going to reply with insults then save it, I got better things to do than feed your trolling urges. If you have facts to back up or disprove what I say then by all means. I'm not going to argue with someone who has a differing opinion because that is just a waste of time.

[Sygmaelle]

The main difference between dragoon and summoner is that unlike summoner our dps isnt in auto mode because of bane, we also have positionning to take care of and multi dotting in a very strict timing.

Besides, what is important as a summoner is knowin how to time the abilities that depend of your aetherflow stacks in the right maneer, and that just entirely depend of how hard your group can actually dps on X and X fight.

Melees got that positionnal requirement and that pretty much change quite a lot dont you think, on top of the multi dots thing and personnal buffs to keep up, that also require to be refreshed before you do your next move, or not.

Yes summoners dont have a lot to manage after the initial opening rotation, mainly because of the design. If refreshin dots before they fall off between managin aetherflow and not managin directly your pet's dps is something complicated, well guess its all up to a personnal point of view but in all honesty, its the easiest class to faceroll with, and on top of that you re boosted by bards


For the insult part I'm not beein more aggressive than you were in the first place, I just really dislike people makin very quick assumptions toward complete strangers and thats about it

[skaterger]

snip

Fair enough. What I will say is there are many tiny nuances that a player will learn that can increase their dps, regardless of the class they play, and this comes with expeirience the longer they play their class. Let me give you an example for summoner. Do you know why summoners blow every class out of the water there? Good summoners will dot both the head and tail, as well as multi dot spumes and bane them to head and tail but really good smns will refresh their dots on both the head and the tail just before levi flies away for dives/slams. Because the boss flies away for about 20 seconds or so, having 2 full sets of dots tick their full duration will mean almost zero downtime. But to do this, you need to memorize the fight so you know when to refresh your dots before he flies away. Once I mastered this, my dps increased by about 50 and I could hit 400+ dps for that fight. So smn, like any other class including blm, needs to memorize the fight and its really not just as simple as refreshing dots when they wear off like the previous example where you have to refresh it before it wears off. The exact same concept applies to T9 for meteor stream dives and that is why you consistently see smns at the top for that fight, with multi dotting golems playing a part too. Of course, there are other small intricacies to playing smn but I'm not going to reveal all my secrets here

I've cleared up to T9 (last phase) using summoner and I'm still learning learning new things about the class. I don't think I'm even close to full mastery for that class so it just seems weird to me when someone calls a class easy to play when they only see it from the outside. My initial response was indeed snarky but that was also due to me having a bad day regarding the hunt issue and I apologize for that.

[LetBloodline]

I believe some players are hugely exaggerating the difficulty of optimising blm dps while moving. They repeat is as fact without explaining what the difficulty is. It takes some practice but like all classes, because the mechanics of bosses are hugely scripted, once you memorize the fights it's just basically repeating the same thing. It can basically be broken down into the following steps

1. Can I totally circumvent moving totally? Notice how some blm stand away from plumes in titan ex, get assigned the least duties in t8, not stack for thermionic beam in t9 or leave it to other players to break vines in t6. For some reason it seems acceptable to do this which in itself mitigates many of their movement problems.

Try to do get max dps out of BLM while still doing your work and don't let do all the work to others. Sure if someone can't play well a BLM the rest of the party can take some load off but that is not "BLM is easy", it's "Said player can't play BLM well"

[Aurelle_Delacroix]

I main a BLM and while I have fun with my job and do it decently well I find that the upkeep and the mechanics for SMN are quite fun. All those poisons, Garuda's contagion, as well as weaving in Festers, Enkindles, and even having the capability to rez people make the SMN quite the useful DPS member. As for melee, I haven't played MNK much but I do have a DRG (not to 50 yet) but I do enjoy that as well. The combos are long and take some memorization as well as skill prioritization but I find it fun as well. (Though I most likely am close to being considered a lolgoon but eh, to each their own!)

As for Bard---that job is straight utility in my opinion. DPS can definitely be good however with it's song's and ability to full party rez with LB and even the DoT's it can dish out while still damaging on the move it's a pretty useful job. Not to mention silence. It's really just up to you. But I'd say SMN.

[skaterger]

Try to do get max dps out of BLM while still doing your work and don't let do all the work to others. Sure if someone can't play well a BLM the rest of the party can take some load off but that is not "BLM is easy", it's "Said player can't play BLM well"

This is not what I said. If you read some of the posts here and on reddit, these are what some of the "top blms" are claiming to be doing.

[Maero]

I would say it may be a toss up between Dragoon and Monk for difficulty.
I have neither class but just from what i have read.
Bard is in fact the easiest and those claiming it is harder then blm, well you have the right to your opinion is all i will say

[LetBloodline]

This is not what I said. If you read some of the posts here and on reddit, these are what some of the "top blms" are claiming to be doing.

Well everyone can call himself "top BLM" if in the fight they let do all the work to others and just stay put and fire

I call a "top BLM" the one able to deal with the fight and do his share and make that work affect the less possibile his DPS. He/She will have less DPS then scarecrow BLM? Sure but it's effectiveness in the fight and in the party is miles ahead of scarecrows BLM

Sure, why put a BLM doing the "homing missile" job or kiter in t7 job? Some jobs are just wrong for BLM but many others can be done without much problems