DPS Spot Justification

[Alcyon1]

a good monk can pull more aoe dps than a smn actually for speed runs, so long as it doesn't last extremely long, but most people dont even give monks the chance due to the overall image of monks not having real aoes.

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH
You were serious ?
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Even a BRD will do more damage.

[Adler]

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH
You were serious ?
AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH

Even a BRD will do more damage.

Zamii is right. MNK can do aoe and hit hard on speed runs.

[NoctisUmbra]

I don't know about doing more DPS than a SMN (though it wouldn't be too surprising if the pack was rather large and died quickly) but MNK can certainly put out solid AoE numbers with Rockbreaker and Arm of the Destroyer. The potency values seem small, but in general MNK has low potency skills and yet it's the king of single target DPS. Why? GL3.

That said, BLM will always reign supreme as the incinerator of trash mobs. BRD will be right up there as well due to being great at spike damage with the numerous damage buffs it has, as well as the AoE spam.

For speedruns, if you get a solid MNK in your party, any time you lose on trash pulls you more than get back on the boss fights :P

[Hiruke]

First off burst. As a smn, if you have to kill something fast, it just isn't possible, unless you already have some other enemy DoT'ed up and have 2 stacks of aetherflow to bane+fester, then you are a bit above drg on burts, until 3GCDs forward, when he has used both surges and vareity of off GCDs. But then, now you are at 1 or 0 aetherlow, now what? Well, you don't burst until you have aetherflows back.

It's true you can't burst without stacks of Aetherflow, but please don't discount Energy Drain. Sometimes stuff needs to die quickly, and you don't have time to DoT it up and Fester. In this scenario, you can alternate Ruin2 and Energy Drain. This is for stuff that needs to die super quick but doesn't have the HP/time to justify full DoTs.

Personally, I use BLM or SMN depending on the fight and preference at the time. I prefer SMN whenever possible, but sometimes BLM makes more sense (or, you know, I feel lazy...).