Ninja damage insane over monk

[ShaolinMike]

You're gonna need TA on your bar....

Suiton mudra combo let's you use it.... without having to hide.

This. Plus, ninja (and other jobs as well) can do a lot of damage in 10s. That's essentially 3 GCDs = roughly 6 skills used.

[Aphel]

If a ninja is able to keep track of:

1. Mutilate 30-sec bleed
2. Shadow Fang (2-hit combo) 18-sec bleed
3. Dancing Edge (side-positional) 20-sec debuff
4. Huton (3-mudra) 70-sec speed buff on yourself
5. Trick attack 1min CD so that you can Suiton (3-mudra) and execute it
6. Kassatsu CD to reset your ninjutsu timer.
7. Blood for Blood, Internal Release cross-class CDs
8. Execute perfect Raitons (3-mudra), no screwing up
9. Avoid Boss mechanics in melee range.

in a raid scenario, then Ninjas deserve to be in the top DPS spot. It is the most difficult class in FFXIV at the moment.

[Alphras]

That doen't really sound more difficult than the other two melee jobs to me and in a raid scenario, the ninja doesn't even need to care about Dancing Edge most of the time.

[Aphel]

This is taking into account the amount of mudra combinations you have to know like the back of your hand and execute them on CD, in between your usual rotations. It's very easy to screw up and hence drop your dps.

So your dps buttons will be like 1-2-mudra1-mudra2-mudra3-ninjutsu-3. I've played dragoon and monk. Can easily tell you that this job is tougher than the other two. While it's true that a Warrior's presence dispenses the need of Dancing Edge, you've still got to know how to use it should such a situation arises.

[Apl_Juice]

Ninja's attack speed is also on par with GL3 if you're playing correctly, which means they have to press buttons just as fast as Monks do.

[Maero]

I sort of noticed while leveling my final level of Monk yesterday, was doing a fate @ lvl 49 and had agro on boss, along came a Ninja of the same level (49) and i got agro and i simply just could not get it back. Granted i did not see the numbers of dmg for the Ninja, but i was like what the heck ...

[Alphras]

The mudra mechanic is not as complex as you make it to be. It only matters that you get the last one right and that you don't press one of them twice. You don't even need to/can't weave them between weapon skills and since we are talking about single target dps, there are only three combinations that matter at all (Suiton, Huton, Raiton). The rest are standard melee dps mechanics that Monks and Dragoons need to take care of too (plus the positional requirements that the Ninja does not have).

Imo the complexity for MNK comes from knowing the fights and the boss movement well enough to maximize GL uptime. I cannot really talk about DRG, since I never played one in endgame, but I know that they get pretty messed up if they don't get their Heavy Thrust up and they have quite a lot of off globals to manage.

Edit: And saying one class "deserves" to be top dps because of complexity is pretty messed up in a mmorpg environment anyway. Every class should be as valid as the others for a certain role in a raid scenario and we will see if that is the case (and square will nerf the Ninja or buff the other jobs if it isn't).

[SpecialKK]

People are overreacting to nin. I'm sure a lot of testing was done damage wise in comparison to mnk. If anything, drg should be brought up damage wise in comparison to where mnk is.

I will say a very good nin will also have really good dps in long fights and it might take longer to catch a nin in damage over a long fight than a drg for a mnk.

I see it like this, drg has really high burst damage, mnk has really high sustained damage. Nin is in the middle.

I'm thinking (more hoping) DRG will get a buff in 3.0

Right now, MNK is tops against single-target boss fights that doesn't have a lot of downtime. They should be fine in the long run even with NIN.

But, based on prelim comments about NINs, their single-target boss damage, though they may not be able to surpass MNK, is still very close to it. Yet, they appear to have better "burst" damage than MNKs. Meanwhile, DRGs appears to lose out against both on single-target and their burst damage shines on quick "adds" kills (since they have less of a timer with their burst ability than NIN).

Basically, this is how they appear to be shaping up right now:

Single Target with no/little downtime: MNK > NIN > DRG
ST with downtime (enough for MNK to lose GL): NIN > DRG > MNK
Frequent Burst skills: DRG > NIN > MNK
Positional requirements (in terms of ease): NIN > DRG > MNK

Just looking at those four criteria, you see that NIN is never last. MNK has the best ST dmg in exchange for their difficult positional requirements. They either rate good or really good without drawbacks. And here's a fifth category that, IMO ultimately swings the favor to NIN over DRG...

Utility

A MNK can Silence
A DRG can Stun
A NIN can Stun, Silence, AND refresh TP for a party member

Given the versatility of DPS they bring to the table, less positional requirements, and the utility they bring to the table...you just can't beat that skill set. And since groups will likely only bring two melee DPS to most fights, why wouldn't you bring MNK and NIN?

[Ehayte]

Since we are playing the conjecture game...

If NIN is unchanged, my new favorite group composition for a 1-tank scenario would be NIN/NIN/DRG/BRD/SMN/WAR/SCH/WHM

- 100% up-time on Storm's Path
- 100% up-time on piercing debuff (forget what its called)
- 33% up-time on Trick Attack
- 2 Goads
- Battle Rez
- Foe's

Can you imagine the 20 second bursts that could be done with TA, Piece+, Slash+, Ninjitsu, DRG DPS, and fester burn?

[iMark521]

A MNK can also stun :P

I'll aways be a DRG lover, but I can't wait to get my NIN to 50.