Highest DPS vs most fun

[Ephier]

Yeah, you need to play with better NINs.

Cosign. NIN>=DRG>MNK. MNK is just outclassed right now with gear scaling in the favor of NIN and DRG.

[KikoriL]

Cosign. NIN>=DRG>MNK. MNK is just outclassed right now with gear scaling in the favor of NIN and DRG.

Not sure if baiting.

[Ephier]

Not sure if baiting.

I am not joking. People are constantly repeating MNK is highest DPS, just because that is what they see when they search information about DPS all the time. With the introduction of NIN in 2.4 and DRG buffs in 2.45, the melee balance was evened out. Now that gear is so easy to come by, people are decked out in BIS setups and it has been proven, that MNK has indeed been dethroned as DPS king. I am not saying MNK is a bad class or anything, I am just saying at the current point in time with current gear, NIN and DRG are stronger than MNK. Even in terms of utility, as DK is not and never was necessary to complete content. Disembowel and Trick Attack increased raid DPS and improve overall burst on targets that need to disappear. Currently MNK is losing out in terms of utility (debatable, I have been lucky enough to have two good healers who can deal with lack of DK even during progression) and DPS. MNKs high risk, high reward play style is not able to keep up with the low risk of DRG and NIN. I really hope MNK is improved upon in 3.0.

[SpookyGhost]

words

MNK was never "needed" to complete content, but it made everyone's life easier.

You don't need BRD either, but would you prefer to not have one when you're still learning?

I'd personally rather have DK and Mantra over a slight DPS increase. There's a problem when your healer's have to "deal with" something when they could easily not be and save themselves unnecessary stress. Same with having songs over whatever you want to replace a BRD with. On farm content, I'll take the melee DPS that shows up because it literally doesn't matter at that point unless some class is required for the content (like PLD/BRD/SCH in T2 if we ever see something like that again).

It's also 2.55 and everything is on farm, so it literally doesn't matter who does what DPS as long as the boss dies. In 3.0 everything could easily be changed. This isn't really ever worth debating, even for min/max purposes.

[Ephier]

MNK was never "needed" to complete content, but it made everyone's life easier.

You don't need BRD either, but would you prefer to not have one when you're still learning?

I'd personally rather have DK and Mantra over a slight DPS increase. There's a problem when your healer's have to "deal with" something when they could easily not be and save themselves unnecessary stress. Same with having songs over whatever you want to replace a BRD with. On farm content, I'll take the melee DPS that shows up because it literally doesn't matter at that point unless some class is required for the content (like PLD/BRD/SCH in T2 if we ever see something like that again).

It's also 2.55 and everything is on farm, so it literally doesn't matter who does what DPS as long as the boss dies. In 3.0 everything could easily be changed. This isn't really ever worth debating, even for min/max purposes.

It can go both ways. While it may be easier healing on the AoE magic damage such as that from gigaflare, having NIN and DRG for adds shortens the time adds are alive, lowering the amount of time split heals are needed. MNK has 0 burst, while NIN and DRG have tons of it on top of their sustain. I agree with you that having DK and 20% mantra is nice, personally our group runs 4 mantras, NIN, DRG, BRD, and WAR just to help what ever way we can.

What I won't agree with is the BRD, at least for progression purposes. The longer the fight goes, the more the need for TP is increased, at the beginning of progression most groups saw enrages or soft enrages and that is with their melee and BRD TP sustained by paeon. With no paeon, melee would be doing almost nothing towards the end of the fight while they wait for invigorate to come back. They would also have to cut expensive dots out such as mutilate, phlebotimize and touch of death, in order to hold on to TP as long as possible, which would result in a further DPS loss.