Easiest and hardest Stormblood DPS?

[Leonus]

I have never once said I'm tired of people saying Red Mage is easy.
I have never once said that Red Mage isn't easy.

It's not DRG's fault it was designed like crap in ARR/SB and it's not Monk's fault it was designed like crap in HW. SAM is just better designed than DRG and DRG in HW was better designed than MNK. Bad design just makes those classes inherently harder, which is why Machinist/Dragoon are such a pain to play right now.

Again, bad class design only makes things harder if you have complete control over what happening. During phase changes, you don't, you did what what was possible. At a certain point, It's out of your hands.

You mention the Dot needing to tick longer like people seriously would use it on something that doesn't last. Overlapping Sen is near impossible if you are actually aware of your options like Hagakure which is almost always a gain if you have it. By the way, that is just being aware of your situation, that doesn't necessarily mean you're good. If you don't and need to apply buffs, yes, you have to deal, which would probably still be rewarded with a 720 potency attack. Tell that to the other classes that don't have much for those situations.

Again, Drg is out of luck by poor design, Mnk now has RoE to extend GL and still has PB. That's also why everyone tries to dump everything before phase changes etc. All so you can start "fresh" upon boss return. You are right, Sam doesn't get hit as hard as Drg during phase change, neither does Nin, or Mnk now for that matter. If everything is dumped before phase change, the all of them have to go through their buildup phase again.

Also lemme answer your scenario with a scenario: A10S with it's plenty of mechanics forcing you to move, along with the boss moving beyond tank's control, and a bound mechanic that will keep you from moving or even turning. You won't have True North for all of that. From what you said, SAM will only lose 60, meanwhile you have DRG still losing more than 100 should you proc FnC followed by WT out of Chaos Thrust. God forbid they have a boss with all of that plus A11S with forcing people to hit from the front to break a shield. In that situation with no True North, SAM still doesn't miss out on much.

60 potency per positional, but yea that's a tough spot for drg. My goal was to inform people that the positional does matter for samurai. People seem to be unaware of this since the game does not explicitly state it.

I love SAM as a class and for the aesthetic since I wanted a sword wielding DPS for so long, but let's face it, it is easy as sin and rewards you way more than any other class at the moment. They had more thought into them and it shows.

I would say it does reward you for good play, even decent play. I still don't see where the rotational difficulty comes from other classes. GL and BotD at this point are practically passive and you will/may loose them during phase changes. I don't see how that alone makes those classes any harder. You will try your best to figure out how to keep them going just like a sam is going to try and figure out how to best use his kenki and sen gained for the phase transition. They're different but the end goal is the same.. to keep dps rolling.

[Vallhallix]

SMN is not hard per say but if you make a mistake on your aeathflow stacks and miss a fester/bane your dps is in the can for the next 2 minutes. And there is nothing you can do about it.

SMN is not hard, but we do have to plan more than the other casters for maximum dps, it's easier for us to be unprepared for an upcoming fight if we don't plan well, and our hands MUST be swift having to switch between our own skills and pet skills on the fly. You often see a lot of SMNs not using all of their kit for that reason. I've seen some who never even use the pets enkindle. We've always been the one class that had to be 2 steps ahead since we can't just do heavy damage on demand. For us in a dungeon it's always ''should I just go ahead and use this just to burn them a little quicker, but then I might be screwed for the next mob'', and depending on how awkwardly a tank is pulling, you can completely screw a SMN over for quite a few seconds lol.

[Ryaz]

@GunZLegend: Nice way to make assumptions. Sorry, didn't see that you had put Kaiten in there on Higanbana already. Yes, I use it every time I apply Higanabana because I'm well aware that it does buff it. I was thinking you we're just talking about the base version (sorry, had been up all night and read it while tired).

And I'm not saying that Sam isn't a little easier to play than some of the classes, like MCH and DRG (I was a MCH for most of HW), but I honestly haven't found it any easier to play than Ninja. DRG and MCH need some buffs and changes- I don't think anyone is denying that.

[Yeol]

Hardest: MCH.
Reason: Extremely punishing. There are no rooms for mistakes.

Easiest: RDM.
Reason: Easy to understand, even for new players.

[Frowny]

Easiest: RDM.
Reason: Easy to understand, even for new players.

Also VERY forgiving. A goof isn't the end of the world vs. other classes where a goof can snowball.

[Chimiko]

I feel like SMN is pretty hard to play. Sure its straightfoward with dots and ruin spam, but the amount of planing you have to do is silly. its also extremly punishing to miss a fester/bane. We rely heavily on Aether to go into DWT and Summon Bahamut, if we miss a fester you have to push up ALL our CD's 1min and there is NOTHING you can do about it. You'll be standing there spaming Ruin or Ruin III for 1min while mantaing dots. Thats it. And if you die after just using Aether you'll be doing like 2k dps for the rest of the fight :| Seeing it takes another 2min to get bahamut up. :S

[Renthas]

I've barely touched the other DPS classes outside of DRG, but RDM is super easy to play imo.

[Neela]

I feel like SMN is pretty hard to play. Sure its straightfoward with dots and ruin spam, but the amount of planing you have to do is silly. its also extremly punishing to miss a fester/bane. We rely heavily on Aether to go into DWT and Summon Bahamut, if we miss a fester you have to push up ALL our CD's 1min and there is NOTHING you can do about it. You'll be standing there spaming Ruin or Ruin III for 1min while mantaing dots. Thats it. And if you die after just using Aether you'll be doing like 2k dps for the rest of the fight :| Seeing it takes another 2min to get bahamut up. :S

Its more about having a priority system than a fix rota like Val said above. You often lose overall dmg by making decisions or thinking about what would be the right decision in the current situation or even the next few steps – and this counts for dngs as well for trials/raids. I don't know why so many pull the argument that a missed aetherskill break your dmg down to the ground to call smn "hard to play" (so while this is true) – throwing a ruin ll after tri simple fix this issue being to fast for server-registration that dots have been applied.

though our strength also is our weakness - we are mobile and free in our priority system, the backdrop of this freedom is that making decisions always takes more time than a fix rota which you automatically repeat over and over again if you get used/mastered it without a thought.

The biggest issue after all is a death ya, no doubt worst case scenario - falling to the ground having aether & swiftcast on cd - than we are helpless like tiny crying babys... no mana, no egi, no trance nothing we can do to jump into the fight asap again.

But still based on the free priority system it's one of the most funniest cls for me.

[Hellzon]

Are people really saying Dragoon is the easiest now? For real?

Dragoon is a pain in the ass, our gauge was bad-designed and we suffer to maintain it. If a fight has some cinematics on it (Laks, for instance) we lose it and all we can do is to restart and cry for the fact we have a level 70 skill that is hardly used in some fights.
I really enjoy dragoon now, the only problem I have with it is this. Of course, we could have some buffs since dragoon is a really hard class to play perfectly imo.

[Ariyn]

-snip-

Saying sam isnt hard cuz its easy at 60 is literally a waste of a post lol. It changes massively from 62-70 and has nothing to do with positionals.

On topic though, sam and nin probably hardest with drg being easiest of the melee. Nin may pull ahead but doesn't suffer as bad as sam if you mess up the rotation.