Easiest and hardest Stormblood DPS?

[Leonus]

I don't get why people keep saying Samurai is one of the hardest DPS, or even the hardest of the Melee.

It's not hard, but mnk and Nin are not either. Drg is not hard, just extremely frustrating.

It has the shortest rotation of buttons and it just repeats infinitely in the same sequence of eight forever, it's buffs have absurdly long durations so there's no real fear of them falling off

Okay...

Shortest sequence of buttons, but looking at strictly buttons to combo off of (no oGCDs)..

Nin has 6 ( no mudras)
Mnk has 6 (You practically can't even hit the wrong button since 4/6 will be stance locked)
Sam has 8 (no iajutsu casts)
Drg has 8 ( didn't count heavy thrust)

All these classes watch buff timers. Funny thing is, i think Nin and mnk can reapply mistakenly missed dots/debuffs (excluding the loss of GL3 or Huton which last over a minute and need less than 7 seconds to reapply or the cost of raiton so you can cast huton.) and miss out on less dps loss with their rotational combo alone. Comparatively speaking. Not 100% sure about that though, would be an interesting comparison though.

Also if Sam's buffs were any shorter, the would always fall off before you got to reapply them. Their GCD is only faster than Drgs, and skill speed isn't the greatest stat for Sam.

Edit: now that I think about it, I need to look into how good DH is for Drg in comparison to sam.

it doesn't even have a persistent buff like GL3, BoTD, Huton, or Enochian, so it's more or less completely mechanics resistant. Kenki isn't even that hard to manage.

GL3 is passive, BotD is passive, Huton is passive (well all of them are practically passive). Meaning as long as you finish your combo in time, you get to keep it/you get more time. Almost but not quite to the same degree as Sam (do the correct combo, get your buff, finish it in time and you get to keep it.) All of the classes suffer when buffs fall off..

Sam looses damage and GCD speed.
Nin looses damage GCD speed.
Mnk looses overall damage and GCD speed.
Drg looses BotD (jump, SS damage bonus and GSM on 35 second timer AND eyes for some design decision flaws).

Not all the classes suffer the same.

Kenki is not hard to manage, but most people "just spend it". The only time you do that is when you're approaching surplus.

I'm not here to tell you Sam is hard or the other jobs are easy, people need to just take a step back and look at things objectively instead of subjectively.

Of course, for the sensitive people, this is how I feel and you all are entitled to feel how you feel. I'm just gonna have fun with the jobs.

Carry on.

[Gallus]

Easiest RDM > MNK > BRD > NIN > SAM > DRG > SMN > BLM > MCH Hardest

Pretty accurate. Except for DRG and BLM. DRG is harder and BLM is easier imo.

[HoLoFoNo]

Pretty accurate. Except for DRG and BLM. DRG is harder and BLM is easier.

The reason I put DRG where it is because its rotation is probably the most straightforward from what i've played (you pretty much just hit every button once apart from the 4th and 5th, you can honestly do it blindfolded but that isn't saying much I know) and that being the basis of what the rest of the class's toolkit is played around it really is easy to do in a fight.

I probably should clarify that my rankings apply to the fights we have seen so far, which is why BLM is so high since optimizing it is very difficult it seems.

[MidnightTundra]

This is most definitely how you do NOT want to play SAM. Well, if you don't want to suck, at least.

Eh. Once you get hagakure you can almost do whatever combo you want as long as you're filling an empty Sen. Having a war or ninja in the party, you can pretty much do whatever you want. The class isn't difficult at all.

There's no snapshotting dots or delaying ogcds for self buffs (outside of your infusion pot) like drg or mnk. You don't have some crippling punishment for messing up. The job is pretty easy but I do find it funny how some people have an ego trip if the job they're playing is perceived as easy.

But hey, I play RDM. Maybe I should be tripping too .

[Nerva3xO]

I really dont understand what people are talking about saying SAM is hard. SAM is very easy, imo its the easiest melee in the game atm. DRG imo is among the hardest. Having to weave a lot of off gcd stuff in, and trying to line your CDs up. SAM has nothing to manage really. Kenki is so easy to maintain. You should always be able to buff your Iaijutsu, and use Shinten/Guren often. DRG pre 70 is very easy so maybe thats what people mean idk.

[Ryaz]

I really dont understand what people are talking about saying SAM is hard. SAM is very easy, imo its the easiest melee in the game atm. DRG imo is among the hardest. Having to weave a lot of off gcd stuff in, and trying to line your CDs up. SAM has nothing to manage really. Kenki is so easy to maintain. You should always be able to buff your Iaijutsu, and use Shinten/Guren often. DRG pre 70 is very easy so maybe thats what people mean idk.

It's less about managing Kenki (though you do have to do that as well through use of Hagakure and positionals) and more about managing Sen, avoiding overlap and keeping your buffs up because it takes a LONG time to reapply them if you've got the wrong Sen up and no way to clear it.

[Lastelli]

Eh. Once you get hagakure you can almost do whatever combo you want as long as you're filling an empty Sen. Having a war or ninja in the party, you can pretty much do whatever you want. The class isn't difficult at all.

I disagree. SAM is a priority based job. You have to manage 2 self buffs, 1 debuff, 1 dot, 3 sens and the kenki gauge. Just this makes it the one job with the busiest resource management in the game. Higanbana dot must be up ideally always. Hagakure has priority over Midare, Guren should be used asap unless adds are going to spawn in the following 100 seconds, third eye must be used every time unavoidable damage is coming to proc seigan, which has priority over shinten. The combos are not interrupted by iai, meaning that there will be several instances where you have to use hagakure, meikyo and iai between your combos, some times all together while you dance around the boss to hit positionals. SAM is simply the melee with the most complex gameplay right now. You can perform decently even if you don't play optimally, but the difference between a good sam and a decent one is huge. I'm not saying that SAM is hard. No job in this game is hard. You have jobs that are more punishing than others, like MCH and SMN are very punishing if you mess something up or die (and I believe it's not fair and both should be fixed) and you have jobs that are frustrating like DRG and the lotd mechanic, but all the jobs have a very straightforward rotation right now. I find it hilarious though that a MNK is trying to suggest that MNK is harder while the current MNK is virtually the same, easy job it was in hw and is by far the easiest of the melee jobs.

[MidnightTundra]

I disagree. SAM is a priority based job. You have to manage 2 self buffs, 1 debuff, 1 dot, 3 sens and the kenki gauge. Just this makes it the one job with the busiest resource management in the game. Higanbana dot must be up ideally always. Hagakure has priority over Midare, Guren should be used asap unless adds are going to spawn in the following 100 seconds, third eye must be used every time unavoidable damage is coming to proc seigan, which has priority over shinten. The combos are not interrupted by iai, meaning that there will be several instances where you have to use hagakure, meikyo and iai between your combos, some times all together while you dance around the boss to hit positionals. SAM is simply the melee with the most complex gameplay right now. You can perform decently even if you don't play optimally, but the difference between a good sam and a decent one is huge. I'm not saying that SAM is hard. No job in this game is hard. You have jobs that are more punishing than others, like MCH and SMN are very punishing if you mess something up or die (and I believe it's not fair and both should be fixed) and you have jobs that are frustrating like DRG and the lotd mechanic, but all the jobs have a very straightforward rotation right now. I find it hilarious though that a MNK is trying to suggest that MNK is harder while the current MNK is virtually the same, easy job it was in hw and is by far the easiest of the melee jobs.

Hagakure is essentially used on CD outside the opener (Momo's 3 Sen opener is really good) which, coincidentally lines up with every 3rd Guren. Since Hagakure occasionally frees up a GCD between your 3 combos, this actually makes your two self buffs and your slashing debuff even easier to keep up during a fight. In an 8-man with a war or ninja? It gets even simpler.

Combos not being interrupted by Iaijutsu doesn't make it hard or complex in my opinion, it's actually a plus. If you use a shinten without watching your kenki and you don't have enough for Kaiten, you can almost always go into another combo to get the extra kenki you need out of the 1 and 2 so you can kaiten > Iaijutsu before unlocking the Sen with the 3. It's really forgiving.

Third Eye timing is really tight, I'll agree, but you need around ~8 Seigans to see a gain over your potential ~5 Shintens with the same amount of kenki. Some of the top SAM on fflogs don't even use it. Funny enough, I've watched Aura La'fell completely ignore Hagakure on stream. His top Susano parse even has him completely ignoring Hagakure outside the opener. He's 98th percentile on that parse.

Lining up AoE GCDs and oGCDs is something every job has to take in consideration when optimizing, not just SAM. Even something as basic as RDM lining up Mana with Manafication to get 4 Enhanced Moulinet on 3+ adds in a raid along with making sure Contre is off CD when they come up.

SAM doesn't really have punishing mechanics intertwined within the job nor is it overly complex from my experience.

While I do think monk is the easiest melee, and this is coming from someone who played monk at a pretty high level in HW, SAM isn't that far ahead of monk in terms of difficulty from my perspective.

[photometrik]

MCH is by far the hardest DPS to play in the game right now, with depressingly low dps on top of the high skill floor. You have to play perfectly to hit the minimum requirements for DPS at this point. Since I am by no means perfect (maybe good, but not great), it's very frustrating to play MCH in its current state.

[EllPii]

Concerning melee, I've raided with 3 classes in the past, excluding NIN; my ping is just too high for maximisation.
Of the classes that i've played at 70, DRG > MNK > SAM.

In my opinion:
DRG is still the hardest melee to play, though comparatively, it's easier than 3.0 DRG.
Dropping BoTD loses you dps on jumps and access to 2 GCD moves.
LoTD, you want 3 Nastrods. Can't charge the gauge so predicting is essential (after wheel/fang w/max 21+ gauge, and only when you have GSK up, and not clipping Gaze)
Plenty of self-buff oGCDs that you can't really delay. Dragon Sight.
Jump timing. (lol)

MNK still has a pretty harsh penalisation for dropping GL stacks; ramp up time still takes 9 GCDs w/o PB, sometimes this is unavoidable with transition phases.
Plenty of oGCDs to weave in, holding Elixir/Howling.
Form Shift and Chakra management for phase changes.
RoE vs Tornado dumping w/PB.
A bit of stance dancing.

SAM is fairly lenient, just need some awareness on clipping Kenki and Sen, but they both are relatively easy to dump (and hold), Quad-Shintens, Iaijutsu/Hagakure.
Meikyo management.
Third eye mitigation. Meditate for phase changes.
No stack drops, like the other two.


Off the top of my head:
DRG has the longest combo with different buttons, with 6 positionals, 1 234 56 789 65 (F 00R RF 000 FR)
MNK has a positional (12) for every move, 123 456 126 453 (FFR RRF FFF RRR). I love True North.
SAM has a relatively simple combo with 2 positionals, 123 456 78 (00F 00R 00). You can pretty much do them in any order of whichever is about to fall off first, and due to the fact that they're all 30s.


DRG has to manage DMG UP buff, PIERCE debuff, a DOT, BoTD, LoTD, GAZE, ~9 oGCDS. Reason i added LoTD separately is because ideally you want as much BoTD before you transition into LoTD for leeway with Nastrods.
MNK has to manage DMG UP buff, BLUNT debuff, a DOT, GL, CHAKRA, ~8 oGCDs
SAM has to manage DMG UP buff, (SLASH debuff), SKSP buff, a DOT, Kenki, Sen, ~8/9 oGCDs. Realistically, if you have WAR/NIN in your party, SLASH debuff isn't really needed; WAR will get it up in their 2nd GCD(?)