Ranking of Jobs in Season 5

[Cynric]

My melee ranking:
DRG
SAM
MNK
NIN

Yes mnk has strong burst, but its locked behind a long build up and no escapes, ranged attack. Did start to enjoy it after 30ish matches of practice. It feels like firing a musket. Boom! wait a min, need to reload As for goon, it has the best combination of tools for the melees imo and with enliven + icarus wings (FL only i guess) you can keep the jumps rolling! I felt SAM has better sustained damage than mnk.

It actually takes less time to "reload" on Monk than on samurai, though I could agree on the sustained part, except burst is the name of the game.

[Hyrist]

It actually takes less time to "reload" on Monk than on samurai, though I could agree on the sustained part, except burst is the name of the game.

I'd say CC/Shielding is more the name of the game, rather than burst. Games are mostly won on the healers and tanks being able to cover and recover what damage is being pushed out. As there just enough of it to have intelligent players counter burst compositions pretty clearly. Sustained damage is still viable, as it wears the healers out of their resources.

Look at the top three punching bags of the community. AST lacks good shielding. War lacks good Shielding or Good CC (Holmgang non-withstanding) Red Mage lacks good CC.

You can play around with the tuning of any of these, to fix their average outputs but it's these key components that are netting them higher losses and will hold them back. If you fix their CC/Shielding issues then they'd be considered more viable.

[Cynric]

I'd say CC/Shielding is more the name of the game, rather than burst. Games are mostly won on the healers and tanks being able to cover and recover what damage is being pushed out. As there just enough of it to have intelligent players counter burst compositions pretty clearly. Sustained damage is still viable, as it wears the healers out of their resources.

Look at the top three punching bags of the community. AST lacks good shielding. War lacks good Shielding or Good CC (Holmgang non-withstanding) Red Mage lacks good CC.

You can play around with the tuning of any of these, to fix their average outputs but it's these key components that are netting them higher losses and will hold them back. If you fix their CC/Shielding issues then they'd be considered more viable.

I'm talking purely from a PVP damage standpoint, the amount of sustained damage a job can throw out isn't as important as the amount they do all at one time.

You're right in saying that CC/shielding matters a lot currently.

But what I was speaking of was in specific to Samurai a melee DPS which has to stand still for their burst as well as cast it, with it doing less damage than their counterparts. Sustained damage being high doesn't matter if that sustain doesn't give you a kill.

[Hyrist]

I never argue mechanics in isolation from one another. I find it to be a poor perspective of rating performance.

You can have high burst, and low sustain, and lose out completely due to having your burst countered by an enemy's defensive measures, and just being worn down. If you have low burst, and high sustain, you can still win out, especially if you have hard shields and CC to counter an enemy's burst. (The Culling also plays in your favor if you are good with hard shielding as immunity frames disregard damage bonuses, yey paladins.) This is why games right now are being won on the backs of healers and tanks, not DPS. The better the healer and tank is at countering the burst-meta, the easier it is for them to gain ranking and wins. From the DPS perspective, this means timing of burst and sustained damage to draw out and wear down powerful shielding and healing skills are both very important.

I'm not saying burst is unimportant, in fact the argument is more along the lines of how frequently you can produce your burst, which is considered part of "sustained damage." But in the discussion of DPS, sustained damage is what helps enable burst damage to work, along with CC. It's okay to call out the Burst meta, but Sustained Damage is also important.

Edit after seeing the mention of Samurai Melee:

No I can agree. Same thing goes with Burst, which is why both is needed. Also, IIRC, the better part of the Samurai's damage isn't just from their Midare Setsugekka so much as using it tandem with their Hissatsu: Shinten, which is off the global cooldown and can be used for both burst and sustain.

But I haven't pushed my Melee DPS yet, nor do I plan on playing Samurai first hand, so you'd know that better than I.

[Cynric]

snip

No I agree with you 100% on everything you said. Though I have won games purely on burst alone, there's a bit of RNG to it though of course and if my healer folds it doesn't matter. However currently Healing especially using scholar, CC and shielding from PLD/DRK is very very important.

As far as Samurai, yes you're correct Shinten is a lot of their damage, however its only about 1500, Midare is 3.4k and Shinten requires 25 Kenki, Kenki is used to move around as well with the gap closer and Shield with Chiten. Being 25 and 35 Kenki respectively.


Sen moves build 10 Kenki and can be spammed at the cost of 250 TP, regular combo starters are 5 kenki build, your natural "burst" combo will build 30 kenki, 45 if you opt out of using meikyou to build sen. Your DoT is locked behind 1sen and your +dmg up is separated from it.

To compare damage /wind up your sen finishers kasha and gekko are the same damage as shinten, so the most damage you can do before you use iaijutsu is 3-4k~ iaijutusu will add 3k more but it has a cast time so the previous 3k will be healed already. then you could add one more shinten after for 1500 more capping at around 7500-8500, and spending 50 kenki, while being unable to chase till iaijutsu finished.

All in all the sustain and the burst is slow, in comparison monk can GL3 instantly(before the fight even starts) and both Tornado Kick and Chakra can be used instantly for 8k together and at once, meanwhile inside GL3 with Demolish up all of your attacks are doing 1500+ anyway. Dragoon has similar damages as well.

The only real wind up to the burst for Monk would be waiting on Riddle of Fire, but you don't even need riddle of fire, you could say that waiting on Chakra stacks is a bit of wind up, but the amount of damage you can do in that time (plus T-kick can always be used to finish someone at 25% health and instantly be rebuilt) just destroys samurai in every way.

I used Monk for the comparisons because its what I have the most matchup experience on after Samurai.

I played a lot of matches on Samurai before I came to this judgment of course, it's just such a shame too, it was the job I was looking most forward to using.

I also forgot to add that GL3 has an innate damage and speed boost itself, so while yeah Samurai can hit for 1500 (every 250 TP/25 Kenki) its much slower than what Monk can do.

If Shifu gave speed buff I think they'd be comparable and if hagakure was present in PvP to allow you to convert sen to kenki it'd probably have a lot less wind-up and more sustain as well. But the Kenki : attack ratio is way off and meikyou costs way too much TP to be consistently usable.

[Stormfur]

Do monk positionals still exist in PVP? That was one of the main reasons why I didn't play it then. Just another unnecessary layer of cumbersome on top of the class.

[Cynric]

Do monk positionals still exist in PVP? That was one of the main reasons why I didn't play it then. Just another unnecessary layer of cumbersome on top of the class.

all positionals are gone from pvp period as far as im aware from all melee

[SokiYagami]

I haven't run SAM in a match yet, but I fought against some good SAM myself. I think SAM's designed to be the "cross-counter" DPS, if that make any sense. In an idea situation, which I only run into twice, the SAM should pop Chiten + Safeguard right before getting burst (or mid-burst) by Melee, then Midare > Shinten. If pulled off successfully, it hits crazy hard like getting run over by a truck. (Trust me, I got run over twice) How feasible that is however, is another topic...

[Cynric]

snip

This runs into the Kenki ratio issue though. 35 Kenki for a skill that is very noticeable if you're paying attention, just wait for chiten to wear and all that kenki is wasted. I have no issues reacting to chiten because the animation is so slow before the effect actually takes hold, Plus shielding beats out any damage chiten would send your way, I think regen ticks almost beat it out as well , of course nothing will be better than just not hitting them till it's gone. if you're hitting the Sam with Chiten up that's kinda on you.

Plus midare is a casting move, so just LoS/get away from them/ get healed from the previous damage before it hits.

[Praesul]

More like:

Tanks:
PLD
DRK
WAR

Whooooah there buddy, don't you know that the blackest night is literally the best thing ever and DRK deserves to have it's kneecaps broken?