Which jobs is at its prime?

[Jirah]

Browsing all the beef DPS mains have with their jobs and was wondering which job is perfect right now. Not the most DPS not the easiest but at its prime, the job with the least amount of beef and controversy. Healers and Tanks are a conversation for another day just curious which job has the highest satisfaction.(as of 5.2)

[Cetonis]

Black Mage. Maybe Summoner, now. I'm sure Machinist has its fans. Maybe Ninja? That's probably it.

By and large ShB job design has been a disappointment for people who main a given job, in the name of making jobs more "approachable" for new players / new players to a job.

Which is a good goal to have, but it really doesn't have to come at the expense of depth, flexibility, options, decision points etc. SE doesn't believe that sort of strategic fun matters though; they think it's fine if all the fun comes from cool animations and all the skill expression is baked into raw execution.

[Mhaeric]

The following is all subjective based on what I see on the forums for complaint threads:

The dps jobs I see with the least complaints are SAM, BLM, RDM, DNC, NIN, DRG. Most of these jobs got QoL fixes or potency buffs in 5.2 that fixed any complaints that arose during the 5.x cycle, and the rest were good right from 5.0. E.g. RDM potencies are in a good place now their dps no longer is completely eclipsed by other casters. Likewise with Ninja. Any complaints you see about these jobs tend to be limited to very minor things that don't affect their performance in an overly meaningful way. E.g. piercing talon on DRG being relatively useless, or RDM wanting Embolden to not have the diminishing buff strength. DNC specifically rarely has any DNC explicit complaints, but often comes up implicitly in general "ranged dps role damage is to low" threads. It's gameplay is strong enough, however, that it could easily just benefit from the RDM treatment and get a potency boost to call it amazing.

I wil also include SMN in this list even though SMN has farily frequent complaint threads. They're odd complaints relative to other dps complain threads, however, because SMN is the current top dps class so they're usually more about wanting gameplay changes to make them pure summoners instead of DoT casters rather than SMN is weak or doesn't function well types of complaints. I.e. aesthetics or thematics of the current mechanics rather than the effectiveness of the current mechanics is what people compain about with it. SMN is in a very good position this expansion.

MNK is the most complained about, rightly so in my opinion, and has been for a long time. It has some very clunky mechanics to it, mostly to do with the chakra gauge being so random even with Brotherhood and the atmanan (sp?) skill being mostly useless.

BRD gets lots of complaints about just needing a damage boost or giving them back more utility. People are especially salty about the DoTs being greatly reduced in potency. BRD is also the job that has had the most core gameplay changes to it over the life of this game, even going back to 1.0. I personally think it needs a bit of a dps boost, but the gameplay and amount of party buffing it has right now works well.

MCH has a lot of complaints that it was too simplified. It went from being one of the most complex job to being one of the least complex in a single expansion. There's just as many who love that about it, however, so this is more of a "you can't please everyone" type of thing. Also, while it is no longer as latency dependent as it used to be, it still can be affected by poor latency and Wildfire went from their big damage signature ability to a relatively minor ability that you use on cooldown during your burst phase just because you can and it does damage. There's quite a bit of salt about that. I personally like the current gameplay and am glad the job is the way it is now, but don't really feel I have a say in it because I don't play it regularly. I will say that I play it a lot more now than I did when it was so complex. It's easier to pick up and play when you want something different from your usual main.

tl;dr: If you want OP, SMN is in its prime. The general consensus is that BLM, SAM, RDM, DNC, DRG, and NIN are all in good places too. I personally think that MCH is too, but that's more split. MNK and BRD are a bit behind the curve right now.

[Wyakin]

All three ranged are under powered. It needs fixing ASAP. End of

[Darkpaw]

To be fair. Blm, sam, drg, nin, even rdm.. are all probably riding high.

It kind of baffles me how much people think mch is in this great spot. It’s certainly in a better spot than it was in stormblood which really wasn’t that hard of a bar to surpass but it has serious design flaws and issues the machinist community want to see addressed.

I wouldn’t include summoners either. Given I’ve known more than a few summoners to move past the job for “weird timings on things” and just general game play clunkiness that makes it less fun to play.

[CKNovel]

The whole Ranged role needs a rework of its identity.

During ARR, it was BRD.
During HW, they were Physical Super-Casters with a load of utility + mana battery.
During SB, they were No-cast jobs with Super-Utility (MP and rDPS).

During ShB their utility is less flexible than Casters and limited to a 120s CD mitigation (Reminder Dismantle was 10% for 5s but on 60s)
Damage wise they are near the ground and still easily outshined in a tier where melee uptime is a challenge, for once. Even during Prog, they were at the bottom.

Ranged DPS became the "noob role" where DPS and utility were both gutted in complexity and depth.
It's unhealthy to balance ranged this way next to SMN and its utility, damages and 40% unpunishable instant cast.

As for the topic:

BLM is on the throne for this expansion (At lv80). Great damage, no shame utility wise and an enjoyable rotation.
DRG has been a bit simplified but it might have been required due to the very tight rotation from HW/SB? (Please confirm!)
Ninja, hahaha ration goes brrr. With TA a bit more flexible, I think NIN is quite good. Still needs some QoL, but remains good.
SAM, I'm a bit splitted on it. Compared to SB, it's now a fixed rotation due to Tsubame Gaeshi. But compared to SB SAM, it's better damage wise. Traded a bit of its gameplay for damage.
RDM also in a good place, just lacks complexity gameplay wise.

SMN is the most unhealthy job. It's bad to play due to pets AI, it's incredible damage wise and can easily outshine BLM, has the most insane utility and 40% unpunishable instant cast (60% instant cast overrall). We often agreed that Res should not be taken in account when balancing, but SMN is doing way too much and it's probably why Physick doesn't heal.

MNK is a pile of poop.
It should be taped on each Job designers office "Do not make a job rely on server tick and never forget the clunky Anatman/Flamethrower", next to the "Fix pets" note that should exist since SMN exist.

[Miminming]

SMN meta power wise, however gameplay wise it's sucks, not the worse but definately not is the good...

Gameplay wise BLM, NIN, RDM, MCH, DRG, SAM and even DNC is in a real good place atm...

[VentVanitas]

I'm going to rank how I feel about the jobs from best to worst. Keep in mind that these are very opinionated and I am not at all an unbiased/neutral man.

- DRG and SAM, they feel the most "completed" DPS jobs to me. While both should still get some very minor QoL changes, I think they should be a very low priority when it comes to the other DPS jobs.

- BLM, I like it. But I feel like it needs more self sufficiency instead of relying on being a statue. I don't like that moving 1 inch can ruin everything and disrupt my flow.

- NIN feels fine, but it needs a lot of changes to smooth it out. (make Shadow Fang great again, please make Assassinate not useless)

- RDM is fine, it has its fans, but it really needs more complexity.

- MCH, I honestly love how it turned out in ShB, but I am not blind to its flaws. There's not much to do when half of its kit is dedicated to AoE and it's only challenge comes from an unfair gamble of weaving with a 1.5 second GCD. Please make it not so reliant on ping SE...

- DNC is not my cup of tea. I don't like its simplicity, I zone out hard whenever I play it because it just can't keep my attention. I'd be fine with it if it wasn't so RNG dependent too.

- BRD. I like how it plays, but it's going through a major identity crisis and I recognise that it can be so much better. What is it dev team? A bard or a ranger? Please decide. I'm still sore about the removal of Foe's Requiem and I'd like it to come back, or some variation/evolution of it so BRD and be a bard again and use MP and have significant utility.
(Of course I'd like all three ranged to get damage buffs but that's a given.)

- SMN. Good lord. I've met people who've genuinely gotten depressed because of what ShB did to this job. I'll keep it simple. Egi Assault? Good! Pet AI and Demis? BAD! Please make pets good again and make Demis not awful. I'm also not a fan of how useless Deathflare has become, I want to be able to spam it like we used to able to in Stormblood. But that is quite literally just me.

- MNK. How many threads are there on this forum dedicated to talking about how dookie this job is? There aren't enough words to describe what is wrong with Monk and how SE has handled it. It should be the poster boy example of how NOT to design an MMO class. Top priority, please rework.

[Eliadil]

Black Mage is probably the job who has seen the best treatment on the whole expansion, it has reached a point where it is the best job in the game, if you know how to play it.
Dragoon is also really high up there when it comes to job satisfaction, probably the second job with the most satisfied playerbase right now.
Ninja is kinda on both extreme imo. Peoples who hate the rework have stopped complaining or probably swapped jobs, and the rework is loved for the other part of peoples who play ninja/began playing since.

For the rest...

SMN has its issues but is overall fine. Rotation could be smoothed out, but it's definitely better and one of the strongest job atm
RDM is the same, maybe a tiny dmg buff could be needed but the majority of its players seem happy
MCH players want more damage and that's about it. Peoples who want a job who's "ping friendlier" should know that this will not change, they would have fixed Ninja a long time ago if that was the case.
DNC players are overall "happy" I think, they just want QoL stuff for the most part, and the job is probably one of the best for prog now.
SAM players generally dislike the new rotation, but the job has such an absurd amount of damage right now that even if they complain nothing will change. Most hope for a return to a SB-like gameplay for the next expac but they pretty much stopped complaining about Tsubame because the devs will sadly not change the ability.
MNK needs a rework to be viable in the next expac, this is certain, I think that despite being one of the "easiest" melee, the job has too many issues that needs to be resolved, peoples aren't happy and you can see it very well on this forum, where at least 50% of the posts here are either directly about monk or full of peoples saying that others problems aren't as important as a "monk rework. right. now."
BRD... Well tbh I feel bad for them. They were doing mostly fine at the start of the expac, but the dot nerf kinda killed the class. The song buffs are fine, but the numbers on a "certain site" says that it deals too low dmg for now. I just hope that they revert the dot nerf, and peoples will maybe be happy.

And as for BLU... Wait.

[Jirah]

To be fair. Blm, sam, drg, nin, even rdm.. are all probably riding high.

It kind of baffles me how much people think mch is in this great spot. It’s certainly in a better spot than it was in stormblood which really wasn’t that hard of a bar to surpass but it has serious design flaws and issues the machinist community want to see addressed.

.

Thank you, so far the majority claims MCH is fixed when most of its issues weren't fixed but cut, considering how few MCH mains existed in 4.0 let alone being one of the most unpopular jobs so few maxed them out let alone mastered it. it goes without saying the satisfaction is from 5.0 being functional rather than engaging