Which melee DPS can keep itself alive the most?

[vanaii]

The one that does the mechanics.

[Ransu]

Dragoon not only has Bloodbath and Second Wind, but it also has more overall health and Life Surge absorbs a portion of damage dealt as HP, so if you use it on your most powerful attacks it will be a good heal.

Literally all of the melee dps have bloodbath and second wind....

[YojimboM]

Monk has the highest eHP of any melee DPS job. Riddle of Earth has a ridiculous amount of HP value. In savage raid content, or really any content, Monks are typically the lowest damage taken of all party members by far if Riddle of Earth is used properly. Mitigation is equivalent to healing in that it completely negates a % of damage you take. So, it is always effective healing, as opposed to normal healing skills that could result in an overheal. For example, Life Surge on Dragoon is needed within the rotation and should never be used for survival, which means it frequently overheals and results in no additional survivability.

Not to mention Monk played at its best historically deals nearly the highest personal DPS in the game (currently behind BLM and SAM only), which means Bloodbath is far more effective, particularly during its burst.

Sort of hard to properly utilize, but Mantra is utility no other melee DPS provides for healing, too. The 10% healing increase is small but I have seen cases where it has actually prevented deaths during savage prog by making shields slightly stronger, when health gets dropped to quadruple digits or lower from AOE or other things.

[Jeeqbit]

Literally all of the melee dps have bloodbath and second wind....

Yes, but not 2 charges of Life Surge and better health.

[Vatom]

If i were to rank each one it would be like this

1. RPR (AC is a TBN with a HOT with BB that works on almost everything in their kit also a buff and debuff to get more out of your healing)
2. MNK (Got buffs to help with healing even though Mantra doesnt work with BB it does work with Second Wind, RoE is strong and sustainable but no shield so behind to RPR on single target)
3. SAM (play it like WAR and use BB with setsu has buffs as well but when you dont have any setsu or ogi you pretty much NIN in healing though they do have Third Eye to help)
4. DRG & NIN (DRG is great for AOE healing but single is very low incomparison to the others and NIN)
(NIN has good single since they have a min TBN but BB doesnt work with ninjutsu other then shuriken and bushin doesn't work with it too making their big hits not able to heal them but they are faster then DRG so single target isn't too bad)

[YojimboM]

Yes, but not 2 charges of Life Surge and better health.

DRG does not have "better health" than other melee DPS (it literally shares 1:1 gear with RPR for that matter which means it has identical main stats). Life Surge results in 0 effective healing if your HP is full. On top of that, the heal from Life Surge is terrible to the degree of it being almost cosmetic at this point. Life Surge is likely the next skill to get pruned since it's typically regarded as a bloat skill these days.

All of that is without mentioning the fact that it hurts a lot worse to use Life Surge for healing than if you were using it correctly within your rotation for the DPS gain...

[Jeeqbit]

DRG does not have "better health" than other melee DPS (it literally shares 1:1 gear with RPR for that matter which means it has identical main stats). Life Surge results in 0 effective healing if your HP is full. On top of that, the heal from Life Surge is terrible to the degree of it being almost cosmetic at this point. Life Surge is likely the next skill to get pruned since it's typically regarded as a bloat skill these days.

All of that is without mentioning the fact that it hurts a lot worse to use Life Surge for healing than if you were using it correctly within your rotation for the DPS gain...

When I say it has better health, I mean it has the highest health even if you compared all the melee jobs without gear on. It's true that Reaper shares the same base health as Dragoon though.

[VictorSpoils]

It probably is Monk, even though the other four can kite with ranged attacks and jump away in a pinch.

[YojimboM]

If i were to rank each one it would be like this

1. RPR (AC is a TBN with a HOT with BB that works on almost everything in their kit also a buff and debuff to get more out of your healing)

Every melee DPS has Bloodbath, but many of Reaper's strongest skills don't actually benefit from it (Communio is a spell, Gluttony, Unveiled Gibbot, etc, are all abilities). It has no special advantages with Bloodbath.

Arcane Circle is weaker than Riddle of Earth on Monk. The shield is only 10% of your maximum HP. The HoT is only 250 potency in total (50 potency for 15 seconds, which is 5 ticks) and it can't crit heal. Second Wind is 500 potency and CAN crit heal for reference on how weak the HoT is. The strength of Arcane Circle comes from the fact it effects the entire party which is a strong net amount of healing, it's a very weak skill in solo play but was strong enough in raids that it warranted a nerf.

Theorycrafting examples on why it's weaker if you care: The reason Riddle of Earth is stronger is because it provides 20% flat damage mitigation for up to 10 seconds with no limiting factors, unlike Arcane Circle which has a fixed shield amount of 10% of your maximum HP and a HoT that does not work immediately, so it can be entirely ineffective as overhealing if your healers already topped you off before it expired. In a real scenario, say a raid AOE occurs, and deals 60,000 damage at base (this is a reasonable amount for a savage-level raid AOE more or less). Arcane Circle would prevent ~7000 damage out of that as shield mitigation, and heal you for around 4200 HP, which is maybe 11,000 effective HP value to be loose with the numbers at maximum, and you'd take the rest of the ~49,000 damage from the AOE. This is not factoring in that the mitigation might be as low as only the 7000 HP shield if your healers healed you before the HoT could work. Riddle of Earth would fully prevent 12,000 damage instead with 48,000 damage taken because it is a flat 20% mitigation immediately, and it continues to work mitigating for the full duration so it can result in even more value. Riddle of Earth scales with the amount of damage you take, because it is a %-based mitigation, so a stronger amount of damage would result in even more value, assuming it's survivable, on top of stacking with other mitigation skills. In a worst case scenario situation where an amount of damage might even one-shot you, you have more lenience with Riddle of Earth since it is more effective on higher amounts of damage. In situations where many small amounts of damage occur that add up, Riddle of Earth is also still more effective, because it is again a 20% fixed mitigation with no stipulations, while Arcane Circle is still shackled to its max HP value shield and the requirement of the shield breaking on top of that which is another potential issue.

NIN and RPR are probably more or less equally survivable, since they both suffer the issue of some of their strongest skills not working with Bloodbath (NIN has a much higher skillspeed and auto-attack speed while it has fewer skills that benefit), but NIN has a 20% max HP shield rather than a 10% max HP shield. Shadeshift is better than Arcane Circle for personal mitigation because it's simply a stronger version of Arcane Circle that lasts much longer (20 second shield vs. 5 second), so not only does it prevent more damage but it won't fall off before it can be fully broken if you mistime it.

SAM has the worst personal mitigation of any melee DPS. It just doesn't really have anything anymore besides Third Eye and Third Eye sucks. Its Bloodbath healing is great during its burst, but it's not reliable since the rest of the rotation is relatively low potency.

DRG's just pretty terrible in terms of survivability. At least it doesn't have the lowest magic defense of any job anymore, though. Its Bloodbath healing is probably better than NIN's at least?

[YojimboM]

When I say it has better health, I mean it has the highest health even if you compared all the melee jobs without gear on. It's true that Reaper shares the same base health as Dragoon though.

Having ~600 extra HP base at 90 isn't what I'd consider some kind of "advantage" exactly. That's less than 1% of current melee DPS max HP. Maybe around .7% more HP than the other non-Maiming jobs at maximum ilvl. It's more of a flavor thing in the same way that Life Surge still heals but its main purpose is for the automatic crit for DPS purposes.