Quote Originally Posted by Skies View Post
Second, you are in fact fundamentally wrong about the DPS of dots and AoEs. For melee, at least. For both monk and dragoon one of our DoTs is in the tail end of a combo, DoTs also take far too long to tick down completely, more than the encounter should last after the application of the first comboless one so there would be a long stretch of time where we should use our AoE attacks.
Also, AoE attacks consume a LOT of TP for melee, we run dry extremely fast using to the it's impossible to do two pulls back to back, and for both monk and dragoon our most TP-efficient and powerful AoE is ALSO part of a combo, so we need a single-target attack before moving into AoE, thus we'd like to focus-fire that too.
Obviously, the enemy will die before the DoT ticks to full if you're focusing down one at a time. If you're applying DoTs evenly across enemies and also spreading your single-target weaponskills, then almost all enemies will take longer than 18-30 seconds to fall.

I see this contradiction all the time. A common excuse is "well, the enemy dies in less than 18 seconds anyway, so DoT is not worth it." Yes, but this is only the case if you only use single-target attacks on one enemy at a time.

And yes, AoE abilities are not very TP-efficient. However, single-target combos are only second on the list in terms of TP-efficiency. DoTs are the most TP-efficient, bar none.