Objective comparison of Mnk and Nin difficulty to play ?

[Camalott]

I don't NIN - at all. However, I do MNK from time to time.

That said, I think the "MNKs are rocket science" perception may come from the fact that if the MNK looses GL3, they go from the (arguably) front of the bus to the back in a heartbeat, and it takes a while to get it back up to speed if you don't have PB on tap. As such, it often requires a good deal of creativity and intimate knowledge of the fight and its mechanics to ensure this stays up and running. This includes when to go ahead and pop PB for your damage boost and when to hold it back a while longer because you're going to need it again to rebuild your stacks.

As far as I am aware, and please correct me if I'm wrong - failing a Jutsu is in no way as damaging to your DPS as loosing GL. Even though you're probably greatly more likely to screw up a Jutsu than you are to lose GL.

That, and for some reason, people seem to have the hardest time in the universe remembering positional attacks. No idea why. It's only one of two positions and it's not like they ever change.

I will not say one is inherently harder than the other because I have no working knowledge of NIN - and I don't necessarily like to jump to too many sweeping conclusions based on theory alone. However, on paper, NIN looks harder to work than MNK due to a lot of snap decisions on the Mudra side that need to be made.

[Casper]

Discussion

Admittedly, no, you can't lose as much as GL, since GL is a loss of both damage % and skill speed. However, should you fail a huton (either doing a bunny due to double tapping, getting a lag without noticing, or using a raiton thinking huton was only next, for example), your GCD goes from 2.15 sec to 2.5 sec, and this for a whole 20 seconds. At this point it is probably at least half as damaging as a mnk losing GL3 without PB up, and probably higher than this. Also, if you take too much time before hitting your jutsu, you will need to skip the raiton in the rotation -- a loss of a 360 potency off GCD attack, so about 15 dps lost for the whole minute. Lastly, if you use trick attack just before a phase switch / jump / mechanics where all people have their dps fall somehow, you wasted quite a bit of potential dps too, and you would have been better off using raiton and saving trick attack for 20 seconds later ; this require intimate knowledge of the fight too.

Not saying nin risk anything as bad as losing GL3 though, and that's why i think it is fair for mnk to be slightly above ninjas. But nin gameplay is made of pitfalls too and some of them can really cripple you if you don't pay attention. During progression on FCOB fight, it was frequent for me to hit 500 dps during the first phases of the boss that i knew in and out, and to drop to 400 at the end of the fight, meaning the last phase i was at 350 max, down from 500, just because i had to focus much more on mechanics of the fight and my rotation got sloppy as hell.

[Levis]

Snip

NIN is pretty simple, considering we have no positional requirements other than Dancing Edge. As for Mudra it can dramatically lower our DPS if we mess up. We need to keep up Huton 100% as this is a huge portion of our damage. For example if we mess up Huton you either have to wait the 20 second CD for Mudras to return or you could cast Kassatsu to get it back up, but then your still hurting your burst damage instead of using it for Raiton. Just as the OP says managing the Jutsu correctly can make up for not having positional requirements.


http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...II-Q-A-Updates
In this letter Bayhone explains their reasoning for nerfing NIN.
Q3: Ninja is able to silence, stun, and I feel like their DPS output is a bit too high. Do you have any plans to make adjustments to they are balanced with other jobs?

A3: With the mudra combinations, ninja is a job where it’s tricky to deal damage, and we’ve set their DPS to be somewhat higher than other jobs. However, players have really been pushing ninja to the limit, and while it’s only by a slight percentage, DPS is being output a bit higher than anticipated. Due to this, in order to make their DPS output similar to other jobs, we will be making adjustments to DPS and the TP costs of certain actions, while ensuring that the current rotation is not destroyed.

I think the "braindead" vs "rocket science" argument could be more focused on which job is easier to pick up and learn. My opinion is that both jobs are pretty easy to understand and play with monk maybe just taking more practice to get the muscle memory down for positional requirements

[Casper]

Snip

The thing i don't understand in this QA is that they say that they planned for nin to be top dps, but they did not expect it to be on this level. Point is, currently, nin is NOT top dps, mnk is -- i think that beyond all arguments, everyone pretty much agrees on that, even if it is only slightly. So i am pretty confused by the whole justification. If it was up to me, i would keep things as they are -- i think both jobs are similarly complex and close to be as rewarding as each others, and i would just wish drg was on par so we could have real choices to make regarding optimal setup. I fear that with the nerfs we will just switch from one obvious optimal setup to another, and miss an opportunity for non-obvious choices.

[OmniKLD]

Monk is top dps in situational fights not straight out top DD. You put a equal geared mnk n nin in a t8 fght mnk would definitely out dd nin but lets say a dungeon or levi or most content nin would out dd simply because its impossible to keep gl3 up

[MrCookTM]

Monk is top dps in situational fights not straight out top DD. You put a equal geared mnk n nin in a t8 fght mnk would definitely out dd nin but lets say a dungeon or levi or most content nin would out dd simply because its impossible to keep gl3 up

This is correct, but classes should be balanced after the current top tier content, because a) it is the only content with dps checks that 10% more or less dps would make any difference and b) with the next content update and new gear, level cap, skills, etc., the balance will change completely anyway. That being said, the current top tier content - final coil - is high uptime fights all the way, so an equally geared and skilled monk should out-dps a nin in every encounter that does not have any deaths.

[Levis]

Snip

I agree I should have stated that I do no agree with their justification of the nerf. I do not mind so much the TP increase (depending on how severe it turns out to be) but the lowering of the damage is what concerns me a little bit. Obviously we can only speculate at this point until it happens and we can go test it and see the difference ourselves.

However I agree MNK still pulls ahead in the long fights, but NIN is not to far behind. I think the better option would have been to leave NIN as is and continue with the DRG buff they have planned.

[Sequora]

Q3: Ninja is able to silence, stun, and I feel like their DPS output is a bit too high. Do you have any plans to make adjustments to they are balanced with other jobs?

A3: With the mudra combinations, ninja is a job where it’s tricky to deal damage, and we’ve set their DPS to be somewhat higher than other jobs. However, players have really been pushing ninja to the limit, and while it’s only by a slight percentage, DPS is being output a bit higher than anticipated. Due to this, in order to make their DPS output similar to other jobs, we will be making adjustments to DPS and the TP costs of certain actions, while ensuring that the current rotation is not destroyed.

It bothers me that NIN was designed to be higher DPS then "other jobs" along with having high utility because the devs think that the job is a little more complex then other jobs. I've never really liked melee classes. This has nothing to do with complexity. I just prefer spellcasters.