How does Monk and Dragoon compare in difficulty and playstyle ?

[Quyn]

Monk is hell of a lot of fun. It's stressful, maybe, but it's so much AWESOME.

Would you mind elaborating why you feel that way ?

[Altijacek]

Would you mind elaborating why you feel that way ?

Monk and warrior are my favorite to play, mainly for the idea of the class than anything else. I can elaborate on warrior some other time. As for monk, well I am a martial artist in real life. And I think the essence of non-stop fast paced fighting is on point. In taekwondo, for example, it's burst burst burst burst breathe and prepare for counter and burst burst burst, etc (same for boxing). I feel like monk is just that. You gain momentum and do your best to maintain it and once you start you can't stop until a mechanic comes into play (breathing time). And even then you're looking for an opening to strike (in this case, a target to hit to keep up greased lightning). Because it's fast paced and you have to sometimes decide what ability to choose (there is NOT A MONK ROTATION) it can be stressful. But hot damn is it a fun and breathtaking experience.

[Dunncan]

Your first post has pretty anything you have to decide. Choose from hard OGCD management and Position+Uptime management, and way to go. You need to take care with this type of thread cause ppl usualy feels that their Jobs is somehow "better" if its harder to play, so sooner or later this kind of thread becomes something like "My job is harder and better than yours".

I would only add two infos here about my experience as DRG. First, is the Jump management. It's frustrating how you need to use it to max your dps, and sometimes it'll just kill you. Like t11 (specially add phase), t13 (Megaflares), some primals, etc. This is the only thing I actually feels "hard" as Drg, as you need to know each second of the fight to predict mechanics and even those sometimes vary depending of the party DPS and the relation with the boss mechanics triggers. The rest is muscle memory like any Job.

And to your other question:

"Which one is more demanding than the other?"

As the 2 classes DPS is somehow close (won't go in this merit), MNK has the valuable Dragon Kick wich is highly demanded in early contents, while DRG "only" buffs Bard DPS.

[Quyn]

Choose from hard OGCD management and Position+Uptime management, and way to go.

I looked at all the Dragoon OGCD Skills, and they all share 60 to 120 secs cooldowns. (except leg sweep?)

Why is that a challenge to manage, when really, they have such long cooldowns, you could potentially macro alot of them together for when you want to push your burst dps ?

It doesnt sound that hard.


what am i missing here ?

[Dunncan]

I looked at all the Dragoon OGCD Skills, and they all share 60 to 120 secs cooldowns. (except leg sweep?)

Why is that a challenge to manage, when really, they have such long cooldowns, you could potentially macro alot of them together for when you want to push your burst dps ?

It doesnt sound that hard.


what am i missing here ?

The problem is not how they align, but the small window you have to use they (and therefor mistake some). For example, on the burst, you have to put 17 buttons in an 20s window. It may look enough time, but when you add latency (DAMN latency), moving to positional, avoiding AoE (otherwise your Jump lock animation kills you), etc, etc, it becomes a bit tricky. Of course that, as of any Job, it gets easier the more you play with the class.

Macro doesn't work well for Dragoons because the CD have some align between them, but won't always come together with some skill. And sometimes, you'll even want to delay it, depending of the encounter mechanics. It's not a hard Job to play with, it's actually fun. But when you try to push every single dps you can, it starts to get dificult to correctly manage your CDs trought the encounter, and it's frustrating when you miss that 1 or 2 OffGCD and notice a large dps loss because of it.

Also, you need to rework all your rotation when you have disconects, in a way to minimize the DPS loss. It's not simple as "start from the begining", it's very situational.

You can take a look HERE and see more of Dragoons, but what I can tell you is that you really should level up both Jobs, at least until the point where you say "Nah, it sux". For me, it was on Pugilist lvl.10 (lol), or Black Mage as soon as I got the job. I knew I could change my mind in the future, but I also knew that Goons looked like more fun since the begining, so I choose my Job.

And just for the record, most Dragoons level up MNK until lv. 46 (?) to get Mantra as cross skill, so it would not be a waste, if you, don't know, start leveling a MNK and decide to go for DRG.

[Tex_Mex]

I looked at all the Dragoon OGCD Skills, and they all share 60 to 120 secs cooldowns. (except leg sweep?)

Why is that a challenge to manage, when really, they have such long cooldowns, you could potentially macro alot of them together for when you want to push your burst dps ?

It doesnt sound that hard.


what am i missing here ?

So I don't think you looked at the CD's too well. Your 2 biggest DPS cooldowns (life surge and blood for blood are on 50 and 80 second CD's respectively)

Blood for Blood - 80 seconds
Internal Release - 60 seconds
Jump - 30 seconds
Power Surge - 60 seconds
Leg Sweep - 20 seconds
Life Surge - 50 seconds
Dragonfire Dive - 120 seconds
Spineshatter Dive - 60 seconds

As far as rotations - I will put them below:
MNK Rotation: (18 moves, 2 basic combos, adding in Touch of Death every 30 sec)
Dragon Kick -> Twin Snakes -> Demolish
Boot Shine -> True Strike -> Snap Punch
Dragon Kick -> Twin Snakes -> Snap Punch
Boot Shine -> True Strike -> Demolish
Dragon Kick -> Twin Snakes -> Snap Punch
Boot Shine -> Twin Snakes -> Snap Punch

DRG Rotation: (24 moves, 2 basic combos)
Heavy Thrust -> Impulse Drive -> Disembowel -> Chaos Thrust
Phlebotomize -> True Thrust -> Vorpal Thrust -> Full Thrust
Heavy Thrust -> True Thrust -> Vorpal Thrust -> Full Thrust
Phlebotomize -> Impulse Drive -> Disembowel -> Chaos Thrust
Heavy Thrust -> True Thrust -> Vorpal Thrust -> Full Thrust
Phlebotomize -> True Thrust -> Vorpal Thrust -> Full Thrust

The rotations are both very easy, with the MNK rotation being a little easier.

As far as DPS, MNK has significantly higher ST DPS than DRG. If that is all you care about, then go MNK

[Quyn]

snip[/B]

ah, once you add in the OGCD skills, dragoon seems busier.

[Esperacchius]

ah, once you add in the OGCD skills, dragoon seems busier.

Kinda but not really!

Take note of the skill delay on the weapons here and here.

This means that Monks have nearly a half second quicker GCD than Dragoons before any GL stacks or skill speed is taken into account. The only difficult thing to manage with dragoons is the animation lock on jumps. That shit will get you killed.

Don't listen to people that complain about Monk difficulty because of positional requirements. Once you get used to melee hitting positionals is second nature. You'll never have to think about it. If you're standing in the right spot it's literally one step to the left or right.

[Tex_Mex]

From a utility standpoint, Monk is much better than Dragoon. Dragon Kick is so good in FCoB that Monk is usually regarded as the best melee DPS for FCoB . Dragoon really only shines when there is a Bard in the party. Otherwise, groups are better off with a Ninja. Fortunately for Dragoon though, Bards are pretty close to required for FCoB so they still can do well.

My static runs: MNK, DRG, BLM, BRD, which is very common these days. Subbing out the DRG for a NIN is also very common due to NIN being more well rounded on the utility front.

[Tex_Mex]

duplicate post