Highest DPS vs most fun

[AskaRay]

What has most dps? Probably well-played BLM or MNK

What's my fav? Bard of course. And yes, I can beat BLM who aren't at the top of their game with their rotation.
Personally I don't particularly like MNK at all, even if it pulls the highest melee deeps, I just. Can't. I hate it. I love my BRD though. Getting to run around while firing, playing songs for my mates, it's great. Also I hate being up-close so getting to be as far away as possible is great for me.

[Altijacek]

Monk is arguably highest DPS but this is just for single target and achieving that DPS is usually fairly difficult. They can dish out insane damage but usually the party has to accommodate things for you. But damn, monk is so much fun.

[RissotoMissoto]

Spoiler alert - this is going to come off as kind of elitist

Highest DPS only matters if you actually play your job well - A poorly played monk is going to do low DPS no matter how "optimal" it may be as a DPS option.
Further more, the optimal is based to an extent on the content you are doing - I pull higher numbers on summoner in T13 than our black mage usually does because of double-DoTing and other stuff, but I get spanked in T10.

Pick a Job or Jobs that you enjoy playing and don't worry about being optimal - Unless you are playing with a team of server-first clear seekers for high end raiding, the meta doesn't apply to you. I've done WoD runs with mnks pulling 101 dps (How I don't know but they pulled it off) and people coming in on Arcanist without a pet summoned (52 dps...) and guess what? we still cleared, got drops, and despite my complete and utter confusion, everyone else seemed to have fun.

All jobs with gear can meet the minimum DPS requirements for final coil at the moment. Again - it only matters if you're trying to bum-rush the content week 1, and if you are at the moment only level 32, i doubt you will be pouring hundreds of millions of gil into over melding crafted gear to be the first on your server to clear alexander any time in the immediate future.

Just enjoy the game

[Spoekes]

Spoiler alert - this is going to come off as kind of elitist

Highest DPS only matters if you actually play your job well - A poorly played monk is going to do low DPS no matter how "optimal" it may be as a DPS option.
Further more, the optimal is based to an extent on the content you are doing - I pull higher numbers on summoner in T13 than our black mage usually does because of double-DoTing and other stuff, but I get spanked in T10.

Pick a Job or Jobs that you enjoy playing and don't worry about being optimal - Unless you are playing with a team of server-first clear seekers for high end raiding, the meta doesn't apply to you. I've done WoD runs with mnks pulling 101 dps (How I don't know but they pulled it off) and people coming in on Arcanist without a pet summoned (52 dps...) and guess what? we still cleared, got drops, and despite my complete and utter confusion, everyone else seemed to have fun.

All jobs with gear can meet the minimum DPS requirements for final coil at the moment. Again - it only matters if you're trying to bum-rush the content week 1, and if you are at the moment only level 32, i doubt you will be pouring hundreds of millions of gil into over melding crafted gear to be the first on your server to clear alexander any time in the immediate future.

Just enjoy the game

TL;DR - Classes are mostly balanced and it depends on playerskill

nothing elitist in saying that

[ErzaScarlet77]

It goes NIN >DRG >MNK then the casters then brd assuming everyone is decent at their job

[Craiger]

It goes NIN >DRG >MNK then the casters then brd assuming everyone is decent at their job

Doesn't really matter for this thread, but it's actually MNK > NIN > DRG > BLM > SMN > BRD

If you're basing it on dummy parses, it's not fair, because while NIN and DRGs DPS is really high on a short parse, it will slowly go down throughout the fight, MNKs is fairly low early in the fight and then increase and stay high throughout it. So in a long fight, MNK will come out on top, which is what matters, because raid fights are long.

But like have been said, it comes down to skill

[CGMidlander]

Doesn't really matter for this thread, but it's actually MNK > NIN > DRG > BLM > SMN > BRD

If you're basing it on dummy parses, it's not fair, because while NIN and DRGs DPS is really high on a short parse, it will slowly go down throughout the fight, MNKs is fairly low early in the fight and then increase and stay high throughout it. So in a long fight, MNK will come out on top, which is what matters, because raid fights are long.

But like have been said, it comes down to skill

Monk's damage advantage is debatable.
They aren't actually top on anything on DnT's leaderboard and Lucrezia's recent T10 speedrun had the Ninja outdamaging the Monk by a fair bit.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets...#gid=722665224
https://twitter.com/Darkwis00/status/588015938542370817

[ErzaScarlet77]

No job beats MNK in fun factor tho

[SpookyGhost]

T10 SRs aren't really the best places to judge DPS since they're basically built on cheesing AOE.

That said, NIN > DRG/MNK.

NIN contributes more overall party damage and does roughly the same DPS as MNK, if not slightly higher. All without having positionals. Weeee.

DRG also does fantastic DPS, but is behind MNK - it makes up for this by increasing the BRDs DPS. The problem with this is that the BRD needs to be exceptional or at least good to warrant DRG over MNK in terms of DPS.

MNK buffs Ifrit's DPS and provides an all-important INT down which is pretty much a god-send for progression (also the only useful Mantra). The INT down allows for the healer to potentially DPS more, depending on how the fight works and all that stuff. MNK's major downside is that it falls flat in fights where it consistently loses GL3, whereas DRG/NIN don't have that problem.

That saaaaaaaid the only real point besides speedruns to have min/max DPS is for progression. You will, 9 times out of 10, want a MNK for DK and Mantra over NIN/DRG for their pure DPS output. You can basically play any of the 3 and be fine, but MNK receives a huge boon in progression content due to their utility.

[Zaft]

Monk's damage advantage is debatable.
They aren't actually top on anything on DnT's leaderboard and Lucrezia's recent T10 speedrun had the Ninja outdamaging the Monk by a fair bit.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets...#gid=722665224
https://twitter.com/Darkwis00/status/588015938542370817

NIN essentially has the DPS of MNK without the worry of positionals or GL stacks falling off. On a target dummy, they will end up very close to each other.