Ninja vs. Dragoon

[Bloody]

Then again, buffing the BRD damage is more significant than buffing Tank damage. So I guess it can go either way.

Have you done the math in your sim between this?
Trick Attack mostly affects the opener, but since it's also a universal damage increase every minute I would put more value in it.

Trick Attack, it is basically effective for only 1/6th of a fight (60 sec recast IIRC) whereas Disembowel can be up potentially 100% of the fight. Which is better for your party basically comes down to simple maths of which increase benefits your party more: 10% boost for all for 10 seconds out of every 60, or is the 10% piercing only buff (or 8% effective buff?) being up 90-100% of the time keeping your overall raid DPS higher, as well as the second question of which buff is keeping your DPS high enough during the critical checks? Sometimes a perma-buff limited on who it is affecting can be stronger than a party-wide short-term boost.

[Allyrion]

Trick Attack, it is basically effective for only 1/6th of a fight (60 sec recast IIRC) whereas Disembowel can be up potentially 100% of the fight. Which is better for your party basically comes down to simple maths of which increase benefits your party more: 10% boost for all for 10 seconds out of every 60, or is the 10% piercing only buff (or 8% effective buff?) being up 90-100% of the time keeping your overall raid DPS higher, as well as the second question of which buff is keeping your DPS high enough during the critical checks? Sometimes a perma-buff limited on who it is affecting can be stronger than a party-wide short-term boost.

Well, those two shouldn't only be compared side to side since the NIN can also bring Dancing Edge.
So can a WAR too, so it depends on who keeps it up.

There's also a possibility that some comps might not have a WAR with 3 tanks.
Slashing debuff only affects tanks, but it's something to take into account in addition to Trick Attack.

This new DRG crit buff probably make DRG favored though.
Unless MCH turns out to not be piercing, at least.

[Zamii]

Importantly, DRG buffs BRDs, and upcoming Machinist (and is the only one to do so), so if you have one or more of them in your party I would consider DRG.

NIN provides an opener burst buff (with trick attack) and also tank damage buff (slashing debuff), which WAR also provide, but at the cost of mitigation/threat/damage.

first off, we dont actually know if machinist will be piercing, im hoping it will be blunt as they seem to have more musket type weapons than they do typical bullets, but we'll see.

second, warriors actually dont lose damage from doing the storms eye combo, they need to maintain maim buff, and its the higher potency finisher to maim between eye and storm.

[Zophar]

first off, we dont actually know if machinist will be piercing, im hoping it will be blunt as they seem to have more musket type weapons than they do typical bullets, but we'll see.

While I guess it's not impossible that they're using potato guns and bean bag launchers, from a purely lore standpoint, the machinists of Ishgard are fighting dragons. The idea that they'd be fighting giant creatures with armored scales with blunt rounds instead of piercing makes, literally, no sense, by any metric, and if they did do it, it would be for literally no other reason than making mnks feel better about themselves.

So, regardless of how you look at it, one additional set will lose you either mitigation or threat, because of the opportunity cost of doing a second maim inside of the maim buff window. You can make the case that you don't need the threat, but the cost is there.

It may seem that way, but honestly, the extra 30% raw damage (20% from maim and 10% from eye) actually fairly well balances out the loss of a butcher block round. And if you can hold hate fine while keeping eye or path up, there is no actual loss. If you can't keep hate and maintain your chosen storm move, you are seriously undergeared. That is not a debate. that is a fact.

[Alahra]

While I guess it's not impossible that they're using potato guns and bean bag launchers, from a purely lore standpoint, the machinists of Ishgard are fighting dragons. The idea that they'd be fighting giant creatures with armored scales with blunt rounds instead of piercing makes, literally, no sense, by any metric, and if they did do it, it would be for literally no other reason than making mnks feel better about themselves.

Many of the MNK weapons in the game would really be more accurately categorized as piercing or slashing. I'm not sure how much they care about matching up damage type with flavor/lore. NIN could have been piercing too, at least for their "stabbers," but they fit into the game better as slashing. I'd wager bludgeoning is more likely for Machinist because there's no class that benefits from Dragon Kick's damage debuff outside of MNK itself. Piercing's possible but stacks the deck in favor of DRG, which they probably don't want.

[Zophar]

stuff

Again though, when it comes to nin, it makes sense, daggers have a duality with them where they can honestly be used in either way. There are a number of reasons why slashing makes sense. If it were just rog, piercing or slashing would make sense, but nin fits in better as a slashing dps. Also, I think it went with slashing less for the fact that there were already 2 piercing dps, as they fact that there were 0 slashing dps.

The mnk weapon thing.... yeah. You're right on that call, and SE has even commented on this in the past, saying they'll try to get back into the blunt aesthetic.

As far as mcn, ignoring resistance decreasers, mnk still has way more utility than drg, and if we're talking about a situation where people are going to be super picky about what jobs they bring, odds are, they are NOT bringing both a brd and a mcn, so basically moot point there. And as I said before, unlike NIN, from a lore, and strategic standpoint, while various forms of blunt ammunition exist, primarily reserved for non lethal suppression, fighting armored opponents with blunt bullets makes, 0 sense. Like, not any sense in the slightest. I would actually go as far as to say, that if they designed mcn to use blunt bullets, it would, in fact, be stupid. And I'm sure the game designers see that too.

[ColdestHeaven]

Many of the MNK weapons in the game would really be more accurately categorized as piercing or slashing. I'm not sure how much they care about matching up damage type with flavor/lore. NIN could have been piercing too, at least for their "stabbers," but they fit into the game better as slashing. I'd wager bludgeoning is more likely for Machinist because there's no class that benefits from Dragon Kick's damage debuff outside of MNK itself. Piercing's possible but stacks the deck in favor of DRG, which they probably don't want.

It's not just a matter of weapon, but how you use that too. You cut and slice most of the time with daggers, regardless of the weapon. Same with the monk.

Bullets? They are made to pierce. While it IS true that bludgeoning is underused, I strongly doubt that MCN is not going to use piercing. MNK has other ways of supporting the party: not buffing the MCN is not something that will make DRG overpowered.

Edit: Zophar beat me to it.

[Jollyy5]

I don't think I've ever been lucky enough to run into a ninja that is similarly geared and is relatively at the same skill level as I, so I can't say which one can deal more damage in an actual fight, but I'll try to help anyway, correct me if I'm wrong.

Support value:

Ninjas: They have Goad, which is great. They also have Trick Attack which makes the target more vulnerable to damage, increasing everyone's DPS for 10 seconds if I recall correctly. They also have slashing resistance debuff to help tanks. Can use Mantra.

Dragoons: Currently have the least support value in the game, as they only have Disembowel to boost their own DPS, as well as that of Bards, but whether or not Machinists deal piercing damage, I don't know. Can also use Mantra.

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[Jollyy5]

Fighting value:

Ninjas: Have high burst and seemingly okay sustained damage, can deal magic damage with Mudras, have increased movement speed and can use Smoke Bomb to move to desired location quickly.

Dragoons: Are supposedly the burst kings, which might still hold water if the Dragoon knows how, but their sustained DPS is a little behind Ninjas, they also have high health pool and highest defence among non tank classes, and since they can cross class from Marauder tree and have access to Foresight and Bloodbath, combined with their Keen Flurry, they are considerably tougher to kill than Ninjas. Dragoons can also move to the target quickly while dealing damage with Dragonfire and Spineshatter Dive, or use Elusive Jump to either close distance or get away while halving their current enmity.

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[Jollyy5]

All in all, Ninjas can provide the group with much more support than a Dragoon while being able to deal good damage, where Dragoons may be able to squeeze out more damage as they won't be punished for disconnects very harshly, and can quickly move from target to target to resume DPSing and burst the enemy's socks off, while being more durable.

Might've missed a lot of stuff, fill accordingly. Sorry for the wall of text and/or misinformation, I tried.