A question about meeles

[Elvin]

And yet, you want monsters to live longer so they can pad your DPS. I read the post. It's not a melee's job to pad your damage. It's a DPS' job to kill the hurty things.

No. I want all the mobs to die faster. But all of them, no one of them.

If we put it simple, assuming that all the actions take 1 second and they have an exact damage output:

If there is 10 mobs with 100 HP each, a SMN doing 10 AoE damage and a DRG doing 20 single target damage, we have this situation:

SMN will kill everything in 10 seconds, alone.

If DRG focus 1 mob, and them other, and them other:

1º mob will die in 4 seconds (20+10+20+10+20+10+20+10)

2º mob will die in another 2 seconds (10*4+10+20+10+20)

3º mob will die in another 2 seconds (20*6+10+20+10+20)

4º mob will die in another second (20*8 +10+20)


There you have, 9 seconds till now. Next second the other 6 mobs will die. All in 10 seconds. The same performance that the SMN alone would have.

So, the meele would be doing nothing usefull.

Of course this is not a real situation, skills take more time, and all that, but what happends is exactly the same.

The problem is not that they are reducing the damage of the BLM/SMN/Healer , the problem is that they are not doing anything useful to the party.

[Krylo]

If a melee isn't aoeing anyway, it's not really slowing things down if they finish off a mob rather than constantly switching to higher hp mobs. Say there are 6 mobs, and you're spamming fire2/flare... Then the monk goes and finishes one instead of switching to one of the higher hp mobs. Then you're hitting 5 mobs with fire2/flare, so your dps drops, but you're still hitting those mobs individually for the same amount of damage, and so is the melee.

Well this isn't really true.

Going to make up numbers here because I'm too lazy to go shoot things and see what the number should be (and also multiples of ten are easier), but:

Lets say you're fighting five enemies with 10,000 health each. This means the encounter has 50,000 health.

If the BLM is doing 1000 damage per GCD spread across five enemies (so 200 to each), and the melee is doing 500 per GCD against one enemy. If the melee continually swaps to highest damage target the BLM continues doing that much damage each GCD, and the mob dies in 34 GCDs total.

If, however, the melee burns one enemy down, that means that in 15 GCDs, the BLM's DPS drops to 800 as the melee finishes one off there, and every enemy the melee wasn't attacking still has 7000 hp left. In ten more GCD, the BLM's DPS drops to 600, we're at 25 GCDs total now. The remaining mobs still have 5000 hp left. Another 8 GCDs kills another mob and drops the BLMs DPS to 400, and puts us at 37 GCDs with two mobs remaining, each with 400 hp left. It's over in one or two more GCDs, bringing us to 39 GCDs total.

Which is five more GCD or 15 more seconds.

Further, the total Damge per GCD of all DPS involved averages out to 1500 in the case of target swapping. Without target swapping you get ~1200.

In actuality the numbers are much larger, as is the discrepancy and so is the time gap created.

But really, how much of a difference it makes doesn't matter. It makes one, so it's silly to say it doesn't.

Also: To top it all off, you might note that the BLM is doing 200 damage to each target in that example, and the last two mobs have 400 hp left. And it's still going to take two GCDs to kill them both. I.E. the last mob is dying purely from AoE damage and the melee has contributed nothing toward clearing the fight quicker.

[Morzy]

Rockbreaker is really good and should be used with 2+ mobs in dungeons. And Elixir Field is hawt. It has nothing spammable without Perfect Balance, but I have run into like one monk in the past month that used Rockbreaker.

Amg i use rockbreaker all the time, the crits alone are worth it. If i can or the pull is real big ill pop pb tok and go nuts and probably pull hate. I dont usually have a purificationready though so that suck sometimes. Why not aoe to add to elixir field and howling.

[Aethaeryn]

snip

I get your line of thinking here, but... Having trouble thinking of how to word this because it's 4am. I'll try to make this understandable.

Using your example, if you're spamming fire2 for 200 damage each on 5x10,000 hp mobs... with 5 mobs up, you're doing 2% of the overall 50k damage per GCD. If one mob dies, you're still doing 200 damage on each of the now 4x10,000 hp mobs. 2% of their combined health per GCD. Your DPS drops, but those 4 mobs still lose hp at the same rate they did before. There shouldn't be any time difference in the overall encounter, assuming that the blm only casts that one spell and ignoring AF/UI etc. I am way too tired for math right now.

Basically, I'm just saying there's no reason for the melee to switch targets unless the aoe the blm is casting at that moment will finish off the mob he's on. It serves no purpose other than to pad DPS for the BLM. People like seeing their big numbers on certain illegal third party programs, though, so whatever's clever.

Late ninja edit: Also changes when you get down to two mobs and the BLM switches to the single target rotation (+flare at the end as long as it's 2 mobs...? Is that how's done now? I quit blm shortly after 3.0).

[Zomy]

It's really an issue of TP, spamming Death Blossom as Ninja with Invigorate I will run out of TP in about 30 seconds. That's fine if the pull dies in that amount of time but depending on skill of your co-dps that might not happen. On top of running out of TP you will most likely start the next pull below max TP and not have Invigorate up meaning you will run out much faster, and trying to dps without TP is like watching paint dry.

[Krylo]

snip

If the melee not switching targets then, basically, the melee might as well not be there, is my point. If the melee is focus targeting the BLM will finish the fight at the same time even if the melee isn't there at all. If the melee swaps targets, the entire fight ends a few GCDs earlier because now the melee is actually contributing.

I don't know how to make that clearer than the two examples above from both myself and Elvin (Elvin's was put in while I was making my post or I'd have not bothered).

[Aethaeryn]

I guess, but my whole point was about whether it speeds up the encounter or not. Obviously your overall damage and DPS will be higher with more mobs there, but it doesn't matter. I aoe on my melee as much as is viable anyway (my alt is monk main, and I'm gearing dragoon on this character now), and I switch targets so that I can eek out a bit more damage because big numbers are fun. But it's still not worth getting upset over a melee that finishes off one mob in a giant pull.

Edit again: That's also assuming the melee doesn't use any of his aoe skills at all - like ogcd stuff (geirskogul, elixir field, howling fist, katon, doton). That'd just be a really bad player if they're focusing one mob down and not even using any of those skills. And it's also assuming the BLM stays aoe rotation throughout the entire encounter, which shouldn't be done with 2 mobs left.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

Depending on the amount of mobs pulled, I generally find single targeting for MNK/DRG results in better overall damage long term, primarily due to the speed of their rotations. Rapid targeting between a select few mobs, then peeling off when their HP is low enough just seems more efficient, especially TP wise. Hate also becomes an issue, as I often find I start stealing it if I AoE spam for too long. If it's a massive, half-room pull though, I'll switch.

That said, it's painfully boring after a few minutes. So I'm far less inclined to spam them just to shave off a little extra time in a dungeon.

[Aethaeryn]

Depending on the amount of mobs pulled, I generally find single targeting for MNK/DRG results in better overall damage long term, primarily due to the speed of their rotations. Rapid targeting between a select few mobs, then peeling off when their HP is low enough just seems more efficient, especially TP wise. I can't speak for other jobs has I haven't played them. If it's a massive, half-room pull though, I'll switch to AoEs.

It's also painfully boring after a few minutes. So I'm far less inclined to spam them just to shave off a little extra time in a dungeon.

TP management is important, yeah. If it's just three mobs or something, I don't really care if the DRG isn't spamming Doom Spike. You can't really call monk aoe painfully boring, though... Replacing snap punch with rockbreaker isn't even a playstyle change. If TP isn't an issue, there's no reason not to use it really. If there's two mobs, you can keep demolish up too, but at three mobs you're already 40 potency higher using rockbreaker on that GCD every time.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

TP management is important, yeah. If it's just three mobs or something, I don't really care if the DRG isn't spamming Doom Spike. You can't really call monk aoe painfully boring, though... Replacing snap punch with rockbreaker isn't even a playstyle change. If TP isn't an issue, there's no reason not to use it really. If there's two mobs, you can keep demolish up too, but at three mobs you're already 40 potency higher using rockbreaker on that GCD every time.

Aye. Shoulder have clarified the boring part is more for dragoons. I think leveling lancer scarred me after so many Impulse Drives in the early goings, xD