DPS Poll

[Nezkeys79]

1)MOST FUN
a) 1-30
b) 30-50
c) 50-59
d) 60

2)EASIEST TO MASTER
a) 1-30
b) 30-50
c) 50-59
d) 60

3) HARDEST TO MASTER
a) 1-30
b) 30-50
c) 50-59
d) 60

4)HIGHEST DPS
a) 1-30
b) 30-50
c) 50-59
d) 60

[Jim_Berry]

Going to comment from my personal experiences at level 60.

MOST FUN:
Neither are fun. All DPS are stressful because if you slip up, your damage dips, and people point fingers.

EASIEST TO MASTER:
BRD would be easier to master. I'm not noticing any true rotations; just priorities on CDs and Heavy Shot, Iron Jaws, and Empyreal Arrow spams.

HARDEST TO MASTER:
While not Level 60, I'd give this award to MNK, from what I see. Not sure what it means, but they need to stress positionals for dps and keep Greased Lightning up.

HIGHEST DPS:
As a NIN main, I lost 100% of the time to DRG, BLM, SMN, and MNK. In many groups, I find an average of DRG > MNK > SMN > BLM having high dps.

[CGMidlander]

1)MOST FUN
a) 1-30 Archer
b) 30-50 Black Mage
c) 50-59 Monk
d) 60 Monk

2)EASIEST TO MASTER
a) 1-30 Thaumaturge
b) 30-50 Black Mage
c) 50-59 Monk
d) 60 Monk

3) HARDEST TO MASTER
a) 1-30 Archer
b) 30-50 Machinist
c) 50-59 Machinist
d) 60 Machinist

4)HIGHEST DPS
This really depends on the scenario

My opinions in bold

[AskaRay]

1)MOST FUN
a) 1-30 ARC
b) 30-50 BLM (as of HW, before it was BRD ofc)
c) 50-59 NIN
d) 60 BRD

2)EASIEST TO MASTER
a) 1-30 ARC
b) 30-50 BRD
c) 50-59 BLM
d) 60 BLM

3) HARDEST TO MASTER
a) 1-30 none of them at this level haha
b) 30-50
c) 50-59 MCH
d) 60 MCH

4)HIGHEST DPS
a) 1-30 who cares
b) 30-50 who cares
c) 50-59 who cares
d) 60 depends

Your quiz was sort of weird
Not a lot of these matter at levels below max. Like, who cares if it's "hard to master" at level 30? You have barely mastered anything at that point.

Also I think there is a master vs picking up. BRD is easy to pick up and be decent but it's sort of hard to "master".

[JackFross]

1)MOST FUN
Dragoon

2)EASIEST TO MASTER
Monk

3) HARDEST TO MASTER
Black Mage

4)HIGHEST DPS
Depends
Assuming every Job with optimal circumstances:
BLM wins.


That said, this is a really peculiar questionnaire. I ignored everything sub-60. First one is obviously just my own preference. The mastering questions are weird without a similar question about skill floors.

Like, I define difficulty of "mastering" a Job how much additional effort you need once you reach what I call the Skill Floor. The Skill Floor is the point at which you're playing the Job correctly. Examples:
DRG: H>IDC4>P>TTT4>repeat with 3 gsk per minute.
BLM: 30s -> 25s -> 20s Eno rotations and then refresh.

Beyond this, there's micro-optimizations like holding procs for movement or 2 gsk per B4B and etc. The amount of these and difficulty of them determine how hard a Job is to master.

I say Monk is easiest, because its skill floor is insanely high. It's the hardest Job to pick up and play properly, because of the nuance of how the rotation works, with snap-snap-demo, rather than snap-demo coupled an awkward 30s dot and every hit besides ToD having a positional requirement. Once you're nailing positionals and doing ToD properly, you're actually at the floor for the Job. And going from there to mastery is a short walk based on opener and cooldown management.

Black Mage, conversely, I say is the hardest. Enochian is honestly very easy to do correctly. You can ignore procs and just use Enochian and be just fine, playing the Job totally fine. Mixing in procs and moving properly while maintaining dps, though, is incredibly difficult and takes a LOT of practice and finesse beyond the simplicity of the basic rotation.

I do think, though, that Bard and Machinist have the lowest skill floor. They're both pretty basic and don't require much aside from dot upkeep to be playing the Job properly.

I don't think any Job is quite as high of a floor as Monk, aside from /maybe/ Ninja, since those mudras are tough to manage properly.

[SecretCrowds]

Most fun DPS: WHM

Easiest DPS to master: WHM

Hardest DPS to master: WHM cleric stance dancing with a bad tank

Highest DPS: WHM in aoe (Foe requiem please!)

[winsock]

1)MOST FUN
MNK

2)EASIEST TO MASTER
BRD

3) HARDEST TO MASTER
SMN

4)HIGHEST DPS
Single target MNK
AoE SMN

[Nezkeys79]

Your quiz was sort of weird
Not a lot of these matter at levels below max. Like, who cares if it's "hard to master" at level 30? You have barely mastered anything at that point.

Also I think there is a master vs picking up. BRD is easy to pick up and be decent but it's sort of hard to "master".

Because it saves me time in figuring out what job I may want to spend all my time levelling. If it's boring, or really hard to master then that might sway my choice

[Nezkeys79]

My opinions in bold

Thanks for the reply! this is gonna help me a lot in figuring out what dps job to start with

[Scarnox]

I know I only just started FFXIV a week ago - so my view in this specific game is worth nothing. However I've been playing a ton of MMO's (EQ, GW 1/2, DAoC, LineAge, WoW, Aion, Tera, Skyforge - just to name some of them).

The easiest to master and also best class (be it DPS, tank, healer or support) is always the one you like playing the most.
In my experience you're willing to go the extra mile in learning your class if you enjoy playing it.
If you play a "flavor of the week" class, then it seems more like a job to go for numbers and the joy of playing is gone for many players. This make their performance drop and they become tired of the class and/or game.