Ninja vs Samurai vs Monk ?

[Dzian]

I don't know enough about Ninja AOE to say more than "it has a frog now".

Ninja AOE isn't terrible. you can rip things 2 shreds very quickly with death blossom double katon with kassastsu and the hellfrog medium.

Doton I tend not to use because either A. the tank is moving the mobs around far to much. or B. things are dead before doton hits full damage. though if you wanted to you could tcj fuma katon doton and then kassatsu another katon

the other advantage is none of a ninjas aoes scale down on larger pulls unlike samurias.

[Laflama_Blanca]

Ninja is an absolute joy to play in dungeons. Hide and ninki are a godsend for this type of content. Hide allows you to start each pack with a free doton. You can then follow this up with katon, Kassatsu katon, and death blossom for days. Ninki is often usable multiple times on each pull, and TCJ has to be in the running for strongest AOE in the game.

Samurai and monk also have fine AOE so I don't think you'll be disappointed either way, though I would lean towards Sam and Nin outclassing Mnk AOE currently. Sam in particular has more of an AOE rotation which is nice, rather than spamming death blossom as Nin are forced to do between ninjutsus and ninki. But as I said, I'm loving 70 Nin in dungeons... and in general, really. Sam and Nin are both in a very good spot, and Mnk is fine too.

[Kaaisen]

Hey.

It depends on many things. Peoples saying sam sam sam are wrong. Yes samurai is the best dps shown on ACT, but the REAL BEST DPS is by far Ninja if you cumulate his support to the team with TA and his personnal DPS.

On AoE Monk have a good burst but not really good in constant DPS.
Samurai have a super great AoE burst, the best AoE burst in the game, but cost really much PT
Ninja have a good burst, better than monk, he can be better than Sam opn AoE if the fight take much time cause his aoe cost almost nothing.

[Ryaz]

Samurai hands down is the best out of all the DPS classes right now IMO. Has excellent single target DPS and FIVE aoe skills in its rotation so you do massive damage there as well. Overall, it just hits like a truck and its rotation is very simple and easy to manage. As for positionals SAM only have two but if you don't get it right you don't lose any damage. You just don't gain a slight extra amount of Kenki... which is no biggie because its easy to gain.

I wouldn't say losing Kenki is no big deal. It takes 25 Kenki for a 300 potency Shiten. Losing 5 Kenki from positionals means you're losing out on 1/5th of that, so it's equal to a 60 potency loss, which is pretty big.

[Hakuga]

Taking your opening statement into proper consideration, I'm sure you would get more enjoyment from ninja in a purely dungeon setting, given time. Laflama_Blanca is spot on in the assessment regarding the utility of hide with ninjitsu, it just lifts ninja to a whole new level of fun. Feels great getting three rotations of ninjutsu out in a matter of seconds. It has much more diversity in terms of what it brings to the 'fun' table as far as AOE is concerned, and brings a lot of style with it. Double Katon's are always juicy to look at and Death Blossom was given a tasty buff.

Also, too many players forget how huge Trick Attack is and what it brings to group DPS - which many would agree far outweighs the extra few hundred DPS a Samurai can output.

You also will never again struggle with TP on a ninja.

[Arkenne]

Have yet to level MNK and SAM but I have a fair amount of experience MNKing my life away in duns at 60 before SB.
They were pretty good and none of its AoE capabilities got really affected by SB.
2 TP recovery skills, all buffs on rotation, 2 AoE oGCDs, can build up on the run just fine to be at max power once the Tank stops.

SAM I've only used it a bit, but from what I collected its AoE is pretty bursty but quite expensive, just like DRG... not a fan of that :/
The bigger the mob the less efficient the damage, and the TP costs makes for a very short sustain. So yea you can quite burn the one mob, but what if there is another one? You'll be pretty dry... I admit I need to try it myself for it, but it doesn't look that amazing on paper...

NIN is what I have at 70. They were fun before SB for mob making, and they are only better now in SB. For one you have no real reason to wait for the Tank to stop, as you can Shadewalker the blame onto them, you can Katon and Death Blossom away on the run, and even Smoke Bomb invite your DPS companion onto the fun.
Once at the stop yea you can have up to 3 Katons, 1 normal, 1 kassatsu and 1 TCJ, which of course allows for a double damage Doton (or a Suiton for TAing one target). and if things are still alive Froggy is your friend.

[Inosaska]

You're looking for AOE dmg? I would honestly recommend going to play a summoner as they're kings of AoE at the moment and also pretty close to top dps in the game.

[Xehmnus]

I am, personally, excited to get ninja up to 70 and play around with the new abilities. Got it up to 60, finally, and that in itself has been pretty fun for me. I had gotten SAM to 65 so far and while I find it aesthetically pleasing and fun in its own right, I just have that much more fun on ninja. I might level monk eventually too, but the one person I play with the most often mains that so I've been hesitant. :-P