Fastest and most engaging class

[Raiden_Ki]

Hi guys,

I'm here to ask/discuss which class is the absolute fastest and most engaging to play at high skill levels.
Some points that come to mind to answer this question is:

Attack/skill/spell speed
Procs
oGCDs
Movement (positioning)

I am guessing the outcome will be NIN/MCH. Looking forward to your thoughts on this.

PS. We are not just talking about burst or openers but the global scope of the class.

[MauvaisOeil]

Procs are pretty poor in this game, most of the time everything turns out to be damn predictable, I can't say why SE made this design choice.

[Xau]

to me the most engaging job is bard, meanwhile the faster one ninja followed by monk(because of riddle of fire slow down)

[Daws]

to me the most engaging job is bard, meanwhile the faster one ninja followed by monk(because of riddle of fire slow down)

Bard you say? I was thinking of making a MCH, want something ranged, but there so much negative chatter about MCHs that I may try bard first.

[Idolon]

NIN and BRD both have lots of oGCDs to use all the time. BRD often needs to double weave oGCDs, while NIN's speed buff keeps them similarly active.

MCH used to fit what you want, but I'm not sure it does now. It lost a lot of its oGCDs with 4.0, and the change to heat generation in 4.05 means you have much less to think about between Wildfires. After 4.06, it now has a massive 10 second burst of activity followed by 50 seconds with jack all to do, and the one minute cycle happens about the same way every time. With the current rate of heat generation, you don't want to stack skill speed to make it more active because then you're more likely to need to use Cooldown once followed by 2 ticks of Flamethrower to overheat instead of one, which delays your next GCD and negates some or all of that extra speed.

[dday3six]

I'd look into MNK as well. Most of the GCDs have positionals, so there's a lot of movement involved, and it's got a solid suite of oGCDs to rotate through.

I NIN mained it for long time after realease, and while it might be what you're looking for mechanically. I find that while the moves of NIN are very aesthetically appealing. When weaving, imo, they tend to not flow as well as say SAM, MNK, or BRD's animations do.

[ThirdChild_ZKI]

Skill Speed always was, and continues to be a terrible stat for MCH.

[Kwoon]

Skill Speed in general has always been a pretty poor stat. Typically, once we get all the mathcrafting out of the way, it tends to be -hit EXACTLY x or y and forget it- which is usually more about fitting buffs/dots around a rotation or something like fitting another RA proc chance for Bard. That said OP, if you're looking for engaging your best bet is going to be relying on procs or positionals.

Monk- Lots of positionals, so fairly high movement to keep you active and engaged.
Bard- TONS OF PROCS! Especially if you stack that crit, which you should be doing anyway. The Opener has you wishing macros didn't suck because there are too many buttons to push and continues to keep you busy as the fight goes on since the majority of the time, you're upkeeping your crit buff, your dots and managing crit procs in the form of RA, Rep, and Bloodletter.
Dragoon- Haven't played mine in SB, but if its similar to how it was, there's enough positionals to keep you engaged and two of them are randomish (in the form of which one you get.)

Personally, I play Bard and find it very engaging. Doesn't hurt that you have a lot of support to offer and can tailor your rotation to fit the needs of the party for that particular fight (such as holding onto Foe's+Refresh for a little bit to line up with healer MP needs.) My crit is in the 2100-2200 range before food/buffs come into play so the crits on DoTs happen often, keeping me busy. Its also very fun in dungeons when you can use an enmity cutter and steal rip aggro from a tank due to how much damage you're putting out thanks to procs.

[ZhaneX]

Dragoon- Haven't played mine in SB, but if its similar to how it was, there's enough positionals to keep you engaged and two of them are randomish (in the form of which one you get.)

They removed the randomness, tying each of the positionals to one of the combos, and also making it so that now you follow one up with the other.

Anyway, I'll echo what others have said about Bard.
Machinist is misery itself by comparison.

[Kwoon]

That's a little disappointing... I know they had a lot ripped off already so losing the randomness is a tad overkill. I guess they got that support thing going still though.. so there's that.