DPS frustration

[Kohdo]

BLM is not a dueling class but has great AOE dps. It's a bitch to use in trials because of the amount of movement required and BLM's long cast times, and this has become more noticeable with the new trials in Stormblood. You can mitigate this somewhat by using skills like Triplecast.

Like Mira said above, Red Mage might be a better fit for you. Faster cast times and less buffs to worry about equals a faster paced play style, but you'll find RDM's AOEs lacking in comparison with BLM.

[BigRed5392]

"No job is easier than another" is innacurate, or at the very least unproveable. my own experience shows I can tank and do decent dps (for a tank) far more easily while holding aggro and not dying. This would indicate tanking is easier. It might not explain the large number of awful tanks however.

tanking is easier for you. May not be easier for another person, while someone else may think blm is the easiest job.

don't mix fact with opinion, its a common mistake.. but too common. :/

like some people think monk is easy, while other think its hard. Its all on opinion and perspective.

Look up "work to game" on youtube, their guides are helpful as well as suggestions with hotbar lay outs fir pc and controler. they helped me a ton, in tightening up my hotbar to make doing my rotations easier to do, to pump out those large deeps :P

[Jijifli]

"No job is easier than another" is innacurate, or at the very least unproveable. my own experience shows I can tank and do decent dps (for a tank) far more easily while holding aggro and not dying. This would indicate tanking is easier. It might not explain the large number of awful tanks however.

Different skill sets for different jobs. A job being difficult is dependent on one's wanted playstyle and capabilities of performing the best actions.

For example, you called BLM rotation complex, but I find it simple, even easier though now that enochian isn't on a long cooldown. At the same time, I play RDM more poorly, despite being better geared than my RDM, making me do less dps. I found RDM complex to me, even though others would say it's simple.

So plug that in here. Is a job that performs lots of damage at the punishment of cast times your preferred style? If not, it might not be for you.

Also, last note, I do more than 3k dps with the level 50 rotation. Is this a gear issue? I haven't read past this, so apologies if it was stated.

[Cold_Raven]

"No job is easier than another" is innacurate, or at the very least unproveable. my own experience shows I can tank and do decent dps (for a tank) far more easily while holding aggro and not dying. This would indicate tanking is easier. It might not explain the large number of awful tanks however.

This doesn't mean tanking is easier.
This means tanking is easier for you.

In order to show that tanking (or, anything) is specifically easier... you would have to show that significantly more people can reach an "elite level" with tanking than they are able to reach an "elite level" with the other classes. (If more people can do it on average... then it would be "easier.")

Is this information available?

I think FFLogs pretty much shows that all jobs can perform at an elite level about as good as any other.
I think they also show a fairly even distribution between the different classes and between "average" and "elite" status in each? But I'm not sure.

Historically, this game has had an incredible level of balance across all jobs.
There's always been a job or two that can be min/maxed to show an increase in value... but that increase is not very significant. It's generally the same kind of "increase" that can be gained by getting lucky with Crits or other random mechanics.

[Zojha]

In order to show that tanking (or, anything) is specifically easier... you would have to show that significantly more people can reach an "elite level" with tanking than they are able to reach an "elite level" with the other classes.

There's several issues with that assumption.
You focus entirely on the skill ceiling and ignore the skill floor and everything in between.
This leads to two big issues.
First, "elite level" is relative. If everyone could perform at an elite level, that level would no longer be elite, but the average. Average is average for a reason. The average performance would simply shift upwards.

Second, it means that even if you could be a functional (i.e. able to clear the content) tank/healer with very little skill and would require tons of skill to be a functional DPS in the same content, you'd still proclaim them equally difficult by your criterion because there's still room to go above and beyond towards the "elite" level.

And then there's a third issue that comes with using FFlogs as reference: By comparing DPS numbers for tanks/healers and DPS, you are technically not looking at the performance of the role for the first two anymore. You already take that for granted and only look at how much you can excel beyond that. That already implicitly assumes that tanking and healing is trivial on its own, whereas DPSing is not. As a matter of fact, if you use DPS as criterion for tank/healer mastery, the difficulty of those roles lies in not overdoing the tanking/healing, which again implies a lack of difficulty in tanking/healing as such. And if that's not the criterion you use, well... I'm not sure how helpful FFlogs is.

By using FFlogs, you are also muddling class mastery with encounter mastery, gear and teamcomp. Believe it or not, people who don't die do more DPS and not dying isn't a matter of whether you can play your job, it's a matter of whether you learned the encounter. The parse of the healer that doesn't need to raise the DPS is going to look a lot more impressive as well.

There's too many issues with that criterion.

[Voltyblast]

Tanking is easy. Healing is not much harder. so WHY does it have to be so difficult to do passable dps in this game?

Because tanks only need 3 buttons to be efficient 99% of the game, healers only need 2 or 3 depending if it's aoe or not (and usually have one dps spell anyway), while dps have triple if not five times the buttons to press, positionals, specific cds and more that healers and tanks usually don't need to care about for most of the game. Talk about fairness, am I right?

With that said, I don't know how much BLM was changed, but don't forget that blm can be tough with certain bosses and if they require moving a lot, you lose dps and sometimes your buffs. But I haven't touched it yet and I'm still unaware of the changes: I can only speak from a former HW BLM

Honestly the best advice I can give is to actually check online for guides, use the SSS or whatever simulator to check your dps (If you're anti-parser that is) and see what gets better and what not. Also try to get into some linkshells or guilds or whatever because DPS are usually the most ignored, since they are so many they are basically "cheap products". Being in more groups will help you find the good rotation.

[Pence]

Because tanks only need 3 buttons to be efficient 99% of the game, healers only need 2 or 3 depending if it's aoe or not (and usually have one dps spell anyway), while dps have triple if not five times the buttons to press, positionals, specific cds and more that healers and tanks usually don't need to care about for most of the game. Talk about fairness, am I right?

Record us a dungeon with you ONLY using 3 buttons as a healer or tank.

We'll be fair, we'll wait.

(This guy has good ideas, listen to him)

[Lilseph]

With that said, I don't know how much BLM was changed, but don't forget that blm can be tough with certain bosses and if they require moving a lot, you lose dps and sometimes your buffs. But I haven't touched it yet and I'm still unaware of the changes: I can only speak from a former HW BLM

Enochian is way easier to maintain now. As long as you don't lose Astral or Umbral, you're golden (any level of either stance). Even transpose can save you from a long downtime. Since you don't have to cast Blizz 4 to refresh Enochian anymore, it now gives 3 stacks of "your next Fire, Fire 2 and Fire 4 spells will consume less MP", with some traits that affect the MP consumption of Flare as well.

I think BLM is easier to use now, since you also have Triple Cast (3 free casts of any spell), allowing you to either fast spam spells or move and cast. The only additional spell is Foul, which procs when you have Enochian up for 30 seconds. Both Thunder 2 and 4 are AoE dots, whereas Thunder 1 and 3 are single target. They replace each other as you level.

[RLofOBFL]

What exactly is your rotation? BLM should be over 4k with even 310 gear. Do you move around a lot for mechanics? You'll want to plant yourself in one spot as much as possible bc every single movement while something is targetable is a dps loss. Are you using Foul every 30 seconds or forgetting and losing one(or more) from saving it? Are you being a bad and taking a hit from an AOE you know you'll live from for that extra damage(ie Susanoo's bubble things/acceleration bombs)?

[Saiah]

You would be better off asking for advice on playing a certain job and people will be alot more willing to assist you. Instead of trying to describe your trouble playing DPS as an injustice.