Best DPS classes?

[BloodRubyXII]

Meh, I'll let you decide based on below. I think Brian Ricardo made a tier list but I don't remember where. TLDR at bottom.

MNK - Way better than before, good burst, good mobility, strong survivability (last expansion melees had almost no defensives and no baseline protection against damage, despite being open 24/7 and SE in their infinite wisdom decided to give them BOTH, so being a ranged now is rough).

Dragoon - AoE cleave monster, really good synergy with Summoner, good mobility (can escape binds and both gap close and jumpback). Consistent damage.
standard now, good luck catching dancers). Looks scary.


Samurai - Just stupid, probably the best melee in 4v4 atm (which is the main mode pvp is balanced for imo). Chiten is extremely strong (50% damage reduction and counters/deflects the next 5 abilities so SAM can just stay super aggressive and you can't really do anything back if they're on you cos you'll just kill yourself even faster) and still has debuffs and gap close/escape on 15 second CD and just unreal burst. If there was a tier list, this would almost definitely be S+

Ninja - Consistent strong damage, only melee DPS with any real CC unless you count Monk's knockback. Has both a silence, a stun and a vuln up. Two "teleports" for gap closing and escaping and bunshi has shadewalker build into it in PvP. Shares a slot with Samurai tho so why bother.

Bard - The worst. I still don't think they're "awful" - but not nearly as good as they were in Stormblood and there is practically no reason to pick one over any other ranged option. Barely any cleave, every range phys has a silence now so the advantage it used to have in blunt arrow (which was the only silence other than Dark Knight's one - which was more expensive, or Paladin's Holy Spirit) doesn't even matter.

Machinist - Lol. Nonstop damage, multiple different paths for bursting (probably more than any other job) which makes them super unpredictable, can take two CC options and still have a knockback. Unreal pressure through bioblaster and all of this whilst being to hit whilst moving, so you can see why that whilst Bard isn't exactly unusable - why ever play it when Machinist is an option in the same role slot?

Red Mage - One of the best ranged IMO with the only real downside being no multitarget pressure (but switching is easy). I've forgotten what it's called but RDM used to have an ability to cause a target to take more damage, which obviously meant you had to commit a lot more to what you wanted to burst, that is no longer in the game, so you're free. Vercure is still powerful along with shields via engagement (and if you take it - manaward) it's difficult for another team to follow up kill if your healer dies, but this depends on team positioning, common sense and intelligent, people in feast tend to lack all 3 of these. The rotation is extremely easy and powerful and cycles well. There is also a silence but this potentially can delay your burst, so unless you burst with 100 B/W mana you can't have both. You get two charges of gap closers and two to escape, the latter being extremely good for peeling.

Black Mage - If you can cast really strong. Good burst some of which can be done entirely through instant casts. Night wing is powerful (aoe sleep) - and again really good if your healer dies, aeth manip works same way as in pve so if you're focused you can pretty much just start teleporting all over the map. Biggest enemy is obviously a wall. If you want to go on a healer/melee and all they do is dance around a wall, you need swiftcast and xeno or you're useless.

Summoner - I main Summoner and I will hold my hands up because I dumped on it a lot when Shadowbringers came out because I felt it was really bad and absolutely atrocious to play. Crit (high ranked PvPer) somewhat showed me the light after I challenged him on it and I was willing to give it another try - but in LP scrims instead of training queue (so Platinum/Diamond/top100 level games) and could see why it's actually a massive improvement over Stormblood and heralded as a top tier ranged pick. You are no longer forced to Wither to apply debuffs like in SB, dots no longer OOM you so you can safely bio/miasma everything in between trance cyles as much as you want and they'll all take 5% damage up / 10% healing down in a heavy pressure meta vs all-in, Deathflare, Akh Morn and the newly introduced Brand of Purgatory are no longer on damage DR - so if you cleave with any of them everyone takes maximum damage and atm there's no aoe healing in the game, so even if you don't kill something you'll eventually fist a mana's healer to death, or someone will get sacrificed because no healer can really keep up with that level of cleaving. Phoenix turns you into a BLM for 15 seconds pretty much with 600 pot auto attacks from phoenix + 2000 pot FoF casts (1.5 second casts) + 1500 aoe cleave. And as an added bonus comes with a 1000 potency regen that lasts 15 seconds completely for free. Caster LB doesn't deal extremely damage on impact, but the 25% damage up + SMN debuffs + SMN cleave, on it's' own that's devastating when you factor everything else.

I again insisted at one point SMN would be even worse of in 5.1 when healers get aoe healing, but again learned from Crit it's unlikely to be the cast, especially when we don't know what SMN will have added to it and if it's another debuff or any kind of CC (fingers crossed for tribind back) - it'll be a big pick. The only weakness being I feel like Manaward/Drain are mandatory - only ranged without any real peel or escape (and ED doesn't heal you, only phoenix and drain action will), you have 12500 HP and will probably just get sat on every game even if you don't have medals because there's nothing you can do, but fortunately everything outside of trances is an instant cast. Being a main job for me it's obvious this would be the job I'd write the most about. Can link you the thread where I got completely embarassed if you wanna read the argument in full.


Dancer - Only ranged I haven't played, don't know anything about them. They've been nerfed but I feel like their cleave (having healed against them) can be incredibly difficult to handle in the long run. 2500 pot aoe heal on on a 30 second CD, THREE stacks of en evant on 15 second recharge cd (so where pressuring the ranged is pretty much


TLDR - Play MCH/SAM.