Melee DPS

[Seabhacgra]

Good day all! I wanted to ask about melee DPS roles. I have Dancer, Machinist, Red Mage, Black Mage, Summoner and Paladin at 80 and already have a good set of gear for them all about 470.. I started noticing that in my FC there are next to no melee DPS whatsoever. So I wanted to delve back into melee and was curious how all the melee is standing right now. I played Ninja when it came out before Heavensward, toyed around with Samurai and Dragoon in Stormblood and never touched Monk ever. So what are the pros and cons of these melee jobs, the strengths and weaknesses and which is more survivable say if I were to want to solo something difficult like Eureka (before the Echo nerf). Which does best on AOE vs single target, which performs best in dungeons etc..Thanks in advance!

[Rayo]

If I recall;

Dragoon is in a safe place having really good damage on raid utilities, and that was before it's damage was buffed last patch

Samurai gets the job done but the other Melee jobs DPS is starting to near SAM plus utility (this coming from a Samurai main)

Ninja I hear lots of conflicting info on it but from what I've heard and seen, NIN Deals good damage and utility but is too complicated/clunky to play

Monk is pretty similar to Ninja, with lots of conflicting info. MNK close damage to Samurai plus raid utility but boring to play and/or clunky

[ForteNightshade]

I'll give a short run down of the melee.

Dragoon
Arguably the most straight forward, offering extremely high rDPS and decent pDPS. The rotation itself is quite rigid, making the job easier to pick up but does lack in flexibility. There really isn't much downside to Dragoon save little annoyances like Piercing Talon being completely worthless due to Raiden Thrust's existence. Perhaps it's only "hard" aspect is learning the best ways to min/max.

Ninja
While the weakest melee, it does boast significantly high rDPS and surprisingly high burst. Unlike Dragoon, the rotation is incredibly fluid—making it the only melee truly capable of occasional range combat without hindering itself. That said, it is quite a "busy" job, especially in the opener. You have quite oGCDs you ideally want to keep in sync otherwise you'll wind up losing a usage. I'd say it's probably the least beginner friendly but wholly satisfying to play once you get passed that learning curve. If you've played Dancer a lot, the new mudras will feel similar to your Steps, which may make it easier to pick up.

Samurai
Sort of in the middle between the aforementioned two. You have more flexibility than Dragoon but nowhere near what Ninja offers. Since you're only concerned with dungeons and the like, I'll skip what makes Samurai a bit... awkward. In that setting, you'll find it plays quite similar to Dragoon; rigid and straight up. It has no utility to speak of but deals huge damage all up front. With only a 60s dot to really think about. Samurai is what I'd call "comfy."

Monk
Admittedly, I dislike Monk. The rotation feels a bit boring, especially as it has virtually no oGCDs. It does nearly as much damage as Samurai while offering good utility, but I find... nothing flows. So much of the job feels at odds with itself. Anatman is just... bad; Tornado Kick is worthless. You'll find yourself spamming the same handful of buttons a lot. Of course, I'd still say give it a shot. There are things to enjoy about Monk. And it's not too difficult to pick up. I simply can't recommend it myself.

As for AoE, they are all good choices. Dragoon is the strongest but even Ninja can be a straight monster once you learn all the ins and outs. If you're wanting to get your feet wet without feeling too overwhelmed, I'd go with Dragoon or Samurai first.

[Eliadil]

From what I've gathered playing roughly the four jobs :

Monk is the easy to learn/easy to master melee, limited in its gameplay, that kinda rotates and repeats itself, but it does decent damage and has some nice utility to bring to the party.
Brotherhood is really good to boost physical damage, and boost your own damage as well by giving you a lot of chakra proc, and Mantra is a 20% group healing buff. The job works fine but the over-reliance on positionnals can make it clunky sometimes, and downtime is your worst enemy as you can take forever to build back your ressources if you're not carefull.

Ninja is on the opposite the hard to learn/hard to master job. Lowest raw damage of all melee but has a 5% damage increase every minute for your whole group.
If monk has quick GCDs but not so much oGCDs, ninja kinda has the opposite with a lot of buttons to press to make the ninja do... ninja things. The mudra systems requires you to input a quick series of spells in a specific order to trigger a ninjutsu. Some can be a speed buff, a raw damage spell or one that lets you use your best ability : Trick Attack (the damage buff). Ninja kinda looks like it's easy to mess up, but also easy to get back on track once you know what you're doing. You gotta love pressing a lot of buttons tho.

Sam is... Special. It's easy to learn, but hard to master in high level content. Sam is often disregarded as a braindead job that's not really good, because unlike every other melee, it doesn't have any party buff. So it only depends on its player's skill.
So the better you are, the better your Sam will be. It's a huge "raw damage" job, with a very strict rotation due to the lvl 76 spell. A good Sam can crush every other damage dealer in the game, but it requires an exceptionnal level of play in order to do so, as missing even one GCD will mess your rotation. Sam is the definition of "learn to optimize everything". If you like fight optimization then this job's for you. Or just if you like big 100k in one hit. For casual play, just try to refresh your dot every minute and the rest should go pretty smoothly, as the job is really easy to play if you don't try to optimize everything.

As for Dragoon... Not easy nor hard to play. The job's main rotation is very simple and once you know it it's nearly impossible to drift away, the real difficulty of the job comes to the oGCDs that come with it. If Sam is a job about timing perfectly your GCDs, then Dragoon on the other hand is all about keeping those oGCDs on cooldown, which can make it tricky sometimes. Still, it has probably the best mobility tool for a melee : a backdash that doesn't need a target. Dragoon's dealing decent damage, has a very fluid rotation once you know how to play it and has two really good party damage buff that makes him one of the most popular melee job of this game. If you like spear, jumps, mobility and buffing your party then Dragoon's the job for you.

hope that helped

[SpeckledBurd]

As for AoE, they are all good choices. Dragoon is the strongest but even Ninja can be a straight monster once you learn all the ins and outs. If you're wanting to get your feet wet without feeling too overwhelmed, I'd go with Dragoon or Samurai first.

Based on the current Data from Expert Dungeons at least, Samurai actually has the highest AOE potential of the Melee followed by Dragoon, then Ninja, and Monk as the lowest, but the actual performance difference between all of them in AOE is so small as to be negligible.

From what I've gathered playing roughly the four jobs :

Monk is the easy to learn/easy to master melee, limited in its gameplay, that kinda rotates and repeats itself, but it does decent damage and has some nice utility to bring to the party.
Brotherhood is really good to boost physical damage, and boost your own damage as well by giving you a lot of chakra proc, and Mantra is a 20% group healing buff. The job works fine but the over-reliance on positionnals can make it clunky sometimes, and downtime is your worst enemy as you can take forever to build back your ressources if you're not carefull.

I wouldn't exactly describe Monk as easy to learn/master. It's defined by Non-linear combos rather than the 1>2>3 combo steps the other jobs use, so to some it can be a bit harder to wrap their heads around compared to the other melee when it comes to just doing the basic GCD rotation. Doubly so when combined with how positional heavy it is. For some people it can actually come off as intuitive because of that compared to a more straightforward rotation. Another thin to note is most of the jobs post level 54 toolkit is just downtime loss mitigation skills that don't work well so once you've got Elixir Field the job pretty much stops evolving. Also side note, Mantra was also recently nerfed to 10% healing, so while it's a nice additional benefit to the job it really isn't anything game changing.

[Seabhacgra]

Based on the current Data from Expert Dungeons at least, Samurai actually has the highest AOE potential of the Melee followed by Dragoon, then Ninja, and Monk as the lowest, but the actual performance difference between all of them in AOE is so small as to be negligible.

That's interesting,.. considering Samurai is a slower AOE build up than the others due to having to get up Shifu and Jinpu and then roll into the AOE.

[Eliadil]

That's interesting,.. considering Samurai is a slower AOE build up than the others due to having to get up Shifu and Jinpu and then roll into the AOE.

Because in expert dungeons now tanks often do the biggest pulls possible, so there's a ton of trashmob to aoe. Definitely worth to AoE there, and even tho the buildup is big, once you've passed it you'll be the one clearing the trash pack in a few GCDs.

Don't forget that we basically have a 540potency AoE every 5 GCD
While the other AoEs may not be as strong as Dragoon's, you technically have more raw damage by this spell alone, and I'm not even counting the Shifu/Jinpu buff, which makes your AoE 13% stronger AND faster

[Yandere-chan]

That's interesting,.. considering Samurai is a slower AOE build up than the others due to having to get up Shifu and Jinpu and then roll into the AOE.

This is greatly mitigated by building your buffs on mobs following the tank (sprint helps), as well as building up kenki during the gathering process too. If you have no prep time for whatever reason (maybe the mobbing phase in Copy Factoy?), I actually like to use Meikyo Shisui to put Shifu and Jinpu on. Normally this isn't a good idea, but if the mobs are going to die fast, which they should, you have no time to build it normally, so just buffing up right away is better since you'll get way more out of your powerful ocgd abilities like Guren, Kaeshi: Goken, and Kyuten. You never want to be manually putting on Shifu and Jinpu though after a large number of mobs are already together. You lose at minimum 4 aoes, and that's with skipping the Sen finishers, with at 8+ mobs, is a huge potency loss.

[Seabhacgra]

So with my Samurai at 80 now with decent gear I opted to try out Ninja for a while and have had alot of fun with it.. I realize it's nowhere near the DPS output of a Samurai, and my hands tend to ache from the many buttons, but it's fun. I last played Ninja back in ARR and loved it then, thought I might still like it. Can someone explain the pros and cons of the Ninja? I'd like to weigh them against the Samurai as I enjoy both, just uncertain which one I prefer, thanks!

[Seabhacgra]

I sincerely appreciate all the input! I ended up picking up Samurai and already got it to 80 and am thoroughly enjoying it.. can anyone explain what the best amount of skill speed is for the Samurai? Seems they may need a little but after watching a few vids and donning the freebie 430 gear I'm already at 1322 skillspeed