Best DPS class in the game?

[xxalucard]

SUMMONER BEST!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1111

[tort]

It's like Black Mage > Summoner > Bard > Monk/Dragoon, though; a skilled/geared monk stacking skill speed can hit 300 DPS in Coil.

Dragoons can hit high numbers as well, though; they have to put a butt load of work into it, where as other classes don't have 20 button rotations to hit their high numbers.

[protopante]

i go for drg and brd try pulling of a AKspeed with 2bards, you laugh at LB's

[charlemagne]

I think it is probably time to start revisiting the whole idea of bards mobility leading to a huge advantage. Early on in the game when we were all learning the fights then undoubtedly bards ability to spam attacks was a significant advantage. Further down the line when we are mostly better aware of the timing in fights and when to use abilities and which to use I think it is possibly less of a clear advantage.
I main BLM in 2.0, in 1.0 I started as LNC main and eventually wound up as MNK main so have some experience of both mellee an ranged dps. Early on in 2.0 I did find that a similarly geared bard would out dps me primarily because of the mobility factor. As time has gone on though I feel that has changed. Knowing when and where to cast which spell has made a huge difference in the lack of mobility. The reason I think that a lot of BLM still under perform is the rigid sticking to the accepted rotation.
An example would be against the wall in AK. Some BLM would wait for the next move before casting as they didn't have time for the long cast before the blue goo moved, or would start casting it and have to move mid cast. As we learn better we know when we should be throwing in a scathe or using that little gap to use another ability.
This situation is probably true of other jobs too, as we learn fights and our jobs better then the ease of use of bard may become less of an advantage.

[glim]

all damage dealers are good dealers

excuse me, but are you accusing me of selling drugs?

[Ronzeru]

So, when you guys are talking about damage... are you speaking about against a stationary training dummy.... a fight against a mob that only lasts a few seconds where you barely get through your entire rotation.... or a boss, where you actually have to 'move' due to it's mechanics forcing you to after you get through just one rotation, long enough for mp/tp to build back up just about before you're attacking it again?

[Royze]

MRD seems to be ahead of everything else by a fair margin on anything that doesn't move.

[McDizz]

From everything I've seen - in an ideal situation where you're on boss 100% of the time Monk & Summoner have the highest paper dps.

However, they both have slower ramp times so movement intense fights can get a bit dumpy on them, there are ways around this of course and knowing the fights reduces this, but yeah. Bards do consistent damage because they laugh at movement, but in a straight "patchwerk" dps fight, they would be close to the bottom with dragoon / blm floating in between (haven't seen any hard numbers on dragoons, don't play with any normally).

[CheshirePuss]

However, they both have slower ramp times so movement intense fights can get a bit dumpy on them, there are ways around this of course and knowing the fights reduces this, but yeah. Bards do consistent damage because they laugh at movement, but in a straight "patchwerk" dps fight, they would be close to the bottom with dragoon / blm floating in between (haven't seen any hard numbers on dragoons, don't play with any normally).

This is actually my main angst with Monk. If a team can't properly balance aggro, or if an enemy simply takes a few steps away, my skill stops and I'm stuck chasing. I have lost count of how many times I've lost my stacks to special situations and human errors in parties.

That being said, at the same time, it does not make the class impossible to play, so I'm not totally ready to go up in arms about it. But it really does handicap the class in a poor way.

[pandabearcat]

All classes have DoTs, and all classes have ramp up time.

Also summoner is by far the best dps on boss when you don't have 100% uptime on boss.

DoTs tick regardless of whether you're on the boss or not, and summoner DoTs are ~60.83 pps, which is roughly 65% of a summoner's personal dps, or 75% of the summoner's total dps (including pet on boss) even when the summoner is doing nothing but staring at the ground.