Best DPS class in the game?

[protopante]

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

[CheshirePuss]

Honestly, I'd still favor my Monk over the other classes. As long as you properly cycle between stacking your skills and dots, you should not have any reason to suffer from TP loss as much as others might think this to be so. Even as far as Titan Hard, I've only ever had the issue of hitting my bottom TP with a few bosses in my run, but that was primarily due to the extreme consistency of my attacks I had been allowed before the boss would break off in some way.

The Black Mage is better in DPS for aoe consistency. They are a reliable damage dealer for many battle situations (e.g. - Add spawn or the like), as is the monk for dependance on single target damage (e.g. - bosses), and so forth. To truth be told, all damage dealers are good dealers. But they all have their pros and cons to promote the battle field in their own way.

[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?

[Ronzeru]

Yah. lol aka parsers 'are' broken when it comes to dots... and dots is a summoner's dmg. Summoner's damage can be disgustingly high. I have a friend who was doing coil on a smn and coil on his blm. Both have pretty much the same gear + relic. We decided to use the burn method on Cad in turn 1 to turn it into a dps race, so after letting him be blm he wanted to switch over to smn. He did, and he as well as the rest of us felt his smn dmg blew his blm out of the water at least in that fight. And i've seen what his smn has done in comparison to other dps jobs and black mages in comparison. A summoner's damage is really no joke. BLMs have large numbers, i'll give you that. But between fight duration and their consistency with high movement battles... It's 'burst' Vs. the consistency of all those dots still going while you have to move around, dodge, ect., the same way a brd can keep constant and roll face as he's running about.

[Royze]

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

[FreeWillGuy]

MNK!!!
(until I become lvl 50 BLM/ ^^)

[Shisou]

(snip) It's 'burst' Vs. the consistency of all those dots still going while you have to move around, dodge, ect., the same way a brd can keep constant and roll face as he's running about.

If any BLM has difficulty maintaining their damage while being forced to move, they need to l2play their Class. I'm sorry -- I've seen numerous threads QQ'ing about how gimped BLMs feel during movement-intensive fights. I just don't get it. Between FS/TC proccs, Swiftcast, Scathe, Manawall, and Aeth Manip., I have yet to find a single instance where having to move has made me miss a GCD or has had a substantial impact upon my DPS. There are (to my knowledge, both through empirical data and research) no fights that require 100% movement throughout the entire fight.

[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).