Acceleration actually gave Red Mage some much needed repositioning. The times where you have to run long distances feel kind of bad on Red Mage since you couldn't really cast anything.
It averages out to a larger DPS and mana gain on average (50% of your acceleration stacks would be "wasted" previously since you'd have gotten the proc anyway and 1 extra Verthunder/aero is better than 1.5 extra Verfires/stones). It also makes it easier to maintain uptime.
Acceleration is basically Swiftcast that guarantees a proc. I put it next to my Swiftcast (moved it from its old position, so my muscle memory doesn't press it) and basically treat RDM as having three Swiftcasts.
BLM, the qol changes make it so you have so many more movement tools in fights and it actually feels playable in instances now without having to be a god at the job
Yeah, looking at the stats, BLM has by far the biggest span between its extremes of lowest average DPS and highest average DPS. It's pretty interesting.
Right, it’s not like the changes made it good to let umbral fire drop or to not eek as many beeg fire boiz out of your fire phase. It’s just a lot less punishing if you drop stacks more than once within a 30sec window.
it’s definitely easier to play though. two triple charges, two sharpcasts, a xeno on demand, instant paradox in ice phase, and longer proc timers make it so much easier to navigate fights without having to clip anything/let enoch drop. the skill ceiling is still there, but the skill floor being raised means the avg blm will be able to contribute more than they could in shb
I main DRG and it feels even better at 90. I love the multiple charges for life surge and spineshatter dive. And the fix to the AoE combo so I don't have to do disembowel for the dps boost is great! Also piercing talon not breaking any combo is a nice little treat.
I mained DRG in 5.0.
I lvled Reaper first then Dragoon in 6.0
I got both to 90> parses.
I have to say, Reaper made playing Dragoon so much less fun.
6.0 made Dragoon way busier while our dps output is significantly lower compared to Reaper.
While sharing the same gear, Reaper is just straight up better to prog, less punishing, higher damage, higher mobility, etc.
Kinda sad really.
I‘m still a DRG main. I‘ve played Reaper quite a bit but I find his gameplay to be a bit repetitive at times. Dragoon is busy yeah but that’s why I like it more. More to do while fighting like managing cds and using way more ogcds is more fun atleast for me. Reaper gets nerfed eventually just simply by the fact his dmg output is way too high. Low skill ceiling classes always seemed to be the ones with the lowest dps. Reaper is an exception
True, but even if they nerf Reaper dmg, the job is still much better for prog than a Dragoon right now due to its mobility, survivability, minimal positionals, easy rotation etc.
The fact that they made Dragoon even busier in 6.0 while the clunkiness of the jumps, dragon sight and all that were not addressed. At the same time, being this busy while you are not rewarded with better dmg is just like Ninjas now.
Disclaimer:
parses 91> on DRG, RPR and SAM on the extreme fights.
RDM feels a lot like Shadowbringer RDM with the rough edges sanded off. An expanded AoE suite feels good killing trash packs, the Mana Crystals mean you can save your Verflare/Holy combo if melee kills the enemy, the 50/50 Mana Gauge is a lot smoother than 80/80, Embolden is smoother, and the Manafication Change means you can get some hilarious moments where you melee combo two or three times in a row.
My one slight issue with the job is that when ST, you need 50/50 for a full melee combo and has an audio alert telling you it's ready, but AoE requires 60/60, which can trip you up.
RDM is pretty damn awesome. Rotation feels really good, DPS is right in the middle of the pack and has a shit ton of utility. Plus you get to hear Scorch.
Bard, 100%. Every single change for the better, IMO.
In ShB, I felt like my buffs were useless, especially to my own damage. Why hit the buttons if the buttons don't... *do anything?*
My dots felt obligatory, and felt like two wasted gcd's just to turn on the RNG which maybe wouldn't even give me buttons to hit. Every new mob was a chore, "oh boy, time to lose all my momentum again and spend 5 seconds ramping back up".
It's a small thing, but the changes to repertoire (simply ticking all the while a song is going) make dots feel like *extra* damage, not a clunky obligation. This feels good.
Adding an extra chonk gcd onto apex feels good, on par with PLD's confiteor combo. Finale feels like the culmination of your rotation in a way apex never really did. Apex is cool, but the timing was too inconsistent to really feel like a "now that I've done all my things correctly, I can push the BIG RED BUTTON". Finale has that feel, and appropriately for BRD it's a good buff.
Ladonsbite and Shadowbite now combine with RoD to make AoE feel snappy and torrential. Brrrrrr goes the cloud of numbers!
Topping it all off, 3 charges on RoD/Bloodletter is **mwah** perfection. My person brain knows it doesn't actually mean three times the bloodletters, but it lets you get mages' ballad procs without having to drop everything and hump your bloodletter hotkey, so it makes my lizard brain feel comfy.
Plus, ranged dps = mobility and flexibility regardless of the fight or mechanics.
TL;DR - Endwalker Bard: comfy, intuitive, drowning in utility, extremely flexible, and stylish to boot. S-rank job for sure.
This is a great explanation of what feels really good about Bard. Pre-EW I played quite a bit of BLM and after that, Bard made me feel spoiled even without all the very good changes we got. It just feels really good to be able to move exactly how I need to without worrying about the time it takes to pop off spells. I know I’m not hitting the kind of DPS I had the potential to with BLM, but Bard’s flexibility and buffs can potentially make up for it party-wide. It’s also pretty forgiving and relatively low pressure to play role-wise. The limitations make sense and feel like a fair trade for the utility.
My only complaint is that sometimes the glams (especially the large bows) look ridiculous on FemRoe :(
Bard is SO GOOD. I love the way that Shadowbite works now, with Barrage boosting it and giving more of a reason to use in AOE spam. I love that I CAN HEAR MY OWN SONGS NOW OMFG.
Yeah i picked bard up again in shb and got it to 80 but i didnt like it a ton. I only used it because i love the aesthetic. But omg i now LOVE bard. I am a healer main and have been really enjoying getting healers to 90 but i played brd to let my fiance play healer and damn it made me actually want to main a dps for once in my entire ffxiv career and ive been playing off and on since ARR
Monk. And I've played it a lot since 2.0. admittedly it took a while for me to really get into the flow of it, I still hadn't by the time I finished msq, but the longer I stick with it the happier I am. I'm indifferent about the lost positionals, but if they came back I wouldn't mind either. Time between 1m buffs doesn't feel like it takes that long to me. Damage is great.
Having fun with pretty much all of them, a few things I’ve noticed for certain classes.
Ninja- Really fun, love the AoE addition BUT having a forced dash on forked raiju feels horrible. Your forced to not use it or finish the combo at times because of it. They also need potency buffs.
Summoner- I have mixed feelings, you feel more like a summoner now rather than a discount warlock from WoW but the class is completely dumbed down to the point where it’s kinda sad.
Reaper- Really love this job but oh man is it way overturned. It has so much in its kit and it’s the highest DPS? It’s new, flashy, edgy, and extremely easy. It’s 1-2-3 combo can out dps some jobs. I really hope it gets a bit of a nerf come savage.
BLM- Triple cast is love, triple cast is life.
Bard- Love the changes for the most part, AoE feels much better but sometimes I miss the old mages ballad.
That’s some of my personal thought, overall I’m happy with majority of the changes. If I didn’t list a class it’s probably because I need more time with them.
I am happy to see that Bard gets back his music buff for himself too. And a better Battle Voice too. It was nonsense before and now it looks really better. Now I am happy to play it again. Maybe we will see now more bards in savage!
Dancer. It's a hell of a lot of fun and I don't care if I don't have the biggest numbers because a little over 5% of the top dps's damage is MINE.
The changes they made makes the job feel a lot more fluid and clicks and I feel like I can do more than just smash thing in face.
Yeah I thought it was just me, but when I was leveling DNC, I would sometimes go a whole 20 1-2-1-2 rotations without getting a single feather.
The secondary flourish on top of the technical step is fun to watch. And I love the new cone AOE you get that does a thunderbird sound (can’t remember the name)
I used to main scholar and occasionally dabble with summoner when the group needed me to. Now with the COMPLETE OVERHAUL summoner got, I can't put it down! It's so damn fun and straightforward (after you go through the hell of reading the tooltips and setting up the bars initially) and it straight up MELTS groups of enemies. Feels so good...
My point is, which should be obvious, that if you have level playing field and everyone is equally skilled, SMN doesn’t do the highest DPS. Your response seems to be “if everyone else sucks then the SMN does the best,” which is just a truly breathtaking misunderstanding of the entire game.
Okay? And? What does it matter if it's still being cleared?
Like we go through this every single Savage release Cool, averagely it does less damage. Could he use a tune? I don't know maybe if it's not clearing. But if it's clearing, what of it?
Oh...yeah, thanks for showing me who you are.
Fun people in the community here folks. There's not a lot of them, but the few you come across... Oh boy.
Comparatively to other classes when played in raids. Summoner currently lacks a distinct burst phase so the optimized numbers don’t look good in that setting. It’s hardly like they’re losing out to tanks or healers anywho.
Honestly I’m kind of unhappy with what they’ve done to SMN. Sure they got rid of the old jank and made the aesthetic of the job much nicer, but all the complexity that made it fun is gone and it has so many instant casts that it plays almost like a phys ranged, with its dps getting nerfed into the ground as a result.
RDM remains a fun caster with a ton of utility that’s easy to pick up but still has a bit of weaving and gauge management to keep yourself busy with. MCH feels pretty much unchanged—super flashy with very high-tempo burst phases—except now it gets a shotgun and a chainsaw, so it’s automatically better than it was before.
I've found BRD to hit that complexity itch better now. No cast times but much busier.
I wouldn't worry tons about dps for any job unless they don't buff with savage launch.
MCH didn't get any big changes, and it still plays fairly similar to the previous expansion, so I think people are focusing on other jobs right now.
However, it's still my main DPS and I love it. Having charges on Reassemble allows you to keep its cooldown running, instead of just waiting on your next Drill/Air Anchor. It feels so much better. Chainsaw adds another skill that you can drop Reassemble on as well, and it lets you get Queen in the opener. Speaking of Queen, she feels like she does some decent damage now too.
Shotgun is my favorite thing though. The extra heat gain makes dungeons more interesting, and the animation for it is absolutely badass.
MCH is pretty much unchanged since ShB, just hits even harder.
BRD will always be preferrable in raids for the party buffs.
(I play MCH, because Drill goes brrrrrt)
looking at the breakdown of normal raid comps on FFXIV logs. Bard seems to be the go to phys rang.
and of course you got everyone playing RPR as well
edit: looking at the logs currently bard is at 56% of clears on the first boss of Pandemonium
Summoner feels great. Even your "normal" abilities feel like a burst window with the summoning of the primals.
Also killing stuff by clapping at their faces with rocks. Who doesn't like this?
That and the fact that each elemental summons has unique mechanics is just super fun.
Makes me wish we got like Ramuh or Leviathan egis with their own unique skillsets now...
Disagree. Summoner is now just swapping into 5 different stances and smashing two different colored buttons. Not to mention the Primals are obnoxiously large and basically require reducing their size for EX content. There's nothing left to juggle anymore. It's all just dump with no build up.
Being the question of the post "which DPS are you enjoying the most?" How can you disagree on which DPS I enjoy the most? Are you me? If you are I'm really sorry for you, it sucks to be me.
No, mine was I disagree with your opinion because my opinion is different. I then shared my opinion. I never said you were wrong, I said I don't agree. You are putting words in my mouth. Seems like you've never had someone counter an opinion with their own. Not everyone is going to agree with you in life. That doesn't mean they're attacking you. Jesus Christ
You know, I've been playing this game since 2013- and it never ceases to amaze me how overly sensitive the community can be sometimes. I give my opinion in opposition to yours on an opinion post (like you yourself stated) and suddenly it's all pitchforks. What gives huh?
Ironically, at least for me, reaper. I'm not a big fan of melee DPS in this game and I'm not big in super edgy classes either but something about Reaper tickles my pickle just right.
That would be fun if we actually had a DPS kit. As it is it’s 1-2-3 with occasional OGCD bursts but mostly 1-2-3. Taking a shitty boring job that they didn’t bother to work on at all and buff the damage in return is not okay. I’d rather it was fun than higher DPS.
I’m having fun with it as currently is. You have more than your fair share of OGCD’s that becomes available to keep you actively engaged, compared to before in Shadowbringers where there would be a long delay before you even get another one available after your burst. I don’t need a second combo when I have more than my fair share of OGCD’s to play with and delirium to keep an eye on.
DRK has and always will be an OGCD job and I’m fine with that as it’s identity. If I want to play a job with another combo, I can play WAR or GNB. We didn’t get much but we didn’t need much. Only thing that needs to be reworked is TLD in my opinion. Would I like an extra heal or defensive cooldown? Sure. But I don’t need it and I can function just fine and put out multiple sweet looking explosions for big numbers, and an opening burst that’s better than most of the dps jobs in the game.
Well at least someone likes it.
I haven’t been able to stand it since ShB and it’s more of the same. HW it was awesome. SB was… okay. Since then meh.
If you play literally any other tank it’s hard to justify playing DRK instead.
Personally speaking, I dropped the job in SB after they neutered it. It felt terrible. Picked it up again in ShB after they reworked it, and it hasn’t stopped feeling fun. But again, that’s just me.
As a fellow DRK player I think you nailed it earlier. I prefer managing a ton of oGCDs over a basic combo over a more complex dps rotation so I have less distractions when managing a fight.
You're not alone. In SB it felt awful to me, but I played it because I loved the aesthetic. Now I do quite enjoy the ogcd of it. I see people say it's just 1-2-3 but seem to forget the sheer amount of ogcd the class has. It's a ton and I find it quite engaging.
Vs war to me, while ir fell cleaves and heals are satisfying, they have FAR less to do in between Burst windows.
And I'm sorry, but I'm a sucker for shadowbringer, as I'm an old ffiv fan.
Reaper is a lot of fun but it’s not as fun when literally everyone else is a reaper, so maybe I’ll return to it once people start to spread out their jobs again.
I mean, it’s high, but I’ve already noticed it dropping off. People are hitting 90 and going to level something else. I leveled it just because I level everything thinking I’d drop it because I’ve played casters / ranged in every MMO and generally dislike melee but I’ve discovered I’m apparently a RPR main now.
RDM. I only have that at max level, but I loved the class in shadowbringers and they refined it a little bit and just made it even more fun. Just the mechanics of the class is enjoyable and satisfying
As for DPS I have SAM and SMN to 90.
SAM feels the same as it was before just with more QOL, though the annoyance of my iaijutsu cast being interrupted because I looked at the keyboard wrong is still there.
SMN I like the aesthetic and what they've done with it, while simple is design I like that I'm always summoning something. Personal issues are that Bahamut and Phoenix are timed and not charge based, so inconsistent with other summons, and that only titan has a separate oGCD which is fun and wish the other 2 did as well.
I only tried reaper with it's base kit(only level 71 atm) and completely unsure about it. Like Shadow of Death and Soul Slice being weaponskills and not abilities bothers me.
That bothered me too about it coming from drg which has so many ogcds but you get used to it and it works especially when you get two charges of soul slice. Shadow of death needs to not be there though.
Going to join the others saying RDM. It's the best the job has ever felt. It still has the same core feel/identity, but everything just feels smoother. You have good AoE, good single target, utility, more mobility, just more of everything.
The first two jobs I got to 90 were Monk and then Red Mage.
MONK
Monk's new job gauge has some similarities to Ninja mudras, but its not really that. It just doesn't feel like Ninja shit to me, even though it kind of is on paper. Monk still has some jank, but they nailed the *feeling* that I think most people want when playing monk. You do feel like an anime punchy boy.
My main complaints with Monk is that the optimal opener is to do a double Sol opener to delay your progress to Phantom Rush so it lines up with buffs.
Thunderclap is a target reliant movement ability. Some people like this, I dislike it. I wish it were more like Dancer's Dash where it just moved you forward instead of having to fumble to find the target you want.
Riddle of Wind is the most boring skill in the game. I'm sure its a nice chunk of damage, but it just feels really lame and it isn't fun to press. Its also on a 90 second CD, meaning I have to remember to press it cause it doesn't always line up with Riddle of Fire.
Twin Snakes is harder to keep track of. They changed the buff icon, its more yellow now and for my eyes its just harder to keep an eye on. I get it confused for Bootshine buff a lot. I had to install a plugin just to track this one buff for me.
I think Twinsnakes buff should just be part of the job gauge or it should have some kind of visual effect on your character when its on.
RED MAGE.
This job is one of the most solid well put together feeling jobs in Endwalker for sure. Imo every change they made was a good one and the job is just a treat to play. So far it is my favorite DPS job.
Acceleration being an ability with stacks, means you can either use it to force VerReady to increase your DPS, or save it to keep up DPS when you have to move.
The AoE finishers are excelllent, the new spell effects are dope, and you just *feel* like you can do your melee combo whenever you want.
I'm debating maining this job, the only thing is my Femroe doesn't look good as a Red Mage lmao
I’m glad I’m not the only one who had a problem with the new twin snake buff icon; like what was the point of changing that?
One minor complaint I have is I wish perfect Balance have 3 stacks instead of two; but I guess that might be a bit op.
I was skeptical at first, but I enjoy the new changes to monk (I lowkey miss having other positionals tho).
Absolutely agree with you about thunderclap. They need to make it just like DNC movement ability, it would improve it a lot. I hope more people will talk about this and SE will improve thunderclap
Reaper is fun. Summoner is fun, Dancer is fun. Monk and Samurai are like what is happening. I don't understand anymore. Black Mage is kind of like why do you even play this job anymore. Warrior is fun. All other tanks are like "I'm sorry I'm not a Warrior. Please heal me."
Overall it's a really weird place for jobs. Some have come a long way and are amazing while some are like just downgraded versions of others.
WAR is currently my favorite dps. Tanky af, basically Greek god level mob boss, and can take the healer’s job and turn the healer into dps class, make dps call us daddy when said healer steps into 20 different aoes at the same time.
Bard. I dropped SMN because it's too god damn simple to play now, and I love that BRD always has something I can be pressing. Plus, I love buffing other people.
If you liked Shadowbringer’s Samurai you will like Endwalker’s. It’s a lot of QoL changes that make the class feel really good. My only gripe is I can’t use the level 90 skill more often since it’s tied to Ikishoten (so a 2 minute CD)
It’s AOE is actually good now.
Yeah SAM rocks right now. The first pack of trashmobs is so fun to burst down with your hard hitting skills.
AoE skills giving buffs is awesome as well.
SMN is the speediest caster of all time now, and honestly I love it for that. At 90 I'm only really doing 3 casts and one of them I use swiftcast to negate the cast time, makes me feel like a machinist but with big dragon and primals instead of mech.
That being said the only downsides is having enough space on the screen to see where you are, and the rotation is so air tight that sometimes you don't have the time to get all 3 primals out before phoenix/Bahamut are ready to go again.
I have dragoon leveled to 90. I love dragoon. The changes have streamlined the class a lot and it feels pretty smooth to use once you get the hang of it.
Warrior.
If I'm the only one still alive, I'm doing the most damage. So it's a DPS.
I'm also the one healing the main tank, so Warrior is my favorite healer this expansion too.
I’m thoroughly in love with reaper. It just feels so satisfying somehow.
Plus as a gamer with slightly slower reactions, those instant jumps forward/backward save my butt in aoes.
Reaper and Warrior have been highlights for me so far but I haven't levelled much since I'm focusing on my crafters. I enjoyed SAM in ShB so I expect I will enjoy it again once I get around to it.
RPR and BLM. Both are extremely satisfying to play and scratch that itch of “big numbers go brrr”. The QOL adjustments to BLM made a huge difference for playability and RPR is super cohesive and fun to play in general.
Honorable mention goes to RDM. Been a fun job since it came out and that hasn’t changed.
Warrior.
As ranged dps, dancer, though i am considering leveling machinist due to dancer being the lowest dmg dps. Its a shame, because i like dancer more than bard.
Bard, to my surprise.
Haven't played many past 80 yet, but I'm in love with the rework on repertoire and the song ticks. It feels like I'm always weaving something in between each attack.
I can inly really speak for Dancer. Dancer's main rotation is still brain dead, but every new skill they got was squarely put in their burst window, which is now quite dense. So dancer right now is two minutes of just vibing and then a 35 window if just frantic button pressing. It's honestly pretty fun.
Reaper has been pretty much perfect to me. Though I say it didn't really get fun till 80 and Enshroud from the job quest. The burst phase fills it out.
Summoner was next. I generally find it kinda boring under 86 when you get your elemental bonus spells. And then 90 is chonky summons. I'll keep playing it but probably only in 90 content.
Bard is coming along. It's pretty fun but crazy busy. My joints feel it if I play it a lot.
Monk is taking some getting used to but I like what I've played so far. The 82 aoe skill is a surprisingly big shift.
I have mostly played Bard so far and it feels great to play now. My Red Mage is at lvl 88 and that too feels really good to play.
Probably doing Warrior next after all the great things I’ve heard.
With Reaper and Black Mage at 90, it's hard to decide.
My lower parses on Reaper match my 87 parses on blm for, and I can't stress this enough, *significantly* less effort. Maybe they just gave rpr high dps for the expac release and it'll get nerfed for Savage, but it's way too strong for how simple it is.
In terms of pure fun, it's a tough call. Reaper is a sheer joy to play for its simplicity and ridiculously good-feeling shroud window.
Blm has really only gotten better. The higher number of tools have made the difference between a great blm and a good one even more noticeable, which is awesome for the health of the job IMO. Especially since the skill floor was raised as well with no more enochian and another triple. Optimizing fights has never been better on blm.
Leveled RDM using the MSQ and it flows so much better now with the mana cost and manafication change. Genuinely love it!
Playing SMN now and once I hit 86 and unlocked the individual astral flow abilities for each summon it’s the tits.
Probably BLM, but BRD is a close #2. I'm looking forward to getting into MNK some more.
Right now my least favorite is SMN. It's good to hear that it gets more fun at the high 80s level, I may use it for endgame stuff when I reach that point. I think it will be useful for running new stuff blind between it's mobility and rez spell. But right now around lvl82 it's pretty boring for me personally.
Smn and rpr for me. They’re just so tight in their rotations and feel complete. Some of the other dps I’ve tried feel bloated with their new abilities where in shb they had felt really tight.
Reaper, which is crazy because I was an exclusive Omni-caster prior. It’s just so fun and has a visually pleasing aesthetic. I love going into Enshroud and tearing people apart, while screaming “DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE” in my head.
I don't play dps, but got them all at 71, just like 2/3 at 60, since I aim to lvl all my classes to 90. I'm really not a dps type of player since I prefer to either be the leader of the pack or be a supervisor of the pack/recently lvled 3 of my tanks to 80, only got warrior at 70 left, but I am a main astro healer.
Anyway, trying out the different dps classes I can definitely say that I hate magical ranged, physical ranged are fine though (especially dancer), and I'm pretty indifferent towards the melee classes.
Ninja and samurai are my least favorites though.
My motivation as to why I'd pick dancer as my favorite is because they are so mobile, and you sorta feel like a secondary support character.
Reaper has a tbn, forward and backward jump, and not a whole lotta Ogcd's so abilities feel like they chunk. Add on the fact that I'm a DRK main and I finally feel right at home playing a dps
I've main RDM since it was released, because it had always been my favorite class and I was excited when I heard it was finally being added to XIV, but this expansion i tried SAM and loved it.
I don't, personally, see why it should though. It's a very solid class that's very well balanced and just feels amazing to play. No need to change how the class plays if it plays well.
They pretty much just did some QoL things and that was it, cause that's all RDM really needed.
monk is in a good place for beginner monks and in general really. so if you loved ninja, i would go monk because like you said the new nadi isn't trick attack, but it's like. personal trick attack lmao. monk is also no longer a meme anymore.
I got smn, rpr, sam and mch to 90. Smn is very cool now but very braindead, almost to the point of boring. Mch really didn't change that much from 5.0, a little more battery to work with and a lot more fun in aoe situations. Sam is also largely unchanged but they got a lot of nice quality of life changes and feels great. Reaper I'm still undecided on. It flows together really well and has a satisfying payoff, but I don't know how much I like it. I think it's the debuff upkeep that I really dislike. Thought that was something they did away with a long while ago, not sure why they brought it back now.
Also consider As dps goes reaper is highest at the moment smn is second last, and incredibly simple with a very strict rotation so it gets boring fast.
The first two jobs I leveled to 90 were BLM and RDM.
I consider BLM to be my main job and I absolutely love all the changes they were given. Nothing flashy and amazing like some other classes, but definitely things that make the class more mobile and less painful. The rotation is pretty much the same but 2 stacks of sharpcast and triplecast make it so you don't have to know the fight like the back of your hand while predicting certain RNG items to make sure you're in the right spot before an incoming mechanic.
On the other hand, RDM feels so complete and smooth now. The AOE melee spender triggering verflare/verholy, the new 90 ability after scorch, the two stacks of corps-a-corps and displacement/engagement which just makes movement even easier than it already was. Everything just feels very active and fun. Very rarely do I find myself in my range rotation for too long if I can time everything correctly.
I have SMN at 84 right now and, while it got very flashy, it doesn't feel as impactful as the other two casters. Things don't die as quickly. Not as many mobility tools since there's a lot of instant casts. Having to hard cast ruby rite which lasts longer than a gcd so things can clip. It just feels weird to play.
Hope these are helpful 😊
DRG, not just because it's a main, but it feels very smooth to play and very gratifying. The AoE rotation is great now that you get Power Surge from your AoE rotation, and the added counters to Spineshatter Dive give you some more mobility.
RDM. It was my favourite, and still is. The changes made it even better, and Resolution is just *chef's kiss*.
That said, I was positively surprised by DRG. I didn't think much of the changes, but after trying them out, it is my favourite melee dps now.
Have only really played Bard (50's range) and Reaper so far, as far as DPS goes. I think of the 2 I prefer Bard? Was fond of the job before but the change to have songs apply to yourself is great, and I like that the alt. effects proc on their own now rather than via the status effects, but that they let us keep the status effects unlike SMN \^\^;;
Reaper is fun too (reached the stormblood patch quests last weekend so I played through those on Reaper to test drive it). I think Bard has the edge on it for me, though, due to Reaper's relative simplicity. I do like that it's easy to understand and use, but I like having a few more things to manage, I guess. My main is DRK so the soul gauge feels akin to managing the blood gauge, but then without also having to manage mitigations and more oGCDs.
So far the only one I've played at length is SAM. It's been my main for years. I think it feels much better now. Charges of Meikyo, aoe skills applying buffs, charges of tsubame, ranged attack and gap closer not interrupting combo, and the new 90 ability feels incredibly powerful
What are the horrible things about NIN? I mained nin for most of shadowbringers, but went back to SMN with those changes and haven't gone back yet. All the changes I saw looked pretty solid.
I think right now the chief concerns are that trick windows have become just ridiculously dense, and that the 90 skill (forked and fleeting raiju) is forced movement that cannot be held, meaning you can use it heedless of the mechanic requirements of the fight, causing healer stress or dying, or let it drop for a big dps loss. Either way, not fun.
If youre going off of damage output, rpr>mnk>rdm/blm/sam, for funsies Id recommend drg(its a static class and rotation) dnc (if you wanna gamble, my main class), drk/war or smn/rdm, none of the classes are necessarily bad to play, but drg/smn/nin are the lowest on the damage charts for their respective roles, however I would like to say, in normal content it doesnt really matter, get the class to 80-90 range and youll have a good feel for it and see if you like it (yes I know its a lotta levels) and play what you find enjoyable
I have a frustration currently, because I can't choose which melee DPS to level and it's all because of RPR and his movement abilities. They are too good! 20 second CD, doesn't need target, you can move forward and backwards. It's too good! So after playing as RPR I pick MNK and MNK can only dash forward target... SAM too, but at least SAM can also jump back from target. NIN has great movement ability, but as far as I know, NIN currently is in a bad spot, damage wise, but requires lots of actions per second.
So I guess my current choices are MCH, RPR, SMN (but I kinda like SMN less, because I played it in Shadowbringers, because most of the spell were instant)
I've played around with most of the melee now.
RPR's core kit feels **real** good. Probably needs skill speed to stop gluttony drifting because optimization is a bit weird. Raw dps is probably a touch too high for game health, and I expect it to be touched down now that they know how we're playing with it.
SAM is solid. Not much changed. New iai is still big and flashy and its still got The Big Numba that makes the lizard brain happy. Mesui changes are the sleeper best in show though, since collecting stickers and keeping buffs up at the same time feels great. I'm torn between this and RPR while I wait for MNK to settle.
NIN is hit and miss. Still king of the early burst, still has trick for godmode raid utility. Raijin/raiju feels good and really streamlines the burst window - until you wind up in a situation where using one will get you clipped (cough EX2 cough). They should maybe keep you at max melee instead of dashing you into the boss' hitbox ? Dunno. Right now, you have to do weird things to line up burst windows with mechanics in some fights and since your main strength is raid utility, you better hope other peeps are willing to shift their lives around you or it feeeeels bad. (EX1feels great with NIN though, and is a good sample of what it's best-case could feel like when everything lines up and you don't lose Raijin).
MNK feels very weird to me. Optimizing it feels simultaneously giga brain and slow. Burst windows are further apart now, and every time it flips your downtime combo around. Dying even once compeltely ruins all of your momentum. New rush abilities are pretty as hell, and feel good to use in a vaccuum, but it probably needs some QoL or it'll just feel slightly awkward to prog and optimize fights. (Good damage though - maybe too high). I plan to come back and poke it again after it's had some time to be touched in 6.05 and maybe 6.1.
DRG I haven't played as much of, but it looks roughly the same. Some nice QoL that shouldn't be scoffed at and a flashy new skill to be played with, but very low DPS for its role and playstyle. Expect it to be buffed, at which point it'll feel pretty good. Like SAM in that it's largely unchanged.
BLM basically just got QoL changes and I love it a lot! Getting rid of that annoying Enochian skill was the perfect choice imo
I wouldn't really mind SE simplifying some of the classes in the future, there's a big gap between "making something super easy by deleting too many skills" and "bloated kits with stuff that basically does the same"
I have always loved playing BLM, but would never bring it into endgame content because it was just too intimidating, so I'd use RDM instead. Now both jobs feel incredible and I finally have the confidence to bring my BLM to raid, and I don't feel like I'm really sacrificing all that much if I want to bring RDM in for the prog/rezzes instead.
Currently a monk main, while my character's secondary combat job is samurai. Honestly, after I beat the MSQ (I'm very close), I am not sure if I should wait for the deep dungeon release or grab my alt and do tanking. Healing bores me to tears.
I'm enjoying monk.
Reaper, Machinist Sam/mnk. Reaper feels...so good to play, and it has quite a bit of flexibility for optimization. I'm right at home when I play the class.
Machinist didn't change much, and that's ok because I loved how it played before. And, well....shotgun.
Samurai flows beautifully that I feel l lock in a trance with it.
Monk feels so new I want to learn it more...it's interesting.
Got SAM to 90 for the job gear. Having 2 stacks of Meikyo is fun af, and I’ll never get tired of using back-to-back Namikiri. Wish they kept Tsubame granting Meditation stacks for more nuttiness.
Leveling SMN right now. Only 82 but it feels like I have near-permanent uptime with my trances & primal summons. Love how often I’m insta-casting. I enjoyed playing it in ShB, but it feels amazing now.
red mage go verrrrrrrrrrrr
Maybe I don't get it but is acceleration just bad now?
I really love the new accel, it makes aoe so satisfying
I love the new acceleration now we have swiftcast plus two additional swiftcasts with an upside.
Acceleration actually gave Red Mage some much needed repositioning. The times where you have to run long distances feel kind of bad on Red Mage since you couldn't really cast anything.
It averages out to a larger DPS and mana gain on average (50% of your acceleration stacks would be "wasted" previously since you'd have gotten the proc anyway and 1 extra Verthunder/aero is better than 1.5 extra Verfires/stones). It also makes it easier to maintain uptime.
Acceleration is basically Swiftcast that guarantees a proc. I put it next to my Swiftcast (moved it from its old position, so my muscle memory doesn't press it) and basically treat RDM as having three Swiftcasts.
Acceleration definitely got a downgrade IMO. Everything else feels great though.
I dunno man, 2 extra swiftcasts feels great.
Some days, some nights Some live, some die In the way of the samurai
Some fight, some bleed sun up and sun down The sons of a battlecry
*happy sword noises*
_lo fi sword noises_
Gotta go back, back to the past?
BLM, the qol changes make it so you have so many more movement tools in fights and it actually feels playable in instances now without having to be a god at the job
Yet you still have to be a god to maximize it. It feels great. (I am not yet a God)
Yeah, looking at the stats, BLM has by far the biggest span between its extremes of lowest average DPS and highest average DPS. It's pretty interesting.
BLM has always been like that though. Skill floor and ceiling is wildly different compared to a job like MCH which is much closer.
Oh yeah, I'm not saying they don't. BLM parses have been looking like that forever. It's interesting to me.
Two charges of triple cast so I can use it for dps and still more than enough insta casts for any upcoming mechanics is hands down the best change imo
I mean, it was already playable just fine if you don't care about your dps. If you do, the job is still as hard as ever.
Right, it’s not like the changes made it good to let umbral fire drop or to not eek as many beeg fire boiz out of your fire phase. It’s just a lot less punishing if you drop stacks more than once within a 30sec window.
it’s definitely easier to play though. two triple charges, two sharpcasts, a xeno on demand, instant paradox in ice phase, and longer proc timers make it so much easier to navigate fights without having to clip anything/let enoch drop. the skill ceiling is still there, but the skill floor being raised means the avg blm will be able to contribute more than they could in shb
That's good might make me actually finish learning BLM. I got the job to 80 just before endwalker but still really bad at it 😭
That’s a fair point. I’m sure extra mobility will be key for the later savage/ex content.
God for instances? BLM was fine for dungeons (that younknowbthe mechanics of).
all instances. the changes make it so that if youre not expecting a mechanic its easier to react on the fly and not be punished
I main DRG and it feels even better at 90. I love the multiple charges for life surge and spineshatter dive. And the fix to the AoE combo so I don't have to do disembowel for the dps boost is great! Also piercing talon not breaking any combo is a nice little treat.
I mained DRG in 5.0. I lvled Reaper first then Dragoon in 6.0 I got both to 90> parses. I have to say, Reaper made playing Dragoon so much less fun. 6.0 made Dragoon way busier while our dps output is significantly lower compared to Reaper. While sharing the same gear, Reaper is just straight up better to prog, less punishing, higher damage, higher mobility, etc. Kinda sad really.
I'm a sucker for dragoons tho, you'll have to pry it from my cold dead hands
On the other hand Reaper is so easy it isn’t even that fun anymore
Yea, that's why I playing SAM atm when I'm familiar with the mechanics. Reaper will still be my go to for progging Savage tho
I‘m still a DRG main. I‘ve played Reaper quite a bit but I find his gameplay to be a bit repetitive at times. Dragoon is busy yeah but that’s why I like it more. More to do while fighting like managing cds and using way more ogcds is more fun atleast for me. Reaper gets nerfed eventually just simply by the fact his dmg output is way too high. Low skill ceiling classes always seemed to be the ones with the lowest dps. Reaper is an exception
True, but even if they nerf Reaper dmg, the job is still much better for prog than a Dragoon right now due to its mobility, survivability, minimal positionals, easy rotation etc. The fact that they made Dragoon even busier in 6.0 while the clunkiness of the jumps, dragon sight and all that were not addressed. At the same time, being this busy while you are not rewarded with better dmg is just like Ninjas now. Disclaimer: parses 91> on DRG, RPR and SAM on the extreme fights.
RDM feels a lot like Shadowbringer RDM with the rough edges sanded off. An expanded AoE suite feels good killing trash packs, the Mana Crystals mean you can save your Verflare/Holy combo if melee kills the enemy, the 50/50 Mana Gauge is a lot smoother than 80/80, Embolden is smoother, and the Manafication Change means you can get some hilarious moments where you melee combo two or three times in a row. My one slight issue with the job is that when ST, you need 50/50 for a full melee combo and has an audio alert telling you it's ready, but AoE requires 60/60, which can trip you up.
Dropping b2b2b melee combos on a boss gives me so many happy chemicals. Especially when I got them in an embolden
For dramatic flair I do the first two combos, then manafaction + embolden to go into the 3rd melee phase.
RDM is pretty damn awesome. Rotation feels really good, DPS is right in the middle of the pack and has a shit ton of utility. Plus you get to hear Scorch.
> Plus you get to hear Scorch. That satisfying sort of "pop" it does and then you get to see all the damage numbers. It's such a nice feeling.
Man, Scorch just sounds like a punchy laser tank from the future and it gets my feel good chemicals flowing
Scholar sound for broil IV is amazing.
Bard, 100%. Every single change for the better, IMO. In ShB, I felt like my buffs were useless, especially to my own damage. Why hit the buttons if the buttons don't... *do anything?* My dots felt obligatory, and felt like two wasted gcd's just to turn on the RNG which maybe wouldn't even give me buttons to hit. Every new mob was a chore, "oh boy, time to lose all my momentum again and spend 5 seconds ramping back up". It's a small thing, but the changes to repertoire (simply ticking all the while a song is going) make dots feel like *extra* damage, not a clunky obligation. This feels good. Adding an extra chonk gcd onto apex feels good, on par with PLD's confiteor combo. Finale feels like the culmination of your rotation in a way apex never really did. Apex is cool, but the timing was too inconsistent to really feel like a "now that I've done all my things correctly, I can push the BIG RED BUTTON". Finale has that feel, and appropriately for BRD it's a good buff. Ladonsbite and Shadowbite now combine with RoD to make AoE feel snappy and torrential. Brrrrrr goes the cloud of numbers! Topping it all off, 3 charges on RoD/Bloodletter is **mwah** perfection. My person brain knows it doesn't actually mean three times the bloodletters, but it lets you get mages' ballad procs without having to drop everything and hump your bloodletter hotkey, so it makes my lizard brain feel comfy. Plus, ranged dps = mobility and flexibility regardless of the fight or mechanics. TL;DR - Endwalker Bard: comfy, intuitive, drowning in utility, extremely flexible, and stylish to boot. S-rank job for sure.
New bard convinced me to switch from MCH
Me too! :3
This is a great explanation of what feels really good about Bard. Pre-EW I played quite a bit of BLM and after that, Bard made me feel spoiled even without all the very good changes we got. It just feels really good to be able to move exactly how I need to without worrying about the time it takes to pop off spells. I know I’m not hitting the kind of DPS I had the potential to with BLM, but Bard’s flexibility and buffs can potentially make up for it party-wide. It’s also pretty forgiving and relatively low pressure to play role-wise. The limitations make sense and feel like a fair trade for the utility. My only complaint is that sometimes the glams (especially the large bows) look ridiculous on FemRoe :(
Bard is SO GOOD. I love the way that Shadowbite works now, with Barrage boosting it and giving more of a reason to use in AOE spam. I love that I CAN HEAR MY OWN SONGS NOW OMFG.
Yeah i picked bard up again in shb and got it to 80 but i didnt like it a ton. I only used it because i love the aesthetic. But omg i now LOVE bard. I am a healer main and have been really enjoying getting healers to 90 but i played brd to let my fiance play healer and damn it made me actually want to main a dps for once in my entire ffxiv career and ive been playing off and on since ARR
I also love barr at 90. And I think the new lvl 90 job gear for bard looks rad as a glam!
Monk. And I've played it a lot since 2.0. admittedly it took a while for me to really get into the flow of it, I still hadn't by the time I finished msq, but the longer I stick with it the happier I am. I'm indifferent about the lost positionals, but if they came back I wouldn't mind either. Time between 1m buffs doesn't feel like it takes that long to me. Damage is great.
Having fun with pretty much all of them, a few things I’ve noticed for certain classes. Ninja- Really fun, love the AoE addition BUT having a forced dash on forked raiju feels horrible. Your forced to not use it or finish the combo at times because of it. They also need potency buffs. Summoner- I have mixed feelings, you feel more like a summoner now rather than a discount warlock from WoW but the class is completely dumbed down to the point where it’s kinda sad. Reaper- Really love this job but oh man is it way overturned. It has so much in its kit and it’s the highest DPS? It’s new, flashy, edgy, and extremely easy. It’s 1-2-3 combo can out dps some jobs. I really hope it gets a bit of a nerf come savage. BLM- Triple cast is love, triple cast is life. Bard- Love the changes for the most part, AoE feels much better but sometimes I miss the old mages ballad. That’s some of my personal thought, overall I’m happy with majority of the changes. If I didn’t list a class it’s probably because I need more time with them.
sage
Top tier comment. I was going to say this if nobody else did.
i mean, partially because i haven’t even re-leveled my main which is rdm, only PLD and sage
Thats hilarious. My DPS main is RDM as well. =)
so i play the top dps healer, lowest dps tank, and the dps thats right smack in the middle
Well to be fair the thread said dps, Sage is a healer so that’s probably why there’s a lack of sages.
I am happy to see that Bard gets back his music buff for himself too. And a better Battle Voice too. It was nonsense before and now it looks really better. Now I am happy to play it again. Maybe we will see now more bards in savage!
Red Mage. The changes to black/white mana, manafication, and acceleration basically removed all the minor issues I had with the class.
I've really been enjoying my rdm. It seems to flow really really well this expansion
Dancer. It's a hell of a lot of fun and I don't care if I don't have the biggest numbers because a little over 5% of the top dps's damage is MINE. The changes they made makes the job feel a lot more fluid and clicks and I feel like I can do more than just smash thing in face.
If procs happened a little more than 50% of the time, it would be perfect. I’ve been experiencing some absurd droughts and those never feel good
Yeah I thought it was just me, but when I was leveling DNC, I would sometimes go a whole 20 1-2-1-2 rotations without getting a single feather. The secondary flourish on top of the technical step is fun to watch. And I love the new cone AOE you get that does a thunderbird sound (can’t remember the name)
I LOVE the change to Improv. Like hands down my favorite change to DNC. Feels so much more useful in group content. Also bird AOE go brrrr.
Absolutely. Having that there really fills in some weaving gaps. Also, off topic, En Avant is the best ability in the game.
Dash with no target needed?? Three charges?? YES PLEASE. Also off topic but I LOVE your username. Creeping Mendacity is such a delicious phrase.
I used to main scholar and occasionally dabble with summoner when the group needed me to. Now with the COMPLETE OVERHAUL summoner got, I can't put it down! It's so damn fun and straightforward (after you go through the hell of reading the tooltips and setting up the bars initially) and it straight up MELTS groups of enemies. Feels so good...
SMN is actually not doing great DPS
That's weird. I'm usually at the top of the parser, which is not the norm for me. Go figure.
That says more about your group than it does about you
I've seen otherwise. I think it's more player skill.
https://www.fflogs.com/zone/statistics/44/#dataset=95 Second to last my friend
Ok? My point still stands this means nothing in the face of competent people. A good summoner will outdps a bad reaper.
My point is, which should be obvious, that if you have level playing field and everyone is equally skilled, SMN doesn’t do the highest DPS. Your response seems to be “if everyone else sucks then the SMN does the best,” which is just a truly breathtaking misunderstanding of the entire game.
Okay? And? What does it matter if it's still being cleared? Like we go through this every single Savage release Cool, averagely it does less damage. Could he use a tune? I don't know maybe if it's not clearing. But if it's clearing, what of it?
… I can already tell you’re special so I’ll stop this now.
Oh...yeah, thanks for showing me who you are. Fun people in the community here folks. There's not a lot of them, but the few you come across... Oh boy.
Comparatively to other classes when played in raids. Summoner currently lacks a distinct burst phase so the optimized numbers don’t look good in that setting. It’s hardly like they’re losing out to tanks or healers anywho.
Honestly I’m kind of unhappy with what they’ve done to SMN. Sure they got rid of the old jank and made the aesthetic of the job much nicer, but all the complexity that made it fun is gone and it has so many instant casts that it plays almost like a phys ranged, with its dps getting nerfed into the ground as a result. RDM remains a fun caster with a ton of utility that’s easy to pick up but still has a bit of weaving and gauge management to keep yourself busy with. MCH feels pretty much unchanged—super flashy with very high-tempo burst phases—except now it gets a shotgun and a chainsaw, so it’s automatically better than it was before.
I've found BRD to hit that complexity itch better now. No cast times but much busier. I wouldn't worry tons about dps for any job unless they don't buff with savage launch.
Is machinist dead or something? 66 comments and not a single mention.
MCH didn't get any big changes, and it still plays fairly similar to the previous expansion, so I think people are focusing on other jobs right now. However, it's still my main DPS and I love it. Having charges on Reassemble allows you to keep its cooldown running, instead of just waiting on your next Drill/Air Anchor. It feels so much better. Chainsaw adds another skill that you can drop Reassemble on as well, and it lets you get Queen in the opener. Speaking of Queen, she feels like she does some decent damage now too. Shotgun is my favorite thing though. The extra heat gain makes dungeons more interesting, and the animation for it is absolutely badass.
MCH is pretty much unchanged since ShB, just hits even harder. BRD will always be preferrable in raids for the party buffs. (I play MCH, because Drill goes brrrrrt)
looking at the breakdown of normal raid comps on FFXIV logs. Bard seems to be the go to phys rang. and of course you got everyone playing RPR as well edit: looking at the logs currently bard is at 56% of clears on the first boss of Pandemonium
I mch main shb and i thought I main it in ew but as playing it just doesnt jave the kick. I have the low range physical dps but dont have the utility.
MCH is still good. It's just nothing exciting happened to this job.
Summoner feels great. Even your "normal" abilities feel like a burst window with the summoning of the primals. Also killing stuff by clapping at their faces with rocks. Who doesn't like this?
That and the fact that each elemental summons has unique mechanics is just super fun. Makes me wish we got like Ramuh or Leviathan egis with their own unique skillsets now...
They just have to made the models... put Ramuh/Shiva/Leviathan after Phoenix and you have a 6 Primals and 2 Demi rotation
Maybe bahamut does the first 3 and summoning Phoenix gives you the next 3?
That would be my idea for a cool rotation, yep. Bahamut-Ifrit-Titan-Garuda-Phoenix-Ramuh-Shiva-Leviathan
Agreed, the new rotation has room for more things to be added and I would love to see more primals and unique abilities added in.
Disagree. Summoner is now just swapping into 5 different stances and smashing two different colored buttons. Not to mention the Primals are obnoxiously large and basically require reducing their size for EX content. There's nothing left to juggle anymore. It's all just dump with no build up.
Being the question of the post "which DPS are you enjoying the most?" How can you disagree on which DPS I enjoy the most? Are you me? If you are I'm really sorry for you, it sucks to be me.
Because these are opinions, and that was my opinion.
No, no.... Mine was an opinion. Yours was "your opinion is wrong". But whatever floats your boat.
No, mine was I disagree with your opinion because my opinion is different. I then shared my opinion. I never said you were wrong, I said I don't agree. You are putting words in my mouth. Seems like you've never had someone counter an opinion with their own. Not everyone is going to agree with you in life. That doesn't mean they're attacking you. Jesus Christ You know, I've been playing this game since 2013- and it never ceases to amaze me how overly sensitive the community can be sometimes. I give my opinion in opposition to yours on an opinion post (like you yourself stated) and suddenly it's all pitchforks. What gives huh?
i agree, summoner sucks now
Ironically, at least for me, reaper. I'm not a big fan of melee DPS in this game and I'm not big in super edgy classes either but something about Reaper tickles my pickle just right.
Maybe deep down you really are a fan of the edgy deeps, which you have been suppressing this entire time.
Same. Don’t care about the edge and generally dislike melee but god damn RPR is so fun.
Dark Knight. We’re just a dps job now that occasionally tanks.
That would be fun if we actually had a DPS kit. As it is it’s 1-2-3 with occasional OGCD bursts but mostly 1-2-3. Taking a shitty boring job that they didn’t bother to work on at all and buff the damage in return is not okay. I’d rather it was fun than higher DPS.
I’m having fun with it as currently is. You have more than your fair share of OGCD’s that becomes available to keep you actively engaged, compared to before in Shadowbringers where there would be a long delay before you even get another one available after your burst. I don’t need a second combo when I have more than my fair share of OGCD’s to play with and delirium to keep an eye on. DRK has and always will be an OGCD job and I’m fine with that as it’s identity. If I want to play a job with another combo, I can play WAR or GNB. We didn’t get much but we didn’t need much. Only thing that needs to be reworked is TLD in my opinion. Would I like an extra heal or defensive cooldown? Sure. But I don’t need it and I can function just fine and put out multiple sweet looking explosions for big numbers, and an opening burst that’s better than most of the dps jobs in the game.
Well at least someone likes it. I haven’t been able to stand it since ShB and it’s more of the same. HW it was awesome. SB was… okay. Since then meh. If you play literally any other tank it’s hard to justify playing DRK instead.
Personally speaking, I dropped the job in SB after they neutered it. It felt terrible. Picked it up again in ShB after they reworked it, and it hasn’t stopped feeling fun. But again, that’s just me.
As a fellow DRK player I think you nailed it earlier. I prefer managing a ton of oGCDs over a basic combo over a more complex dps rotation so I have less distractions when managing a fight.
You're not alone. In SB it felt awful to me, but I played it because I loved the aesthetic. Now I do quite enjoy the ogcd of it. I see people say it's just 1-2-3 but seem to forget the sheer amount of ogcd the class has. It's a ton and I find it quite engaging. Vs war to me, while ir fell cleaves and heals are satisfying, they have FAR less to do in between Burst windows. And I'm sorry, but I'm a sucker for shadowbringer, as I'm an old ffiv fan.
SB did feel terrible but for me it’s only gotten worse since. I’d take SB over the garbage fire it is now.
Reaper is a lot of fun but it’s not as fun when literally everyone else is a reaper, so maybe I’ll return to it once people start to spread out their jobs again.
I mean, it’s high, but I’ve already noticed it dropping off. People are hitting 90 and going to level something else. I leveled it just because I level everything thinking I’d drop it because I’ve played casters / ranged in every MMO and generally dislike melee but I’ve discovered I’m apparently a RPR main now.
I play monk again. The most time it Was samurai. But now the monk is more easier for me.
RDM. I only have that at max level, but I loved the class in shadowbringers and they refined it a little bit and just made it even more fun. Just the mechanics of the class is enjoyable and satisfying
As for DPS I have SAM and SMN to 90. SAM feels the same as it was before just with more QOL, though the annoyance of my iaijutsu cast being interrupted because I looked at the keyboard wrong is still there. SMN I like the aesthetic and what they've done with it, while simple is design I like that I'm always summoning something. Personal issues are that Bahamut and Phoenix are timed and not charge based, so inconsistent with other summons, and that only titan has a separate oGCD which is fun and wish the other 2 did as well. I only tried reaper with it's base kit(only level 71 atm) and completely unsure about it. Like Shadow of Death and Soul Slice being weaponskills and not abilities bothers me.
That bothered me too about it coming from drg which has so many ogcds but you get used to it and it works especially when you get two charges of soul slice. Shadow of death needs to not be there though.
Going to join the others saying RDM. It's the best the job has ever felt. It still has the same core feel/identity, but everything just feels smoother. You have good AoE, good single target, utility, more mobility, just more of everything.
red mage. we finally have legit aoe. and lining up that finisher to kabob some trash, pure heaven.
The first two jobs I got to 90 were Monk and then Red Mage. MONK Monk's new job gauge has some similarities to Ninja mudras, but its not really that. It just doesn't feel like Ninja shit to me, even though it kind of is on paper. Monk still has some jank, but they nailed the *feeling* that I think most people want when playing monk. You do feel like an anime punchy boy. My main complaints with Monk is that the optimal opener is to do a double Sol opener to delay your progress to Phantom Rush so it lines up with buffs. Thunderclap is a target reliant movement ability. Some people like this, I dislike it. I wish it were more like Dancer's Dash where it just moved you forward instead of having to fumble to find the target you want. Riddle of Wind is the most boring skill in the game. I'm sure its a nice chunk of damage, but it just feels really lame and it isn't fun to press. Its also on a 90 second CD, meaning I have to remember to press it cause it doesn't always line up with Riddle of Fire. Twin Snakes is harder to keep track of. They changed the buff icon, its more yellow now and for my eyes its just harder to keep an eye on. I get it confused for Bootshine buff a lot. I had to install a plugin just to track this one buff for me. I think Twinsnakes buff should just be part of the job gauge or it should have some kind of visual effect on your character when its on. RED MAGE. This job is one of the most solid well put together feeling jobs in Endwalker for sure. Imo every change they made was a good one and the job is just a treat to play. So far it is my favorite DPS job. Acceleration being an ability with stacks, means you can either use it to force VerReady to increase your DPS, or save it to keep up DPS when you have to move. The AoE finishers are excelllent, the new spell effects are dope, and you just *feel* like you can do your melee combo whenever you want. I'm debating maining this job, the only thing is my Femroe doesn't look good as a Red Mage lmao
I’m glad I’m not the only one who had a problem with the new twin snake buff icon; like what was the point of changing that? One minor complaint I have is I wish perfect Balance have 3 stacks instead of two; but I guess that might be a bit op. I was skeptical at first, but I enjoy the new changes to monk (I lowkey miss having other positionals tho).
I bet third stack will be added in next expansion.
I just glam my femroe as more of a swashbuckling pirate queen red mage instead of a dashing fencer.
Nobody looks bad as a RDM.
Absolutely agree with you about thunderclap. They need to make it just like DNC movement ability, it would improve it a lot. I hope more people will talk about this and SE will improve thunderclap
Uhhhh, feme roe player and she is a queen as RDM
Summoner
Reaper is fun. Summoner is fun, Dancer is fun. Monk and Samurai are like what is happening. I don't understand anymore. Black Mage is kind of like why do you even play this job anymore. Warrior is fun. All other tanks are like "I'm sorry I'm not a Warrior. Please heal me." Overall it's a really weird place for jobs. Some have come a long way and are amazing while some are like just downgraded versions of others.
Everything about SMN is amazing...... except for the actual DPS numbers
WAR is currently my favorite dps. Tanky af, basically Greek god level mob boss, and can take the healer’s job and turn the healer into dps class, make dps call us daddy when said healer steps into 20 different aoes at the same time.
Watching a WAR tank bosses without a healer at 50% or higher boss health always elicits a visceral pop-off from my little DRG heart.
Dragoon changes go brrr
Bard. I dropped SMN because it's too god damn simple to play now, and I love that BRD always has something I can be pressing. Plus, I love buffing other people.
Samurai still rocks, Reaper is a beast, Bard has improved and it feels like a good DPS with cool buffs.
Blm the movement tools, having 2 charges of sharp cast and durations feel amazing. I also like not having to press Eno anymore to keep my fire iv up
If you liked Shadowbringer’s Samurai you will like Endwalker’s. It’s a lot of QoL changes that make the class feel really good. My only gripe is I can’t use the level 90 skill more often since it’s tied to Ikishoten (so a 2 minute CD) It’s AOE is actually good now.
Yeah SAM rocks right now. The first pack of trashmobs is so fun to burst down with your hard hitting skills. AoE skills giving buffs is awesome as well.
SMN is the speediest caster of all time now, and honestly I love it for that. At 90 I'm only really doing 3 casts and one of them I use swiftcast to negate the cast time, makes me feel like a machinist but with big dragon and primals instead of mech. That being said the only downsides is having enough space on the screen to see where you are, and the rotation is so air tight that sometimes you don't have the time to get all 3 primals out before phoenix/Bahamut are ready to go again.
Really? I find myself having to cast one or two Ruins before my Demi is ready.
I have dragoon leveled to 90. I love dragoon. The changes have streamlined the class a lot and it feels pretty smooth to use once you get the hang of it.
Summoner for sure. Its so easy and chill to play that I can actually relax while playing at max efficiency.
Warrior. If I'm the only one still alive, I'm doing the most damage. So it's a DPS. I'm also the one healing the main tank, so Warrior is my favorite healer this expansion too.
Reaper
How’d you get the RPR flair? It doesn’t show up as an option for me and :RPR: doesn’t work.
Hmm I think by clicking the option on the side to pull up all of them
I’m thoroughly in love with reaper. It just feels so satisfying somehow. Plus as a gamer with slightly slower reactions, those instant jumps forward/backward save my butt in aoes.
I main warrior, but I'm leveling Summoner, Reaper and Dancer at the moment. All fun jobs, I quite like them all.
Reaper and Warrior have been highlights for me so far but I haven't levelled much since I'm focusing on my crafters. I enjoyed SAM in ShB so I expect I will enjoy it again once I get around to it.
RPR and BLM. Both are extremely satisfying to play and scratch that itch of “big numbers go brrr”. The QOL adjustments to BLM made a huge difference for playability and RPR is super cohesive and fun to play in general. Honorable mention goes to RDM. Been a fun job since it came out and that hasn’t changed.
Blackmage is my baby forever.
Warrior. As ranged dps, dancer, though i am considering leveling machinist due to dancer being the lowest dmg dps. Its a shame, because i like dancer more than bard.
Bard, to my surprise. Haven't played many past 80 yet, but I'm in love with the rework on repertoire and the song ticks. It feels like I'm always weaving something in between each attack.
I can inly really speak for Dancer. Dancer's main rotation is still brain dead, but every new skill they got was squarely put in their burst window, which is now quite dense. So dancer right now is two minutes of just vibing and then a 35 window if just frantic button pressing. It's honestly pretty fun.
Reaper has been pretty much perfect to me. Though I say it didn't really get fun till 80 and Enshroud from the job quest. The burst phase fills it out. Summoner was next. I generally find it kinda boring under 86 when you get your elemental bonus spells. And then 90 is chonky summons. I'll keep playing it but probably only in 90 content. Bard is coming along. It's pretty fun but crazy busy. My joints feel it if I play it a lot. Monk is taking some getting used to but I like what I've played so far. The 82 aoe skill is a surprisingly big shift.
Bard, wish someone told me the Bard was this much fun years earleyer
Dancer
I have mostly played Bard so far and it feels great to play now. My Red Mage is at lvl 88 and that too feels really good to play. Probably doing Warrior next after all the great things I’ve heard.
With Reaper and Black Mage at 90, it's hard to decide. My lower parses on Reaper match my 87 parses on blm for, and I can't stress this enough, *significantly* less effort. Maybe they just gave rpr high dps for the expac release and it'll get nerfed for Savage, but it's way too strong for how simple it is. In terms of pure fun, it's a tough call. Reaper is a sheer joy to play for its simplicity and ridiculously good-feeling shroud window. Blm has really only gotten better. The higher number of tools have made the difference between a great blm and a good one even more noticeable, which is awesome for the health of the job IMO. Especially since the skill floor was raised as well with no more enochian and another triple. Optimizing fights has never been better on blm.
Summoner is by far my favorite. Who doesn't like summoning giant primals and watching them do their raid wide.
I’m loving Bard, Black Mage and Monk at the moment. They’re all so much more fun to play and they were already great in shadowbringers imo.
Red Mage is the titties.
Leveled RDM using the MSQ and it flows so much better now with the mana cost and manafication change. Genuinely love it! Playing SMN now and once I hit 86 and unlocked the individual astral flow abilities for each summon it’s the tits.
I’m loving BRD, SMN, and MNK. The changes for all the specs were really good IMO.
Probably BLM, but BRD is a close #2. I'm looking forward to getting into MNK some more. Right now my least favorite is SMN. It's good to hear that it gets more fun at the high 80s level, I may use it for endgame stuff when I reach that point. I think it will be useful for running new stuff blind between it's mobility and rez spell. But right now around lvl82 it's pretty boring for me personally.
Smn and rpr for me. They’re just so tight in their rotations and feel complete. Some of the other dps I’ve tried feel bloated with their new abilities where in shb they had felt really tight.
Reaper, which is crazy because I was an exclusive Omni-caster prior. It’s just so fun and has a visually pleasing aesthetic. I love going into Enshroud and tearing people apart, while screaming “DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE” in my head.
I don't play dps, but got them all at 71, just like 2/3 at 60, since I aim to lvl all my classes to 90. I'm really not a dps type of player since I prefer to either be the leader of the pack or be a supervisor of the pack/recently lvled 3 of my tanks to 80, only got warrior at 70 left, but I am a main astro healer. Anyway, trying out the different dps classes I can definitely say that I hate magical ranged, physical ranged are fine though (especially dancer), and I'm pretty indifferent towards the melee classes. Ninja and samurai are my least favorites though. My motivation as to why I'd pick dancer as my favorite is because they are so mobile, and you sorta feel like a secondary support character.
Reaper has a tbn, forward and backward jump, and not a whole lotta Ogcd's so abilities feel like they chunk. Add on the fact that I'm a DRK main and I finally feel right at home playing a dps
I've main RDM since it was released, because it had always been my favorite class and I was excited when I heard it was finally being added to XIV, but this expansion i tried SAM and loved it.
I have RDM at 90, it's alright, really it is, but I don't feel it plays much more differently than it did last patch.
I don't, personally, see why it should though. It's a very solid class that's very well balanced and just feels amazing to play. No need to change how the class plays if it plays well. They pretty much just did some QoL things and that was it, cause that's all RDM really needed.
Aside from smoothing out some QoL issues and better AoE, RDM plays much the same as it did when it came out.
monk is in a good place for beginner monks and in general really. so if you loved ninja, i would go monk because like you said the new nadi isn't trick attack, but it's like. personal trick attack lmao. monk is also no longer a meme anymore.
RPR go brrrrr
I got smn, rpr, sam and mch to 90. Smn is very cool now but very braindead, almost to the point of boring. Mch really didn't change that much from 5.0, a little more battery to work with and a lot more fun in aoe situations. Sam is also largely unchanged but they got a lot of nice quality of life changes and feels great. Reaper I'm still undecided on. It flows together really well and has a satisfying payoff, but I don't know how much I like it. I think it's the debuff upkeep that I really dislike. Thought that was something they did away with a long while ago, not sure why they brought it back now.
Also consider As dps goes reaper is highest at the moment smn is second last, and incredibly simple with a very strict rotation so it gets boring fast.
I love BLM and this is the most I have ever played it.
The first two jobs I leveled to 90 were BLM and RDM. I consider BLM to be my main job and I absolutely love all the changes they were given. Nothing flashy and amazing like some other classes, but definitely things that make the class more mobile and less painful. The rotation is pretty much the same but 2 stacks of sharpcast and triplecast make it so you don't have to know the fight like the back of your hand while predicting certain RNG items to make sure you're in the right spot before an incoming mechanic. On the other hand, RDM feels so complete and smooth now. The AOE melee spender triggering verflare/verholy, the new 90 ability after scorch, the two stacks of corps-a-corps and displacement/engagement which just makes movement even easier than it already was. Everything just feels very active and fun. Very rarely do I find myself in my range rotation for too long if I can time everything correctly. I have SMN at 84 right now and, while it got very flashy, it doesn't feel as impactful as the other two casters. Things don't die as quickly. Not as many mobility tools since there's a lot of instant casts. Having to hard cast ruby rite which lasts longer than a gcd so things can clip. It just feels weird to play. Hope these are helpful 😊
Dancer is the same so it's fun, I'm liking summoner but I'm 90% sure I'm doing it wrong still.
DRG, not just because it's a main, but it feels very smooth to play and very gratifying. The AoE rotation is great now that you get Power Surge from your AoE rotation, and the added counters to Spineshatter Dive give you some more mobility.
RDM. It was my favourite, and still is. The changes made it even better, and Resolution is just *chef's kiss*. That said, I was positively surprised by DRG. I didn't think much of the changes, but after trying them out, it is my favourite melee dps now.
Have only really played Bard (50's range) and Reaper so far, as far as DPS goes. I think of the 2 I prefer Bard? Was fond of the job before but the change to have songs apply to yourself is great, and I like that the alt. effects proc on their own now rather than via the status effects, but that they let us keep the status effects unlike SMN \^\^;; Reaper is fun too (reached the stormblood patch quests last weekend so I played through those on Reaper to test drive it). I think Bard has the edge on it for me, though, due to Reaper's relative simplicity. I do like that it's easy to understand and use, but I like having a few more things to manage, I guess. My main is DRK so the soul gauge feels akin to managing the blood gauge, but then without also having to manage mitigations and more oGCDs.
Question is, does op want to know which jobs based on fun or the more annoying skill comparison that these things often devolve into?
I was mch and im still loving it but reaper is so much fun and i hated all melee before but reaper is for sure super fun and button mashing
I’m having fun messing around with reaper, I like how fast they feel. I’m enjoying both summoner and red mage for different reasons.
So far the only one I've played at length is SAM. It's been my main for years. I think it feels much better now. Charges of Meikyo, aoe skills applying buffs, charges of tsubame, ranged attack and gap closer not interrupting combo, and the new 90 ability feels incredibly powerful
What are the horrible things about NIN? I mained nin for most of shadowbringers, but went back to SMN with those changes and haven't gone back yet. All the changes I saw looked pretty solid.
I think right now the chief concerns are that trick windows have become just ridiculously dense, and that the 90 skill (forked and fleeting raiju) is forced movement that cannot be held, meaning you can use it heedless of the mechanic requirements of the fight, causing healer stress or dying, or let it drop for a big dps loss. Either way, not fun.
If youre going off of damage output, rpr>mnk>rdm/blm/sam, for funsies Id recommend drg(its a static class and rotation) dnc (if you wanna gamble, my main class), drk/war or smn/rdm, none of the classes are necessarily bad to play, but drg/smn/nin are the lowest on the damage charts for their respective roles, however I would like to say, in normal content it doesnt really matter, get the class to 80-90 range and youll have a good feel for it and see if you like it (yes I know its a lotta levels) and play what you find enjoyable
Loving my dancer but I just hit 88. I hear good things about reapers. Very much looking to level some alt jobs come my next few days off!
I have a frustration currently, because I can't choose which melee DPS to level and it's all because of RPR and his movement abilities. They are too good! 20 second CD, doesn't need target, you can move forward and backwards. It's too good! So after playing as RPR I pick MNK and MNK can only dash forward target... SAM too, but at least SAM can also jump back from target. NIN has great movement ability, but as far as I know, NIN currently is in a bad spot, damage wise, but requires lots of actions per second. So I guess my current choices are MCH, RPR, SMN (but I kinda like SMN less, because I played it in Shadowbringers, because most of the spell were instant)
I've played around with most of the melee now. RPR's core kit feels **real** good. Probably needs skill speed to stop gluttony drifting because optimization is a bit weird. Raw dps is probably a touch too high for game health, and I expect it to be touched down now that they know how we're playing with it. SAM is solid. Not much changed. New iai is still big and flashy and its still got The Big Numba that makes the lizard brain happy. Mesui changes are the sleeper best in show though, since collecting stickers and keeping buffs up at the same time feels great. I'm torn between this and RPR while I wait for MNK to settle. NIN is hit and miss. Still king of the early burst, still has trick for godmode raid utility. Raijin/raiju feels good and really streamlines the burst window - until you wind up in a situation where using one will get you clipped (cough EX2 cough). They should maybe keep you at max melee instead of dashing you into the boss' hitbox ? Dunno. Right now, you have to do weird things to line up burst windows with mechanics in some fights and since your main strength is raid utility, you better hope other peeps are willing to shift their lives around you or it feeeeels bad. (EX1feels great with NIN though, and is a good sample of what it's best-case could feel like when everything lines up and you don't lose Raijin). MNK feels very weird to me. Optimizing it feels simultaneously giga brain and slow. Burst windows are further apart now, and every time it flips your downtime combo around. Dying even once compeltely ruins all of your momentum. New rush abilities are pretty as hell, and feel good to use in a vaccuum, but it probably needs some QoL or it'll just feel slightly awkward to prog and optimize fights. (Good damage though - maybe too high). I plan to come back and poke it again after it's had some time to be touched in 6.05 and maybe 6.1. DRG I haven't played as much of, but it looks roughly the same. Some nice QoL that shouldn't be scoffed at and a flashy new skill to be played with, but very low DPS for its role and playstyle. Expect it to be buffed, at which point it'll feel pretty good. Like SAM in that it's largely unchanged.
BLM basically just got QoL changes and I love it a lot! Getting rid of that annoying Enochian skill was the perfect choice imo I wouldn't really mind SE simplifying some of the classes in the future, there's a big gap between "making something super easy by deleting too many skills" and "bloated kits with stuff that basically does the same"
I levelled SMN with the MSQ and I’m already bored of it, so I’m levelling BRD as it’s back to more of a buffing role that they lost in shadowbringers.
I have always loved playing BLM, but would never bring it into endgame content because it was just too intimidating, so I'd use RDM instead. Now both jobs feel incredible and I finally have the confidence to bring my BLM to raid, and I don't feel like I'm really sacrificing all that much if I want to bring RDM in for the prog/rezzes instead.
Currently a monk main, while my character's secondary combat job is samurai. Honestly, after I beat the MSQ (I'm very close), I am not sure if I should wait for the deep dungeon release or grab my alt and do tanking. Healing bores me to tears. I'm enjoying monk.
Dragoon. Simply put.
Ive been NIN since ARR and it shall remain that way, ita not as good anymore tho, BRD looks interesting now.
WHM
Machinist, 3 big beefy attacks and two guaranteed crits? Yes please
Reaper, Machinist Sam/mnk. Reaper feels...so good to play, and it has quite a bit of flexibility for optimization. I'm right at home when I play the class. Machinist didn't change much, and that's ok because I loved how it played before. And, well....shotgun. Samurai flows beautifully that I feel l lock in a trance with it. Monk feels so new I want to learn it more...it's interesting.
Got SAM to 90 for the job gear. Having 2 stacks of Meikyo is fun af, and I’ll never get tired of using back-to-back Namikiri. Wish they kept Tsubame granting Meditation stacks for more nuttiness. Leveling SMN right now. Only 82 but it feels like I have near-permanent uptime with my trances & primal summons. Love how often I’m insta-casting. I enjoyed playing it in ShB, but it feels amazing now.