Job Balance?

When we run drk melee we use the brd, cor, idris geo set up as much as possible. Between the 3 of them you should be seeing upwards of 7k attack. The amount that chaos rolls gives after smite, brd, and idris geo is just unfair. 5k attack, which is very possible with human geo, and trust brd/cor.

Don't forget to dia II from someone that is whm or /rdm, cor use light shot for upgrade, assuming you didn't bring a rdm main for dia 3, (which is rare but not unheard of)

There has been occasions in which the drks pull so much hate it isn't even worth taking a tank, just burn whatever down with x2 AG Rag, idris geo, jse/barataria cor, r/e/m brd (soon to be aeonic as well), dia 2/light shot (3 if you bring a rdm) if you are in escha/reisen make sure to get all the possible vorseals you can. Think my lowest is 9/9, temps can push your reso avg in the 60-70k range.

Literally do everything, if you have a blu there have them hit with def down spell, can't remember the name of it. Every job has some form of value, war has tomahawk, drg has angon, mnk is a great cheerleader....

First time I hit 48k I about ***a brick, months later I started hitting 40k+ cross reapers, then our geo got idris and I started seeing 45k+ reso, we added in a few extra elements such as dia, light shot, no tank extra buffs now I am hitting 50k much more commonly. At least 70% when full buffed, I also almost never use souleater.

Our ideal party would be idris geo, rdm, cor, brd, x2 drk whm, rdm being in the outside pt strictly for enfeeble/haste/back heal/nuke spam in hopes of MB just for the hell of it.

Keep in mind, I am not saying I always brutalize blu by more than 3 times their dmg. I have seen some note worthy blu that would at least get a thanks for participating medal. We have seen blu come and go in shell, most are just tang+1 or colada, few have been mythic, they just don't compete with the drks though. Not to forget the ceaseless amount of PuG blu I have run with in stuff like ambuscade. As I said before I have seen some impressive blu pushing 60% of my dmg, then again I have seen drks doing 20% of my dmg. It really boils down to the effort, knowledge, skill, & gear of the player.

Since I have got argosy I have drastically increased my dmg, I am only 3/5 +1, still need body/legs +1 and have yet to see a blu stay ahead of me.
Again, this is only my experience, there are probably a group of blu out there that could keep up if not beat me, as I said, the last blu to come close was empy/aeonic before I started using argosy, so I hope you can see my doubt as to when I cringe when people think blu is a top tier DD.

To preface, since the topic of "not endgame players" chiming in has come to light, I'll say that our LS (under the glorious leadership of Lordoftheseven, so say we all) has completed several aeonic runs.

Since ~85% of the 'hard part' of the aeonic runs is done with a purely Mage (blm sch geo whm +tank etc) setup, we get bored and usually on t1-t2s in Reisen we'll have a couple people swap to melee jobs they don't get to play often. With an NQ geo and a cor, we had a top-tier war reso spamming for over 70,000 dmg per ws on selket (and close to that on others) ... thats what he means by 'CRUSH'.

Additionally, people here act like other melee jobs can't offer support buffs, but the war I just described is also able to give an ABSURD amount of critical bonus to party members, which resulted in higher (though no where near 70,000) cdc's from the top-tier blu also in pt (who btw, still got 'CRUSHED').

If you think this is an exaggeration, I believe I still have screenshots, and I know I've uploaded at least one screenshot of this war using a club and doing 40k judgements in an ambuscade run.

Everyone's view is skewed because the current FFXI hive-mind doesn't want to bother buffing people, exploring other jobs they don't understand, and in general, take a risk on anything not currently-cookie cutter... and honestly, I don't blame them!

RDM for example having to individually haste II everyone being a mostly non-existent thing is an incredible relief, but it's still possible, and still super useful. The problem is finding one who isn't a piece of trash who can't handle even the most basic of tasks related to supporting other people. We've all had the RDM from days-of-old who just refuses to stay on top of buffs for anyone but himself, and if the group is relying on it, it's a HUGE problem. Bottom line is that AOE buffs are just more fun to use; they aren't nearly as tedious and allow you more freedom to spend your time not-single-target-buffing and actually 'playing' (I.E. interacting with the enemy in front of you!).

I can assure you that provided a good DD RUN could self haste-II they'd absolutely ***on 99%~149% of the 'good blus' in existence. If I could haste-II myself on DRG my star-diver would be never-ending and I'd ooze joy from every crevice. If WARs could Haste II themselves... there wouldn't just be a bandwagon, there'd be a goddamned high end mobile-home with flames painted on it and it's name would be Warcry.

At the end of the day, this topic, just as the DEV-for-a-day topic before it is always going to go the exact same direction (south and fast!) for one reason only: Players make HORRIBLE developers! Players get tunnel vision tied to the tight scope of "what they know" and don't see the much broader scope of the massive plethora of options that lay in front of them in a game like this. If players were only willing to invest some time into alternatives they'd see that *ghasp* they not only exist, but in a lot of cases, they work damned good.

Fuji, if I am correct in assuming, I believe you have aeonic polearm, if so, I would love to watch your drg in action at some point as I have yet to see an aeonic drg.


I am already seeing more and more drks and wars in the game, most are using AG rag as well. Still some beastmode drks rocking scythe though *cough* Bloodlusty *cough*

Dive into the DRG thread and look for some posts from Ruaumoko (another of our LS members). You'll see him as DRG with no outside support doing 99k umbras and obliterating a T1 reisenjima Cactuar NM solo-with-trust. That's more than I'd be able to show you since I'm still job pointing in CP capes (but I'm no slouch either!).

This is just one of the many examples of just how extremely off base the bulk of the tunnel-visioned replies in this type of thread always are.

I'll save you some time, here's a snippit~quote from his post:

That is absolutely insane, definitely gives me a new perspective of drg. I knew aeonic really helped drg, just wasn't sure how much, this makes me think it is much higher than I originally believed.

Memories of 75 era with shitty red mages incapable of handling a refresh/haste cycle.

The definition of crushing a BLU is too vague. Non Tizona/AG BLU? Sure.

Just messing with Great Axe I wasn't parsing much lower than an afterglow Tizona/Almace BLU. The guy is an absolute beast and the only way I can keep up with him is capping delay. I was still behind by maybe 4-5%.

Now without capped delay I was pretty much blown away. Thats just how the game works.

The main reason I was using great axe though is so we could keep pumping out skill chains. It's fun killing the Ambu Gnole in 2 minutes flat. WAR and BLU pair nicely especially when you let loose a fully gifted Blood Rage. If I'm correct it boosts critical hits by 40%, and the duration is extended by reforged body. for about 65 seconds all melee have an insane boost to crit rate. Which is amazing for short fights.

Ukkos damage wasn't bad at all. But CDC naturally spikes higher due to the extra hit from dual wield, and all that double attack/triple attack BLU gets from traits/subjobs/bonuses. Its quite easy for CDC to have 5-8 hits.

Tomahawk the Gnole on 4 legged mode, Blood rage when its on 2 legs.

I believe an after glowed Ragnarok can give me a slight edge, or even make things equal. I'll find out once I get 6000 more plutons. Crushing a BLU on equal terms? Doubtful, if anything it allows you to keep up.

A non afterglow war or drk should have no issues crushing the run of the mill/bandwagon Blue Mage. Only Blue Mages that love the job/take it seriously are going to be an issue. The people who just level the job without putting time and effort into it aren't even capable of bringing out BLU's true potential.

WAR and BLU go together like the Battle Toads and Double Dragon bros. Its like the ultimate team that can buff and compliment one another. Especially during fast paced fights when you have the option of resetting JA timers with nomad moogles.

The AGI adjustments just made all jobs a little more even. You no longer need 1400 accuracy on higher end content.

Intense Ambu for example, if you can hit 1200 accuracy you can go back to red curry buns/meat with capped acc. Its going to vary based on content/target/nm though.

Crushing blu was defined, blu on equal terms in mid tier gear should be on par if not beating a GS war/drk. When it gets into top tier war/drk/blu, blu gets left in the dust. Blu is not going to spam 50k+ ws where as a top tier war/drk will do 50k+.

Mathematically impossible for a top tier blu to beat a top tier war/drk if they are both buffed the way they need to be. CDC just flat doesn't compete with reso. Blu will never come close to the amount of attack of a war or drk.

Furthermore the need of AM3 on tizona to be worth it's weight normally pushes tizona further down the list on top DD weapon for blu. This is why I was only sweating vs empy/aeonic blu, not an aeonic, again this was BEFORE I used argosy nq, now I am full argosy with 3/5 +1. Massive difference in damage.

GA vs GS isn't a comparison, Reso will win. The only time I can come close to rag dmg is if the fights are under a minute and I use apoc CR spam, the lack of need to build AM on apoc until the 4 minute mark helps, but once that AM3 on rag kicks in and someone starts spamming reso, that DD will go from the lowest DD on the list to the highest DD real fast.

Talking the difference of a top tier blu everything HQ, top weapons, best usable buffs for blu, the blu will top out in the 2.6k-2.8k range, very respectable and most likely a lot of luck. VS a top tier war or drk spamming reso, perfect buffs can break 4k dps on the same nm. My best was 4.3k dps in VD ambuscade, nothing spectacular due to it being ambuscade, but I have never seen a blu even break 3k after 60 seconds worth of engaged time.

Generally a blu will start off stronger than a war or drk, but as it has been said many times over shorter fights favor blu over 2hd dd. Soon as that fights started seeing 45-60 seconds there is a large change in the dps from the initial engagement. 90-120 seconds war and drk start to pull much further ahead. It doesn't get until the 4 minute mark where drk starts to slow down from last resort dropping, and that is for all of 55 seconds. That is just to assume your melee aren't so strong they killed whatever off in the first 60-90 seconds to begin with. If your war or drk start with 300% tp, that blu never stood a chance, that is AM3 on rag, and a 225%-300% tp reso followed up with meditate and more reso or torc if solo for a double light.

15k scourge to even a low end 30k reso gives upwards of 75k dmg which would tie a high end blu hitting x2 25k cdc with a light sc. That is low end reso vs a monster cdc.

Even terms? 15k+ scourge and a 50k-70k reso, that is 115k-155k from AG rag vs 75k from blu.

That is what the explanation of crush means.

Why don't they start by fixing Victory Smite ? >.> That be a nice one to tackle down. Along with all 2-handed-weapons.

Not sure if I understand correctly, either you mean fix V.S. and all 2hd weapons or you mean fix V.S. to a point so mnk would be on par with all 2hd DD.

If you mean the first many 2hd DD would disagree to the need for another buff for dmg.

If you mean buff mnk ws to the point of 2hd DD, I would agree it needs some serious help, bring jishnu up for rng as well, just a little higher of a crit dmg+ for jishnu. (My opinion though.)

PLD Savage Blade 14,732
MNK Victory Smite 4,795


That is what I am saying

MNK is completely and utterly WEAK nowdays :(

I would like to see Victory Smite Fixed so we can play once again MNK

At least if it did around 9~13 K it would be Descent !

normal DMG is ranging between 2~4 K Wiffs and 4-8 K (Spikes of 8 K)

Which is not the way it should be

K, I figured you meant the latter, but I had to ask for clarity.
I know mnk was hitting 4k+ V.S. back when delve was popular, that was long before the gear we have now, I have not seen mnk much since, but I am willing to bet there is a hardcore mnk out there that can still hit decent V.S. avg (my guess is 10k minimum avg as I have seen people do more than 10k spikes on mnk)

4k seems more like a shijin spiral average than a V.S. avg. I think with the stat vomit and crit gear out there mnk is capable of at least 10k. Best bet would be to talk to some of the AG vere/glanz mnks and see what they are pulling because I feel 4k avg is way low even for mnk.

You focus a lot on attack when it's actually one of the least important stats. Idris BoG Frailty + Dia II + Berserk + Nat. Meditation is enough to cap attack on almost everything. You mention end game content frequently in your posts. Doing end game content when you're attack/accuracy starved is a dumb idea especially if you're considering what's hypothetically best.

That said, I don't think BLU is #1 DD in all situations. DD A vs DD B posts usually fall short at providing useful insight. Attempts at objective analysis are rare and often riddled with confirmation bias. Your posts are no exception to this. Most of your points are anecdotal, overemphasizing the value of attack and high WS numbers. I literally did 3x the damage (yes I parsed it) of an AG Ragnarok WAR in last month's ambuscade and I didn't even have Almace at the time. Does that mean BLU is gonna 'crush' every AG WAR? No. It means there is a lot of context missing for that situation. I've heard the player I was up against doesn't use gearswap and I'm guessing he was not playing optimally although I don't know if either one of these are actually true, I wasn't watching that closely.

The context of what you're doing, your gear, and your playstyle have and always will trump job selection in regards to DPS.

Mine was doing 11 K + on Delve now doing 3 K only

So they clearly nerf it down for some odd reason (I also noticed my SAM doing ***DMG on Fudo compared with before)

When I say before I mean 1-2 years ago.

Same mob (got better armor now and doing Worse DMG ? something is up :X)

thats all I am saying ^^

(Sorry been Pre-ocupied doing GS)

Having that high of attack means nothing since you are way over capping attack. Geo-Frailty with Idris is 42% Defense Down and with BoG its 63%. Correct me if I am wrong with 63% plus another 10% from Dia II would drop a mob with 2000Def would drop down to 540 which would mean for a 2-Hander they would need 2228 Attack to cap while 1-Handers need 1958 to cap in this scenario which is easily achievable for any job in question and any additional attack is wasted.

You only reiterated my point I made several times about the need for correct buffs, gear, skill, knowledge. I have said myself, I have done way more than other AG rag drk, last months ambuscade I was in a run with a drk, blu, cor, and myself as the dd. I ran 60% of the dmg, blu and other drk were dead even each run 16 to 18% depending on the fight, cor, pld and sc accounted for 8% of the dmg.

"Attempts at objective analysis are rare and often riddled with confirmation bias," this is literally what you did talking about your non-almace blu vs AG Rag war.
Which is why I also, many times over, put up top tier cdc dmg vs low end reso dmg as a comparison.

I always /sam on drk unless I am screwing around SATA torc on /thf, so I don't get berserk, I also don't get nat. meditation, cdc doesn't get a -15% attk like reso, so yeah I stack tons and tons of attack. (As for capping attack, that seems like pure garbage to me as we have increased our dps output by raising our attack and lowering mob def more so than "cap", I even talked about what we did differently to get my drk over the 45k reso mark and into the 50k) There is no "over-valuing attack and high ws numbers." Those 2 things are what put drk and war so extremely high on damage.
50k reso spam on drk, or 70k reso spam on war.
2.5k-2.8k dps extreme top tier blu vs 4k dps break of a drk or war.
Don't fall into the trap thinking cdc comes close to competing with reso, don't think just because blu gets to self cap -delay it can compete with a war or drk.
If you are doing 3x the dmg of a war, you found a bad war. There is no way around that. Even if you are perfect geared, if that war was remotely close to half decent he would have given you a run for your money, especially since you say you didn't have almace.

My gear, my playstyle, my buffs are all a very large reason on to why what I do does so well. There is a reason I deal so much dmg, no, I am not the top DD in the game. I know for a fact there are people that can beat me in terms of raw dmg. The thing is, those people I know for a fact can beat me, they are war and drk. Not blu, again this isn't to say it is impossible, in fact I invite a blu, drg, mnk, rng, cor, or pup to beat me. I don't care what job, I get excited when I struggle to beat someone in parse, it is a rush for me, makes me try harder adjust my gear more, find better options, tweak my play style.

Equal terms, blu loses to war and drk. You can not compare how great your blu is against an AG Rag if the guy is doing so little dmg. It should be taking you at least 2 ws for every 1 reso.

All I was doing to begin with was try to state that jobs are far more balanced than people believe. Mnk and Drg were the ones I felt got left behind, Fiji was kind enough to pull up the Drg pic that gave me a new light to look at Drg in.

I have used my experience to try to assist people to step out of the box and try new jobs and options. We used to run blu only DD in shell, we got off that kick real fast learning how much more other jobs can do. We got to the point that the blu in our shell hated playing blu because that was all they did. After everything that we have tried, (literally all jobs but mnk, or aeonic drg) the fastest melee kills we have got was with AG Rag dd's.

That's some nice support. We have had that kind of prep before, but its rare and I've usually been on Blu. All my spike reso's have been with NQ GEO x 1 (my mule). Going to take my WAR and DRK out for a spin soon and let you know how it goes.

Honestly though, I am not here to argue or debate, the information has been out there and debated hundreds of times. The question is how much time/gil/effort do you want to spend on what job.

You want to top tier blu? Go for it, it will still get the job done.
You want to top tier cor? Go for it, it will still get the job done.
You want to top tier drk? Go for it, it will still get the job done.
You want to top tier war? Go for it, it will still get the job done.
You want to top tier mnk? Well.. you probably have geo lvld as well.

Perfect MNK gear and augments, very aggressive and competitive player, only better MNKs I know of were Hmok from excellence and Vegito - I average 8k Victory Smites.

I've done a ***ton of testing on MNK. My RDM and PLD out dps it on Apex mobs. I have Glaz and Vere AG'd. People claimed Godhands were the ***. I spanked a Godhand MNK badly. He had better augments on his Herc set too. Verethragnas produce the best dps potential for MNK with AM3 up and full buffs. But it still pales compared to a similarly geared R/E/M RDM or PLD.


MNK is trash. Even with Hundred fists up and capped accuracy, I had 3 less WS's than Blu friend over the course of 90-100 second zerg. The dmg difference was about 19k....in that short a period of time..

That is depressing for mnk's out there, I kinda figured that Vere would be top, seems like the white dmg is where mnk would be, kinda like delve runs. I know I out parsed my ls's mnk on my rdm but he was relic non-ag so I wondered if it was the weapon or what.

This was deliberate to illustrate why anecdotal testimonial (the crux of all of your posts) is not very useful. It seems this went over your head though.

The rest of your post is just more of the same stuff so I'm not going to bother with a detailed response. It's basically you celebrating the jobs you like the most and stating why they're better than other jobs while also demonstrating a clear lack of insight into the jobs you don't play. I feel like your scope is narrow and limited.

To put MNK where it SHOULD be:
- R/E/M traits need to proc on 2nd hand
- VS needs to be where it was at on release.
- An STP trait - Godhand MNKs have no way of consistently self skill chaining.

I had a nice long detailed response for you, explaining once again how incorrect you are, I deleted it all to simply put it this way.

You are wrong in thinking blu even remotely competes with an AG Rag war or drk. You have not used any numbers except that you beat a really bad war in parse. Until you go toe-to-toe against someone that knows what they are doing you will never see nor understand that, you are putting your 1 experience of a bad AG Rag player as your end-all knowledge. Where as I have gone up against countless blu and the only one that came close was top tier, empy/aeonic, geared when I used reforge/eschite/skirm gear.

I think you seriously need to get out of your bubble and search the dmg that war and drk are capable of now. No blu is spamming 50k-70k ws, period. I don't care what kind of gear you have, you are not spamming that kind of dmg on blu with cdc.

Drk and War forums would be a great place to start.

Damn dude. You're pretty dumb. I'll highlight the key part of Snaps' post that you're obviously missing.

He understands that there are many variables in parses, whether it be gear, human error, dispels, enfeebles, bad RNG, etc. that are capable of skewing parses. However, most of the time people don't mention these variables in their anecdotes when comparing two jobs; merely the end result.

I addressed that as well, which you seemed to miss completely with your attempt to insult me.

Where did you address you understood the point in his example in this paragraph?

Keep reading more than one paragraph. I have actually addressed it more than once in the past few pages.

Not something I have looked into for a while now, last time I played mnk or sam was during the delve craze, so very likely I missed a nerf in there somewhere.

Even when spilling it out for you you still can't see it, or you're only seeing what you want to see. Either way, you're the second person in denial I've talked to in this thread; this should be my last post here as I can see you people refuse to move from your stance. Continue getting mad at someone saying they did more damage than a bad WAR while missing the lesson attempting to be taught in doing so.

k, thanks, bye now.