(01-09-2014, 09:02 PM)synaesthetic Wrote: People who think DRG and MNK don't do ridiculously insane single-target DPS have been listening to the whiners on the official forums far, far too much.
Melee was good pre-2.1, they were just overshadowed by how ridiculously overpowered bard was, and the fact that Titan HM is a terrible fight for melee and it was the barometer practically everyone was using to determine how much damage people actually do.
Now, after 2.1, bards and summoners were hit with nerfs (bards moreso, but SMNs got hit pretty hard by the loss of Thunder), and monks and dragoons were buffed considerably. Now the damage hierarchy is looking a lot more like it should... monks should be the best DPS, because they're the highest-risk damage dealer to play. Monks go splat easily. Dragoons are close behind them, which also makes sense, because DRG rotations are crazy complex and require a lot of positional wankery.
Bards still do too much damage for how safe they are. They're the only damage dealer with potentially 100% uptime since they can move and shoot without any loss of damage whatsoever. I think, to fix bards, Square should disallow them from shooting "magical homing arrows that work like physics-defying guided missiles," (they should get the same "not facing target" error BLM gets) but undo the Internal Release and Blood for Blood nerfs, while also giving bard a few small potency increases and buffs to their utility skills to make up for the loss.
Summoners are about where they should be and so are black mages.
In my opinion, damage dealers should all perform within 10-15% of each other to prevent elitists from preferring one type over another and resulting in underutilized jobs. They're doing a pretty okay job with that (the limit break nerf was unnecessary, especially since the Duty Finder does not prioritize making sure there are no duplicate jobs), but damage dealers should also have a hierarchy. The most risky jobs to play should always perform the best when played right.
The damage hierarchy ideally should be MNK > DRG > BLM > SMN > BRD. Monks are the riskiest, bards are the safest. It's not quite there yet, but it's getting there. I'm sure we'll see further adjustment in 2.2.
I'll be honest - I have absolutely no idea what "risk" has to do with anything when balancing DPS. Â I've never played in a game where one class was given buffs over another because their job was "riskier." Â By that logic, tanks should be doing the most DPS of all because they are constantly - 100% of the time - in the boss's face and at the most risk for being hit by things.
![[Image: hFalP38.jpg]](http://i.imgur.com/hFalP38.jpg)
