FFXIV Melee Comparison! Easy/Hard? Strong/Weak? Intense?

let's compare the five melee damage dealers of Final Fantasy 14. if you already know you want to main a melee damage dealer or melee DPS as it is more commonly called then this might serve to help you choose or alternatively teach you what you don't want or maybe you just want to hear about the pros and cons of each of these jobs combined with a bit of comedy in which case you have also come to the right place please keep in mind that this video may be slightly opinionated especially in the ratings shown for each job so if you feel that I missed something or that you disagree I would love to hear about it or about your favorite melee DPS in the comments now then let's start with the most literal mealy job you can imagine the fist punching monk the first of the Striking type combining punching and kicking martial arts with chakra and fantasy monk Aesthetics the monk has very few surprises in its toolkit the basics of the monk rotation revolves around three so-called forms imagine that the monk knows three attacks to perform from a specific martial stance and all three attacks lead to a new stance that the monk also knows three attacks to continue with this gives rise to the three stances namely Opa Oppo a type of monkey Raptor a strange type of two-legged bird-like yet raptor-like creature and curl an electric sort of feline species in combat this means that like most physical jobs you go through one two three compos however the monk uniquely can choose whichever Step 1 followed by whichever step two and then finish by whichever step 3 when optimized this leads to four common combos in a single Target scenario which is used in a certain sequence of six combos before it Loops for area of effect however you simply use one combo sequence repeatedly due to how the Monk's birth sequence is connected to the weapon skill combos being directly tied to usage of perfect balance the main optimization of the monk relies on planning your combos to be in a certain State as reliably as possible when your cooldowns are ready due to brotherhood's 15 second duration which does line up with most raid cooldowns your aim is to try and fit two masterful blitzes within this 15 second window as you master the job simply put if you are playing around just your own situation you can just use Brotherhood when your combo sequence lines up but once you introduce other players to the situation typically only necessary in a Savage rate context you want to use Brotherhood precisely on cooldown if you can which puts a lot more weight on you being capable of either just being in the correct point in your combos at that time or alternatively know multiple ways to line up your combos to match up well enough regardless this is what makes the difficulty of mastering the monk so incredibly high as most other jobs can interrupt their normal weapon skill combos to perform their burst whenever they like but monk just cannot do that a trait that is somehow familiar with black Mages in some ways this means that you have a lot of opportunity to grow as a monk player finding lots of ways to optimize your rotation and bursts in terms of Defense monk both has the most readily available and strongest defensive cooldown amongst Emily jobs with riddle of Earth and also has a great white healing buff in Mantra the downside to Monk Is that while the other melee are less punished by losing up time on fights due to having ranged attacks the monk does not have this however this is a very mild weakness as fights in the game tend to offer plenty of opportunities to stick to your target if you're really trying to optimize your monk gameplay you may run into the interesting aspect that the Monk's standard gcd timer is so fast that it is common knowledge in the Hmong community that you need certain skill speed to avoid DPS loss due to frame rates which is something so specific that it is something I have never observed in any other job optimization in any significant way you know it is getting technical when you're optimizing around your frame rate next up is the samurai also of the Striking type with the aesthetic and the gameplay of a disciplined Samurai fighting style not unlikely to take inspiration from Kendo combined with the fantasy summarized combination of instantaneous single slashes of death and hundreds of slashes in a fraction of a second the samurai is very much in tune with what you would expect from such a job the basic rotation of the Samurai involves cycling through three different combo sequences two of which are three-step and one that is two-step so both make sure a damage buff and a speed buff is kept running but also to collect send resources to access specific finishing moves so-called EI jutsus even at the most basic level the samurai can optimize the use of the hikambana ei22 specifically by performing it with the yukikase related Zen sets saving time starting summarize may not care much from when they use their big attacks potentially sprinkling them out throughout a fight since after all the samurai itself has no ability to boost its damage output temporarily so it does not matter this makes the basic rotation about making the most of your combo sequences keeping up he can banner and getting as many midari said to get cast as you can while filling in with all your sudden death like slash cooldowns as you improve however you notice that while you cannot boost your own damage temporarily a lot of other jobs can boost your damage in addition to their own this first leads the optimization to make sure all of those long cooldowns are spent while boost it by the rest of your raid now this can be extremely difficult to match up since tsubamakaishi and make Yoshi sweets some of your birds to your gcity like with the monk this tends to lead aspiring future masters of the Samurai to practice the looping rotation which then leads to mastering fillers which then finally teaches what hagakure is and why it is important as it helps you to line up that midari satuka as raid cooldowns come up however this means that the biggest complexity in the Samurai's burst comes from the planning and preparation to make it happen rather than the act of performing it in the first place although after all that preparation it is not uncommon to accidentally fumble the whole thing in terms of Defense the samurai has only the third eye which when used will can be used to block damage on most raid-wide attacks however the power of this cooldown is significantly weaker than the Monk's riddle of Earth and aside from this the samurai only has access to the universal defensive toolkit of the melee jobs while the samurai itself brings literally nothing to the table in terms of Rage support it does have one rate support functionality with the power of friendship and Anime the samurai is capable of translating other raid cooldowns into the biggest damage number amongst all jobs making their supporting functionality of these selfish DPS Samurai that it makes your other raid cooldowns better simply by existing next let's drag ourselves over to the Dragoon the first of the maiming type a very Final Fantasy specific type of job complete with dragon inspired attacks and jumps a lot of jumps the maiming type wears more play the armor compared to the Striking type which happens to mean that the base defenses are high-end comparison almost like a pseudo tank but not really first unique aspect of the Dragoon's rotation at its basic level is that instead of three step combos it has five step combos however due to the length of its combos combined with the duration of the Buffs and debuffs applied by them the two five-step combos tend to merge together into a single 10 step combo sequence aside from live search all of the dragon's cooldowns can be dealt with separately from the basic combo sequence which means that the Dragoon's burst is a lot more a matter of Simply doing it right and then fitting live search where it matches with your rotation the first thing aspiring dragoons will run into is that it turns out that using your Gap closing jumps like spine Shadow dive to actually Gap close is considered wasteful and that you will often use elusive jump and Sprint as your only Gap closing options to save the other damaging ones for well damage the second thing is related to guys where the logical move would be to use Kai's koku after Mirage dive to get into life of the Dragon your big burst mode as quickly as possible however once you start to optimize it turns out you want to flip their order such that you're intentionally delayed by 30 seconds similarly to Samurai you do this to move your life of the Dragon to every whole minute rather than the 30 seconds between this is more intuitive for a Dragoon compared to a samurai however as the Dragoon has not won not two but three Buffs one of which is a RAID cooldown and one of which is above for you and a friend teaching you that fitting as many of your attacks in these Buffs as possible is obviously what you would want to do due to the sheer amount of buttons needed to be pressed in your burst as well as the fact that all of your jumps take slightly longer to perform than normal abilities star diver especially makes the main complexity of the Dragoon needed to managing to fit all of that in the burst window the great news are that because of the raid Buffs you bring a significant portion of the damage you bring to the table is related to boosting your friends as well Samurai will love you in terms of Defense the Dragoon quite literally has nothing while life search heals for a portion of the damage you do with it you will be using live search for damage purposes and so typically you will not be using it when you need the healing this leaves the Dragoon at the mercy of the melee job role actions and your party options as a whole now that I have commented on the Dragoon well knowing that the job is chosen to be having a major rework come next expansion watch the dev team choose to rework the job in 6.3 and make me look like a goof I'm daring you to do it I know you removed Titan at that exact moment just to mess with me I know anyway let's move on to Reaper the other maiming time a very unique aesthetic combining death from the inspiration of a grim reaper combined with void magic through your avatar the combat aesthetic is focused on extremely flashy and intense slashes for the general rotation combined with quick extra strikes from the Avatar which combine when you merge with your avatar leading to a much more aggressive and Speedy rotation temporarily the basic rotation of the rebirth starts by watching the death's design debuff and ensuring this is always on your target to maximize your damage this is Then followed by making use of your cooldowns with one part generating resources and the other more effectively spending them than the basic tools spending the First Resource Soul gauge then leads into a forced combo that can be a one step or two-step when spent with gluttony specifically and once every cooldown is spent the reaper makes use of this simple 123 combo that just slowly generates Soul gauge while doing an acceptable amount of damage the key difference here being that while other melee jobs gain some sort of major benefit from their combos the rebels combo is quite literally the I'm waiting for better buttons to be available combo once enough shroud gauge is produced you can then jump into in Shroud which increases the pace of the job similar to a machinist temporarily by both employing fast gcd attacks and adding extra ogcd attacks and finishing with the explosive communion due to how the Reapers rotation is a lot about using cooldowns as they come up and just waiting in between it feels similar to A Warrior's priority sequence rather than a real rigid rotation the first optimization most Reapers will recognize is making the most of the Harvest Moon attack since you get very limited users of this attack throughout a fight additionally while all melee jobs have some sort of Mobility option the Reaper's Ingress and egress leaving a portal to return to means that additional optimization for the reaper is related to choosing where to teleport from such that you get the most value out of returning to the spot after danger while the opener of the reaper appears to be very intuitive playing with an optimized Savage rate team offers two different openers because one optimizes around getting the most out of all of your cooldowns as quickly as possible gluttony first and the other prioritizes getting in Shroud out as fast as possible in Shroud first both of them also gives rise to a very strict skill speed requirement to perfectly optimize due to there being a wait time between using Arcane Circle and enabling plentiful Harvest and finally the intuitive way to perform the burst every two minutes is significantly different from the optimal way to perform it incorporating two deaths design applications to play for time to be able to train to win shorts and quick succession which can also result in drifting gluttony at least the first time however the difficulty of forming this optimization is heavily easened by the fact that Reaper is one of the slowest and most mellow jobs in the game you have plenty of time to observe everything you need and perform everything you need to in terms of Defense Reaper also uses the stronger defense maiming equipment like Dragoon but also has Arcane Crest which as a single button is possibly one of the best defensive cooldowns for your raid allowing you to support your healers in healing the party back up after read white damage the relatively short cooldown also enables the use of Arcane Crest very regularly this makes Reba an excellent job to have in a team especially when learning a fight additionally while not a defensive tool in its own right up is the strongest of all the spammable ranged attacks amongst the melee jobs making Reaper the best job to be if you are the type of player to be very careful with telegraphs when learning fights and finally dashing Out of the Shadows we have Ninja the only scouting type melee job ninja uniquely also depends on ranged physical job accessories due to using dexterity instead of strength the ninja combines covert stealth attacks with classic anime troops like summoning magic through special hand signs called mudras it should be stated that these hand signs are also a part of actual real-life ninja history although I only know the Bare Basics of this a ninja is expected to get in get the deed done and get out quick and easy which is absolutely represented in its burst sequences the basics of the job start at a very high level of difficulty since you need to memorize several sequences of mudras to even be able to play the job at a base level however once this is learned you will quickly notice that nearly every single cooldown and Tool of the Ninja outside of their 123 combos all line have to be used together every minute exactly as you would expect a ninja to do this makes the difficult part about learning ninjas burst that the job goes very fast when it goes and knowing how to perform the Full Burst which includes a lot of actions in the 15 second time frame allotted by Trick attack done in the correct order the fact that the Ninja's rotation as a whole is so deeply intertwined with its birth sequence removes some complexity from the job by simply having very little outside of it to do for example the ninja does not need to care at all about where it is in its 123 combo for its burst compared to Monk and Samurai and while you want to make sure who turns duration is high when you go into your burst this happens almost completely naturally at all times which removes the worry of keeping up your maintenance effects from your burst compared to Reba who actually uses it during its burst intentionally and since your 123 combo has little to no no direct impact on your burst you even remove the worry of lining that up compared to Dragoon's life search the only concern is considering stockpiling some ninky gauge for your burst but overall you generate a lot of ninja gauge as you go so this may also be something you can safely ignore without a massive loss shockingly Mug's longer duration and more universally powerful 5 damage increase makes the ninjas raid buff better than both the Monk and Dragoon raid Buffs on the other hand the Ninja's defensive tools are limited to just shadeshift and the rule actions while the shadeshift is excellent in its own right nearly as strong as as the Blackest Night the massive cooldown and no side effect ultimately makes it far far worse than the other melees well except for Dragoon of course an interesting Synergy is that the ninja brings the power of friendship and Anime and the samurai lives off of it and they are both possibly the most anime jobs in Final Fantasy 14. isn't that something to round up this comparison each melee of course brings something unique to the table in terms of performance they are all very close to each other so the main reason to choose one melee over another is either in their Aesthetics there play style or whether they are easy or difficult to play depending on your preference for a new player wanting something easy I would recommend starting with Dragoon and then transitioning into Reaper once you reach level 70 as the difficulty of Dragoon really starts to spike at that point this of course also implies that any player wanting something easy I would recommend Reaper 4. if you want something with a strict rotation I recommend Samurai and then if you want something with a super complex burst combo you have the choices between ninja Dragoon and monk in order of how much your combo State plays a factor which can make it more difficult and that leads us to the ending of this video thank you so much for watching if you enjoyed this comparison or even found it funny or interesting please consider leaving a like you can also subscribe or post combo the Bell to get notified when next I post a video and if you really want to support me making these videos you can also become a member of the channel which helps me immensely with being able to dedicate all my time to making content and finally make sure to remember to let me know in the comments which mainly DPS is your favorite fun fact before 6.1 Samurai had an action called hisaten which at the cost of 20 kinky boosted the potency of their next weapon scale by 50 percent this exclusively was used on EI jutsu's and oginamikiri of course which meant that the blade flourish animation of chitin was almost seen as an integral part of these attacks unfortunately this was removed as it added unnecessary complexity to the job I guess many Samurai still mourn the loss of chitin to this day [Music]

Channel: Caetsu Chaiji Ch.

Views: 56,349

Keywords: ff14, ffxiv, final, fantasy, ARR, Realm, Reborn, HW, Heavensward, SB, Stormblood, ShB, Shadowbringers, EW, Endwalker, Guide, DPS, Pugilist, Monk, Lancer, Dragoon, Samurai, Rogue, Ninja, Reaper

Id: JrLTqDD55L4

Length: 20min 11sec (1211 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 09 2022