What Heavy DD Would You Pick And Why?

Go play them for a bit and see which you enjoy. With R15/BiS gear, you're talking such a small difference in % on a parse that it's all personal preference and not "which job is best" anymore, but rather "which job/ability set do I enjoy playing with the most and want to actually invest in". I personally prefer DRK over the other options because in most cases I can sit at 6k HP and not get 1 shot when I inevitably rip hate. But my Tiz BLU does almost the same DPS and is super fun to play as well, and is more useful at other times (Stunning in dyna d-sandy to avoid counterstance face wrecking, for example).

Yeah I really like the state of the heavy DDs right now. DRG DRK WAR MNK SAM are all really strong but each has their niche, too.

I would really like to write full opinion, but I dont have few hours to spare, so just few things.


100% not, unless you compare to MS war.


Probably the highest DPS in events like Dynamis, because it has capped haste all the time, jumps are great for events with a lot on engaging/switching target, Sonic thrust is OP if you have enough support. Also easily the best Umbra multistep (beside DNC with Climactic, but that's once per 90 sec).


Kinda depends. You can get pretty good darkness with Ambu Gaxe. Steel > Uph > Uph


I would say Naegling build on DRG is slightly underrated. DRG can cap haste easily with /dnc without dual wield in gear, so it will have higher TP return than all other dual wield builds known from other jobs. Problem would be no huge TP bonus items and no Fencer, but much higher WS damage (because of trait and wyvern bonus) should make up for that and it should generally be really solid.



More like 34-62k (70k+ would be probably possible with QA, but then again Torcleaver set has poor accuracy and MA proc hits might have harder time landing sometimes) unless you talking about some zones with WS damage bonus like some dynamises or you talking about Escha and with Absorbs, then maybe. Generally Torcleaver isnt that impressive on its own, especially that it's hard to overflow TP a lot with Caladbolg, since its not that fast to get TP. It's white damage that pushes the Caladbolg build as top tier build on DRK.

For those talking about BLU, OP was specifically asking about the heavy DD's which are those jobs who's purpose is killing the target. There is a second set of DD's which while still having solid damage output, come with a bevy of utilities and secondary capabilities.

NIN, DNC, THF, COR and yes BLU. BST might be joining this group eventually, we'll see how it goes. These jobs can situationally be made very powerful, but then again so can any job in the game. Instead they each bring some sort of bonus, either in the form of buffs, debuffs, SC's or other strategic element. This makes them a bit more complex to play, very gear intensive, and more for advanced players looking for a change of pace or challenge.

did you get amnesia after you left leviathan?

I'm glad this was finally brought up. The damage potential between the strongest DD's and the rest of the pack isn't terribly significant. My thief is just a few percentile off our strongest dark knights in dynamis on the parse, and in addition to treasure hunter it has utility with an evasion hybrid and malignance gear really shores up the "squishy" problem we've been accustomed to until lillith. Plus aeolian edge is great for cleaving non wind resistant mobs. But the gear requirements are a lot steeper to reach that performance level, and thief has the added complexity of positional requirements for aligning trick and sneak attack. The situations thief excels in are also different. Thief isn't great at zerging so it falls behind the "heavy" dd classes when fights only last 30 seconds, but if we can stay engaged near fulltime with Twashter's aftermath and our crazy triple attack rates our white damage can rival a monk's, and our sneak or trick attacked rudra's can reach dark knight levels of power.

People by now should be well familiar with what a top tier cor can do as well, and ranger, dancer, and ninja all rank right up there too. The point is that you shouldn't be pigeon holed into thinking there are only a few select "best" DD's and everything else is too sub-par to bother with. The "heavy" class of DDs are a lot easier to get up and running. They take less gear, have faster payouts, and put up big numbers pretty easily. Thf, rng, cor, dnc, and ninja all require a lot more dedication to gear sets, both in quality and quantity before they start to catch up to the pack. But once they do catch up they can put up some really impressive figures, and the extra utility makes them more than worthwhile to persue if you find the playstyle enjoyable.

I'll add my vote to the WAR Smash train. DRK you would have to worry about getting things like your Drain set up to snuff, whereas WAR and PLD share some heavy overlap that DRK, DRG, or SAM do not always get to be on, and WAR has a lot of weapon versatility that you can expand to other heavy jobs if you want to (the Ambuscade Great Axe, Polearm, Sword, or even Hand to Hand and Club can all have a home on WAR and serve you very well elsewhere). Haste should never be an issue for any of these jobs, considering options like Tempus Fugit, Sailfi +1, and Ioskeha. of the two you can buy, NQ is relatively affordable, isn't going to make or break you, and can be upgraded in the future as needed. Sailfi comes from Unity, so is "free" if you can solo or get help from friends for Arthro. one downside is that WAR does lean a little heavily into its upgraded AF from Omen, (at least, last time I checked) so that can be a major card sink.

I have blu, thf, and geo built well. pup just built for things like the frog ambus

I would pick war if I had to choose, but only because getting a chango seems like an easier option than a caladbolg or a masamune and I wouldn't want to start the job unless I was going to have nice stuff

SAM abusing SP2 does crazy damage. SAM can literally solo Zerg (buffed to the max) fights like Lilith VD, pretty sure no other job can.

In a Zerg paired with a WAR, SAM is literally spamming 3k TP Fudos and even after warcry the TP speed and overflow is unmatched.

If you can’t abuse sp2, MS war will beat SAM. I’d put DRK behind them both but they are all pretty evenly matched.

Any type of data you would use to calculate a percentile in dynamis would be incredibly noisy, I think you mean percent.

HAHAHAHA! It's your solos of Yakshi that makes me put that caveat on there about abusing skillchain damage! Your tiny cannonball of a taru is one helluva beast!

i am sorry i have yet to see any sam do 70k+ WS like a war can but your right about lilith (DRK with there 1hs there about the same rly i like DRK a bit better but sam ia good there to ^^)

but ya WAR is my vote ^^

Yeah, maybe when monk forget to turn on Impetus lol THF white damage is very good but nowhere near Impetus MNK (or Ukonvasara WAR geared for white damage). It's also on par or below Caladbolg DRK and Saber DNC with Twashtar/shield.


Being able to match strong WS on MNK or DRK once per 50 sec doesnt really make THF better in longer fights, not to mention you need to hold TP on that Rudra, unless you are using Centovente, but then your white damage is not even good, but just ok.

THF is nowhere near DPS of MNK, DRG or DRK (and THF and MNK are both my mains, while I dont have DRG, so there is no bias here). If you are close to some DRK on parse in dynamis D it's because you are better player or you have much better connection. Good DRK player with BIS equip and having similar skill in engaging/switching target and same connection speed, would eat you alive.

Even then the data would be hard press since there is so many factors ie lag, type of mobs you fight, stun etc

That would be the noise.

Yet another reason that judging DPS from Dyna-D "whole run" parses is foolish *** waving. Just as you point out in one direction, a less geared/skilled player can destroy a better one in those because of packet loss/improper swapping of sets and connection lag causing poor target switching.

Its like posting a screenie of a cap damage WS on Fu. We all know better.

Not to mention a full parse of dynamis is more a record of who had the best time-on-target than actual damage potential.

Generally speaking I agree with Austar that DPS as a discreet concept is overrated because every job can get stacked enough to rip through content. Beyond that, WAR is the simplest route to a straightforward zerg job, which is the only real added value.

Yea the only thing parses prove in dyna is who is slacking off or has potato internet

That's a hack that changes many good zerg jobs into amazing zerg jobs really. Caladbolg DRK for example. Caladbolg TP slowly and has only ok damage at 1000TP, but with Warcry it's whole another story. Trishula DRG will be doing 3000TP Stardivers too pretty much. Godhand MNK will be doing 3000TP Tornados. The list is long :)

My internet is rather good. Its ~1Gb/s, but my signal to Japan goes through USA, so its a total of 18000 km. My 300 ping is apparently the minimal value you can get for such distance. Only solution would be forcing the signal to go through Asia instead, which I should try to do finally, but even then I can only expect around 190 ms ping.

I recommend war.

Unlike drk/sam/drg and to a lesser extent MNK, WAR greatly improves party DPS while being about even with all top options on it's own. Warcry and to a lesser extent blood rage boost party dps. My usual party set up I do is Sam-war-geo-cor-bard-whm.

Basically all other DPS cant do their best DPS, unless a WAR is in the party.

War pops warcry now the cor bard and other DD are hitting a good chunk harder for 1 minute. Pop blood rage and something similar happens.

You like impulse drive sam? A war is a FANTASTIC partner for that. Want your RUNE to get some nice DPS? Warcry!

War has by far the most versatility in damage types. War has great options for piercing, blunt, slashing, h2h blunt and an semi decent magic dmg option. War can hit hard at range too.

The argument about suble blow is kinda meh. asupice gives you 25 SB and chirichi rings give you 10 each. So extremely easy to cap Subtle blow and not gimp yourself.

As far as special abilities. I would vote Sam and WAR are the bigger winners. War's is just generally better. You get fights like WOC and lady lilith where SAM does really well (you can solo zerg VD lady lilith on war or sam and PROBABLY mnk, i would bet even more jobs). Then any fight where physical damage does well, war does well.

The biggest knock I have on war is the MEVA. But to be honest its isnt a big deal as long as you have a good whm for barspells. If you want to gear WAR with the windy VOLTE set then even the MEVA arguement goes away.

Warcry by itself is kinda ridiculous. So from all of my playing and testing, outside of MS zerg DPS (and other wierd zergs like jimpu), war is about even with the other big DD on personal dps. . Maybe a bit higher, maybe a bit lower. Party DPS with a warrior will be a big chunk above every other big DD party buff contribution.

If you dont like WAR. Then RUNE is actually a very good DPS these days. Most party set ups can use a rune.

All jobs have there own uses and perks. However, no other jobs have Kenda gear AND good aeonics (I say aeonics, because they are essentially free). Godhands MNK, and Doji SAM are both solid DD options that share a lot of TP gear that is great for endgame due to the acc, meva, and sb+ on it. Do up both jobs, get the select af pieces and be done.

Right. More noise. I think it's fine to compare your damage in Dynamis if it's the same group and the DD's are relatively constant. My comment was more me being pedantic about their use of the word "percentile" which is incorrect for what I'm sure they meant, and wrong generally.

Most of what you said is ok, beside this. Im not even gonna touch your bubble when you zerg most things and have 2 cors, because that's pretty common for today's endgame (tho that would be really hard to achieve outside of 6 boxing, because it's literally 5 support chars doing mostly nothing but buffs, so you can have fun, since most of your tactics involve multistep Radiance, so CORs and BRD can't even WS).

Let's go back to this subtle blow tho. First of all, WHM is not always in the party outside of maybe Ambuscade. Many ppl lowmaning stuff use hybrid healers like RDM, SCH or even DNC. Now even with WHM 45 Subtle blow is nothing to compare with 75 Subtle blow, Penance and Shijin Plague. Subtle blow is like haste. The more you have, the more value each next % has. Going from 40% to 45% is ~8% reduction. Going from 70% to 75% is ~16.5% reduction.

Now if you compare 45% to 75% with Penance, that's more than 3 times less TP per hit and if you add Plague on top of that, it's not even close to be close. The effect in practice is even more visible than what I show with numbers.

You're right about my use of the word percentile. I meant percent. And our dynamis group does runs regularly and the top dd's are always very consistent. The differences between one and another don't change by much from run to run. The point I was trying to make was that the optimal potential between the different DD's isn't as big as it used to be before the current generation of equipment. Some jobs are more equipment intensive though and take more energy to get good results.

Blue MagE!!

SAM requires SP2 to hit 80k+ its a 20% WSdmg boost per attack evaded up to 60%.

https://www.bg-wiki.com/bg/Yaegasumi

Which is true for many top DDs, but THF is not there. THF can probably do like 60% of top DD jobs right now.