highest DD melee characters : FFXI General Discussions

Hi I am wondering what job/subjob combo will do the highest DD excluding casters (blm/rdm) only melee characters. I am hopiong it would be a monk/war like me ^^

also what eq/weapons would provide that damage???

thank you...

probably drg/drk at lower lvl and rng/nin at higher. mnk isnt a great DD always for a few reasons (sry to burst your bubble) H2h is weak against lots of mobs including armored normal types, on the other hand piercing aka polearm is strong against many and the atk bonus from drk and the acc and atk bonus and wyvern make drg ultimate DD. still anyjob can be good depending on how deep ur wallet is. i'm a sam i know about expensive equipment

Post 55 - Ranger is by far the most lethal damage dealer! Sidewinder/Slugshot are simply awesome damage. At 61, I can routinely hit IT+ mobs for 800-1000dmg with slugshot (musketeer +1 and silver bullets).

As a sidenote: A good ranger/ninja using gun, silver bullets, and utsusemi will spend 200k/lvl easily. Just a warning, other than that it is one of the most fun jobs to play in the game if you like dealing huge damage.

i've heard that rangers&ninja cost a bomb to lvl up that's why i am hesitant in making one. due to real life and work, i don't really want to spend lots of time lvling up my crafting, i spend most of my time gardening and hunting ^^, maybe at higher lvl i'll prob chill and craft, dunno how many months that would be =p

dragoon/darkknight, sounds interesting, what are the advantages of darknight over warriors, they use similar weapons no? do u mind explaining a bit abt this?

what do u think of a sam/war? i've always want to be a sam. i'm an elven race, would it change anything??

thanks...

At least on my server Sam's are not very popular. There are very few high lvl sams and they rarely if ever are in a party with me. Not saying that makes them bad but they just don't seem popular, so you could end up seeking for hours and not get invites. They can be good but mostly just for skillchaining. We'll have to see what type of change happens with the new update for Sam's.

Drg are another one that seems never to get invited to parties that I'm in. Only time I ever see high lvl Drg are the gil sellers on my server. Very few high lvl drg's otherwise. If you are going to pick one over the other I would probably lean towards Drg but in this case either are probably bad choices unless you always make your own parties as you probably won't get invited much from the mid-levels and up.

Drk are cool but you really only use scythe and G.Sword. they can deal some decent damage and have alot of draining spells that can help out a party if used correctly. If you use souleater/berserk you will most likely steal hate from the tank. Drk is a semi-popular job to get and I've partied with alot of them.

Hope that helps

gosh =( i am now daydreaming abt my advange job but what should i make? i am currently war 21/monk23, did my monk first then worked on war. going for war 37 as sub then back to monk all the way and then advance job but what to pick =(

i am a crap leader so i guess lvling up will be a real pain since no pt wants me crap.... well guess i gotta learn then.... (^_^)

okok, besides whm/blm/rdm, what is a popular charac/combo that almost everyone wants in a party ^^ somehow i don't like magic skills i prefer beating the life out of mobs hehehe...

i hope the answer is not ranger/nin ^^

Typical party setup for me at lvl61 is:
whm/smn (healing)
blm/smn (nuking)
brd/whm or rdm/blm (crack dealer.... errr refresh)
pld/war or nin/war (tanking)
rng/nin (damage) x 2 if possible
thf/nin, thf/war, drk/war,mnk/war, drg/war(bleh) or any other DD combo here

post 65 light skillchains rule the damage world and rangers and monks really gain value with sidewinder/slugshot and dragonkick! ex: sidewinder for 600dmg + dragonkick for 600dmg = light SC for 800dmg + any applicable MB (most likely Banish III after update) for 200-400dmg

I have a good friend who is playing monk and will hit 69 today and you just have to make it through the tough low and mid-lvl's. What I've found is any job can have value to a party but there will be times when your job is just not good for certain stretches and will not be picked up as often for parties. Example is thf before he gets Sneak Attack at 15 then from 25-30 is pretty bad until you get viper bite at 30 and at 33 you get Trick Attack (transfer massive hate to the tank) and SA TA VB is wicked deadly!

Hope my info is helping you out and not confusing you too much haha. I think the greatest advice I can give you is try to stick to 1 job and take it up as high as you can tolerate. If you find a dry run, lvl something else for a week or two and come back to your main and you will find all the people you were leveling with have moved on and you can get parties with a fresh batch of people. This has worked for me in stretches of no party invites in the past.

Happy hunting!

moonvball, i thank you and salute you for your advice, your last comment hit the spot, i'm going to lvl my monk as much as i can then think abt it again =)

a thousand thank yous..

Monk is defenitelly the melee job I'd recommend people to play. My ranger is twinked out the wazoo and a monk with good gear (admittedly significantly more expensive than ranger) ain't all that far from ranger on a lot of mobs.
They also cost less in the long run as you can sell the gear back to the AH.

Small comment:
This is true for all jobs, rangers included.
Important thing though is that almost all monks I've met have been good while almost all drg / drk I've met have been bad!

Oh and SAM is cool! (and horribly rare)

after reading a few posts i just realize elvens have high str and mnd, isn't that good for chi blast? i heard that can really creak some skulls with enuf boost... ^^

sam equipment more expensive then monks?? possibly going to make one for kicks ^^

All gear is typically the same cost across jobs but their are always key pieces of *elite* gear that costs a ton. In general get the best gear you can afford at your level and get into a *good* linkshell that will help you quest/farm/buy the best gear.

Mnd does help chi-blast but you aren't going to want to run around with mnd gear equipped just for that reason. You can macro it in to use +mnd gear when you fire chi-blast though.

just outa curiousity i notice that nowhere in this discussion is the War/Nin
is there something wrong with this choice of main job?

Not at all, it's an awesome job combination at level 74+. Before that I don't really know but like, I know a lot of people use it at the high end.

WAR/NIN are great before 75 also. They outdamage DRG, SAM, DRK, mostly because their job abilities. It really depends on your gear. It's basically expected that you have 2 snipers, hauberk etc.

Which means it shouldn't really be a job to recommend as first combo I guess.