Quetzalcoatl.Trulusia said:
»Noted & thx.
Damage-wise, does MNK > NIN though?
This is FFXI.
It depends.
To an extent, but honestly, that's an "it depends" that favors NIN in the vast majority of normal melee DD situations when compared to a similar quality gear/player MNK.
NIN has several SIGNIFICANT DD advantages over MNK:
- Much better WS damage from Ten (particularly with Aeonic) and Shun, and Metsu (for relic users, the other of the top 2 mainhand katanas) and Hi (especially for SC purposes) have their place and do solid damage.
- Much better SC utility than MNK, with good darkness AND light options. This is one of the less frequently cited things that particularly bugs me about MNK, it's a real one trick pony when it comes to "HEY GUYS WHAT SC CAN WE DO?" (and that stings even more when realizing the fellow H2H user has a lot less issue here since Stringing Pummel adds significantly more SC flexibility)
- NIN isn't as completely reliant on outside attack speed buffs as MNK, if for whatever reason you lose a buff or need to try to fit into a less than ideal party setup. I can self-cap delay on my NIN with zero magical haste by popping into an appropriate DW set. MNK essentially needs to get all of its haste from other people's magic, since there really isn't any top tier Martial Arts gear (i.e. nothing that doesn't cause a much more steep dropoff in DPS potential), and selection is still pretty limited.
- Realistically with the current gear options, offhand weapon gives NIN a significant additional stat buff over MNK (e.g. I can add dozens of Acc with an offhand katana, and have flexibility to adapt a different offhand to a situation). Most of the other standard DD gear choices are quite similar, as MNK and NIN are usually on the same gear.
NIN also has has several significant non-DD advantages over MNK:
- Main job Utsusemi, which isn't quite the powerhouse it once was but it still helps defensively on a lot of content where you might be able to soak up an AoE or something. Even enables more realistic tanking on certain content (though to be clear, I barely consider NIN a tank any more... but it has its weird moments, or ability to jump in and emergency tank better than most DDs if the main tank goes down)
- Solid enfeebles, particularly now that NIN has a ton of really good new Macc gear just since 2017 (e.g. AF+3 head/feet, Mummu gear)
- Some level of enmity control with Innin/Yonin Yain/Gekka (and also playing into the tankiness).
- Migawari can be a real life-saver. I can't count the number of times some big move killed multiple DDs in my groups but my NIN is still slashing away at full health (and sometimes becoming an impromptu tank at the same time...)
MNK DD advantages over NIN:
- Um... sometimes on very specific content (but generally not on 2017 content), Formless Strikes can be useful?
- If you Boost a bunch of times, then you can Chi Bla... eh, sorry. Never mind.
MNK non-DD advantages:
- Mantra is pretty cool
If you're actually picking for which job can
usually DD better, and contribute in other ways, NIN's kind of a no brainer over MNK unless you're just doing it for fun or for the hope that one day the job gets fixed (I figure it has to at least get some decent DD buffs before too long... right??)