I feel like I'm touching hot coal for asking this, but what's the damage difference between the DPS melee jobs in current endgame? That's including raid DPS brought on by BL, piercing resist debuff, TA, enmity skills.
My current synopsis of them is:
NIN: TA is extra damage dealt by everyone (10%) for a short time, enmity skills allow MT to tank in DPS stance, goad helps out people who can't manage TP and covers some of the support BRD or MCH would otherwise have to do. Able to debuff slash resistance, shared with WAR. Raw DPS is lowest among the melee classes, offset by the amount of raid DPS they bring. AoE is the weakest of the melee and most expensive (requiring Mudra expenditure to use their decent AoE abilities). Action arsenal is the most varied of the three and NINs have the most combat mobility and freedom of the melee, with the least amount of positional attacks. Skills are easy to execute with little setup required, balanced by CD/skill punishment from messing up a mudra.
DRG: Piercing debuff adds permanent extra damage from BRD/MCH, BL is a boon to everyone's crit for 15 seconds resulting in some crazy +damage depending on RNG. Raw DPS is middle of the three melee. AoE is middle of the three melee and can't be maintained for long, having a large TP drain. Action arsenal is mostly offense and mobility oriented, the mobility part usually more useful for gap closing or evasion than rotation execution. Positionals guarantee an optimal conal engagement angle during an encounter that the DRG will not want to stray from. Skills line up for massive spike damage and the rotation is set in stone aside from the 50/50 WT/FC RNG, balanced by the CD punishment of BotD if care isn't taken to maintain it or is popped at the wrong moment.
MNK: Mantra is a boon to healers once every 2 minutes, helps during damage checks or clutch moments. DK debuffs enemy INT, reducing magic damage, shared with DRK's Delirium. The blunt resist debuff potentially aids Ifrit-egi's DPS. Raw DPS is the highest of the melee to offset its near non-existent raid DPS boost. AoE is the highest of the melee and the longest sustained, with TP expenses being more forgiving. Action arsenal is the most offensively varied with two powerful AoE oGCDs that have no requirements to execute but has the least mobility, only having a gap closer unlike DRG and NIN. MNKs playstyle is centered around positionals and combos, and the MNK will want to stay at the sweet spot cone between flank and rear at all times in a very narrow band of the engagement ring, like DRG. Skills require setup to execute rotation properly and momentum needs to be maintained to keep up GL3, has the longest rev-time for getting to full momentum. Punishment is the loss of GL3 and the required setup time to return to it.
In summary:
NIN - lowest raw damage potential with high raid DPS and QoL combat utility, easy to execute skills with requirement of mudra memorization.
DRG - middle raw damage potential with arguably the highest raid DPS and no QoL combat utility, set in stone rotation with requirement of maintaining BotD and knowing when to pop Gierskogul.
MNK - highest raw damage potential with virtually no raid DPS and some defensive QoL combat utility, flexible skill flow with the longest setup and most execution requirements.
Damage ranking:
1. DRG - high DPS and brings the most raid DPS, resulting in the highest overall contributed damage to a raid.
2. NIN - while it has the lowest raw DPS of the melee, it's still high and the total raid DPS contribution of TA and its enmity skills/TP utility give it a large contributed damage to a raid.
3. MNK - almost all of its contributed damage is directly from its raw damage potential. It has the highest raw DPS of the melee, but is arguably lowest on the rankings when it comes to overall contributed damage.
Then there's AST and party comp to consider. AST favoritism could theoretically make any of the three melee top DD in their raid group. WARs will theoretically always be using their slashing debuff so that NIN can run a more optimal DPS execution. DRGs are usually guaranteed to have a BRD or MCH in their group. In contrast, a SMN specifically using Ifrit needs to be present for MNK's blunt resist debuff to extend to anyone other than themselves, and a DRK makes their -int debuff redundant. On the other hand, not having any CDs that aid raid DPS also frees them to go full HAM at all times, letting them maximize their personal DPS instead of saving for key moments during the fight to pop BL or TA after an invulnerability phase. NINs go best with WARs, DRGs with BRD/MCH, and MNKs go best with PLDs to complement PLD's -str debuff.
So we have a high raid DPS/high utility job, high raid DPS/high damage job, and a high damage/defensive utility job. What I'm trying to figure out is just how big the damage differences actually are in the current meta/endgame. My ranking could be wrong, too - NIN's raid DPS is very high, I just believe BL adds more damage than TA (even with it being RNG based) in addition to DRG's perma pierce boost for BRD/MCH. What's the lead MNK has on the other two in terms of raw DPS? If the final differences come down to a range within ~100 DPS between all three melee's damage contributions considering all party configurations, assuming three players at expert level skill and mastery of all endgame fights with the exact same RNG fortune, are they unbalanced? What about ~200? At what range then does it necessarily matter that a raid group takes a MNK or a NIN or a DRG?
There's also consistency of performance, but I feel the balancing checks level out the difficulty of execution between the three. However, I think the endgame fights lend themselves better to DRG and NIN - MNK's chakra and form change skills seem more like stopgap attempts to cover their weakness to mid-fight downtime. Is my evaluation here accurate?
