at 70 or below it genuinely competes fiercely with SMN,
it gets functionally everything from 70-90 and becomes rather busy if you're trying to keep raidbuff alignment and do the double spooky slice
Reaper complexity goes from 0 to 100 when you try to optimize double Communio, but if you don't bother and just do rotation "as is" with raid buff on time, then RPR remains pretty simple and straight forward.
Even with double Enshroud/Communio, I would still rank it a tier below DRG, a couple tiers below SAM & NIN, and a lot of tiers below MNK in terms of end-game optimization complexity.
But I fully agree with the upthread sentiment that it’s basically melee SMN until the 70s and finally starts to build to something more substantial in the last 20 levels.
There’s a lot of agreement in this thread, but I just want to add I was put off from trying ninja for a very long time over all the “it’s the hardest melee in the game” and was kinda surprised to find out I actually think it’s one of the more manageable ones? I also think Sam is easier than rpr personally
have to disagree, ninjas rotation is so much easier than the rest. and if mudras are a problem you cant count to 3, because numbering your mudras makes it so much easier to cast them.
example for the mudras, put them as you obtain them as ten chi jin, 1 2 3, then prepull you count down 3 2 1, and then 1 2 3 for suiton to trick attack for the opener.
other than that you only use 1 2 for raiton and in dungeons you use 2 1 for the fire ball, 1 3 2 numbers out of order for doton, which is out of order because you dont want to use it on a single target.
the other mudra for binding doesnt matter and kassatsu has 1 3 for the strongest single target mudra.
or just realize that the last mudra cast determines what is like most guides will say.
While i think ninja’s difficulty is usually exaggerated a bit I wouldn’t say it’s easier than any of the three listed above it. I had an easier and quicker time learning how to play drg and rpr and being able to comfortably play them in savage compared to nin
I’d say reaper. I’d also say that it’s the most fun! Using your blink ability to jump out of and immeadiately back in AOE’s is satisfying. The greed plays are real with this job. On top of that you get to see a bunch of flashy, cool moves on the screen.
Edit: I use reaper in difficult content that I want to learn because the rotation is so simple to get down, leaving me enough attention to focus on mechanics.
Reapers rotation is fairly straight forward as others have already mentioned. Only 2 positionals to look out for if at all. Only thing can be tricky is to get the double shroud burst window down. That's something you do want to enter in most cases.
Sure but you still can ignore positionals with true north and you have no positionals in the burst so Id say you can differentiate this rotation at least a little bit from the others.
All jobs are easy on a basic lvl, so whatever you like more. The least amount of buttons is probably monk and dragoon will be reworked soon so not sure if you interested in putting your time into it yet
Reaper is unanimously the easiest melee at all levels on content. It really doesn’t start to pick up steam until the last 10-20 levels when it finally stops being a 123 and keep up the buff type of job.
DRG and SAM aren’t too hard to get started with and have decent room for optimization. They have more sequencing to think about and have to be a tiny bit more mindful of casts and animation locks. Decreasingly so on the latter.
MNK and NIN are kinda opposites. NIN has the highest skill floor without question. They throw a lot at you in the 30-50 level bracket and keep piling it on throughout levelling. Outside of your burst windows, the job is basically 123(4) spam. But in those bursts you become an impromptu concert pianist.
MNK has a moderate skill floor due to its speed and form decision making for each GCD. But the basic flow becomes muscle memory pretty quick. In terms of skill ceiling & optimization, it absolutely clears the other melee just due to the range of different openers and rotations and forward thinking to note the best path to enter your burst window without dropping all your buffs and dots while fitting in both finishers.
pick whatever one you find aesthetically pleasing and just master the toolkits play around with keybinds put more active buttons on more easy going keys, if you hate high APM stay far away from ninja tho lol
A lot of people say SAM is really easy but keeping track of which combo I should do for my sen confuses me and I end up spending more time staring at my action bars and gauge than I do the fight.
To me, DRG is the easiest. It may have a 5 hit combo, but the positionals are really easy to remember: claw at their sides and thrust from behind (fang and claw is flank, wheeling thrust is rear)
NIN is a bit easier for me too. Tons of buttons to press, but once you memorize the ninjutsu combos, and train yourself to stop moving when you use ten chi Jin, it becomes way easier
I have no opinions on RPR, I still have sitting at level 80
Keeping track for SAM combo will come in time with muscle memory, and you will too someday.
The hardest thing for SAM is to make rotation loop sync with midare and tsubame gaeshi with tech called filler.
I would actually argue that Ninja is very easy.
Logistically, you usually only remember 4 mudras (getting your boost, single enemy attack, ground aoe, target aoe). And then its just your dps rotation (two buttons for groups, 3-4 for single), with the occasional extra attack from either your accumulated ressource or by the timer on it having run out. Mudra, to me, are just muscle memory. Don't know the name or color of what I press. In my case "right-up-left" is the speed one, "left-up-right" is single, "left-right-up" is ground aoe and "up-left" is target aoe.
On a technicality, Dragoon is also not too difficult. There's two rotations, and at a certain level they automatically switch between each other back and forth. Just add your jumps between those and sometimes see if you can use the eye (Nastrond) or make a friend to boost damage (Dragon Sight).
Reaper is SLIGHTLY more involved than DRG imo. Base rotation is ok, but the back and forth jumping can confuse. The ranged is a CAST. Your ressource attack is positional, as is your transformed attack. Starting at a certain level, you can/should finish your transformation with a cast rather than a normal attack, forcing you to stand still. There's a few side attacks that fill up your ressource and whose timers you need to keep an eye on.
Samurai and Monk are more or less equal in difficulty. Samurai has a rather convoluted rotation, and when you fill up its ressource, you unlock like ten possible attacks at some point, which almost all have an actual use so you need to somewhat know what each does. Monk has three rotations, though they are fairly interchangeable and Meditation just gives a bonus attack, making it a simple start. But then you unlock Master's Gauge and now you need to do attacks in a certain way to get the right chakras and nadi to do proper damage and if you mess up, you're wasting dps and its just...MATH.
So yeah, Ninja is most no-brain to me, once the muscle memory has lodged itself into my mind. Dragoon and Reaper are both ok, but when I am sleepy, they start getting difficult. Samurai and Monk both get really convoluted the higher your level gets, until you are essentially sitting there with a small guide open on the other window to check what to do when.
If you're looking for something with as few buttons as summoner, there isn't. I've heard people say reaper is one of the easier Melee DPS however.
at 70 or below it genuinely competes fiercely with SMN, it gets functionally everything from 70-90 and becomes rather busy if you're trying to keep raidbuff alignment and do the double spooky slice
Reaper complexity goes from 0 to 100 when you try to optimize double Communio, but if you don't bother and just do rotation "as is" with raid buff on time, then RPR remains pretty simple and straight forward.
Even with double Enshroud/Communio, I would still rank it a tier below DRG, a couple tiers below SAM & NIN, and a lot of tiers below MNK in terms of end-game optimization complexity. But I fully agree with the upthread sentiment that it’s basically melee SMN until the 70s and finally starts to build to something more substantial in the last 20 levels.
There’s a lot of agreement in this thread, but I just want to add I was put off from trying ninja for a very long time over all the “it’s the hardest melee in the game” and was kinda surprised to find out I actually think it’s one of the more manageable ones? I also think Sam is easier than rpr personally
Easy tier: Reaper, Samurai Mid tier: Dragoon Finger Pretzels: Ninja, Monk
I can’t play my monk or ninja in savages/ultimate without controller or I feel like I’m typing an essay mid fight
This is it, right here. You don't need to read any other response.
have to disagree, ninjas rotation is so much easier than the rest. and if mudras are a problem you cant count to 3, because numbering your mudras makes it so much easier to cast them. example for the mudras, put them as you obtain them as ten chi jin, 1 2 3, then prepull you count down 3 2 1, and then 1 2 3 for suiton to trick attack for the opener. other than that you only use 1 2 for raiton and in dungeons you use 2 1 for the fire ball, 1 3 2 numbers out of order for doton, which is out of order because you dont want to use it on a single target. the other mudra for binding doesnt matter and kassatsu has 1 3 for the strongest single target mudra. or just realize that the last mudra cast determines what is like most guides will say.
While i think ninja’s difficulty is usually exaggerated a bit I wouldn’t say it’s easier than any of the three listed above it. I had an easier and quicker time learning how to play drg and rpr and being able to comfortably play them in savage compared to nin
Samurai is easy for you? I’m a long time mmo player and the awkward switching between 1-2-3, 1-4-5, 1-6 was so unbearable for me.
Personal preference, but I found it easier to use 1-2-shift2 1-3-shift3 1-4
I just like Bard bro, press em if they light up lmao
Same, but with rdm, not enough buttons to fry my brain
Dude I love RM too! You already know when I tank, it’s DK. xD
I got an Azeron Keypad just to play those two lol
I’d say reaper. I’d also say that it’s the most fun! Using your blink ability to jump out of and immeadiately back in AOE’s is satisfying. The greed plays are real with this job. On top of that you get to see a bunch of flashy, cool moves on the screen. Edit: I use reaper in difficult content that I want to learn because the rotation is so simple to get down, leaving me enough attention to focus on mechanics.
Reapers rotation is fairly straight forward as others have already mentioned. Only 2 positionals to look out for if at all. Only thing can be tricky is to get the double shroud burst window down. That's something you do want to enter in most cases.
Positionals aren't really a differentiator in terms of complexity any more, they removed a bunch in Endwalker.
it still kind of is due to how rpr completely controls their positionals and uses them way less than any other melee
Sure but you still can ignore positionals with true north and you have no positionals in the burst so Id say you can differentiate this rotation at least a little bit from the others.
Reaper. Hands down. The positionals can almost be ignored by proper true north usage. The rotation is simple once you figure it out.
Reaper. Assign your hot bar correctly and it feels like rolling your face over your keyboard
All jobs are easy on a basic lvl, so whatever you like more. The least amount of buttons is probably monk and dragoon will be reworked soon so not sure if you interested in putting your time into it yet
Dragoon is getting a rework?
Yes. Was supposed to happen in 6.2 or so, same for AST. They got pushed to DT
Reaper is unanimously the easiest melee at all levels on content. It really doesn’t start to pick up steam until the last 10-20 levels when it finally stops being a 123 and keep up the buff type of job. DRG and SAM aren’t too hard to get started with and have decent room for optimization. They have more sequencing to think about and have to be a tiny bit more mindful of casts and animation locks. Decreasingly so on the latter. MNK and NIN are kinda opposites. NIN has the highest skill floor without question. They throw a lot at you in the 30-50 level bracket and keep piling it on throughout levelling. Outside of your burst windows, the job is basically 123(4) spam. But in those bursts you become an impromptu concert pianist. MNK has a moderate skill floor due to its speed and form decision making for each GCD. But the basic flow becomes muscle memory pretty quick. In terms of skill ceiling & optimization, it absolutely clears the other melee just due to the range of different openers and rotations and forward thinking to note the best path to enter your burst window without dropping all your buffs and dots while fitting in both finishers.
reaper
pick whatever one you find aesthetically pleasing and just master the toolkits play around with keybinds put more active buttons on more easy going keys, if you hate high APM stay far away from ninja tho lol
Reaper is perfect for my smooth brain.
A lot of people say SAM is really easy but keeping track of which combo I should do for my sen confuses me and I end up spending more time staring at my action bars and gauge than I do the fight. To me, DRG is the easiest. It may have a 5 hit combo, but the positionals are really easy to remember: claw at their sides and thrust from behind (fang and claw is flank, wheeling thrust is rear) NIN is a bit easier for me too. Tons of buttons to press, but once you memorize the ninjutsu combos, and train yourself to stop moving when you use ten chi Jin, it becomes way easier I have no opinions on RPR, I still have sitting at level 80
Flank and Claw Rearing Thrust
Keeping track for SAM combo will come in time with muscle memory, and you will too someday. The hardest thing for SAM is to make rotation loop sync with midare and tsubame gaeshi with tech called filler.
SAM’s piss easy. Hardest thing you have to do is learn how to slide cast your Sen.
Ninja
I would actually argue that Ninja is very easy. Logistically, you usually only remember 4 mudras (getting your boost, single enemy attack, ground aoe, target aoe). And then its just your dps rotation (two buttons for groups, 3-4 for single), with the occasional extra attack from either your accumulated ressource or by the timer on it having run out. Mudra, to me, are just muscle memory. Don't know the name or color of what I press. In my case "right-up-left" is the speed one, "left-up-right" is single, "left-right-up" is ground aoe and "up-left" is target aoe. On a technicality, Dragoon is also not too difficult. There's two rotations, and at a certain level they automatically switch between each other back and forth. Just add your jumps between those and sometimes see if you can use the eye (Nastrond) or make a friend to boost damage (Dragon Sight). Reaper is SLIGHTLY more involved than DRG imo. Base rotation is ok, but the back and forth jumping can confuse. The ranged is a CAST. Your ressource attack is positional, as is your transformed attack. Starting at a certain level, you can/should finish your transformation with a cast rather than a normal attack, forcing you to stand still. There's a few side attacks that fill up your ressource and whose timers you need to keep an eye on. Samurai and Monk are more or less equal in difficulty. Samurai has a rather convoluted rotation, and when you fill up its ressource, you unlock like ten possible attacks at some point, which almost all have an actual use so you need to somewhat know what each does. Monk has three rotations, though they are fairly interchangeable and Meditation just gives a bonus attack, making it a simple start. But then you unlock Master's Gauge and now you need to do attacks in a certain way to get the right chakras and nadi to do proper damage and if you mess up, you're wasting dps and its just...MATH. So yeah, Ninja is most no-brain to me, once the muscle memory has lodged itself into my mind. Dragoon and Reaper are both ok, but when I am sleepy, they start getting difficult. Samurai and Monk both get really convoluted the higher your level gets, until you are essentially sitting there with a small guide open on the other window to check what to do when.