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A Newbie Guide to DPS

HALO~

I make this newbie guide in the hopes that it helps new players. The in game tutorial is…

adequate, but it leaves out the nuance of playing with others. So in addition to general info I have added an etiquette guide

Suggestions welcome! But please remember that this is meant to be a general beginners guide, so I won’t get into all the specifics.

Last updated since patch: 7.5

Everything under the cut!

Now some people might say the DPS have it easy, and to be fair, we don’t lead the charge or bring our buddies back from the dead [most of us]. But do you really think the Tank and the Healer want to do a 30 minute dungeon run? Or want to try and man a cannon while enemies keep punching them in the back of the head? They get to focus on what they are doing, because we are doing everything else!

The DPS Club is the most diverse of the job groups, so we will not be covering a lot of the class specifics [though I will point out unique traits if relevant]. For simplicity, we’ll stick with group names: the close range fighters aka Melee [MNK, SAM, DRG, RPR, NIN, VPR], the long ranged fighters aka Ranged [BRD, MCH, DNC] and the magic users aka Caster [SMN, BLM, RDM, PCT]

THE RULES OF THE DPS CLUB

1. Don’t Die

You can command the most destructive magics in all the world, but it won’t mean much if you’ve been surrounded by enemies that can and will, take you out in a few hits. Luckily that’s what the Tank is for! So you can freely beat the enemies heads in without worry! BUT, remember the Tank can’t actually block all the damage, they just direct it. You still need to be avoiding Area of Effect moves [AOE], and generally trying not to stand right on top of the Tank, as some of the attacks can go through the Tank and hit you. This is called Cleave, and is why Tanks will typically point the boss away from the party.

For the Melee this is the part where you must learn to dance. A conscientious Tank will try to group the mobs in a way that keeps you safe, but sometimes that’s just not how the dice rolls. So keep one eye on your Tank and the other on the ground lol

Ranged can literally run in circles while attacking from a distance so there’s no shortage of mobility here lmao But if you’re spinning like top into all the AOE’s and then get Cleaved then you need to adjust your arc.

Yes, this means you too Casters. I know you guys have to stand still to attack, but if you die before you can pull off your spell it won’t matter :’> One thing that can help is a little trick called slide-casting! When you are casting a spell, there is a half-second or so just before it is unleashed, where you can move, and the spell will still cast! This will take some practice to get a feel for it, but is great for especially hectic fights. At the very least: check that your health is full, that you are not in a Venn diagram of death, and that the healer isn’t occupied with keeping someone else alive!

All DPS [except BLM] also have a self-Healing move [Melee & Ranged: Second Wind, RDM: Vercure, SMN: Physick], and the Melee have an additional heal called Blood Bath, which heals you as you do damage. DNC also has a party wide heal called Curing Waltz, and gradual heal called Improvisation.

Some DPS also have skills that will increase the potency of healing moves for themselves and the party [MNK: Mantra, BRD: Nature’s Minne], meaning you can use them before a strong attack is coming, or simply before you use your own healing move, to help you and/or the party recover more HP.

At this time only one DPS has a status curing skill. BRDs can use the skill Warden's Paean to remove a curable debuff from themselves or another party member. I go into more detail about types of healing skills in my Healer guide.

Quite a few DPS also have their own Mitigation skill similar to the Tanks. Some only reduce damage for the user [MNK: Riddle of Earth, NIN: Shade Shift, SAM: Third Eye, BLM: Manaward, SMN: Radiant Aegis],

while others will be party wide so long as they are within range [RPR: Arcane Crest, BRD: Troubadour, DNC: Shield Samba, MCH: Tactician, RDM: Magick Barrier, PCT: Tempera Coat].

Additionally, the Melee DPS have a Role Skill called Feint which reduces the amount of damage the target does to the party, and all DPS have the Role Skill Arm's Length, which will slow the attack speed of any enemy that physically strikes you.I talk more about Mitigation and how it works in my Tank guide.

Remember, nothing is a bigger DPS loss than dying!

2. Control the Battlefield

The Tank is the leader, and they will be doing their best to make sure everything in the room is focused on them. But if things start to get crazy or if extra factors come into the fray, that’s when you need to step in!

When you are facing groups of enemies [which is most of the time], you want to be using your AOE [Area of Effect] skills primarily. These are skills that hit more than one enemy at a time. The Tank will also be doing this in order to keep the enemy focused on them. This makes it so the party can make a clean sweep of the enemies faster and move on to the next pull quicker! Once you get down to two or one enemies, you can start focusing on attacking one at a time.

Occasionally ranged enemies can put a damper on the AOE attack strategy though, as they tend to hang back from the rest of the group. Sometimes a skilled Tank can find a way to force them to come in closer, but if not, look to DPS these enemies down first!

If the Tank misses an enemy and it targets you, do not panic! Bring it to the Tank. Grab that random Coblyn and wave it in the Tank’s face until they take it from you!

If the Tank misses an enemy, and you see one go directly for the Healer, go kick it in the face! You must get its attention on you, and away from the Healer. Then, you guessed it, bring it to the Tank!

If the Tank goes down, the enemies will divide their attention on you and your Healer. This is because their enmity [or aggro] is based on two things: who is doing the most damage, or who is generating the most enmity, and they really hate the Healer's regen moves. Do your best to take the heat off your Healer and stay alive while they get the Tank back up!

Some bosses will summon extra enemies to the battle to fight you. The additional enemies [Adds] should be quickly eliminated. They typically will not have a lot of health, and will only serve to annoy and harry your party while trying to kill the boss if left alone. Sometimes extra adds will disappear when the boss dies but not always.

Melee and Ranged, you also have a couple skills that you can use to either Stun or Interrupt enemies from doing certain attacks. These are indicated by the Progress Bar, showing that the attack is charging up. The normal progress bar indicates an attack that can be stopped by Stunning the enemy [IF they can be stunned, some are impervious]. Melee can do this with the Role Skill Leg Sweep.

The flashing progress bar indicates that the attack can be Interrupted. Ranged can do this with the Role Skill Head Graze. Remember that Stun and Interrupt are not interchangeable! Enemies who have been stunned multiple times will become impervious to it, and Bosses cannot be Stunned at all.

Extra mechanics like flipping switches and shooting cannons and so on during the battle- that’s up to us! The Tank needs to keep the enemies focused on them and the Healer needs to focus on keeping all of you alive. So if the boss needs to get shot with a cannonball in order to stop it’s big party-wiping attack, its up to the DPS to get it going! [This seems to be slowly getting phased out in Main Scenario, but is still present in a fair amount of optional dungeons, so it’s still good to keep in mind]

3. Maximize Your Damage

You’ve dodged all the enemies attacks and and made sure your party is safe, now its time to turn to your enemies and do what you do best- melt those motherfuckers HP bars!

Now! This is much too large and diverse a topic for the DPS Club to really get into the nitty-gritty of it for each class, so I encourage you all to look up guides for the specific class you are interested in. I have found the ones made by Megastar to be really helpful for getting a basic understanding of your class and its flow. Finding a training dummy in the game to test things out on to get a feeling of the class’s rhythm will help too! But most importantly, READ YOUR TOOL TIPS! Hovering your mouse over them will give a detailed description of each skill. Some general tips for everyone:

Pay Attention to Your Combos! Any attack move you can do that is a part of a combo will do more damage if you do it in the correct order of the combo. These are visually indicated when you start with your first attack skill, the next in the combo will have a flashing dashed line moving around the icon.

Always be Using Your Off-Global Cool Down Skills! What does that even mean, WELL, those combo moves I just mentioned? They all recharge at the same time, meaning they all have the same “Cool Down” [CD] timer or Global Cool Down [GCD]. But you’ll get extra attacks that have their own CD, that are independent of your usual combo moves.

This means that you can use one of those moves to attack in between the time you are waiting for your next combo move to be available. So use those whenever possible! [if you ever read a guide and it talks about “weaving” skills, this is what they mean]

Always be Using Your Damage Over Time Skills! These are skills that then inflict a form of status or de-buff on your enemies that will cause a small amount of damage to the enemy, repeatedly, for a small amount of time. Also known as DOTs. As of Dawntrail only 6 DPS jobs have DOTS: DRG and SAM have a single attack that affect one target, BLM has single target and Area of Effect [AOE] DOTs, MCH and NIN- which only have a AOE DOTs [NIN is ground targeted one], and BRD- which has two single target DOTs. HOWEVER single target DOTs are best utilized on Bosses, unless you have one of the AOE DOT’s it’s a DPS loss to try an place a DOT on every single enemy. Just focus on AOE attacks for crowds otherwise.

Always be Buffing Your Damage! All DPS have the ability to either temporarily increase their damage, or increase the speed of which they attack. Many of them also get party wide versions of these skills. There are some that you may want to use strategically [such as selecting another DPS for a single target one], but for the most part use these as frequently as you can.

Lock and Load! Some of you like MNK and PCT can charge or prep skills instantly outside of battle, remember to do this between pulls so you have a full arsenal going in. Similarly longer buffs like the ones DNC and BRD can do are best done as you enter the battle to maximize the benefits! And on that note-

Don't Hold Back! You are part of the DPS Club. DPS means Damage Per Second-your main job is to be killing things as fast as you can. That means you need to be going all-out: if you're holding back your stronger moves to wait for the boss at the end of the long pulls you're not actually saving anyone time later, you are just wasting time now. There's no damage skill that has a cool down long enough for it to matter, I promise.

And for each group, here are some extra things to consider so you can up your game:

Melee- For the most part you guys want to be paying attention to how your combos work, and where you are striking the enemy from. All the Melees have a basic 1-2-3 combo, and as you get more moves, you might either get an additional combo set, or have your original combo make a branching point. Again read your skill info, feel it out. In most cases for these 1-2-3 combos, the final skill in a set will do more damage based on if you strike from the Flank, or from the Rear. These are called Positionals.

Ranged- This is a strange category because MCH honestly is very similar mechanics wise to the Melee group: it has a combo and relies fully on damage, but it does not have to worry about Positionals at all. On the other hand, damage for BRD and DNC is more “Random Number Generated” [RNG] based. Many of their attack effectiveness or activation depends on chance or actions of your teammates. This makes it a bit hard to make a consistent damage output, but that’s okay, because you guys get to buff yourself and your pals with song and dance! DNC, always be dancing to provide attack buffs, and choose a Dance Partner at later levels [high output Melee's are ideal]. BRDs, keep in mind that your Songs do not stack with the Songs of other BRDs, so try to pick a different Song from the other BRD to max out those damage buffs!

Casters- For you guys the importance is mostly on learning the rhythm of your magic, and making sure you position yourself well. Ideally you want to be familiar enough with the battles so that you don’t have to move, and you can keep spamming spells all day. This is particularly important for BLM, as they are the least mobile of the Casters. When attacking groups, one thing can help is to switch your target to the enemy that has the most health every so often: that way you're less likely to have your spell cancelled because your target died partway through. Remember the slide casting trick mentioned earlier too! It will take a little practice but it’s very worth it. RMD's, remember that your sword skills are always more powerful if they are used when you have some magic built up!

4. The Limit Break

The battle has raged and you’ve got your enemy on the ropes, it’s time to finish them off! It’s time. To. LIMIT BREAK!!!

If you’re new to Final Fantasy, a Limit Break [or LB] is generally a strong move used by a character to do a lot of damage. If you are the DPS at least. This is a multi-sectioned bar that fills gradually as the party attacks,

and a Limit Break can only be used if at least one of the sections is full.

For most encounters you might only get one or two sections, but many bosses will get three. The more sections full when you use the attack, the stronger it will be.

And most critically, the Limit Break is party shared [not the case in most FF games], which means if one player uses it, it has been used for everyone else too. This is why it’s important for the LB to be used strategically, particularly for higher level dungeons/trials/raids.

On top of that, the LB move changes depending on your DPS Type, and how many bars are full. The Limit Break Three [or LB3] in particular is the strongest and it’s attack animation is unique for every single class. But the inherent way the LB attacks function is the same for each group:

Melee- a single target, hard hitting attack

Ranged- a line AOE that will hit multiple enemies

Casters- a circle AOE that will hit multiple enemies

As a general rule the Melee DPS is the one who uses the LB attack on a Boss. This is not favoritism, but rather because the Melee LB attacks do the most damage to a single target. So when you are fighting a single enemy, the party will expect the Melee to use the LB. You could do this at the start of the fight if the bars are full, or wait near the end to finish the boss with it if you prefer. If there are no Melee DPS in the party: the next most powerful LB attacks belong to the Ranged group, then the Casters.

As you get more familiar with fights, you will note there may be exceptions to the Melee LB Rule! Sometimes it’s more strategic to do a Ranged LB on a certain phase of the fight that has multiple targets. Or maybe you guys are fighting some mobs and it will save time if a Caster uses an LB on them so you can move along. There can also be situational exceptions where you don’t want the DPS to LB at all! If a raid isn’t going well, you might save the LB3 so that the Healer can use it instead for a full party raise! And there are a couple instances where the Tank might need an LB3 to shield the party from a boss attack that may otherwise wipe the group.

General DPS Etiquette

Dungeons & General Tips

If you notice the Tank run into battle without their Tank stance, remind them to put it on! A lot of times the game will turn off their stance when they enter a new duty and they might forget to stance up again because of it.

On a similar note, remember how when you are in the field, the name of the enemies you attack change color when they are aggressive towards you? You can use that cue to spot when the Tank has successfully engaged all the enemies, making it safe for you to attack after with no worry of repercussion! Another way to tell is to check for a little "A" next to the Tank's icon

Occasionally, despite a boss being clearly engaged with the Tank, the boss will turn around and face other players to attack them, usually with visible AOE's [but not always]. This is not because the Tank lost control of the boss! Some bosses are just programmed to be assholes for specific actions :'D So if you notice the boss suddenly change behavior and face you, best thing to do is to get the hell out of there!

Leave the AOE attacks for the enemy groups. When you face a single enemy or a Boss, use your single target attacks. They are much stronger than your AOEs, so they are worth more in the long run when you fight a single target.

When the enemy is doing a visible AOE move, usually visible on the ground and in orange, that area is dangerous only when it is orange. Yes, even if the attack animation is still going. So you can move back into that into that space immediately after it stops being indicated on the ground! More time for attacking! [There are like…maybe two exceptions to this in main game lol you’ll remember when they happen. The party will likely warn you even!]

Ranged guys! You have a really fun move called Peloton that makes everyone in your party run faster [when you’re not in combat]. Everybody likes it when you use this :D

Ranged and Casters, be mindful of your position relative to your Healer. Their heal moves only go out so far, so if you’re on the other end of the battlefield, they won’t be able to hit you with their AOE Heal Skills!

SMN and RDM, you guys are in the unique position of being able to Resurrect [Rez/Res] fallen players like your Healers can! For SMN this is called Resurrection and for RDM it is Verraise.

This can be extremely helpful if the Healer has already used their Swiftcast to Res someone else or is otherwise occupied. Or dead. RDM specifically, is able to spam this skill quickly by virtue of its Dual Cast mechanic. You can use a fast spell [like Jolt], and then be able to cast Verraise again instantly!

BRDs don’t forget about Wardens Paean! Like the Healers Esuna skill it picks one status to remove at random, but unlike Esuna it has a cool down. Since the healer will likely prioritize themselves or the Tank first, if the whole party has been hit with a status effect, a good bet is to use it on yourself or the other DPS! Or maybe if the Tank has multiple status effects on them, use it on them so the Healer has one less thing to worry about!

Every so often you’ll encounter a Boss that is charging a party wiping attack. For the most part [again some of the older side content is not up to date with the new indicators] you can tell this is happening when a completely different looking progress bar appears on the screen. It typically has a silver frame and fills up at snails pace compared to the usual one.

This is the DPS check and it is your time to shine! Oftentimes the Boss themselves is not the target in this case, but something else on the field. Whatever it is, it’s your job to crank up the damage and turn it to dust before it does the same to you!

If you ever see a player get marked by another player with an icon like this:

usually this is to indicate this player knows the fight very well, and to follow them! This is often used in more chaotic trials or if the party has wiped a few times, to help the newer players know where to go to avoid dying. Not all players know how to do this though [or there’s not enough time], and they might just start jumping in place on the safe spot, so look for that too! XD

DO NOT run in front of the tank, wait for them to pull the aggro first. Despite what the Duty Support/Trust systems would suggest, DPS do not lead the charge, because you would die in 5 seconds. This doesn’t happen in those settings because the NPC Tank is programmed to be glued to your ass. Please wait for your Tank!

DO NOT PULL FOR THE TANK. I know it seems like I am the same point twice, but I am this time referring to purposefully running ahead of the tank to pull enemies back to them. Please do not do this. How many enemies are being fought at one time is a decision that must be balanced between the skills and comfort level of the Tank and the Healer. You should not be deciding this for them!

Finally-do not start pulling forward until the enemies are all dead. You are the DPS, this is your one job: kill all the things. And more often than not, the next area will not open to the group until all the enemies are killed anyway. So at best running ahead wastes everyone's time, and at worst you die because you're not the Tank and you ran into the enemies first. The Tank is the one who sets the pace, not you. As a great Healer once said, if you run ahead of everyone, "then you can speed run death".

Raids

When you are in a Normal Raid, the party becomes an 8 player team, and for the most part the same rules apply as when you’re in a Dungeon or Trial. Even the use of the LB. But when you are in an Alliance raid, you are joined by two additional 8 player teams. This makes battles chaotic and fun, so there are some extra things to keep in mind:

Any party buffs you have or can give to other players will not be given to the other Alliances, they will only reach your own Alliance. This includes AOE Healing.

HOWEVER, players of other Alliances can be healed or rezzed if directly targeted when using the skill.

The LB is shared only with your Alliance. This means each alliance will have its own LB bar. Typically it is in the Raids that you want to keep an eye on how your team is doing before using the LB. If half your party is down, consider letting a Healer do it. But if you’re the last man, and there's no hope for a Healer to be rezzed, may as well go for it!

For the most part Raids [at least not the regular difficulty ones] do not have DPS specific mechanics to watch out for like they have for Tanks and Healers. But the Raids are very diverse and many of them have unique mechanics, plenty of which may require the DPS to handle. And there are lots of online tutorials on dungeons and raids to help you make sense of them!

NOW GO! AND DEMOLISH YOUR ENEMIES >:3c

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