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Hey guys! In Stormblood, the cross-class skill system was completely replaced with the Role Action System. Here we talk all about the Melee DPS Role Actions, and what’s best to use!
Melee DPS Role Actions – Navigation:
List | Discussion | For Dungeons | For Raids
Melee DPS Role Actions list
(still debating the best way to present this table)
| Skill | Level | Recast | Effect | Duration |
| Second Wind | 8 | 120 | Restore own HP with potency 500 (scales with ATK) | NA |
| Arm’s Length | 12 | 60 | Created a barrier that nullified knockback and draw-in effects. Slows all attackers by 30% when struck. | 15 |
| Leg Sweep | 16 | 40 | Leg Sweep | 3 |
| Diversion | 20 | 120 | Reduces enmity generation. | 15 |
| Invigorate | 24 | 120 | Restores 400 TP | NA |
| Bloodbath | 32 | 90 | Converts a part of your damage to healing | 20 |
| Goad | 36 | 180 | Refreshes TP of a single party member | 30 |
| Feint | 40 | 120 | Lowers target’s strength and dexterity by 15% | 10 |
| Crutch | 44 | 90 | Removes bind and heavy from a party member. | NA |
| True North | 48 | 150 | Ignore positional requirements. | 1 |
Melee DPS Role Actions: quick strategy & discussion
Here’s a general rundown and a quick analysis on how useful each of the melee DPS role actions are.
Second Wind: A small heal that’s useful in emergencies. It can and will save your life, sometimes.
Arm’s Length: The anti-displacement can be useful in some encounters. This is quite powerful at reducing damage if the enemies are not immune, but it requires enemies to hit you…
Leg Sweep: Bring this if there is something that needs to be stunned. Unlike the old DRG Leg Sweep, this does not do damage.
Diversion: It helps when you’re doing a lot of damage in bursts. Mostly good for raids.
Invigorate: TP restoration is extremely important. Take it 99.9% of the time.
Bloodbath: This is not as good as Second Wind, but if you need more healing you can take this. Not as good in emergencies because of the slow heal over time. Useful for solo content.
Goad: If you take Invigorate 99.9% of the time, then this goes in 98% of the time. Tanks use TP so there’s always gonna be a target for this.
Feint: A must have for raids! Use it for the large physical attacks that most bosses have.
Crutch: VERY situational. It’s either good or garbage. Choose one.
True North: Many fights require movement which makes hitting positional requirements hard. Consider this a free DPS increase in those situations.
Melee DPS Role Actions for Dungeons
These role actions should be taken when “queuing blind” in a random dungeon, and should serve you well for general content.
- Invigorate: You’d be crazy to go anywhere without this.
- Goad: This allows DPS to use more AOE attacks before running out of TP. Any other TP user in your party will appreciate this.
- Leg Sweep: Use it to interrupt attacks that would force you to run away from enemies.
- True North: Big pulls, messy movement, bad tanks… yeah.
- Second Wind: Can save you a death sometimes.
If you need to swap in a different skill, I’d suggest swapping out Leg Sweep or Second Wind.
Feint can be swapped in if there is a boss that hits with powerful physical attacks. Similarly, Crutch can be swapped in if there is an enemy that slows or binds your teammates.
True North is technically optional for dungeons… but there are MANY upsides in getting used to it, plus in large speedrun pulls ground effects can cause you to lose positionals. Just take it, it’s not like you’ll lose much.
The other skills are iffy for “casual random dungeon runs”.
The order is largely irrelevant, but the above is a decent ordering given the dungeons you will encounter when you scale down to <50.
Melee DPS Role Actions for Raids
RAID ROLE ACTIONS ARE HEAVILY INFLUENCED BY ENCOUNTER! THERE IS NO TRUE ONE SIZE FITS ALL!
- Invigorate: As with dungeons, never enter a raid without this.
- Goad: With 4 DPS and 2 tanks, you will always have a suitable target for this in raids.
- Diversion: Helpful to prevent you from taking aggro when you are doing burst damage.
- Feint: Almost every raid in the game has some form of physical damage, which makes Feint incredibly good. If the raid has only magic attacks don’t take this.
- True North: Raids are the most common place where you will be unable to hit positionals due to mechanics. Take this unless you KNOW you will be able to hit all of your positionals.
If you can do without one of these 5…
Arm’s Length can be considered in any encounter with a displacement effect.
Leg Sweep can be useful if you need to join an interrupt cycle. Similarly, Crutch can be an absolute lifesaver if the raid has mechanics which heavy or bind.
Second Wind is also useful in raids if you take unexpected damage. If you don’t require one of the above skills replace it with this.
Melee DPS Role Actions – Navigation:
List | Discussion | For Dungeons | For Raids
Well, that’s about it for Melee DPS Role Actions! As can be seen, in raids all of the Melee DPS role actions are situationally useful. I hope this guide gives you a general idea of how to use them in raids. Observation and adaptation will be the keys to figuring out what is best for each fight.
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