Omni-Gearing for Melee Jobs

The melee DPS in this game fall into one of three categories - Maiming, Striking, and Scouting. Maiming includes Dragoon and Reaper, Striking includes Monk and Samurai, and Scouting is only technically a melee, since they have the same Role Actions, but they share gear with no one. Ninja need not be included for this reason. Below, we have gearsets designed to be used if you want to flex between the two Maiming or the two Striking DPS with minimal need to re-meld gear.

The buttons linked below will lead you to the job specific gearing pages.

Dragoon and Reaper share the exact same stat considerations, and their best weapons have identical stat spreads this tier, but because the weapon is where we pick up two Critical Hit Rate melds, the two classes are unfortunately incompatible. We use the exact same gearsets and, if you examine them, you will see that Reaper merely swaps out 1 or 2 Direct Hit Rate melds for Skill Speed melds. Reaper operates at 2.49 or 2.48 GCD speed, whereas Dragoon operates at 2.50. The best solution is to swap this meld around as you swap between the classes. Alternatively, pick your main, run that set, and deal with the issues the alternative speed gives you. In general, 2.49 or 2.48 on Dragoon is less of an issue than 2.50 is on Reaper.

Monk and Samurai are extremely incompatible. They utilize different Skill Speed values to properly execute their rotations, which makes it very difficult to build a "one-size-fits-all" sort of gearset for the two classes at the same time. What's listed below is kind of a "best it's going to get" set which takes a small hit on both Monk and Samurai in order to facilitate easy swapping between the two while still maintaining relatively decent parity on both classes, damage-wise.

Only one set is listed. The only difference would be the weapon. As both Babyface Champion's weapons have identical stats, all you would need to do is meld both your Monk and Samurai weapons identically (as shown in this gearset) and swap between them when you swap between sets (obviously).

Ninja and Viper share very similar desires when it comes to setting up their stats, and they have an identically-potent speed buff baked into their rotation. While Viper, in general, prefers a 2.11 or 2.10 GCD spin, their 2.12 GCD speed option perfectly aligns with the Ninja's favored gearset. As such, it's recommended that you run 2.12 on your Viper if you intend to swap between Viper and Ninja with any regularity.

Due to the desire of Maiming to run 0 Skill Speed and Striking to run more-than-zero, there ends up not being any way to completely marry the Slaying Accessories between the two sets of melee. This is the closest they can be - differing only by a singular meld. That is, the Striking classes meld the earrings with DET/SKS while Maiming melds DET/DH, and Striking melds the Ascension Ring with CRT/DET instead of the Maiming's DET/DET.

If you want to avoid remelding, the recommended play is to simply swap the DH meld from the earring for a SKS, and put that DH onto Reaper's weapon in place of its SKS meld. This only negatively impacts Dragoon, and minorly. For the ring, you are welcome to meld it CRT/DET. This has slightly weaker stat tier hits for the Maiming classes, but not by enough to make a sizeable difference in the final damage numbers.