[ospeff]

It works very well.

Use DD gear, same type of gear you would use for your warrior, you basically are a warrior without berserk/doubleattack/etc but with a pet to make up for it, so gear up like one.

And yeah sub /NIN starting at level 20, dual wield is consistent damage over time increase. There is not really any other option. Use axes of course. No you will not get PT invites but you can make your own, I always do.

As far as performance goes, I am only level 43, but the last PT I was in, there was NO WAY the other DD's could keep up with me, absolutely no way. I was using tiger jug and it's special moves were more almost the same damage as the other DDs, for instance Samurai would WS for 180, my pet would do special for 130, and on top of that I did my own WS for another 150. It's insane, it's like having 1 player controlling 2 people.

I don't know why the dont get invited, maybe it changes later on, but at 42 it seemed kind of overpowered.

[Susurrus]

Originally Posted by ospeff

I don't know why the dont get invited, maybe it changes later on, but at 42 it seemed kind of overpowered.

Same reason most pet jobs don't get invited. They only look at the player, not the pet.

[Esoa]

From 23-45ish I partied a lot. For some reason I got invites. I parsed about 5 of those parties and in every single one of them I was top DD. In some of them, I did 50% more than the next highest DD. I found almost no difference in damage output between Steffi and Funguar so I just used Steffi. One PT I was in had another BST who used a Diremite Familiar and the damage difference between it and my pet was significant. I subbed /nin the whole time.

Then, one day the invites stopped. I didn't get another invite for 20 levels with my flag being up a good 75% of the time until my gear was bad (what's the point of DD gear if you never use it). Soloing can be fun for an hour or two but it gets tedious quickly and most BST camps, frankly, suck.

I finally got another PT invite today at lvl 70. I went BST/NIN with LifedrinkerLars and we fought imps. I used 2x Rune Axes, Hauberk, Celata, Life Belt, Amemet Mantle (NQ), some 68 acc/attk gloves and pants, +10 attk boots, +5/+3 attk earrings, merman's gorget...think that's about all of it. Nothing too fancy. Anyway, I parsed our PT and I was pretty much tied for first with the mnk/war. Lars had a horrible 60% accuracy rate and his Sic moves were very very lackluster...think 100-150ish max. His per hit damage was very good though (a crit on a melee hit would do more damage than his highest Sic).

So I would say that BST is a very strong DD at lower levels and quite decent at higher levels. But then...you hit 75. Everyone gets better gear, except our gear only affects half our damage output. Everyone gets merits, except our merits have 0, none, zilch effect on our DD capabilities. Beast Affinity? LOL why bother when LifedrinkerLars is the best pet regardless? I'm not dumping 25 merits or whatever into an ability that does nothing but save me gil...and gimp me because I use a weaker DD jug.

BST isn't even the best solo job any more like it once was. DRG/mage puts us to shame for straight xp/hour vs. normal mobs. BLM is better at leveling speed because they are so good at soloing goblin pets. RDM is leagues better at NM soloing. The final kick in the nuts is that /BST is a better BST than BST main. Why go BST (except for +charm AF gear) with half the abilities of your subjob when you can go /BST and get the full abilities of the main and BST?

BST can be fun, no doubt. Just don't delude yourself into thinking it's going to be some kind of a) uber solo xp machine or b) warrior with a pet that PT's will love to invite for DDing.

BTW /WAR is a better subjob for DD. I never leveled it because /NIN looks cooler and shadows can come in handy. It's not like if I min/max my sub I'm going to get mad PT invites...