BST sub-jobs?Follow

I recently have returned to the game after a few year hiatus. My main job back in the day (rocking the ole' PS2) was Beastmaster. I had leveled from 1-75 as BST/WHM and primarily stayed that way as I mainly soloed (outside of BST parties). With that being said, I have now started completely over from scratch (brand new account) and have recently hit the pinnacle level 30, ready to start unlocking advanced jobs. While there are a handful of jobs I have an interest in taking to 99, Beastmaster remains my focus. As such, I wanted to inquire on recommended sub-jobs to consider. I ultimately want to avoid the whitemage sub and take a different path this time around. I was tinkering with the idea of subbing Ninja or Blue-mage, however, I really am unsure what may be optimal for soloing, farming, and perhaps parties. I browsed through the forums and found out-dated information that I ultimately found all too familiar. With all that being said, I would greatly appreciate any advice. Thank you in advance.

At 99, I don't remember the last time I used any sub other than DNC or NIN. Any time I think I want to try /WHM or any other sub, I realize I lose out on one of my pet -PDT axes without dual wield.

The main differences would be:

/NIN:
- Dual Wield III (/DNC would be DW II)
- Shadows for damage mitigation
- Sneak/Invis that last longer, for a consistent amount of time

/DNC:
- Ability to heal HP and status effects
- Ability to stun with Violent Flourish
- Ability to lower defense and lower evasion
- Free Sneak/Invis that are insta-cast

Typically, I'll choose /DNC if I absolutely have to be able to stun the mob, if I'm doing Dynamis and need more JAs to proc, or if I need to drop and reapply sneak/invis a lot (mainly Dynamis anyway). I'll choose /NIN if I'm not likely to be building any TP (standing out of range and letting my pet do all the fighting) and if shadows are better suited to the task (e.g. the mob does high damage, non-AOE attacks).

I wind up going /DNC the vast majority of the time for the kind of stuff I typically do on BST. But my activities may differ from someone else (e.g. I've never done Voidwatch), and I have 6 other lvl 99 jobs to choose from for the activities I do participate in (so I may never do certain activities as BST). I always go BST/DNC for Dynamis (unless I need to get limit points on another job for a Relic +2 trial), and I'll often go BST/DNC or BST/NIN when I do Old Nyzul and low man certain Limbus zones.

yep, its all about trade-offs.

you can have both haste & cure 4 from /rdm
but /whm gets reraise. and no refresh

/sch you get reraise and plenty of refresh-like mp, but no cure4 or haste

I don't worry about /rdm on bst cuz I have twilight mail, which tends to be plenty of refresh for bst/mage.