Because I've been playing a lot of Final Fantasy XIV, I thought I'd write out some of my thoughts about all the different jobs I've been leveling since the game launched back in 2013. I'll group them by their roles and talk about them individually. Also, when I refer to 'high level', I mean level 70 and above. Currently, I have every job to at least 70.
Tank
Before I get into this, I just want to talk about the role of tanking. When I first started playing Final Fantasy XIV, I was an Archer during the beta, then an Arcanist/Summoner when the game launched. I spent most of my initial run as strictly DPS (damage per second, a term I still don't personally like. When I played FFXI, it was DD for damage dealer, which just made more sense to me). The early days of FFXIV had tanks marking their targets in order for DPS to focus attacks on. Keeping an eye out for any new monsters popping up (adds) and positioning bosses correctly during fights made this role very intimidating for me. Somewhere down the road, though, I decided I wanted to play everything, so I sucked it up and tried a tank out. I don't remember which one I started out with.
Paladin - One of the original jobs, the paladin evolved from the starting job of gladiator. The PLD job has always been about defense over offense, so much so that I still find it to be the most boring out of the four tank jobs. Healers love them because of their high defense, which means that more brazen healers could DPS more often. PLD saw the removal of one of their most used skills, Flash which increase aggro/enmity and blinded mobs, when it was reworked in Shadowbringer. I loved the sound and flash that Flash made, but one of Shadowbringer's focuses on pretty much all jobs was increasing their AoE (Area of Effect) skills so PLD got a couple of AoE slashes to make up for their lack of the adorned Flash. High level PLDs are a little more fun to play but the lack of offense still has me leaning towards pretty much any other tank.
Warrior - Another original tank job, the warrior began as the marauder. Its quest line was rather enjoyable dealing with pirates and an NPC named Curious George that remains one of my favorites. The warrior's main crowd control move is Overpower, a cone-shaped frontal attack that deals damage and raises enmity, but the issue with Overpower was that you had to position the group of mobs correctly for the attack to hit them all. In the early days, it was rough learning how to be play as a Warrior because directional-based melee DPS couldn't be efficient if you were constantly moving the mobs around. Overpower also consumed TP (technical points), and it was very easy to run out of TP if you weren't good at crowd control. Shadowbringer actually did away with the concept of TP, and the game plays much better without it. As Warrior progressed, many damage-based skills were unlocked and activated with a Wrath meter, and high level Warrior is probably still my favorite of the tank jobs. It's very satisfying to unleash your wrath and watch you do big numbers to the boss, even as a tank. The only downside was that Warriors were offense over defense so they died a lot to inexperienced healers.
Dark Knight - Dark Knight was a new job in the Heavensward expansion. Heavensward also took a departure from the main game's jobs and didn't require you starting over at level 1, and you didn't need to level a previous job to evolve from. I still have issues with that decision, because it's a lot to take in when you start a new job and have a full hotbar of skills you've no idea how to use, but I digress. I played DRK in FFXI, and it was a straight up damage dealer, so seeing them turn this job into a tank took me by surprise. Granted, it does more damage than PLD (anything does, actually) it was still counter-intuitive to actually be the DRK that took all the hits. In FFXI, it was highly recommended NOT to get hit as a DRK because they had very little defense. Also, because of FFXIV's jobs being bound to one type of weapon, that means DRKs were stuck with great swords and the days of seeing scythe-wielding DRKs were over. Still, DRK was very much fun to play because of all the cool-looking and sounding effects. Pre-Shadowbringer DRKs were a bit harder to play, though, because of MP management as most of their skills consumed MP, but Shadowbringer tweaked them making MP management a non-issue.
Gunbreaker - Having skipped a new tank with Stormblood, Shadowbringer introduced a fan-favorite weapon wielder: the Gunbreaker. You may have recognized the gun/sword hybrid gunblade as a weapon of choice by Squall from Final Fantasy VIII. Gunbreaker has very quickly become one of my favorite tanks, just edging out Dark Knight and falling slightly behind Warrior. Gunbreaker's all about keeping your gunblade loaded with ammo from combos, dealing DoTs (damage over time), swinging your sword around for crowd control and unleashing punishing gunblade shot-enhanced slashing combos. When you get in the rhythm, Gunbreaker is very fun to play, but it has one of the worst near death abilities of all tanks, Super Bolide. This move makes you immune to almost all attacks, but drops your HP to 1, and this freaked out many a healer. They usually panic not knowing what's going on and before they can heal you, your Super Bolide wears off and you die. I very rarely even use it. If I die, I die. The job was also used prominently in the story as two main characters took on the role of swinging around gunblades.
Healer
Just like tanks, I was scared to try to healing. For the first 30 or so jobs, healing wasn't very hard to do, but it was somewhere around level 30, the dungeon called Haukke Manor, that the game started to take off the kid glove. I remember the first time I tried to heal that dungeon, it did not go well. Before Stormbringer, there was a move called Cleric Stance that increased your healing potency. Turning it on increased your damage output. I loved to DPS while I healed, but trying to find the balance in juggling this stance while keeping everyone healed overwhelmed me at that point. Many people try to heal, fail and then never heal again. Because I'm stubborn, I kept at it and eventually could heal my way through almost every dungeon.
White Mage - One of FFXIV's original jobs, WHM stems from the job Conjurer and is regularly considered the defacto healer of FFXIV for its pure healing potency and Holy spam. Although Scholar is no slouch either, WHM is simply an overall better healer with more DPS output. As I mentioned before, earlier WHM was tricky to balance DPS and heals because of Cleric Stance, but once that was removed, it was much easier to play as WHM. I would usually keep myself in the middle of the fray and just not care about being hit because I'd simply heal out of it. WHM was also one of the few jobs that had an exclusive mount that could be earned from its storyline. I wasn't around when SE greatly altered WHM between Stormblood and Shadowbringer, but from what I've read, a lot of handy abilities were removed, but from the high level WHM runs I've been doing, I wouldn't have known.
Scholar - This job's an oddity. Another original job, Scholar evolved from the Arcanist job but so does Summoner. Regardless of what you choose at that point, the other will level alongside you. Early SCH and SMN shared stat points, so if one went SCH, they would have poor Intelligence and weak offense. If one went SMN, they would have poor Mind and weak restorative power. This required a complete reset and redistribution of one's stats if they wanted to switch to the other job and play effectively. Thankfully, that was fixed a couple expansions ago. As for SCH itself, although I've always had access to it, I never really bothered to play with it mid to high level unless it was to heal easy content. Accompanied by a summoned fairy that provided healing and buff support, in theory it meant that healing shouldn't be too hard. Plus, the job had a good amount of damage mitigation abilities, but I never really liked the fact that the job's healing output was on the low side. I do believe SCH is far better at 80, though.
Astrologist - Heavensward introduced this new class, a rather tricky one to play. There have been very many bad ASTs, so much so that people refer to them as Asstrologists. It's an interesting job, nonetheless, as it plays a support role along with healing due to the cards the AST draws. Early AST used to have very specific cards, each of the six increasing a job-related stat, and good use of drawing cards meant that everyone's stats would be increased regularly. In Shadowbringer, the card system was reworked splitting the six cards in two groups that enhance damage for either ranged or melee jobs. Even though WHM far outclasses AST in terms of healing potency, I do enjoy the numerous different abilities AST has. It's just far easier for me to panic when the tank decides to do multiple pulls at once.
DPS
As I already mentioned, I dislike the term DPS, or Damage Per Second. They are split into three different subgroups: Ranged, Melee and Magic, but when queing for regularly duties, it doesn't really matter what type.
Ranged
Bard - An FFXIV original job, it evolved from the Archer, which was the very first job I played when I tried out the beta in 2013. I played BRD in FFXI, which was completely different as it wasn't considered DPS. It was purely support. An archer in FFXI was actually a Ranger, and that job did a lot of damage, but was dependent on the player supplying their own arrows. When I started playing Archer in FFXIV, I was pleasantly surprised that I didn't need my own arrows. When I evolved to BRD, I started having more fun with it because of the songs I was able to play. Early BRD's songs were more job-specific depending on who was in the group. If someone was magical, there were songs for that. Melee, the same. But after Shadowbringer, songs pretty much only benefit you to activate procs (procedural actions) for increased damage. I still enjoy the job, though. Plus, it's nice to have a BRD for Peloton to help speed up the movement of the party.
Machinist - This was the third and final addition that Heavensward brought. The MCH's weapon of choice was a firearm, something that a lot of people were looking forward to. I think after level 40, MCHs also gained the ability to spawn a drone for extra damage. Early MCHs used to have to keep their weapons loaded with rounds in order to do significant damage, but Shadowbringer scrapped the ammo mechanic entirely replacing it with an overheating mechanic for the gun and a battery for the drone. At one point, MCHs even got some BRD abilities as both jobs were viewed similar enough to benefit from a little homogenization. I do enjoy the changes they made to MCH, as I think it's easier and more fun to play, and high level MCHs have some really kickass heavy damage abilities.
Dancer - The second of the two new jobs Shadowbringer introduced, DNC is a rather powerful support DPS. Being able to deal a burst of AoE when dancing, the DNC also increases the attack of a paired party member. Abilities to increase attack for the entire party as well as a one-off party healing ability and a defense buff make a well-experienced DNC an essential job to have in any party. It does take some attention to play, though, as your dance steps have to be executed in order, and they are a lot of fun to watch when they're dancing.
Magic
Summoner - Ahh, the Summoner, my main. Like Scholar, it also evolved from the Arcanist. I used to love playing SMN in FFXI, but I gave up early on when some of the best summons could only be obtained by defeating their level 70+ versions. I was hoping that FFXIV's summoner would have been as fun to play, but the array of what it could do was greatly reduced. FFXI's summoner had at least 10 different summons, each one of them having different uses, but even after eight years, FFXIV's SMN still only has the same four: Carbuncle, Ifrit, Garuda, and Titan. Even then, the latter three aren't even the same representations of the actual summons, just weird-looking "Egi" versions. As for playing the job itself, it's very fun because I've always liked jobs with pets. Early Summoner was more complicated to play because of different situational abilities depending on what type of summon you had out. It was also considered more of an AoE magic job while Black Mage was more single target focused, but Shadowbringer reworked both jobs to be more even. I still think SMN edges out BLM when it comes to AoE damage as high level SMN can call Demi Bahamut and Demi Phoenix for a lot of beautiful, bright blasting. I guess technically, you can say SMN has six summons, but I can't count Demi Bahamut and Phoenix as you can only summon those when certain conditions have been met. Anyway, as I said, this is my main, so this is the only job that I spend doing post content with in order to get better armor.
Black Mage - Yet another FFXIV original job, BLM stemmed from the Thaumaturge. I remember first hearing about the Thaumaturge job and had to Google that word. To be perfectly honest, BLM is the hardest job for me to play. It has to do with the BLM's states of Astral Fire and Umbral Ice. Depending on which state you're in, it affects damage potency and MP consumption, and if you want to be effective, you have to have a good rotation and keep it up. As the BLM got higher in level, it only became more complicated, and at 70, I've yet another ability that is tied to me keeping my rotation going. When I tried to use it again after not playing for a couple of years, I was actually panicking and screwing up badly and I could just hear the other players saying to themselves "Man, this guy sucks." But I was just out of practice. The real problem, however, is since spells take longer to cast than other magic jobs, it's very hard to stay efficient because you're always having to move to avoid getting hit by enemy AoEs.
Red Mage - I believe it was Stormblood that introduced the Red Mage. Unlike other jobs FFXIV introduced, RDM was the closest to what I actually remember playing in FFXI. It casts both offensive and healing magic and can even melee, although melee effectiveness is based on building up black and white mana, and that's the tricky part. You have white and black spells you have to cast alternatively, but you also need to cast your basic Jolt spell first in order to get a Dualcast proc that lets you instantly cast the next spell. If you aren't paying attention, casting can take too long and you won't be efficient. Once you build up enough white and black mana, you can rush in, do a melee combo for huge damage, and rush back out to safety. High level RDMs gain the ability to follow up the melee combos with powerful Verholy and Verflares. I love playing RDMs, but I admit that it can be hard to play because I have to pay more attention to it because of the Dualcast proc, or I really start messing up.
Blue Mage - I almost forgot about this one entirely. Scratch what I said about RDM being the closest to the FFXI jobs. Blue Mage is exactly what it was like in FFXI. Introduced in the tail end of Stormblood, BLU is an outlier as it's considered a limited job meaning that you can't use it to run normal duties as it has potential to break the game. In order to learn spells, the BLU has to have enemy spells used on them, and certain spells cast in conjunction with one another can one hit entire groups of mobs. One of my favorite spells is Bad Breath. Yes, that menacing spell the malboros use the inflict 10 status effects on you. One of my favorite moments with BLU was when I used Bad Breath on a malboro. HOW DO YOU LIKE IT, HUH? Anyway, instead of spending time running normal content with BLU, BLU players spend the majority of their time tracking down and learning over 100 monster spells and abilities. There's a Blue Mage log that can be used to organize dungeon runs with other BLUs and there's an event called the Masked Carnival that caters tailor-made single player instances where you can earn currency to buy specific BLU gear. Also, they benefit from a massive experience boost when soloing out in the open world. I really enjoyed playing it, but they're currently only capped at level 70 and I wish I could keep going to 80.
Melee
Dragoon - An original job of FFXIV, the DRG evolves from the Lancer. Now, I used to main a DRG in Final Fantasy XI and one of the best things I loved about that job was being accompanied by a young wyvern. Sadly, the DRG in FFXIV is solitary. But, the DRGs do jump! In fact, so many early DRGs still learning the ropes jumped at the worst times always putting themselves in danger, some even leaping to their deaths. It was a running gag for a while that "dragoons gonna dragoon." Early DRGs also had a lot of positional-based moves, but Shadowbringer got rid of most of that. Once DRG entered 60, it was given the state Blood of the Dragon, a very cool effect of a blue dragoon enwrapping your character and allowing you to pull off some punishing moves. It was also the focal job of Heavensward, since that expansion was all about dragons and everyone's favorite dragoon Estenien. At 70, it's only gotten better, and I'm really looking forward to seeing how it plays at 80.
Monk - My least favorite of the melee jobs and another original job, MNK got its beginnings as a Pugilist. I also used to play one in FFXI, but of course, the MNK in FFXIV is vastly different. Still a damage dealer at heart, MNK not only has to pay attention to positional attacks, but also to the form they're in. In order to be effective, you had to know your rotation and what stances to change into in order pull off certain moves. Early MNK was somewhat frowned upon in lower level dungeons as they weren't very effective with AoE attacks. As per usual, Stormbringer fixed this giving them a much needed boost. High level MNK has actually been pretty enjoyable since I have many more abilities to use and am not just spamming the same three attack combo all the time.
Ninja - Introduced in the tail end of A Realm Reborn (2.0), Ninja grew from the job Rogue. Rogue was FFXIV's Thief, a job I mained in FFXI. As usual, FFXIV completely reinvented jobs I was used to. FFXI's THF had a mechanic called Sneak Attack Trick Attack which allowed you to pull off a very damaging attack behind the tank and the mob would think the tank was the one that hit it and it would increase enmity. Since tanks in FFXIV don't need assistance in keeping enmity, Rogues no longer needed this mechanic. They still kept Sneak Attack, though. When they changed into Ninja, they began to learn ninjitsu, but this was a mechanic I still haven't 100 percent perfected yet. To cast ninjitsu, you have to hit 1-3 buttons in a certain order, and then cast the spell. You can throw fireballs, lightning bolts, increase your movement speed and enter a state where you can execute Sneak Attack without being hidden. Add in a couple of extra AoE abilities and a few extra ninjitsu spells and you've got a very busy job, but I like it though. When I'm in the zone, playing as NIN is very satisfying. The one real problem with this job, though, is that it only takes a little bit of lag to ruin your ninjitsu summoning.
Samurai - The star job of Stormblood's campaign, the Samurai was the new melee addition in that expansion. Just as with NIN, SAM requires the player to pay close attention to what they're doing in order to be as effective as possible. Powerful moves are can only be executed when you obtain the symbols Ka, Getsu and Setsu, and you need to remember which combinations do what. SAMs are particularly powerful against singular targets, but they're no slouch when it comes to AoEs either. They've only gotten stronger with Shadowbringer's retoolings as well. I really enjoy playing as SAM building up my gauges and symbols and unleashing nasty strikes. Plus, it's one of the best sounding jobs as well when that katana gets to slicing.
Gatherers
A downside to FFXI was that it was rather easy to go broke very quickly, especially if you played a job like Ranger where you had to supply your own arrows. This isn't the case with FFXIV. Not only does the story campaign and side quests provide you with enough gil to get you through the game, you can literally make money right off the bat just by leveling any of the three gatherers.
Fisher - To be honest, fishing isn't for everyone. It is the slowest of all the jobs to level. As expected, fishing requires you to stand in one spot, cast a line, wait for a bit and reel it in. ... Over and over and over again. Fisher has also had a problematic history in the game as it doesn't have very many really interesting abilities, and a lot of the fish you hook hold almost no marketable value. It has gotten better over time and in Stormblood, the ability to dive underwater was added, so you could actually spearfish. But fisher was also more of a struggle to level quest-wise as you had to sit through a bunch of casts that net you fish you didn't need. I only have my FSH at 80 because of the insane XP bonuses the recently added beast tribe quests offered. I do remember having some fond memories with my old Grand Company members, though. We would try to hook legendary fishes and just took a break from the rest of the game and chatted while we waited for a bite.
Botanist/Miner - I'm lumping the two together because they play exactly the same. As a BTN/MIN, you go around the world looking for mining and harvesting nodes. When you inspect one, you see a list of gatherable materials. Your gathering success rate is determined by your level and gear, and you can use a number of abilities to raise the chances of getting higher quality items that nets more XP and more money. One of the fastest ways to make early money was just being a BTN/MIN, harvesting crystals and selling them to crafters. The one thing that annoys me about gathering, though, was having to wait for certain nodes to appear to get rare materials. I really dislike scheduling my day around having to show up at certain places at certain times.
Crafters
I'm not going to bother going into detail about every job, as they all play exactly the same now in Shadowbringer. Before SB, they each had their own specific moves that you could share across other jobs, but SB removed shared abilities altogether and made one unified moves list. Anyway, if you really were serious about making money in FFXIV, you probably spent hundreds of hours crafting. It was the perfect way to be self-sufficient because if you needed anything, you could just make it yourself. If you had enough materials to make several, you simply sold the extras. If you leveled your gatherers along with your crafters, you wanted for absolutely nothing. That's what I did in the early days. I leveled all the crafters and gatherers and became rich. Although I'm still leveling them, I doubt I'll spend any time making more gil just because I really don't need or want to buy anything. I have roughly 30 million at the time of this writing and I sell all the stuff I get from doing dungeon runs and whatnot, and that's more than enough to live on.
If you made it through this long post, thank you so much! If you play FFXIV, what are your current thoughts on the jobs? Do you play just one or a handful or are you like me and play everything? If you don't play FFXIV, I hope this blog gave you a good idea of what it's like. Thanks again for reading!
