Final Fantasy XIV (Guide in first post)

The patched are formulaic for good reason too - helps with catch up; those who only kill bosses in one tier, then leave the game for a bit only have one tier (the current one basically) to farm for their upgrades. Reclearing missed content is simply for glamour/transmog or just to say you've killed it.

As far as standout jobs - you can always look into one of the three tanks (who's meta changes often), or one of the dps jobs that really bring something worthwhile to a raid (see: Dragoon, Ninja, Bard). Sure you can in theory succeed with just about any job as long as you're good at it, but those 3 have safely been a part of the cookie cutter raiding meta for a while now and with good reason.

As far as finding a raid team goes, it's not so bad. FFXIV cross-server raiding has been a bit more relaxed than WoW's system; as long as you're in the same Data Center all the servers therein are basically one giant world as far as raiding is concerned. Though you can succeed with just one job maxed out, I recommend bringing at least 2 jobs to the table on a raid team just for flexibility sake.

No real standouts, but, high certainty judgements:

Don't play whm, ast/sch blow it away

Any tank is fine

Brd is better than mch, but mch is playable


Casters and melee are hard to judge now - in 4.3 I would have said:

Drg is god tier. nin is better than mnk, but mnk is viable. Don't play sam

Smn is better than rdm, but rdm is viable. Don't play blm

BUT in 4.4 sam/blm got buffed, smn got nerfed, and there's a lot of argument over what's best. Meta comp is looking like tank/tank (not sure which), drg/brd/?/?, sch/ast.


Generally balance is really good except for whm sucking -- it's an amazingly strong healer but basically that's irrelevant this tier, sch/ast heal completely fine with no particular difficulty and sch/ast bring a bunch of strong dps buffs, whm doesn't.

WHM is not even that bad of a class, you should give the context that you're talking about speedrun/world first groups or statics that think they're good because they use a meta comp but will be progging O10S for an entire month. All the current content can be cleared with any mix of classes... except for maybe Ultimate, I don't know too much about that.

Ya, the game is pretty well balanced. "Worst class" is like saying which super model is the least attractive. Play what you like unless your goal is to get into an uber guild, in which case that isn't too different than any other MMO: You pick whatever the uber guild needs.

In reality: play what job feels most comfortable to you. As said, all raid content can currently be cleared with any job.

Sure some jobs can seemingly do better than others in certain situations on paper, but this is an old truth that has existed since the dawn of MMOs. There's no such thing as perfect balance among the job tiers. Case in point, someone who plays WHM on a higher level will be a better fit than someone who plays SCH/AST on an average level, even if WHM is the weaker of the 3 healers currently.

You just have to find a static of people who aren't blinded by what is the current cookie cutter meta setup, and you'll do just fine as long as you play your job to the best of your ability. Unless you're one of those people who is obsessed with playing the job that is the current flavor of the month, in which case you'll find yourself switching mains quite often. And you should kill yourself, because you are everything that is wrong with the world right now.

Asmadai said:

You just have to find a static of people who aren't blinded by what is the current cookie cutter meta setup

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This is very important, the FFXIV community has a bad habit of scapgoatism and they will try to blame anything but their own inability to play if they're not making progress. Try to find people who aren't like that.

As far as Ultimate raids , they are designed too put you into your place if you screw it up(I still belive that the dev's literally create the Ultimate version first, then tone it down for easier difficulties). Learning the scenario is half the fun(at least for me anyway) but I would do it with a group a friends over trying too PUG(I know some people have success doing it that way..)

But play any class you want, everyone is viable(as long as you are properly ilvl'd) if people complain leave and find another group...

I think WHM suffers from the same problem PLD did when it came time for SB mechanics - they just kinda ran out of ideas, or just needed "something" to fill the gap.

I usually stick to the tank side of things, so I've only really heard about the lillies from WHM, but from a PLD perspective their Sword Oath/Shield Oath meter is strange as hell too. I'll never understand why they thought the whole "Requiescat + Holy Spirit spam" was a good fit for the PLD job. It's so bizarre and out of place; in the middle of a melee rotation, they all of a sudden stand still and spam cast a ranged spell (with a casting time, mind you) 4-5 times in a row? Was this supposed to in some way emulate a Fell Cleave spam session from WAR? It just doesn't feel natural on PAL; like they could have gone a different way with it and it would have been far more interesting and unique.

Had Holy Spirit been a melee type strike type thing it may have made more sense to me, but it will always feel out of place to me in it's current state.

Housing and glamour is the true end game

Don't forget ERP

Did ARR Relic quest simply for the glamour.

Glamour is love, glamour is life.

Kriptini said:

Don't forget ERP

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I just want you to know, I'm repressing a lot of commentary right now.

Also, make sure to scan your "computer" for viruses. That's important.

Your experience is outside standard deviation of survey results.