What jobs do you consider well designed?

I have a personal, biased list for this regard. But before I list them, I'll leave MCH, DRK, SAM, MNK, and RPR out of the list because I rarely touch them. And by rare I mean, I leave them rotting at lv90 until lv cap increases again or just use them at veeeerrryyy rare occasion. Now that they're out of the way, here goes:

Top: Yoshi-P.

It's BLM. For obvious reasons. 'Nuff said.

High - RDM, DRG, and PLD.

RDM: outside requiring to be lv50 at minimum, gameplay wise is a very accessible job to play. It doesn't have much screw up margin and yet offers player a deceptively huge room for growth if they wish to maximizes the job's full potential. All buttons in their arsenals serves a certain purpose & rarely forgotten. They fit basically in every occasion, while not failing to capture their "Jack of All Trades, Master at None"-feel from previous titles. As somebody who played the previous FF titles, this is a huge plus to my overall enjoyment.

DRG: speaking from entirely casual point of view, there's always that sense of progress for leveling a DRG from lv1 to 90. For every buttons I learn, it always adds something to my rotation. Those buttons are always useful and more impactful than not. And you also know it when you've executed their rotation properly. I have never felt bored using a DRG.

PLD: has likely the most fleshed out and well thought rotation to execute of all tanks. Starting out as the easiest then ends up being the most complicated to utilize of all tanks, which will most likely keep players hooked longer to improve further. The only reason I ranked them the last in this tier is because they're a tank. Being a tank, we all know how bloated they are in mitigative cooldowns at some point.

Mid - DNC, NIN, GNB, WAR, & SMN.

DNC: This could be in high tier just behind PLD if it wasn't for their lv60 requirement which is a good portion first playthrough you have to go through before you can even unlock it. Easy to understand with it simplistic design. Some room for growth. Impactful buttons, and most importantly: feels great to execute. It captures their supportive theme very well.

NIN: One rank behind DNC solely because leveling experience does not feel great until lv54 and has some buttons that I wish they are learned sooner to smooth out the progression (Huraijin, Bunshin, Ninki Gauge). The last change they had also did not felt great, at all. Otherwise, very satisfying to execute-rotation correctly & is not a 'true melee' in regards that they have mudras that they can somewhat plan in case they need to get out of melee range briefly while keeping that uptime.

GNB & WAR: These two shares this spot. One being super busy (GNB) and the other being almost a snoozefest (WAR). Double Down was -not- a satisfying button to press, I wish it never existed and instead they could've expanded on the lv80 capstone ability while keeping the busy feels of Continuation & Hypervelocity. Meanwhile WAR used to be higher in my list until they butchered Overpower's conal AoE. At least Fell Cleave still feels very satisfying to press.

SMN: from a 'seemingly galaxy brained' job to play into cookie cutter version of their sister, book-wielding job. They are saved from low tier all because of their red colored job icon with slightly more fleshed buttons to press, some actually impactful buttons, and they're actually summoning stuffs now! Yeah, at least that feels great. Now tell me, what is Carby doing there now? And why do they still need Energy Drain and Aetherflow stacks at this point...

Low - BRD & AST

BRD: Oh $h!t, a DPS that's actually put on low tier? No, seriously. Outside the bloodletter/RoD and pitch perfect changes, I seriously I did not like alot of what they did to BRDs, like their DoT and their interaction with the songs. Also why Ladonbite looks incredibly silly? At that point even Quick Nock's horrendous animation looks more appealing than ever.

AST: Cards, and the most supportive of all. That's all the reason I rate them slightly higher than any other healers. Even that, I think it's a bit of a stretch.

Bottom Rock - SGE, WHM, and SCH

Designed for encounters that hardly exists in the game. Actions that works against their own kits. Green DPS meme. I would even rate those 5 jobs that I rarely touch above these three if I'm feeling crazier. I could bore the section with more details but I've derailed too much at this point so I'll stop now.

/bows

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Originally Posted by Nizzi

None of these are unique to Scholar though, except positioning your faerie I suppose, but none of that really has anything to do with your claim that it's "well-designed because they don't have useless and clunky abilities like in Heavensward". How are Fey Union, Dissipation, Seraph, and Fey Blessing not clunky abilities? How is Ruin II not a useless ability? How is having two buttons for different faerie skins not the definition of useless abilities? No offense, but you've just listed things that are healer role specific, and not specific to Scholar.

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Ruin 2 adds just that little bit of variety in abilities vs the situation. It allows you to do decent dps during AoE spam and makes interupting your current cast less punishing. Its situational, but on that its fine as it at least gives variety vs constant 1 spamming.

But yes, all healers except SGE need some QoL changes applied to them as they very often have outdated features or things that feel clumsy (for example: why is the fairy not autocasted after respawning? why do the basic cure abilities always end up being useless after a certain level).

But in the base design, they arent bad. Its just that beyond a certain level getting more heals just isnt worth it because you already have enough, and epsecialy in decent teams, that extra healing power is negated. More damage is generaly on that more rewarding, but that just doesnt seem to happen. However, up to lvl 70 WHM, AST and SCH are absolutely fine in the gameplay even with the quirks. I would even say that certain quirks are a welcome feature as it allows players to maximize dps in a less clear way (giving a more smooth learning curve).

Outside of DRG, BLM, PLD and the recent addition RPR basically none of them, some jobs are in a far worse state than others like Healers or DRK being basically a WAR with a couple of oGCD more but is easy to see SHB agenda has gutted jobs to many already.
It's almost feels like they don't want ppl have mains and just pick a different job every day so thats why are being all becoming the same with a different set of animations, it's sad how one of the strongest feactures of the game is slowly becoming in one of the worst unless you main one of the Dev favourites, i guess looking good is more important that being good.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

It's because these things are not unique to Scholar that I listed all of them. Ruin II is useful for movement. I can see how the pet abilities are a bit slow to use but this is because you are commanding a pet to use an ability. Being slow to execute doesn't mean that they are useless or poorly-designed in concept (especially when Sage has many of the exact same abilities), but you could argue it's poorly designed in code. My feelings are that this would be easy to improve and that the delay was left there to make it realistic. If I told someone to do something, it would take them a moment to get up and start doing it, but because it's a game, maybe it should be faster. I don't find it a significant problem though.

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The slowness isn't what I'm referring to, it's specifically the clunkiness. To SE's credit, they've made your faerie more responsive in EW and she seems to almost always cast when you want her to, though ghosting is still present within Seraph. What I'm talking about is how SCH is locked out of using these abilities. You mentioned Sage having the exact same abilities, and while the abilities I listed SGE's equivalents do differ a bit, we can compare things for example's sake.

SGE is not locked out of Haima (level 70) or Holos (level 76) for using Panhaima (level 80). Scholar is locked out of using Fey Union (Level 70), Dissipation (Level 60) and Fey Blessing (level 76) when Scholar uses Seraph.
When SGE uses Haima (level 70), Haima doesn't drop off if SGE uses any of it's other heals. When SCH uses Fey Union (level 70), Fey Union drops off if you tell the faerie to do anything else, functionally locking you out of using Whispering Dawn, Fey Illumination, Fey Blessing, or Seraph. Further, using Fey Union locks your faerie out of using Embrace. Imagine if you were locked out of using Kardia because you pressed Haima. Wouldn't that be clunky and stupid?
Dissipation is... Dissipation, and I won't complain too much about it because it does do what it says it's going to do, it's just a button that generally serves to grief the SCH's cohealer because the SCH wanted to pump out more DPS with Energy Drain. Having a button that kills half of your healing kit so it can optimally be used on... not healing with the other half of your healing kit is pretty ridiculous; but that can be chalked down to opinion as it does have a good use in recovery situations and it gives it an edge over SGE in those situations because of that.

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Originally Posted by UkcsAlias

Ruin 2 adds just that little bit of variety in abilities vs the situation. It allows you to do decent dps during AoE spam and makes interupting your current cast less punishing. Its situational, but on that its fine as it at least gives variety vs constant 1 spamming.

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The problem with Ruin II is that we have 1.5s cast times now, allowing for you to move with every cast. Obviously I understand that as you're learning a fight you won't always be able to do this, but realistically and optimally, you never want to hit Ruin II. Back in ShB, Ruin II + ED was necessary so SCH could get free healing from its faerie, but now that we have weave windows, Ruin II wants to be hit as little as possible. Having buttons that serve only to never be hit as you get better at your job isn't good design, it's the opposite, and the fact that they haven't changed Ruin II to reflect SCH's new weave windows is bad. (SGE also having an entire gauge built around Ruin II is also bad, but that's a discussion for another time.)

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Originally Posted by Nizzi

SGE is not locked out of Haima (level 70) or Holos (level 76) for using Panhaima (level 80). Scholar is locked out of using Fey Union (Level 70), Dissipation (Level 60) and Fey Blessing (level 76) when Scholar uses Seraph.
When SGE uses Haima (level 70), Haima doesn't drop off if SGE uses any of it's other heals. When SCH uses Fey Union (level 70), Fey Union drops off if you tell the faerie to do anything else, functionally locking you out of using Whispering Dawn, Fey Illumination, Fey Blessing, or Seraph. Further, using Fey Union locks your faerie out of using Embrace. Imagine if you were locked out of using Kardia because you pressed Haima. Wouldn't that be clunky and stupid?

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A lot of those things do make sense, because the Seraph is a different fairy and an entity that can only do one task at a time must stop the previous task in order to do another. I could see Fey Union being changed to function while pressing other abilities. Changing all of it to be just like SGE would be homogenizing them even more and healers are the most homogenized of any role already.

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Dissipation is... Dissipation, and I won't complain too much about it because it does do what it says it's going to do, it's just a button that generally serves to grief the SCH's cohealer because the SCH wanted to pump out more DPS with Energy Drain. Having a button that kills half of your healing kit so it can optimally be used on... not healing with the other half of your healing kit is pretty ridiculous; but that can be chalked down to opinion as it does have a good use in recovery situations and it gives it an edge over SGE in those situations because of that.

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A good part of it is the opportunity it provides them to grow. They have to remember to use their heals such as Whispering Dawn before pressing Dissipation or Fey Union. Dissipation does increase healing potency, so if you urgently need to heal you can spend the extra aetherflow on buffed heals.

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The problem with Ruin II is that we have 1.5s cast times now, allowing for you to move with every cast. Obviously I understand that as you're learning a fight you won't always be able to do this, but realistically and optimally, you never want to hit Ruin II. Back in ShB, Ruin II + ED was necessary so SCH could get free healing from its faerie, but now that we have weave windows, Ruin II wants to be hit as little as possible. Having buttons that serve only to never be hit as you get better at your job isn't good design, it's the opposite, and the fact that they haven't changed Ruin II to reflect SCH's new weave windows is bad. (SGE also having an entire gauge built around Ruin II is also bad, but that's a discussion for another time.)

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They might be rare, but there are still going to be situations where you need to run for more than 2.5s and stopping to cast for 1.5s would get you killed. Ruin II is still worthwhile.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

A lot of those things do make sense, because the Seraph is a different fairy and an entity that can only do one task at a time must stop the previous task in order to do another. I could see Fey Union being changed to function while pressing other abilities. Changing all of it to be just like SGE would be homogenizing them even more and healers are the most homogenized of any role already.

A good part of it is the opportunity it provides them to grow. They have to remember to use their heals such as Whispering Dawn before pressing Dissipation or Fey Union. Dissipation does increase healing potency, so if you urgently need to heal you can spend the extra aetherflow on buffed heals.

They might be rare, but there are still going to be situations where you need to run for more than 2.5s and stopping to cast for 1.5s would get you killed. Ruin II is still worthwhile.

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Seraph being a different entity may justify a bit of ghosting in extreme scenarios but there is absolutely no reason why Fey union and Dissipation do not work while its summoned, is pure jank.

Dissipation on the other hand doesn't work at all like you say, it only buffs GCD heals while giving Aetherflow and locking out the fairy. It barely gives any room for growth/depth because fairy heals are the first ones to be used in a fight as they're free so they're very likely to be on cd when Dissipation is used and since the fairy is gone for 30s only there is barely any room to lose potential uses, let alone how with a 180s cd losing potential uses due to a delay is very unlikely to happen. The worst part is that as a healing tool is an absolute mess, it locks the Sch out of their free heals, to give Aetherflow which has higher oportunity costs when using to heal and on top of that buffs only the GCDs the worst potency heals, less efficient and the ones Sch use the least. There is a reason why despite being designed as a healing tool everyone uses it as a dps tool and its because how pure jank it is.

Ruin 2 is still worthwile sometimes but right now way less than ever, in Shb its niche was to weave the heals which gave Sch a very unique gameplay using ruin 2 to both move and weave and plan its healing with double weaving in mind as well as using ED to have free movement, right now that is gone and as such Ruin 2 starts to feel more vestigial in the majority of content.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

A lot of those things do make sense, because the Seraph is a different fairy and an entity that can only do one task at a time must stop the previous task in order to do another. I could see Fey Union being changed to function while pressing other abilities. Changing all of it to be just like SGE would be homogenizing them even more and healers are the most homogenized of any role already.

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I fail to agree with the "homogenizing it to be like SGE" argument when considering these are all issues that existed in ShB or before, when SGE didn't exist. Is the argument supposed to really be that because SGE doesn't have conflicting skills that lock you out of being able to heal efficiently, that letting SCH not have clunky skills that work against each other is a bad thing? Besides, these buttons are different to begin with; letting Eos cast other faerie heals while using Fey Union isn't going to be "homogenized" to be like Haima, it's just going to allow you to not need to continually target and re-target a party member. There's no upside to having these things not work properly when other healers can do it without fighting against their kit.

Regardless of this though, there's 0 reason that Seraph should not be able to use Fey Blessing. It's not on the Faerie Gauge anymore, so why is Seraph locked out of a faerie heal?

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A good part of it is the opportunity it provides them to grow. They have to remember to use their heals such as Whispering Dawn before pressing Dissipation or Fey Union. Dissipation does increase healing potency, so if you urgently need to heal you can spend the extra aetherflow on buffed heals.

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Dissipation does not buff your Aetherflow heals, it buffs your GCD heals. Aetherflow is unaffected by it. SCH uses Dissipation as a DPS cooldown for the extra Energy Drains; if you're trying to heal with Dissipation's Aetherflow stack, Indom, Soil and Excog are likely going to be on CD, meaning it really only gives you more Lustrates.

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They might be rare, but there are still going to be situations where you need to run for more than 2.5s and stopping to cast for 1.5s would get you killed. Ruin II is still worthwhile.

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Ruin II is just a punishment to use. Worthwhile buttons in a kit should not be negated to "as you get better, you never want to hit this button." Similarly, this is the reason buttons like Physick are also bad. Ruin II was necessary in ShB for SCH to function, and it isn't anymore and has received zero updates or changes.

Oh, but if we're still talking about clunk with Scholar, it should be mentioned that you can't even build faerie gauge while your faerie is Dissipated. Why is this not built through the Scholar instead of relying on your faerie being active? Dissipation locks you out of Energy Drain and all of your Aetherflow heals building gauge. What a great design.

Love Black Mage, but really hate that the rotation is very different at different levels compared to other jobs. It feels much better this expansion...but I still think it needs a little polish.

I also really dig Sage right now. It always feels like there is something to do as opposed to WHM just spamming holy when nothing else is up.

I really like how Sage builds its resource when a shield is expended, giving you a cue that shield went down AND that you have a different bit of DPS to throw. With their other AOE requiring close distance it feels more involved with dodging mechanics as you tend to position near the mobs.

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Originally Posted by Nizzi

Besides, these buttons are different to begin with; letting Eos cast other faerie heals while using Fey Union isn't going to be "homogenized" to be like Haima

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I was referring to the rest of the ideas. Fey Union not being interrupted by other heals would help because it is immediately obvious how annoying it can be.

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Dissipation does not buff your Aetherflow heals, it buffs your GCD heals. Aetherflow is unaffected by it.

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It could be changed or made clearer then, but it's not that much of a problem because most of the time, any heal is good enough even if it's not buffed.

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it should be mentioned that you can't even build faerie gauge while your faerie is Dissipated. Why is this not built through the Scholar instead of relying on your faerie being active?

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It's probably so that a Scholar that forgot to summon their fairie can't build fairie gauge when there is no fairie. It should change for Dissipation but I can see why it is happening. It may just be easier for them to make it impossible for the fairie to not be summoned because it not being summoned after dying is a problem.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

...Feels like BLM, though perhaps uniquely, survived that pretty well (apart from, maybe, the significance of banked Firestarters decreasing with the changes to Flare use due to the opposite-element MP cost changes).

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true but that just makes me even more bitter over what ShB did. especially to SCH, AST and BRD.

they got lobotomised, but the golden child job gets improvements and QoL it needed.