Jobs Are Not An Upgrade?

If I understand this correctly, Jobs are not supposed to be a strict 'upgrade' from the bass classes. They are supposed to be a 'party' oriented version of your base class. Looking at the abilities some jobs get and how easy it is to change back and forth, this seems to make sense to me.

Is this correct. Do players use their base class when soloing and jobs when grouping?

Nope, classes die at level 30.

I soloed 30-50 as blm never took my gem off.

I've heard that ARC can maybe benefit from CC abilities more than BRD. Then again, this is only relevant if you have CC abilities to set.

I kept my gem on for SMN/SCH and WHM at all times.

Yep I never take my gem out

I believe that was the way it was intended, but it's not really how it works. Most people will run their job all the time because of the stat bonuses that the crystal from the job grants that are job specific.

Generally speaking, having additional cross class skills arn't enough to make someone give up their job mechanics in most situations.

Tanks and WHM's probably get the most benefit since they can bring in additional DPS-buff skills not accessible in their job class making soloing less painful. SCH's could yield some benefits too if it wasn't that summon is basically arcanist 2.0 (I solo in SCH anyway since i like rounding up 6 or 7 mobs at a time and melting them with AoE DoTs)

Can't really even see a conjurer doing it. You get more mind from the white mage crystal so in cleric stance you would still have more int for damage than without it.. does picking up a couple abilities actually outweigh the damage increase you get with the abilities you have? Also I believe the crystal has piety so they would also have more mana to do damage with just staying as a WHM over playing as a CNJ.

If the crystals didn't offer such good stats then I can see people dropping it, but generally speaking the 2 classes you can pull abilities from grant you everything you really need for utility. Every job has access to a self-heal or hp regening abilities.

I'm kind of OK with classes being cast aside tbh. It feels much more fun to play as a Job than a class. It's more like classic FF, and it makes the Job continue to feel like a special moment.

It will be interesting to see how, if at all, they try to balance this. :]

When making the transition on Pugilist, you give up your Raging Strikes cross-class at 30 to get MNK's... stats. And that's it. I felt I was losing out of some critical burst damage at that point.

But by the time you pick up Blood for Blood, Fists of Fire, and make strides toward 50, it becomes pretty lopsided in favour of MNK over PGL. At AF gear, the job is superior.