How many classes can you main without quitting your job?

I started around two months ago, and regularly spend around 20-30 hours/week playing the game. With that said, I'm taking my time slowly progressing the MSQ.

But now my highest class is at lv70, and a couple of others at lv66-69, I think it's time for me to come to terms with reality and ask the question just how many classes can you main with optimal gears for endgame stuff all that with the amount of free time I have?

How about 1 tank, 3 DPSs and 1 healer. Five times the grinding I'm assuming?

Time does not gate acquiring BiS gear at max level. The weekly lockouts is what does that.

With that in mind, based on the free time you have to play the game, it is more than adequate to take full advantage of your weeklies. How many weeklies it will take to gear up will depend on how many roles you want to do that with. I say "roles" because jobs within a role can share the gear except for weapons, so yeah you basically nailed with it being 1 tank, 3 DPS, and 1 healer as there are currently five roles. However, within the Melee DPS role, there is Striking, Scouting, and Maiming sets, and within the Ranged DPS there are the Aiming and Casting sets. That would bring the true number of sets you can acquire to seven.

Due to weekly lockouts, I don't think there is enough weeks between patches to BiS everything, but someone can correct me if I am wrong about that.

Once everything is maxed it’s inevitable that you’ll accumulate the wealth - tomes, Gil, drops - you need to max out your character as long as you remain consistent with doing content. But the resources you require won’t come terribly fast as the system is meant to prolong gameplay. I’ve seen people with all their jobs maxed and well-equipped who maintain a solid working schedule.

You typically "main" one class each raid tier and the reason is because you have got the best gear from the raids and from weekly capped tomestones for that class. Since some classes share gear with other classes, some people main all of the classes within that role (such as the healer role, the tank role or the ranged physical role).

You can still play all of the other classes in raids and be fine with crafted gear, it just isn't your main because you haven't been using your weekly obtained gear on it. When raids have been out for some time, you may have got all of the gear and be looking for another class to get gear for but you are really "maining" one at a time.

For how long it takes to get crafted gear for secondary classes, you just go up to the market board and buy it.

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Originally Posted by LitheSuxman

I started around two months ago, and regularly spend around 20-30 hours/week playing the game. With that said, I'm taking my time slowly progressing the MSQ.

But now my highest class is at lv70, and a couple of others at lv66-69, I think it's time for me to come to terms with reality and ask the question just how many classes can you main with optimal gears for endgame stuff all that with the amount of free time I have?

How about 1 tank, 3 DPSs and 1 healer. Five times the grinding I'm assuming?

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At max level things work a bit differently.

You can clear the raids once per week. And tomestones to get the best gear not from raids are also on a weekly gate.

Further, tanks and healers share gear minus weapons in their roles. So if you're gearing 1 tank and 1 healer, you could realistically "main" all tanks and all healers and just pick up crafted weapons or something to fill in.

DPS of certain subclasses also share gear so you have a similar thing going. If you play all casters, for example, you can share most gear and thus effectively gear up all 3 casters at once. If you've got a caster, a dex melee, and an str melee, then each will require separate gear sets and, combined with a healer and tank, you'd need to gear up 5 times.

All in all, you can "main" - in the sense of keeping geared - as many classes as you like. No extra grinding or time commitment required. It's just a matter of which ones you're going to gear first. (I strongly don't recommend spreading out time-gated gear between them, or they'll all end up being a bit mediocre.)

For endgame raid purposes, you'd probably want to prioritize DPS > Tanks > healers for endgame gear - as DPS checks have the most stringent requirements, then tank gearing helps reduce incoming damage/healing load, and finally healers have the softest gearing requirements.

Leveling other jobs won't take long. Daily Roulette bonus and Pixie Beast Tribe dailies gives you a lot of xp.

As for gearing, hitting 520 is easy. Buy or craft Exarchic gear. It can be upgraded to 520 at Eulmore. Pushing more is entirely up to you. I stopped at 525. No point pushing now due to Endwalker around the corner.

Really not that hard, as TristanX and Risvertasashi said. Once you get your first job to max level (currently 80), gearing up and leveling other jobs becomes fairly easy with a combination of Dailies, Duty's, Fates, PoTD, HoH and Beast tribe dailies levels will practically fly by. There is of course the "Pay" option by visiting the mog station and just buy the boosts, but honestly I prefer to actually play and level the class (Though I have payed SE for job boost for alts, but not my main).

Maining a job in FF14 is more about learning the particular ins and outs of the unique elements in a job's tool kit. Most jobs within a specific role share a lot of elements so it's mostly about knowing what makes each job unique in whatever particular content you're going to be doing. The actual gearing part once you're at level cap mostly takes care of itself because most jobs within a specific role share gear outside of their weapon, and in most cases you're not even going to need to slot different materia.

So, yeah, gear takes care of itself and it's really about learning how to play the specific jobs, and that can be tough to maintain if you're constantly shifting around. Most players at end game end up "maining" a role rather than a specific job, or they'll pick one job for each role to avoid confusion on specific rotations, skills, etc.