Jobs that you think are underrated?

There are two I'm thinking are underrated in Crystalline Conflict, though that doesn't mean they don't need buffs.

Black Mage
Black Mages are deceptively tanky and due to Aetherial manipulation, they are a lot harder to kill than it seems.
-In order to make use of Black Mages kit, you *have* to use Burst and attempt to draw fire towards yourself. Burst is almost a free recuperate on yourself every 20 seconds and it deals a crap ton of damage. Warp to an enemy and Burst them, Guard if you think they're going to focus fire you, then warp to an ally at range.
-You need to be mindful of which of your party members is going to be fighting at range so that you have a general idea of who you can teleport to.
-Teleporting directly on top of the enemy range to escape the enemy melee is a viable option in a pinch. Then you can bounce back to a random teammate if they chase after you.
-If there's too many Line of Sight walls, you can always just alternate Fire and Blizzard on separate targets so that they're instant casts. This lets you setup an instant Paradox -> Superflare on one of them.
-Sleep is potentially 4 seconds of aoe CC. Get this on a cluster, then find a different focus target. Sleep can basically force a team to use an early purify without putting the Black Mage in any real danger.
-Black mage Limit Break is up nearly all the time. It continues charging while it's in effect so for half the game, you can shoot out instant casts left and right. During limit break, you can basically double weave recuperate so focus fire isn't even too big a deal.
-You do *not* have to cast at a melee that's currently attacking you. All of your spells allow you to weave in Recuperate so if you're not a focus-fire target, you can just stand there and keep hitting a priority target.


Bard
-On demand ranged Silence on an ability is incredibly good. MCH in comparison has to wait 40 seconds to cycle back to Air Anchor. Plus, Air Anchor is preceded by Drill, and succeeded by Bioblaster, meaning that MCH itself has really poor capability to capitalize on its stun to score a kill.
-Brings a lot of invisible power to the group due to the damage aura.
-Incredibly good at shot-calling, their ability to Blast Arrow-> Empyreal Arrow-> Silent Nocturne-> Pitch Perfect can deal a respectable 27000+ damage burst and lock down a priority target while also buffing your allies to help finish it off.
-Warden's Paean is the perfect tool to counter lockdown burst combos.
-As a general rule of thumb, you can generally ignore one person sitting on top of you and just weave Recuperate into your rotation.
-Repelling Shot should be used liberally on enemy melee to reduce pressure on your team.
-If needed, you can Sprint into Repelling Shot to catch stragglers.
-Repelling Shot makes Bard a bit more slippery than MCH. This combined with Paean makes you incredibly hard to actually focus down.
-You don't need to be the one standing on top of the crystal if your team comp is balanced.

If your definition of "underrated" is "not literally useless despite being unpopular for good reason", then sure.

You can win matches with BRD and BLM. You cannot win them as consistently as you can with other DPS classes.
They have exactly the same problem, which is that their utility doesn't compensate for their insufficient burst damage.
BLM can actually be very good because of their root uptime, but only if you have a team that can and will kill the targets you root.
If you don't, then you're rendered annoying instead of dangerous.
Since you have no control over the job composition or player skill on your team, that dependency is a liability,
and it's one that several other DPS jobs simply do not have.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Iyrnwaen

If your definition of "underrated" is "not literally useless despite being unpopular for good reason", then sure.

You can win matches with BRD and BLM. You cannot win them as consistently as you can with other DPS classes.
They have exactly the same problem, which is that their utility doesn't compensate for their insufficient burst damage.
BLM can actually be very good because of their root uptime, but only if you have a team that can and will kill the targets you root.
If you don't, then you're rendered annoying instead of dangerous.
Since you have no control over the job composition or player skill on your team, that dependency is a liability,
and it's one that several other DPS jobs simply do not have.

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Exactly, BLM could be decent in ranked premade teams. But with random and no communication, sometimes is just annoying. I have to target what another one is target and hoping the don't jump from target to target like usually on my teams..

I try to add markers just to see they get ignored or replaced.. (even removed..)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Iyrnwaen

If your definition of "underrated" is "not literally useless despite being unpopular for good reason", then sure.

You can win matches with BRD and BLM. You cannot win them as consistently as you can with other DPS classes.
They have exactly the same problem, which is that their utility doesn't compensate for their insufficient burst damage.
BLM can actually be very good because of their root uptime, but only if you have a team that can and will kill the targets you root.
If you don't, then you're rendered annoying instead of dangerous.
Since you have no control over the job composition or player skill on your team, that dependency is a liability,
and it's one that several other DPS jobs simply do not have.

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I'd say that Bard is actually one of the best jobs when it comes to creating and single-handedly shutting down spike attempts. Their burst combo is nearly half of someone's health and it comes out every 20 seconds and comes with a Silence to interrupt heals. Bard's main problem is that Limit Break only generates in combat so you have to be engaged in a constant slugfest whereas a proper LB chain will wipe the enemy team incredibly fast. Bard's best bet for victory is to attempt to snowball the game from the start before LB's come online, then attempt to sync your own team's LBs after the enemy has had their first pass.

I think there's a lot of classes that will shine once/if we can queue as parties, as they seem to have holes in their kit, but make up for that in other ways. The problem, then, is that the random nature of the queues means those classes can easily get put in comps where they cannot take full advantage of their kit, whereas the "meta" classes have all-round solid kits, so their comps matter little.

That said, Monk and Reaper. I see them in the lowest rungs of every tier list dreamt up by a redditor or poster. But they can actually do a lot of work, it just requires your team knowing what you bring, and following up on it.

Reaper, for instance, has a 15y aoe heal on a 20s cooldown and a limit break that does an aoe fear effect plus is up very quickly. If your team understands your kit, you can slug it out in a brawl much better (most likely) than your opponents, and your limit break often results in a fast pick that snow-balls the team fight. But you can't make the best use of your kit on your own, since even in LB, you may not be able to burst down fast enough.

Monk is similar. Its dash gives shields (to yourself if you dash to an enemy, or to an ally if you dash to them), it has a potent self heal (with aoe damage) on a 30s cooldown, and its LB comes up fast and can guarentee a kill. The obvious LB use is an enemy at low health Guarding, so you LB, rip the Guard off, and kill em. The less obvious use is that while you are animation locked while LB'ing, so is your target. They can't self heal, they can't purify, they can't attack. Nothing. If your team follows up on your LB, you can use it on even high health, high priority targets and guarantee a pick. And this isn't even getting into the fact that monk is the only melee with a knockback, so between that and its stun, it can isolate targets for your team to gank.