Phantom Jobs are a step in the right direction but need iteration.

I personally feel like Phantom Jobs are one of the best things but also one of the worst things about occult crescent. Making them permanent fixtures that you don't have to repeatedly gather is an amazing improvement over logograms and lost actions. Farming those were the biggest barrier to participating in later content in Eureka and Bozja. It makes Phantom Jobs feel that much more desirable and impactful to recieve.

Unfortunately, they do other things worse. They aren't as flexible, and several of them don't do enough to change the way you play and only show the majority of their value inside of Forked Tower, which is almost impossible for the general player base to enter, and even less likely for a PUG that does, meaning most players will not ge tthe opportunity to appreciate these jobs entire toolkits.

Phantom jobs have the potential to be an amazing addition to the game, but they seem to be afraid to to be as outstandingly weird or powerful as older versions of this system, as well as afraid to step out of the box mechanically, they are, overwhelmingly, buffs, debuffs, or minor or expensive damage increases, of which only some few debuffs are usable in Critical Engagements. Much of what phantom jobs bring to the table is not interesting enough or not impactful enough to cause players to prefer them outside of forked tower, meaning the playerbase gravitates to the roles with damage based skills, or chemist, which would have been amazing had it not been a consumable based class. Rather than having consumables for Chemist and Samurai, Timed Consumables that enhance or alter certain aspects of phantom jobs would have been better options to encourage grinding, though that has the same problem as logograms and lost actions, it would be mitigated by the Jobs themselves already being permanent fixtures.

Please, Square Enix, do not be afraid to go big and bold in extra content. It won't unbalance the rest of your game, have fun with it, iterate, be wild and crazy. Make this Field operation memorable just for how it plays. Oracle's ability to sacrifice a ton of HP for a powerful attack makes for a very interesting risk reward factor, making most classes have to really learn mechanics of a fight to find a window big enough to ensure safe access to Starfall. Make just the idea of getting to use a phantom job fun and engaging enough to make people want to come back to forays like this. The sheer joy of raising people en masse as chemist alone is some of the most fun I've ever had in XIV, despite its other flaws.

I personally think outside of them being easy to use, it is extremely boring and uninspiring to have the phantom jobs currently as it is. There is no experimentation or change of pace as with the logograms of Eureka or Bozja that made them unique and fun to use. It seems they are afraid of things getting too powerful and have decided to tune down the system as a whole. What they should of done is improve the system they currently had and made it better but instead we got this system which feels kind of barebones.

I think they have pros and cons.

The way I see it, Phantom Jobs are just the gimmick this time round. They might turn them into some other gimmick in 8.0, such as Magical Companions who follow you around and do these actions.

they needed more passives that change your gameplay
they're too afraid of anything massively changing your rotation, for some reason, even though this is not end game raiding

I love them conceptually, but I also agree they shouldn't be afraid to experiment more. The moment I saw Chemist had infinite free revives, or knight having 90% damage mit I was blown away. It's cooperative, it's an isolated place, we're not competing with anyone to worry about balance!
I wish deep dungeons would do something similar aswell, just experiment, let us become for atleast short time in a restricted place be ridiculously powerful or make really fun combos! :)

i think how it is now its more designed for players to do OC to lvl up phantomjobs. but since they are only usable in OC it should be pretty much the other way around.
as it is now we switch from job to job in order to lvl them all up. not only to have the dmg buff but also to experience what these jobs can do.

but we should be encouraged to play with these jobs. acquiring them through different means is good. lvl them up needs too long though.

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Originally Posted by MitsukiKimura

I personally think outside of them being easy to use, it is extremely boring and uninspiring to have the phantom jobs currently as it is. There is no experimentation or change of pace as with the logograms of Eureka or Bozja that made them unique and fun to use.

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Yes, this is one of the issues with the current system. Them being framed as jobs is good, but they are not, as a whole, interesting or game changing enough to warrant being less flexible than Eureka or Bozja. I am hoping that, rather than just inserting additional jobs in North Horn or adding more levels/skills to existing jobs, they iterate on how jobs work in general. Perhaps you can wear two to experiment with synergies, or combine them to create powerful roles like with logograms.

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Originally Posted by Asari5

but we should be encouraged to play with these jobs. acquiring them through different means is good. lvl them up needs too long though.

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As someone who has maxed out all Phantom Jobs, I like playing with them, and Occult Crescent captures that great feeling of fighting epic conflicts with a bunch of other people that's so rare outside of alliance raiding, but I find that unless I am playing specific roles or doing a very specific Critical Engagement, I am not incentivized to switch the Phantom Jobs up much, when the best option for the content is usually just boring damage utility. Some of the jobs are more useful than others by, well, a lot, and the ones that aren't as useful sometimes aren't fun or interesting enough to warrant using regularly due to restrictive balance design. Thief for example, has a really great skill that makes you go nyoom! and even works in encounters, and it would be really fun to just be able to be really fast in CEs, but Occult Sprint is only available 1/3 of the time, so instead of feeling like you're having a lot of fun going fast, you feel like you're obligated to use it as a reactionary utility, which feels arguably worse than just using Samurai or Time Mage or Oracle or Berserker or Cannoneer for the funny numbers.

One Big problem with Phantom job skills is the Button bloat, i really have no space to keybind those abilities, and when i saw the controller instuction for them , i was truly sure that they are totaly indifferent when it comes to keyboard /mouse players.

Yeah , just click them i guess, or put them all in a macro somehow, works with grenadier at least.

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Originally Posted by Arohk

One Big problem with Phantom job skills is the Button bloat, i really have no space to keybind those abilities, and when i saw the controller instuction for them , i was truly sure that they are totaly indifferent when it comes to keyboard /mouse players.

Yeah , just click them i guess, or put them all in a macro somehow, works with grenadier at least.

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I personally don't click them, I set one function to Mouse Forward and the other to Mouse Back like I have in the other two Field Ops. In this case, one button rotates the job panel and the other uses the aligned skill. Fairly simple. No bar bloat. Not too much extra forethought needed. Easy enough to see and manage depending on where you put it.

Do people really have trouble with lost actions? I play bozja casually and along the way I got enough (relevant) lost actions for 3/4 of total relic weapons. I only needed to buy from MB about 3 or 4 times, and their prices were pretty cheap as well. Unless you're attempting to do delubrum savage, you don't really need to grind for those lost actions.