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.

You have 5 extra skills as your job and 5 cross class skills you can still use.. so .. Yeah it's an upgrade.

The only class I heard that is good at it is Thaumaturge. Once they cap certain stats with ilvl 90 gear they can revert back and grab more CD skills that make them hit harder.

It's a bit unfair to judge considering not all the options are on the table yet.

I am a 39 thaumaturge. I don't say I'm a Black Mage due to the simple fact that I haven't changed anything about my playstyle with the addition of Convert and Freeze. If I had any gem BESIDES Black Mage I'd likely be using it.

I am also a 40 White mage. I don't say conjurer because I'm clearly using the White Magic abilities on a VERY regular basis. Especially Regen.

And that's the joy of the job system. It lets you tweak the base classes in a particular direction. For instance, whatever other jobs Thaumaturges get, they will always be cycling between fire burn phases and ice regen phases. They will always be sleeping targets. So if you're going to analyze the job system, you should look specifically at the job abilities and see if you really use them all that often.

Some classes find solo benefits to be better/noticeable as the class, rather than the job. So yeah, you're more or less correct on that. At some point though, namely as you approach the level cap, you'll notice that the abilities you pick up as the job start to outshine whatever survival spells/abilities you can cross-use as the class. Not to mention the boost in stats that the job gets over the class become more noticeable as you near cap.

I have not ran as a CNJ in a long long long time, it just doesn't seem logical to me with the bonus stats and abilities I get to ever remove my crystal

Cross-class skills have greatly been curtailed since 1.0. As such, there isn't much to be gained by staying as a Class.

Here is the fix

Give Classes:

• Exclusive abilities & traits that broaden their abilities and usefulness for soloing. (ie. THM gains damage-mitigation skill, GLD gains damage-boosting skill)
• Their own crafted AF and exclusive weapons (similar to DoH, DoL)

Give Jobs:

• Traits that fundamentally change class abilities to more focus their roles. (ie, 'Cleric Stance' for WHM should reduce enmity while active, rather than increasing damage)
• Traits that radically shift stats towards their specialty roles (ie, When MRD changes to WAR, it loses 20% STR and gains 20% VIT)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by MomoOG

Nope, classes die at level 30.

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Speak for yourself, chum, I use THM a great deal when I solo.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by NoctisCaelus

You have 5 extra skills as your job and 5 cross class skills you can still use.. so .. Yeah it's an upgrade.

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You lose five cross class skills and your choices for the five you have left have severely restricted options...so..yeah, it's a tradeoff.

Most people only seem interested in leveling one class to 50 and couple others to ~15. There's no reason for them to take off the gem... or, from what I've gathered from some posts, play after running CM a dozen times .