What job to play? please advise

Hi Guys,

I have played many MMO's before and i like to keybind my keys on the keyboard. However Final Fantasy has way to many skills for the jobs i have tried and i am not sure what to play. I do enjoy a dps job rather than tank and/or healer.

I generally like melee classes in games, especially dual wielding swords. example of this are classes frost death knight or combat rogues in WOW, Champion in Lord of the Rings, Assassin in Ragnarok Online, Witch hunter in Warhammer Online, Conqueror in Age of Conan, Swashbuckler in Everquest 2, DragonKnight in Elder Scrolls Online, Warrior in Terra Online, Assassin in Guild Wars, Thief in Guild Wars 2, Paragon in RIFT, Jedi Sentinel in SWOTOR, Berserk in Black Desert Online and so on.

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Thank you

I would like to play something fun and not convoluted with to many redundant skills which seems to plague the jobs i tried (Rogue/Ninja, Samurai, Lancer/Dragoon). While i enjoy the Samurai at level 50 looking at the skills the job will get to 70 makes my head heart. Way to many skills to keybind them all for optimal use. Looking at the skills it feels very annoying to have to keep up 3 buffs, 1 debuff and manage 2 type of resources while optimally having to be behind the target or on the flank and on top of that having some short term buffs and cool downs to manage.

Perhaps i do not know how configure the hotbars as well, but visually it is not as easy to see when an ability is of cooldown. Is there something that darkens the ability while it is cooling down and it makes it shine once the cooldown wears of? Also the combo chains are hard to see, is there something easier on the eyes rather than a clock wise moving segmented line on the border of the skill icon?

Thank you

I mean... I remember playing EQ2 and the amount of skills doesn't really seem all that different. Maybe just me though?

As for SAM... the buffs/debuff are part of your basic rotation so it's really not hard to keep them up and active, especially considering their duration. The additional skills you'll get on the way to 70 may well seem a little off-putting at first, but it comes pretty easy once you start getting them. Also, having all of 2 positionals, which only matter for kenki generation purposes, REALLY isn't bad.

I have no experience with DRG, so can't really help you there. NIN, on the other hand, is actually pretty fun. All of 1 debuff to keep up, then Trick Attack (which is awesome) and then just using jutsus and resource spenders on cooldown.

MNK can be fun too, though if positionals bug you on SAM, you REALLY won't like them on MNK. So... there's that.

As for the cooldown thing... eventually, you'll just get used to the timing of when they're up. You can, if it helps, set up a hotbar with the icons relatively near your character on the screen so they'll be easier to notice when they're off cooldown. Alternatively, you can set them up as macros with wait timers lasting for the cooldown time and set them up to say a message/sound effect when they're off cooldown.

You should try Red Mage.

EDIT:: Sorry, didn't thoroughly read the first post that you like melee, but then again you can pretty much stay in melee range as RDM (unless mechanics forces you to go ranged) and it does have a melee combo too.

If you are not sure for keybinds, you need around 32 skills for every job to play them, plus potion, limit break and some other stuff.

Happy keybinding.

The best answer I can give it to try out each one and see if that playstyle is best for you. Cause if I pick a job, you may not like it. Or in the former rpg games you played, what style you like best? Do you like to heal more, magic burst, etc.

My advice? Play a different game, or play Red Mage.

This game suffers from massive button bloat for every single class, and they all have multiple resources / buffs / positional requirements you need to manage. You can make this easier with a controller or an MMO Mouse (Razor Naga, Logi G600) or try using a controller to play.

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Originally Posted by Nerisu

You should try Red Mage.

EDIT:: Sorry, didn't thoroughly read the first post that you like melee, but then again you can pretty much stay in melee range as RDM (unless mechanics forces you to go ranged) and it does have a melee combo too.

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I tired Red Mage, and it was fun as you say but i don't really like it more than the samurai, i generally like melee better then casting.

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Originally Posted by Legion88

If you are not sure for keybinds, you need around 32 skills for every job to play them, plus potion, limit break and some other stuff.

Happy keybinding.

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Yea, that does seem a lot of keybinds. I am surprised Square Enix has not lowered the number of skills for a few of the classes i tried.

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Originally Posted by Osmond

The best answer I can give it to try out each one and see if that playstyle is best for you. Cause if I pick a job, you may not like it. Or in the former rpg games you played, what style you like best? Do you like to heal more, magic burst, etc.

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Yea, i may have to try different classes. I like melee classes that generally have faster attacks. I don't generally like casting.

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Originally Posted by Pendas

My advice? Play a different game, or play Red Mage.

This game suffers from massive button bloat for every single class, and they all have multiple resources / buffs / positional requirements you need to manage. You can make this easier with a controller or an MMO Mouse (Razor Naga, Logi G600) or try using a controller to play.

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It seems like that. I just picked this game a couple of days ago but having a difficult time choosing a class to play. Am i the only person bothered by the amount of skill bloat? I like your suggestion in fact i have the logitech G600 MMO gaming mouse. But even with that it still is not as fast.

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Originally Posted by Deprive

It seems like that. I just picked this game a couple of days ago but having a difficult time choosing a class to play. Am i the only person bothered by the amount of skill bloat? I like your suggestion in fact i have the logitech G600 MMO gaming mouse. But even with that it still is not as fast.

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It's like that at first, but then you'll get the hang of it. Ppl usually train w/ dummies in zones to practice their rotation.

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Originally Posted by Xehmnus

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Yea EQ 2 had just as many but you could macro them together to my recolection and play with only a couple of buttons.

I haven't tried monk so i do not know, but the samurai is fun at lower levels but once you start getting the rest of your abilities it becomes to bloated. Ninja is also fun but it still suffers by the amount of button bloat like the samurai and the dragoon is even worse especially with the jumps. I do not know perhaps i am getting old.

The macro idea is neat, i would like to try that, but visually this game is hard to notice when something is of the cooldown at least for me.

Thank you for your suggestions.

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Originally Posted by Osmond

It's like that at first, but then you'll get the hang of it. Ppl usually train w/ dummies in zones to practice their rotation.

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That's a nice idea. I didn't know there were dummies.

I never really bothered much with macros in EQ2 so i suppose im more accustomed to handling the amount of abilities

Unfortunately, the button bloat issue is pretty much across all jobs. It's going to seem crazy at first, but things will piece themselves together soon enough once you get experience with the abilities. Honestly, I'd say just start with whatever job seems to appeal to you the most, get a handle on things, and do what you can to make it easier.

You can macro abilities together in this game, but... probably not how you'd like and it's considered a no no to do so since it typically results in a dps loss over all.

Also, while it's not a perfect setting, PotD can be nice for getting a handle on your skills as you level in there. It starts you off at level 1 and you do level quickly in there. (Different from your real level). Will give you room to play around with your skills and get used to things. Also a good way to check out different jobs and you'll get actual experience for leveling up too so that may be worth checking out.

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Originally Posted by Xehmnus

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The button bloat being across all jobs it is quite unfortunate. How do macros with abilities work? for example can i make a macro that does the following. Use Hakaze -> Jinpu -> Gekko and another macro that uses Hakaze -> Shifu -> Kasha ?

You can, yes. However... you'd have to use wait timers between each ability in the macro which screws with your overall skill speed. In the end, you'd be losing out on a lot of dps. Fuethermore... you wouldn't be able to weave your oGCD abilities since they'd break the macro.

You usually have 2 (or 3) melee combo's to work with. Some AoE buttons. Cooldowns etc. While this seems daunting at first, you will get the hang of it. Paladin (tank) has alot of buttons to manage, yet when playing it, it feels really fluid and you hardly notice the amount of buttons you have. If you like the feel of this game, try to look past the amount of buttons. It's not as bad as it looks at first sight.

I think using a controller would help you a lot. The xbar organizes all of your skills really well. I keep my most used skills in my standard xbar, most of my cd's on my expanded xbar and really situational stuff on my wxhbar (i think that's what it's called) then i have some standard hot bars by my character to monitor my cd's. It's overall a great organizational tool and allows you to only bring up what you need at the time.

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Originally Posted by Xehmnus

You can, yes. However... you'd have to use wait timers between each ability in the macro which screws with your overall skill speed. In the end, you'd be losing out on a lot of dps. Fuethermore... you wouldn't be able to weave your oGCD abilities since they'd break the macro.

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Yea, that would be not good.

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Originally Posted by Gunnie

You usually have 2 (or 3) melee combo's to work with. Some AoE buttons. Cooldowns etc. While this seems daunting at first, you will get the hang of it. Paladin (tank) has alot of buttons to manage, yet when playing it, it feels really fluid and you hardly notice the amount of buttons you have. If you like the feel of this game, try to look past the amount of buttons. It's not as bad as it looks at first sight.

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You are probably right, I probably need a little bit more time to get used to the UI and the skills which like you said they do follow a pattern. The game outside of skills looks interesting though i am only playing through ARR story right now, but i heard Heaven's Ward and StormBlood's story are even better.

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Originally Posted by Genis_Elric

I think using a controller would help you a lot. The xbar organizes all of your skills really well. I keep my most used skills in my standard xbar, most of my cd's on my expanded xbar and really situational stuff on my wxhbar (i think that's what it's called) then i have some standard hot bars by my character to monitor my cd's. It's overall a great organizational tool and allows you to only bring up what you need at the time.

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That's neat, i can try playing with a controller, it would feel a bit weird playing an MMO with a controller but i guess i can try it out. What do you use a Xbox 360 controller or a PS4 Controller.

To the OP: Looking at your original post, being that you enjoy dual wielding classes and a non convoluted dps routine, might I suggest you try to give Ninja another chance? It's has a fairly simple main dps rotation: A chain of two attacks followed by a choice of three finishers to either debuff, deal top damage, or restore your own speed buff (which really is the only resource you need to worry about). From there you build up your skill at weaving in the off globals and mudras. Admittedly their mudra skills can be confusing at first but if you place the mudras on a hotbar in a way that makes sense to you and allow muscle memory to take over it's fairly simple. I personally find it satisfying to play because of how fast paced it is while remaining pretty simple (compared to, say, monk), and this is coming from someone who doesn't like melee jobs and sticks to mostly casting and healing.

P.s. I'd recommend controller style play over keyboard for ease of movement in battle and the crossbar system works great on any job besides summoner and scholar, who still have a lot of ability bloat if you bother to micromanage pet actions. Utilizing the double hold down and the double tap trigger hotbars means I don't have to have more than one main hotbar for all the essential abilities. I personally play on PS4 mostly, but when I'm on PC I use an Xbox controller.

The core rotation of any job is not that terrible since they are usually a combo or some other mechanic in your rotation that basically "guides" you through a series of abilities. As that series of buttons finishes, you assess what the next goal in your rotation is and you push the series of buttons that will give you that.

The thing that's a bit daunting is the amount of oGCD abilities everyone gets. That gets to be a bit much to track - I 100% agree with you there.

To help with button bloat, I'd highly recommend making heavy use of shift and ctrl. For example, you could bind all three of SAM's combos to the first three number keys by having one combo use just the numbers, another use shift and the numbers, and the last using ctrl and the numbers. So your normal combo is just 1,2,3,shift+1,shift+2,shift+3,ctrl+1,ctr+2. Then you just need a few extra keybinds for iaijutsu and oGCD skills.

Ninja can do similar things but you need three separate keys for madras. They are the only dual wield class though.

Honestly, if the button bloat is still too much for you even with that, I'd recommend giving Guild Wars 2 a shot instead. All classes only have 10 buttons (11 with the built in dodge); 5 weapon skills, a heal, three utility skills, and an ultimate skill. The weapon skills are tied to the weapons you use and every class can play with at least one melee weapon. It's also very cheap compared to FFXIV and is getting a new expansion very soon.

Combat design remains the low point of FFXIV, and I wish that SE's developers would play an MMO released after 2003 for ideas. The entire game is built around a 2.5 second PS3-friendly GCD and throwing button after button at players. I'm enjoying the world, aesthetics, music, and story, but DPS classes are stuffed full of redundant buffs, gratuitous oGCDs, and amateur UIs.

I play on PS4, but I have a few friends who play on PC and they all use PS4 controllers, too.

If you're starting off as a level 50 character, then you're starting off with 50 levels of skills... so yeah, there's gonna be a chunk to deal with, at first.

If it were a job starting at level 1, they ease you into your skills, much more gradually. There may be a lot of skills, but by the time you're unlocking the next one, you should be comfortable with the previous skills and where they fit in your rotation.

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Originally Posted by Deprive

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I have done something that changed my gaming life some time ago :P I changed the side buttons of my mouse into Shift, Ctrl and alt (Shift and ctrl is enough if you only have 2 side buttons, I have four). Now, there are some very easy to use keybinds, like Q, E, R, F, C, Z, X, 2, 3 and Space! All of these, with a press on a side mouse button with your thumb, are double, tripple, quarduple ...Shift+Q, Shift + E, Shift+Space, CTRL + Space, CTRL+E etc etc. And is very very easy onjce you get used to it, you will never ever have problem with keybinds again

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Originally Posted by HappyHubris

Combat design remains the low point of FFXIV, and I wish that SE's developers would play an MMO released after 2003 for ideas. The entire game is built around a 2.5 second PS3-friendly GCD and throwing button after button at players. I'm enjoying the world, aesthetics, music, and story, but DPS classes are stuffed full of redundant buffs, gratuitous oGCDs, and amateur UIs.

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I actually like a lot the slow pace of combat... not everyone is fun of twitch gameplay

At low level all the melee job are kinda repetitive due to lack of skills however higher up this is not the case. That being said all jobs have a rythem of button you need push at a given time so all jobs going fill repetitive after awhile.

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Originally Posted by Deprive

Hi Guys,

I have played many MMO's before and i like to keybind my keys on the keyboard. However Final Fantasy has way too many skills for the jobs i have tried and i am not sure what to play. I do enjoy a dps job rather than tank and/or healer.

I generally like melee classes in games, especially dual wielding swords. *snip*

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Thank you

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Hi! I love dual wielding swords too. My frost death knight is a joy to play.

Unfortunately, there is no job which exactly matches them in FFXIV. In fact there are no dual swords in the game. However, there are two jobs who do use two melee weapons, ninja and monks.

Monk is the simpler of the two and the game lights up the next ability to use for combos. There is a buff called Greased Lightning for you to maintain but it isn't difficult.

You and I have a lot in common. I too have trouble seeing everything. I recommend you fiddle with the settings. Enlarging parts of the UI (Cntrl or Command + Home) helps a lot. There is no other options but the moving dotted lines on the icons. I'd kill for a flashing icon instead.;)

Since you like Melee classes and I assume a DPS role (From your MMO history), as well as a Job that has less buttons to press, IMO it would be MNK. From all the Melee DPS jobs MNK has the least amount of buttons to press. DRG, SAM, and NIN have a lot of things to press. They have way more off-GCD skills to weave compared to MNK which only has around 8 (without counting Perfect Balance + Shoulder Tackle and you will rarely use Tornado Kick, for example) at level 70.

The difference is that MNK's off-GCDs are just "use when it's off cooldown and use it again when it's off cooldown again" while the other Melee classes has to weave / maintain their off-GCDs in a correct timing in their rotations.

So for general advice... I definitely second using a controller. For more bloated jobs you can simply have your often-used on the main hot-bar and your buffs or less used abilities on the cross bar. That way everything is easy to access AND easy to view for cooldown purposes. I've used both PS4 and Xbox, they're too similar to make a distinction. Play with whichever feels better in your hands.

As for class suggestions... Bard and Red Mage have the least amount of bloat in my opinion. I can fit both on a single Hotbar+Crossbar setup and their "rotations" are simple enough. Bard goes off of a Priority system due to its innate mechanics (most everything is proc-based) so you use whats up when its up while maintaining your songs, party buffs and DoTs. Red Mage is simply do this until that then repeat. MAYBE toss a cure or raise if the healers need some help.

For the up close melee characters.... the most fun I've had is Dragoon. It can be as difficult or as easy as you want to make it. Playing it casually, you'll clear most-all content, maybe even all with a good team but it has layers of complexity that are honestly very fun to uncover and learn, as well as rewarding since you'll notice a hefty dps boost by playing it correctly.

As general advice, I would say give the casters a chance. They may not be your normal playstyle but they may also surprise you. I've never played a Tank class in any other game but I really enjoy it here, for example. Other than that, use Palace of the Dead to your advantage. Most classes are boring in the lower levels, by clearing PoTD up to floor 50 you can start there solo with every skill up to level 60 unlocked. This gives you chance to play the class at -almost- full power with most of your toys unlocked and get a good feel for them.