Jobs for players with bad latency and lag?

So, I've been asking around the different boards for a while, getting an idea of the various jobs to play and such - thanks to everyone for helping me out, btw, it means quite a bit more than you think. After getting some recommendations and ideas over on the DPS boards, I had the idea to make a thread here.

In this case, I'm making a board concerning the issues with latency; more specifically, which jobs can be used well when latency and lag become an issue. Here's the jobs that I main, currently, as well as some others that I recommend:

Tank:

- Warrior: Easily the simplest of tanks in FFXIV currently, and a great choice for meat-shielding when the lag spikes start.

- Paladin: Another good choice for tanking; not the simplest of rotations, but still easy-to-learn-and-use, and a blast to play.

Melee DPS:

- Dragoon: Currently, DRG has a fairly simplistic rotation, that nonetheless ends up doing rather solid amounts of damage regardless of the situation; granted, this may or may not get changed with the rumored 7.0 rework, so keep that in mind.

- Samurai: Certainly, has some button bloat, but the rotation itself is fairly simplistic to learn, and it has a fairly high amount of DPS potential attached to it.

- Reaper(?): Not quite too sure how this performs, admittedly; it's actually my current main Melee, and I'm doing fairly well in dungeons and trials, though I'm still learning the ins-and-outs of the job.

Ranged DPS:

- Dancer: One of the simplest jobs, and far, far more fun than it has the right to be - shoutout to Mithron for the recommendation. Great mobility and great support, though the personal damage is a bit low compared to other jobs, so solo players need to keep that in mid.

Magic DPS:

- Red Mage: Probably my favorite DPS job; good damage, extremely versatile, and it has fantastic fashion as a bonus. Admittedly, I'm still not quite at max level with it as of yet, nor have I been able to get the complete rotation figured out, so take what I've said with a grain of salt. Thanks to the DPS boards for the recommendation; would have slept on it otherwise.

- Summoner: The DPS job I'm currently leveling, so I can't quite vouch for it personally; however, there have been plenty of other posters nothing the current ease and reliability of the job - it's literally the most braindead easy job in the game, from the videos and such that I've watched - so it's getting put here.

Healer:

- I don't have all that much experience with healers as of yet - still in the middle of leveling with what little time I have - so I'm afraid I need to leave this spot blank for now.

So, with all of that posted; what do you guys recommend for player with poor latency and bad lag? Any recommendations or suggestions?

Machinist :)

i'd take reaper out since I heard there are some freaked up things on its rotation and for healer, white mage? tbh i think any healer will do with the exception of astrologian

You seem to be going with the idea that simple = better for high ping. I don't agree with that. What is better for high ping is a job that does not involve a lot of weaving.

I would say, yes, Warrior and Paladin are the GCD tanks that don't have regular weaving like Gunbreaker and Dark Knight and that makes them better for high pings.

Dragoon becomes weave-heavy at 90 and so does Samurai, so I would find Monk and Reaper to be lighter with this.

Dancer has to weave a lot like everything in its role, but it is simpler than tracking everything a Bard does or dealing with the losses you get on Machinist at high latency.

Going to agree about Summoner and Red Mage because with a lot of lag you are probably going to mess up all of your careful positioning and Aetherial Manipulations on a Black Mage.

Despite my suggestions, I am able to play at a very high ping with any job. I just focus on single weaving if it becomes a problem to double weave. It's not as optimal sometimes, but other than a few isolated situations such as the first few weeks of savage or a new ultimate, you don't really need to be that perfect if you optimize everything else.

While a lagging healer is definitely not what you want, shields are a bit more reliable as they do act as overheal allowing you to prepare for incoming damage a bit better. And i think sholar is on that slightly better than sage. Although both should work fine enough.

Earlier casting on normal healers can result in a wasted heal a lot faster.

I've been stuck on trash rural satellite for several years now. MCH has been by far the easiest to adapt to high ping, since you're able to keep moving which is important when you need to dodge things a solid second or two before they happen.

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Originally Posted by AmpelioB

i'd take reaper out since I heard there are some freaked up things on its rotation and for healer, white mage? tbh i think any healer will do with the exception of astrologian

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Yeah, it's not even just the rotation. The moment you get into Enshroud, you have to weave a skill between each GCD. And the GCD recast timer is reduced to 1.5s. If you lag or have high ping, you're definitely screwed at that stage.

Definitely not Reaper. The Enshroud combo already clips enough as is.

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Originally Posted by Limecat

I've been stuck on trash rural satellite for several years now. MCH has been by far the easiest to adapt to high ping, since you're able to keep moving which is important when you need to dodge things a solid second or two before they happen.

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Except that when it comes to optimal play.. mch suffers the most from high ping which has been it’s biggest flaw since it was introduced in Heavensward, and that have never corrected it.

In fact they made the ping issue worse in stormblood. Better in shadowbringers (slightly) and worse again in endwalker.. to this day it is mch players biggest issue with the job and the dev team has done nothing to correct it nor do many of us believe they ever will.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

You seem to be going with the idea that simple = better for high ping. I don't agree with that. What is better for high ping is a job that does not involve a lot of weaving.

I would say, yes, Warrior and Paladin are the GCD tanks that don't have regular weaving like Gunbreaker and Dark Knight and that makes them better for high pings.

Dragoon becomes weave-heavy at 90 and so does Samurai, so I would find Monk and Reaper to be lighter with this.

Dancer has to weave a lot like everything in its role, but it is simpler than tracking everything a Bard does or dealing with the losses you get on Machinist at high latency.

Going to agree about Summoner and Red Mage because with a lot of lag you are probably going to mess up all of your careful positioning and Aetherial Manipulations on a Black Mage.

Despite my suggestions, I am able to play at a very high ping with any job. I just focus on single weaving if it becomes a problem to double weave. It's not as optimal sometimes, but other than a few isolated situations such as the first few weeks of savage or a new ultimate, you don't really need to be that perfect if you optimize everything else.

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Not necessarily, I'm just going on what I've found from both personal experience - which isn't much so far right now, as I'm still learning everything - and from what other people have told me previously about the various jobs. I'll be the first to admit; I don't know everything about the jobs even in the best of conditions, to say nothing of dealing with them at endgame with high lag and such, so I fully welcome anyone with more experience to post their thoughts.

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Originally Posted by AmpelioB

i'd take reaper out since I heard there are some freaked up things on its rotation and for healer, white mage? tbh i think any healer will do with the exception of astrologian

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Yeah, I haven't really ran to much with Reaper on the higher level; I've got it at 90 currently, but I haven't done much of the really difficult content with it yet, so I'm not the most reliable source of experience, I'll be the first to admit.

As someone with 150ms minimum... WAR, SMN, and WHM have been kind to my ping. The rest of them optimally need double-weave at some stage or another. I only have RPR at 90 but my impression of every melee DD is that they're cruel in this regard.

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Originally Posted by UkcsAlias

While a lagging healer is definitely not what you want, shields are a bit more reliable as they do act as overheal allowing you to prepare for incoming damage a bit better. And i think sholar is on that slightly better than sage. Although both should work fine enough.

Earlier casting on normal healers can result in a wasted heal a lot faster.

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I'd say SCH is actually the worst healer to play with high latency since unlike Sage (which isn't much better, mind you) you have to cast your shields, which may get a bit wasted if cast too early, but entirely wasted if cast too late, and that's not even mentioning all the ogcd weaving that will clip.

WHM is the best choice hands down because the job is not only bareboned with nearly no ogcd to begin with, it also has strong instant heals, so it's really forgiving for a late reaction.

Any class with low CPM should be friendly to lag
https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...minute_by_job/

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Originally Posted by Allegor

and that's not even mentioning all the ogcd weaving that will clip.

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If you have lag (as in packet loss style) and latency, weaving will become very unreliable as it can only rely on it having queued. And as your timing will be off regardless, you want a healer that can apply the effect at both moments. A late shield is not wasted because the shield is still there! That shield acts the same as healing on that. Note that barely any attack will instantly take the HP away, and if it does, an early shield cast would at least have done something, with WHM the player is already dead before you know.

WHM at least has more regens which on that can be better as it grants more healing over time. And if nothing more is demanded, it obviously will work. But in that case, nearly all healers are going to do fine anyway. And below a certain level SCH does lack quite a lot of abilities that benefit when lagging (i would say below lvl 60 sch will indeed have some issues in such way it becomes a pain to handle).

Dont expect lagging players to follow perfect rotations, its not going to happen. So you want to ensure as much as possible is going to work succesfully. Weaving can be queued on that, which does benefit SCH as it does allow quite a bit of these. But reacting quickly isnt going to be possible. SCH can trigger a lot of these indirect effects that are timed perfectly on the server side, WHM has less of those. WHM only has higher raw output numbers on the healing.

You might think DPS matters here, but it doesnt. You will waste a lot of cycles, so optimizing dps is a 'best effort' case and losing 20% here wont matter in any of the dungeons. Only in things like savages you will realy need to optimize this, and thats something that if you are lagging is something i would highly discourage anyway.

But in the end, it depends on how severe the lagging is. If the game just goes into low fps or has a big (but reliable) latency, then most healers will work anyway as you can still follow the flow well. But the moment this isnt reliable, you are often down to guessing. And shields are more forgiving here. WHM only has sustained healing over time which helps a lot in most cases, but its those burst waves that are truly dangerous, and this is where WHM cant realy do a lot against.

Dancer might suffer a bit with latency during their burst windows, in the case of your latency not allowing you to double weave without clipping.

I would say the most ping friendly job is BLM, due to the low number of weaving you need to do.

Basically anything that does a lot of double weaving, or single weaving under 1.5s GCD, that’s going to hurt your performance with moderately high pings.

For healers, AST is definitely no bueno. The only least concerning is quite possibly WHM because they have the least amount of tools to be weaved. You can’t play any of the barrier healers without clipping too much because large portion of their stronger & efficient heals comes from their abilities rather than healing spells.

So, to summarize from what I've been able to gather from the comments on here and some other boards, these are the jobs that are reliable for people with bag lag issues:

Tank:

- Warrior

- Paladin

Melee DPS

- There doesn't seem to be a general consensus on a single melee job that's good for laggy players; the only thing confirmed is that Reaper is a terrible pick.

Ranged DPS

- Dancer

Magic DPS

- Summoner

- Black Mage

- Red Mage

Healer

- White Mage

Anyone have anything that they want to add? Any suggestions to make, or jobs to add or subtract from the list?

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Originally Posted by Travel

So, to summarize from what I've been able to gather from the comments on here and some other boards, these are the jobs that are reliable for people with bag lag issues:

Tank:

- Warrior

- Paladin

Melee DPS

- There doesn't seem to be a general consensus on a single melee job that's good for laggy players; the only thing confirmed is that Reaper is a terrible pick.

Ranged DPS

- Dancer

Magic DPS

- Summoner

- Black Mage

- Red Mage

Healer

- White Mage

Anyone have anything that they want to add? Any suggestions to make, or jobs to add or subtract from the list?

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Dragoon will probably be the best melee since Monk/Ninja/Samurai are all faster-paced. Black Mage doesn't weave that much but it's still a difficult job with a strict timer. Summoner also has quick Garuda GCDs that might clip and you don't want to miss that 6th Bahamut/Phoenix cast. Might also have to see what Paladin looks like after the rework, though it's unlikely they'll flood it with oGCDs.

Fast GCDs isn't really much of an issue for moderately high ping players. It's the instances when they want to weave something between those fast GCDs that the horrendous clipping becomes apparent (source: played with 220ms before :cry: ). So high ping SMNs will most likely avoid weaving anything extra during Garuda & Titan's phase. BLMs can get by with faster Sps to ensure server tick aren't trolling them.

Not sure about any of the melees to be frank. They all do have decent amount of double weaving in their (re)opener and I bet it'll feel terrible to just clipperino your way through.

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Originally Posted by Travel

- There doesn't seem to be a general consensus on a single melee job that's good for laggy players; the only thing confirmed is that Reaper is a terrible pick.

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I didn't bother playing Reaper at max level but it was alright before getting the level 81-90 abilities. But I would say Monk, because it's not weave-heavy. Yes, it has a fast GCD but that isn't much of a problem when you are hardly weaving.

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Originally Posted by RobynDaBank

As someone with 150ms minimum... WAR, SMN, and WHM have been kind to my ping. The rest of them optimally need double-weave at some stage or another. I only have RPR at 90 but my impression of every melee DD is that they're cruel in this regard.

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MNK barely has any double weaving. And I don't think SAM has any double weaving, not even in the opener.
These two are quite ping friendly for melees.

Jobs for players with bad latency and lag?
XIVAlexander

I've always got bad ping and have found WAR, BRD, and RDM to be the most forgiving. DRG, PLD, and BLM have been the most challenging. I haven't leveled the others to 90 and can't speak for them.

None of the physical ranged fit imo
all 3 need double weaving
i'd say dragoon isn't very fun with lag because of jump animation lock too

I agree with the list except for melees. Out of all of them samurai fits the best for bad ping.

For Reaper, Enshroud is a nightmare on bad ping
Monks GCD speed is by far the fastest and even requires double weaving (rarely) where even good ping players cant do lmao.
Dragoon has too much animation lock still that would be more awkward for high ping players
Ninja has a fast GCD speed and requires double weaving in certain instances. You also have to do your mudras which could ghost on bad ping.

Samurai, on the other hand, has an optimal build at a GCD speed slower than ninjas that doesn't require any double weaving to stay optimal.

I'd disagree with monk. There's places in the rotation where it's ideal to double weave and with a sub 2s GCD that's not going to work so well without a single digit ping.

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Originally Posted by VictorSpoils

Dragoon will probably be the best melee since Monk/Ninja/Samurai are all faster-paced. Black Mage doesn't weave that much but it's still a difficult job with a strict timer. Summoner also has quick Garuda GCDs that might clip and you don't want to miss that 6th Bahamut/Phoenix cast. Might also have to see what Paladin looks like after the rework, though it's unlikely they'll flood it with oGCDs.

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Dragoon double weaves a ton.

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Originally Posted by Imora

Dragoon double weaves a ton.

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Dragoon is definitely hindered if double weaves are off the table entirely, but if it's not even possible to weave with the other jobs then the melee options are pretty much a Dragoon with delayed buffs or an Enshroud-clipping Reaper.