Phantom Freelancer Needs to be Customizable

So, while I appreciate a Final Fantasy V themed exploration zone(which mind I love the aesthetic and the idea behind it), the job system has been a cornerstone of Final Fantasy for quite a while - and it's painstakingly disappointing that Freelancer of all Phantom Jobs is UTTERLY USELESS!

I didn't mind if it required one to master jobs to increase its level - that was one of the main things that FFV did: You got small bonuses to Freelancer as you mastered jobs. The other thing that made FFV outstanding in its job system was the fact you had customization. Being able to tag on passives, actions and such was the one thing that helped make FFV great and even to this day has the "Job Fiesta" that happens once a year.

My biggest issue however is the fact that Freelancer does not get this perk. All the jobs are static, meaning you have the aesthetic, the system of FFV, but none of the customization. Passives? You can forget about it. You play one job that is interchangeable and that's it. It's especially annoying when you have to swap multiple times for different job buffs(Knight, Bard, Monk) so you can get something done while Gold Grinding or just have flat mitigation.

Freelancer, being the job as it is, I don't mind the two actions for Treasure Hunters and also the 30% HP Recovery. What we need is three more slots to fill Actions in so people can take a customizable build wherever they go based on Mastery. This was how it originally worked in FFV, and I'd love to see that system show up in a future update. Right now? It isn't worth it aside from getting the Mastery Buff the Occult Crescent provides to help with Forked Tower.

If this does happen though, it'll make the area a lot more fun to mess with - especially since Bozja and Eureka have WAY more Customization than Occult Crescent does at the moment.

We need more than just freelancer being customizable. The main problem with phantoms right now is that they're designed with the end goal in mind, but they actually forget the whole leveling experience, which is 99% of their gameplay. Why should I care if I can customize freelancer since I'm leveling all the actual jobs that can't be customized? Why should I care about the gameplay loop of each phantom job if I can only play with said gameplay loop once the job is fully leveled and I'm moving to the next one anyway?

We need customization slots that are open at any time, and different states/sets that we can fill with the phantom actions we have unlocked, and save and load those sets at will. Even if one has to fully master a phantom job to allow the use of its actions in a shared loadout while playing other jobs, we need to have that little set of abilities we can use to customize and find cool combinations that we can experiment with. Even if the only job I mastered is phantom knight if I've been there for say, less than a day or a day, then being able to load up my favorite phantom knight actions to a shared loadout while I'm now leveling phantom bard would really address most of the glaring issues of the system. Much like in FF5 really.

Then just make freelancer able to have MORE shared slots for MORE shared actions, like double the amount to make up for the loss of a phantom job set. Essentially the ultimate phantom job all about combining what we have mastered.

Honestly one of my biggest complaints about OC is the phantom job system, the only good things it does over bozja is the fact actions aren't limited use (that was annoying) and you get to have more then two

No passive customisation, you can't make a DPS into a Tank, a Tank into a healer, a DPS into a Healer, passives that increase your healing output but reduce damage/defensiveness, or ones that increase your haste at a cost, you can have certain added actions (like provoke or a consistent gcd aoe heal) but theirs no actual consistent way to get your job to function as another role, this could have easily been done like it was in bozja (though I'd prefer no limited actions or potions).

No Active customization, I remember when we all thought freelancer was going to be able to take actions and passives from other phantom jobs... this would have been a great way to do this, once you master a job allow freelancer to use 1-2 actions pull what they want from different jobs, that way people can actually customize...

Honestly this system is such a letdown it's disappointing. I love the content itself but phantom jobs if done right would have made grinding and making "builds" a lot more fun, but the system falls very short.

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Originally Posted by Valence

We need more than just freelancer being customizable. The main problem with phantoms right now is that they're designed with the end goal in mind, but they actually forget the whole leveling experience, which is 99% of their gameplay. Why should I care if I can customize freelancer since I'm leveling all the actual jobs that can't be customized? Why should I care about the gameplay loop of each phantom job if I can only play with said gameplay loop once the job is fully leveled and I'm moving to the next one anyway?

We need customization slots that are open at any time, and different states/sets that we can fill with the phantom actions we have unlocked, and save and load those sets at will. Even if one has to fully master a phantom job to allow the use of its actions in a shared loadout while playing other jobs, we need to have that little set of abilities we can use to customize and find cool combinations that we can experiment with. Even if the only job I mastered is phantom knight if I've been there for say, less than a day or a day, then being able to load up my favorite phantom knight actions to a shared loadout while I'm now leveling phantom bard would really address most of the glaring issues of the system. Much like in FF5 really.

Then just make freelancer able to have MORE shared slots for MORE shared actions, like double the amount to make up for the loss of a phantom job set. Essentially the ultimate phantom job all about combining what we have mastered.

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That is really what would make it like V. "Jobs" are from the first game, the "job system" is from III, and then V's deal isn't just the job system again it's the "ability system." Jobs are in, like, half the games in the series, including XIV, so if they're going to invoke the V imagery they should be making it about abilities than just jobs.

I think maybe their thinking is that you already have a job, so the phantom job is like your other set ability in V, but it doesn't feel that way to me and clearly to others as well.

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Originally Posted by Tsukino

That is really what would make it like V. "Jobs" are from the first game, the "job system" is from III, and then V's deal isn't just the job system again it's the "ability system." Jobs are in, like, half the games in the series, including XIV, so if they're going to invoke the V imagery they should be making it about abilities than just jobs.

I think maybe their thinking is that you already have a job, so the phantom job is like your other set ability in V, but it doesn't feel that way to me and clearly to others as well.

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It’s just grating in regards to how actions in one job are useless in the overworld while actions on another job are particularly strong anywhere. It’s night and day. Ranger has the worst of it because they’re more built for Forked Tower than anything else, and honestly they should’ve gotten a use in Overworld aside from just Crit/DH Buff every 2m. Having other jobs mixed together is how SE can win here.

Oh wow, I thought based on FF5 that when we finish levelling jobs we could pick a few skills on Freelancer. Disappointed to hear that would be a relatively useless job then.

I have 5 jobs mastered so far and it is disappointing we don't really use them at full potential since we need to keep levelling other jobs for the passive buff. Usually once you unlock the end skill you have to move on, so it will be quite some time before I can play jobs because I want to and not because I have to level things like Beserker as a healer lol.

I nearly shed a tear leaving behind Oracle - I love that job.

Presumably Freelancer will keep leveling up and gaining new abilities as they add more phantom jobs. It is quite uninteresting at level 10 but perhaps that will change if it has 5 buttons at level 24. That's going to be a very long wait, though.

Make it a job where you have 4 ability slots and 2 traits, and you can use any ability/trait from a mastered job. This would let you build your own class as you want.

Current Freelancer is near worthless. The heal is pointless and the treasure ability only tells you how many chests are spawned, not locations.

To be fair I’ve noticed that some jobs and the way the UI is designed are able to hold up to 5 actions. This means Freelancer should hold up to 3(which, to be fair, is pretty strong at all jobs mastered) and could lead to some pretty broken builds for either Gold Chaining or even Forked Tower.

I do want to push this thread to the front so we can at least discuss the different jobs and what they are lacking(and what could be compensated for with just a single action slot you can customize).

I’ll start with Knight.


Overall I think Knight is a good job early on since DPS suffer a lot, but its value is determined by what you’re getting hit by. Pray is only a self-regen, while their first skill is a 90% Mit. Their Lv 6 Skill though I’m still curious about because the way it’s worded makes it sound like an Invuln, but I don’t know what kind.

Generally you could slot any damaging action or buff in the free slot; and honestly? I don’t know who wouldn’t slot Predict since it’s one of the most busted abilities you can throw at the cost of 90% HP with Starfall or even just a big party heal with Blessing. Even comes with Stop on Cleansing, and free damage and healing on Judgment.

Not just freelancer being able to use other jobs abilities and their associated traits, but if its introduced in North Horn, it needs to have backwards compatibility with South Horn. If it doesn't, it makes South Horn even worse as there is even less reason to stay in there if its just restricted to North Horn aside from realistically Forked Tower Blood.

They should have allowed players to customize the jobs using a priority system, sort of like TT. Rank certain abilities as 3-star, 2-star and 1-star. Allow players to put on 1 of each from jobs they already mastered. Maybe Chemist Raise is 3-star. And maybe Monk Phantom Kick is 3-star. So, you can't have both the insta-raise and the damage-up ability at the same time.

That might balance things a bit and prevent players from having all the "best" abilities from various jobs on at the same time.

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Originally Posted by HyperiusUltima

and it's painstakingly disappointing that Freelancer of all Phantom Jobs is UTTERLY USELESS!

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That's not entirely true. It's a fairly decent choice for solo-ing.
Occult Resuscitation is great when paired with DPS jobs (with no reliable self-sustaining), and Occult Treasuresight, while it could have been better (like say, displaying chests on the map), can be handy for treasure hunting.

That said, I do agree that it needs (far) more than just those skills, especially considering the amount of phantom jobs we currently have (and will have in the future).

The problem with freelancer being able to mix and match others traits is that the phantom jobs are all so carefully constructed to be just above useless that mixing and matching thier traits won’t actually benefit anything because nothing synergises with each other, like you can’t use time mage haste on berserker because it’s rage isn’t actually auto attacks it’s fake casts disguised as auto attacks, you can’t use starfall to cause damage to yourself to proc battle bell because bell is designed to only proc from enemies hitting you, not you damaging yourself

So if freelancer was allowed to pull let’s say 3 abilities from any class then a boring as hell meta would form that basically amounts to “everyone play tank and stick prediction meteor/Ilunaki and rage on their bar for more damage

Freelancer being mix and match doesn’t make the system any more customisable because none of the skills actually synergise with each other

I think if they did it, it would likely come in the form of Phantom Mimic, which could be a future addition.
The way Mimic worked in 5(and 6), is it had the Mimic command, then could select any 4 skills. It would be a really powerful kind of job to have, and would likely need to have some downsides.

I think it will be once all PH will be released they probably are finding a way to make it somewhat balanced

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

The problem with freelancer being able to mix and match others traits is that the phantom jobs are all so carefully constructed to be just above useless that mixing and matching thier traits won’t actually benefit anything because nothing synergises with each other, like you can’t use time mage haste on berserker because it’s rage isn’t actually auto attacks it’s fake casts disguised as auto attacks, you can’t use starfall to cause damage to yourself to proc battle bell because bell is designed to only proc from enemies hitting you, not you damaging yourself

So if freelancer was allowed to pull let’s say 3 abilities from any class then a boring as hell meta would form that basically amounts to “everyone play tank and stick prediction meteor/Ilunaki and rage on their bar for more damage

Freelancer being mix and match doesn’t make the system any more customisable because none of the skills actually synergise with each other

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Which says something about the phantom design, right?

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Originally Posted by Valence

Then just make freelancer able to have MORE shared slots for MORE shared actions, like double the amount to make up for the loss of a phantom job set. Essentially the ultimate phantom job all about combining what we have mastered.

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Yep, sounds about right!

A Freelancer with double amount of customizability seems like the perfect reward for having everything mastered out.

Considering this is self-contained content (you can't run your supposed customized freelancer outside of OC), how bad for balance would it be if we could mix/match some abilities?