Strong duo synergies?

[Blaiseblah]

Hey everyone. My bro and I just started playing the game and we're enjoying it so far. We'd like to try to find a strong duo to start out with if somebody can help us.

We're both veteran gamers so we know you probably can't go wrong with a tank/healer or a dps/healer but we were wondering if there were two classes that went really well with one another. We're open to playing almost any class combination but the SCH has caught my eye and Monk, Warrior, Ninja and Bard has caught my brother's eye. PvP is also something we may try in the future(do people even do that in this game?) so we're open to suggestions in that department too.

On a related note, is there a fair amount of fun, challenging content for a duo to do in the game? We're kinda weird in the sense that if a game gets too faceroll we tend to get bored and leave. How challenging do 5 man dungeons get?

Thanks for your time.

[Urthdigger]

Honestly, tank and healer is probably the biggest power combo, but even with just one of those you'll bypass one of the bigger leveling hurdles: long queues for DPS to enter dungeons.

There are honestly only a couple synergies, as most classes work on their own and the buffs they offer are useful to all. However, ninja makes a great assistant to a tank, both due to Goad for TP recovery (more so for marauder/warriors, who may spam overpower to keep hate), and for the slashing damage debuff (Marauder/warrior may apply this as well, but that takes time they could spend on hate generating abilities.

The other synergy is bard with its songs. Foe Requiem basically only helps black mages, and works well with them. Mage's Ballad is useful to both gladiator/paladins (who use MP for flash and have an MP recovery combo that takes valuable time that could be spent gaining enmity. Also for marauder/warriors, who can cross-class flash) and conjurer/white mages (Who are the only casting job without a reliable MP recovery mechanic, only capable of 1000 MP a minute)

As for duo content, most content is aimed at either 4-man or 8-man instanced content. Open world content tends to be easier for the most part, if only because anyone can hop in and help out. That said, the later 4-man dungeons like Sastasha Hard and Temple of Qarn Hard have some mechanics that trip people up, and the Binding Coil of Bahamut is an 8-man dungeon that manages to be quite difficult.

[GizmoDraeco]

I agree. The only things about tank and healers are that with tanks you cant focus on just one thing. You have to focus on all the players and monsters all at once. It can get frustrating. And with Healers, you aren't attacking anything. Mostly healing. You do attack, but that is not your first priority.

With later dungeons, they can get very hard. Even with everyone at level 50 with 110 gear, you can still wipe if someone isn't paying attention or if a little mistake is made.

[Garlyle]

And with Healers, you aren't attacking anything. Mostly healing. You do attack, but that is not your first priority.

Depends on the content. The difference between a decent healer and a great healer in a lot of content is whether the healer knows things well enough to swap in and out of doing DPS between the times when they actually need to be healing.

Anyway, yeah. The overworld content is easy to solo, nevermind duo. So long as your role doesn't overlap (all 4-man content is One Tank, One Healer, Two DPS; almost all 8-man content expects those numbers doubled but isn't until level 50) you'll be able to benefit from both great synergy in and out of dungeons and have great queue times. There's plenty of challenging content later on down the road for you to get psyched up for though.

[Qaaliaa]

This isn't like WoW in the sense that you can zone into older content/raids and try and duo it (a favorite activity of a friend and I as a Disc Priest and Shaman). You need a full group for dungeons and instances and there isn't any way around it.

That being said, I love SCH! Give it a go! I also got my WHM to 50 and did the relic, but I just prefer SCH. As for your brother, all those classes are fun, with MNK probably being the most challenging due to positioning during attacks.

The game does get more challenging as you progress, no doubt; check out some of the raid streams and the vids on YouTube to get a sense of the content. All the classes you mentioned playing will find a spot in a raid if you play them well. Good luck!

[Nyalia]

As others said, there aren't really that many super combos in this game, and most of the story missions and class quests require you to solo them (as well as the Duty Finder Low-Level Roulette, which gives a massive exp bonus once a day but must be queued for solo), but it's nice knowing that you'll always have someone with you on dungeons/raids/trials/etc. For those, a few useful combos:

• Any Tank + Any Healer: Super short queue times when queuing together! Also, the tank knows they can trust the healer to be good, and the healer can trust the tank to know how much to pull safely. It's really nice when doing speed runs and such. The tank sets the pace for the dungeon, and if the healer can keep up, the party won't wipe regardless of how bad your DPS is. No tank/healer combo is really better than any other, imo.
• WHM + SMN/SCH: Well, you can't run 4-person dungeons together as WHM+SCH, but at endgame when doing 8-person content, it's really nice to have both WHM and SCH in the party. WHM is better at raw healing power and SCH is better at preventative shields. Plus, with both, you get the better Stoneskin and Protect buffs from WHM, and the SCH buffs (Galvanized + fairy buffs) too. The SCH will start out as a DPS class (ACN), and after level 30, for 4-person content, the SCH can run as SMN. SCH and SMN share experience points since they're the same class (no other class in the game does this, sadly, and they're not continuing the class system with the expansion jobs =\). Also, SMN and SCH will share the same non-mainhand gear until level 50, so you aren't really gimping yourself by switching between the two.
• NIN + WAR: Ninjas have a move that increases TP regen. WARs can spam their AoE threat generator much easier with the buff.
• BRD + WHM: Bards have the mana song, which really helps WHMs, especially in current endgame content.
• BRD + BLM/SMN: Bards have a song that increases BLM (EDIT: and SMN) damage. But, this is a double-DPS pair, which is very bad for queue times right now.
• DRG + WAR: One of the biggest advantages of PLD compared to WAR is that PLDs have an on-GCD stun, whereas WARs have theirs off-GCD with a cooldown. DRGs, with two short cool-down stuns, have the most stunning ability of any DPS class (I think?). MNK and NIN get their stuns late, only get one, and BLM/SMN/BRD can't stun at all (though BRD can silence). So, if you coordinate, you can stun pretty much anything you need to between the two of you. Also, WARs are the best at AoE threat control, and DRGs are the best melee AoE DPS class (though they don't get their AoE skills until really late).
• MNK + any Tank: MNKs have the highest single target DPS of any DPS class in the game right now, but most of their skills require them to be on the target's flank or back. You can't achieve these positionals when soloing or when duoing open-world content if you're the one holding aggro, so it's really nice to have a tank to get hit for you so you can kill everything. In 4/8 person content, it's nice to always know your tank because random PUG tanks sometimes don't know how to keep an enemy still while dodging and will turn the enemy every which way causing the MNK to miss positionals.
• WHM + WHM: Okay, not a great duo pair for most things, but it's really fun in open-world content to have multiple WHMs. WHMs have a strong point-blank AoE attack (Holy) that they can spam while healing themselves. My wife and I find that duo-WHM is amazing for spiritbonding (killing relatively weak enemies over and over while wearing garbage gear so you can turn that gear into materia). BLMs cast too slow, and melee classes run out of TP too fast when spamming AoEs (and can't heal).

I don't recommend both of you maining DPS classes if you plan to queue for dungeons together a lot. Solo DPS queue times are bad. Dual DPS queue times are terrible.

SCH is cool because it's basically two classes in one since you can run SMN when you want to DPS. Unfortunately, I didn't wind up enjoying either SCH or SMN despite really wanting to, so I kinda ditched them for WHM and BLM (I main PLD for tanking, WHM for healing, and BLM for DPS - I like switching up what role I'm doing).

The only real downside to SCH is that when you run low-level dungeons as SCH, you can't use any healing skills except the basic heal and the fairy, which only has a basic heal, an AoE heal over time, and a bunch of small buffs. This is especially annoying in the guildhest (4-person training mission) that teaches you about curing debuffs, since you don't learn your debuff-curing spell until level 40 and your level is synced down to 26 for the guildhest. The NPC keeps yelling at you to use Esuna... which is a CNJ/WHM spell that you can't cross-class :P (the mission pre-dates the SCH class)

The upside to SCH is that when you run low-level dungeons as SCH, you usually can just let your fairy do all the healing, sit there in Cleric Stance (cross-class skill from CNJ, switches your Mind (healing) and Int (DPS) stats while further increasing your damage and reducing your healing), and DPS the whole dungeon as if you were a third DPS. Makes for fast runs!

But, I don't really know of any class besides WHM that SCH combos really well with. I don't think any BRD song benefits SCH since SCH doesn't need mana (Aetherflow restores 20% of their MP every 60 seconds and is learned at level 6) and I don't think their DPS spells are elemental. (EDIT: As per the below comment, BRDs do boost the damage of DPSing SCHs. Since SCH's primary source of DPS is DoTs and they have passive healing, they can definitely DPS while healing, which is much harder for WHMS.) They don't use TP, so there's no special combo with NIN... I mean, the one semi-sorta-combo is with WAR, since WARs don't have a silence (PLDs do) and Selene (one of the faeries) can silence, but that's really not very relevant. But, there's a strong lore connection between MRD and SCH (the SCH class quests are even given in the MRD guild), so there's that, I guess?


Oh, and for PvP, people do run Frontlines (zone control) a fair amount. Dunno what duo combos are especially good there though. It's 72-person content (24 per side, 3 sides) and you can switch classes all you want in the respawn area. If you plan to do Frontlines together though, when you get to the point in the story where you can choose a Grand Company, be sure to both pick the same one. You can only do Frontlines with people who are in the same Grand Company as you, since that's what determines the sides.

[sarehptar]

Ditto to pretty much all of the above--if you want to roll a healer, bard will be your DPS best friend--scholar doesn't rely on mana song as much, but the bard can switch between ballad and requiem to boost scholar's mana and DPS damage in the same fight. (Foe's Requiem doesn't just boost elemental attacks, so it can and should be used for summoners/DPSing scholars.)

Although I don't recommend picking two DPS classes at once, I'm surprised bard and dragoon got overlooked as a pair. Dragoons can buff bard damage which helps to mitigate the negative effect of TP song, they can handle the stuns that bards can't, and provide strong single target DPS as well as AOEs in desperate situations. Typically the easiest four-man runs I get are bard/dragoon DPS combos. Dragoon and bard are also both pretty good classes for PvP.

Ultimately, since you can be any class you want at pretty much any time in this game, you can basically pick whatever you want now and then just change your minds later if you feel like it's too slow leveling or the class/job is boring. Try a little bit of everything and find the roles you like best.

[Wysteria]

I think it depends on what content you're aiming for.
if we're talking about leveling up, I'd suggest to go as WAR-SCH since both classes can deal quite high damage even they're not DPS role (WAR has higher dps compare to PLD while SCH can applies DoTs on multi target at once)
with Tank-healer duo, it'd be really really easy to get queue into dungeons and you can also trust your hp to your healer since it's not "somebody" getting queued up with you. even if things go bad, you can just say hey I think we better try this so we won't die and learn to do your job properly by listening to others. (like when to pop defensive skills/when you want your healer to deal additional damage to help the dps)

[Nyalia]

(Foe's Requiem doesn't just boost elemental attacks, so it can and should be used for summoners/DPSing scholars.)

Thank you so much for posting that link! The English localization team for this game is so bad at non-dialog, it's really sad So, I'll assume it's a translation error, because there's been tons of others in tooltips, puzzle clues, quest dialog, and other places.

Although I don't recommend picking two DPS classes at once, I'm surprised bard and dragoon got overlooked as a pair. Dragoons can buff bard damage which helps to mitigate the negative effect of TP song, they can handle the stuns that bards can't, and provide strong single target DPS as well as AOEs in desperate situations. Typically the easiest four-man runs I get are bard/dragoon DPS combos. Dragoon and bard are also both pretty good classes for PvP.

I logged in to add this to my post when I saw that you beat me to it Definitely agree, and I'm guessing that DRG will boost Machinist damage in the expansion as well (they reduce a target's piercing resistance).

On that note, NIN + PLD have a similar combo. NIN and WAR can both reduce slashing resistance by 10% (the debuffs don't stack), and that benefits NIN, WAR, and PLD. Though, the NIN move that restores TP (Goad) only helps PLD when PLD is stunlocking a target (their only really TP-intensive move).

PLD + WAR can also be nice in 8-person dual-tank content, both for the slashing debuff and for the other tank debuffs (-10% damage dealt from WAR, -10% STR from PLD), but that's not terribly much content.

MNKs can reduce blunt resistance similarly to DRG and NIN/WAR, but that only benefits MNKs right now. Well, and possibly the SMN melee pets (Ifrit and Titan), but no one ever uses those (Garuda is just so much better, and deals magic damage). I guess it also benefits caster melee auto-attacks for those scholars who want to slap things with their books, but that really doesn't count. :P

Ultimately, since you can be any class you want at pretty much any time in this game, you can basically pick whatever you want now and then just change your minds later if you feel like it's too slow leveling or the class/job is boring. Try a little bit of everything and find the roles you like best.

Totally agreed!

[Meshico]

As far as healer/tank Combos.

I prefer to have a Warrior/White Mage combo, since white mages massive AoE heals can be better handled by warriors, and not to mention WHM's Stoneskin is based of off HP, and no one has higher HP than warrior.

Paladin/Scholar seem's to me to be a great combo, since SCH's spells are about mitigating some damage, but not all, and PLD is all about defense. Just my two cents.

*** DISCLAIMER This is my point of view, and I'm sure some people out there can point out counters to what I have stated, but this is my opinion and it's based off my experience ***

-Tari