What did your favorite job used to play like?

[Shougun]

2.0 PLD, 1 combo that got used. All the defensive cds.

Made it way easier to call fight mechanics out when you didn't have to focus on a rotation.

Oh and only one oGCD aoe damage spell, circle of scorn. Spammable aoe, flash, dealt no damage, and this was back when enmity still, sometimes, mattered so you'd occasionally have to cast it a few times in a row to ensure some 'i refuse to use quelling strikes' DD didn't randomly rip and tear one mob off out of no where while everyone else was doing aoe damage lol.

I don't really want the warrior spam of one skill (both magic and physical phase has a repeater move), so that part of the evolution of Paladin I don't really mid if it changes next expansion (I encourage it, if it makes sense/feels better), but in general Paladin's evolution has been fun to watch and I enjoy playing that job quite a bit.

[KRIPTICON]

BLM was my bff in 2.x and then 3.0 gave us Enochian. It's not nearly as difficult to keep up with now but when HW launched it was a pain. I switched to healing and haven't mained a DPS class since. I'm not complaining by any means. Enochian made the class more interesting to play and really raised the bar that separates a good BLM from a mediocre one. I just didn't want to deal with it.

[HeulGDarian]

mine is Stormblood summoner 4.1 onwards. To be fair its the fixed version of current summoner with a couple of differences:


1) egis existed, I remember how in eureka to put the most extreme scenario they not only could aggro stuff but also if i aggroed stuff accidentally ifrit would slap him once with his ability that also stunned mind you and save me, or in the overworld they could even sometimes deal with the add they aggroed themselves or in hoh with the mamooth that does an aoe that goes through many rooms if i wasnt carefull they could run to go fight them.

Not only that i used to do solo dragon maps as a level 70 with 270 ilvl gear mind you and no bahamut cause titan tanked for me , you also had to take care of them with sustain . not only that currently the best egi imo is titan egi cause he shields you he is perfect for progging but back then we had arguements about garuda and ifrit cause one had physical dmg buffing and garuda had magical , so what they did is fix one and break the other instead of having garuda and ifrit now we have titan and ifrit and garuda appearing only on dungeons. They had character from all this random stuff that happened not only that ghosting was easier to deal with back then cause of sic and order , now its just order, stripped from choices and worsened . They arent companions anymore now they are just toddlers. All that was asked was make garudas auto spells be instacast, it didnt have to be this way

2) The Aetherflow chain was the linchpin of summoner , with it removed everything works against each other. Now nothing makes sense egi abilities work against demi summoning instead of being the thing you depend on to help you survive long enough for the ultimate payout that is Demi bahamut, not only that instead of ruin 4 being a bonus now you dont want to use it during pheonix, youre now screwed every time the boss leaves when trance nears the cooldown . On aetherflow you didnt have that you could control your phases much better, it really felt like you were planning, like you had everything under your control , Control your pets to do you bidding , use their spells early so that when the time comes to use the one spell remaining theyd use it immediately, give no chance for the boss to avoid your spells , play safer at your weakest youre mobile enough to avoid what he throws at you, use devotion for dps or as extra mitigation , use garuda if you re heavy on magic dmg or ifrit if youre more on the physical. people called it like mastering a piano of a rotation that is 2 mins and they were right it was like music , All the choices dripping from the job it was so GOOD and if you managed to pull your music you were rewarded with the best job in this game, The AOE King , the Dps who for 20 seconds had the best dps and utility in the game , Smn with a bahamut out , but if you died if you died at any point you would lose everything you would start worse than if youd reset the fight. That kind of high risk high reward , is the reason i fell in love with smn.


All this though is now gone Bahamut is an egi compared to stormblood bahamut , pheonix is clunky as hell , job is literally a shadow of its former self. here lies stormblood smn may he return in the next expansion

[ItMe]

I think part of it is the fact that, with TP management, we would only do a handful of Overpowers on a pack

Oh my god...
I joined so late I didn't have much time to enjoy Stormblood before the next expac dropped so I totally forgot that TP was even a thing!
Though... having to manage enmity (instead of basically just deciding you want it like it works now) AND TP together sounds like a interesting balance.

Fairy back then used to not take up any space on your hotbar. You see when you have Eos/Selene out there's a hotbar above yours that has stuff like six/stay/whatever. Their abilities used to be on that as well, and you could use them while simultaneously casting. You didn't have to stop. It was perfection.

It was even better because back then, if you told a fairy to do something, they did it with no delay.

Oh, that sounds neat.
I wonder how accessing that pet hotbar worked on a controller.
I'm not gonna lie, as SCH now I never need it so I just have it turned off. If there still is a way to access it on controller I don't know how :P
Also, wait, back that up for a second... the fairies input delay was... added? It sounds like you're saying they added input delay, is that right? W...why would they do that?

I first played DRK in 4.4. There were things I liked about it, and things I didn't. I liked the speed you got from Blood Weapon, but hated pressing Dark Arts so often. To this day I find myself pressing my DA button before many of my skills, but it doesn't do anything now. I miss the old Darkside.

But even so, DRK is still fun IMO. I dislike the Inner...erm Delirium spam, but that's the only thing I "dislike".

Hahaha old habits die hard, huh.
Funny how the part you hated ended up going so deep into your muscle memory.

I don't really want the warrior spam of one skill (both magic and physical phase has a repeater move), so that part of the evolution of Paladin I don't really mid if it changes next expansion (I encourage it, if it makes sense/feels better), but in general Paladin's evolution has been fun to watch and I enjoy playing that job quite a bit.

I agree. I especially like the way it's magic works now.
It's hard to wait for 6.0 because I'm quite eager to see how it's gonna evolve next.

BLM was my bff in 2.x and then 3.0 gave us Enochian. It's not nearly as difficult to keep up with now but when HW launched it was a pain. I switched to healing and haven't mained a DPS class since. I'm not complaining by any means. Enochian made the class more interesting to play and really raised the bar that separates a good BLM from a mediocre one. I just didn't want to deal with it.

Huh, that's interesting. How did BLM play before Enochian? I'm having a hard time imagining it without it.
Also, what healers do you like?

mine is Stormblood summoner 4.1 onwards. To be fair its the fixed version of current summoner with a couple of differences:

Wow... I started as SMN and had no idea they had so much solo potential.
If you dig how high risk high reward SMN was do you play a lot of BLM now? Or is that class too different?
I'm honestly quite curious to see what they do with SMN next. That is my most anticipated 6.0 news.

[SenorPatty]

ARR summoner:

- Always use Aetherflow on cooldown. Gives you 3 stacks of Aetherflow. and some MP.
- Summon your egi. It's probably Garuda, the single target caster pet. Ifrit, the single target attacker pet wasn't too bad if he didn't have to move. Titan for solo so he tanks stuff for you.
- Use Raging Strikes (+20% damage), Spur, Rouse (pet buffs) and Enkindle (pet's mini ultimate ability).
- Set up DOTs. Bio II (35 potency on 30 seconds), Miasma (30 potency on 24 seconds, inflicts disease lowering target's movement and healing), Bio (40 potency on 18 seconds), Shadowflare (25 potency on 30 seconds, was casted on the ground and you could use it as much as you wanted to). If you were good you could keep up Thunder from black mage too (40 potency on 18 seconds).
- If Garuda is out put her on Steady and tell her to use Contagion to extend your powered up DOTs.
- Use Aetherflow on Fester (100 potency per Bio, Bio II and Miasma) or Bane (spreads your basic 3 DOTs to targets nearby and refresh their times). Energy Drain if you really needed MP, or if Aetherflow was coming out of cooldown and Fester was on cooldown.
- Control your pet. Set it to Obey on a target to attack it, set it to Steady before using their abilities while you cast yours so they didn't lose too much time.
- For area damage you used Bane, Miasma II and Tri Disaster (now called Tri Bind).
- Cast Ruin or Ruin II if you don't have to do anything else.

That's it... simplistic but I loved it, very active and at the same time, a very calm gameplay. Later they took away Thunder and allowed us to use Blizzard II from black mage so you used that for area damage.

The hilarious thing about this post is how you call ARR smn simplistic and calming...because that's exactly how it felt for me as well but the people around me were usually perplexed because for them, smn was just this overly complicated, button bloated job. I mean, they were probably right about that last part but to me, playing smn was like playing a piano at different tempo.

[RyuDragnier]

Started at 2.0 (ARR launch), favorite became HW DRK. Everything flowed so perfectly, everything worked in harmony. Dark Arts was used for a very few amount of moves, Parrying would allow the use of Reprisal (used to be exclusively DRK move), critting would allow Low Blow (another former DRK exclusive) to come off cooldown so we could spam it for damage, we had a DoT, a second combo that specialized in doing damage, a constant MP degen going with Darkside so we had to balance using MP and keeping it up constantly, Abyssal Drain was a GCD AoE you could spam for HP when you needed to (but it still sucked out a lot of MP), and cooldowns for days, you could always have 1-2 going at any time. Oh the glory days of DRK, how I miss you so...but then it because that travesty and trash that was SB DRK with the DA spam that was so unfun and annoying, all while SE removed all that made DRK great to give WAR and PLD moves they never needed to begin with. I'm glad DRK is in a better spot now thanks to the changes for ShB, but man do I miss HW DRK.

[Ririta]

Man, very calm is right. ARR SMN sounds super chill. Sounds like, in that respect, it's kind of in the place BLM is now?
SCH def sounds more compact. Where there just less abilities on your hotbar back then? Or are those just the main ones?

And yeah, if you have more to say and that pesky character limit is getting in your way feel free to make another post. I'd love to hear more.

Compact in terms of healing, I meant. Because we branched off a DPS class, most of our healing abilities came from the few job quests that we had between 30 and 50. It was only: Lustrate, Adloquium, Succor, Leeches (Esuna), Physick, Ressurrection... and that's it. Plus Eos' 3 cooldowns if we count her as us. Want to fill everybody's HP quickly? Hope you didn't spend Eos' healing increase and AoE HOT cooldowns... otherwise, you'll have a hard time. I believe every scholar who was left to heal alone in Titan Hard learned this quickly haha.

Maybe I was just messy, but because I didn't like using the bar I binded the fairies' abilities together with my own. So I had to use 2 bars and a half of stuff. In general, the first one I left the healing stuff, the second one, DPS stuff, with the same layout as summoner plus Embrace and Lustrate. Then on the third, pet stuff: summon, their cooldowns and Swiftcast to get them quickly. One silly thing that I loved was how long the summon cast was. I think it was 8 seconds? It's stupid, but I liked the "investment" that was getting your pet out... while, of course, you get the cute orbs around you.

Summoner was chill but by chill, I mean ultra chill. Maybe even too much? Unlike today's black mage, you didn't care about anything... boss is no longer targettable? No problem, you're not in a hurry. And you didn't have to keep any job mechanic up so... there's no rush to do anything. Just refresh your DOTs, cast your Ruins, use your stacks. Maybe I'm exaggerating because I played it so much that I got used to all the timings and such, but in general, you never really felt punished by anything. Not even death really punished you... get raised, just pop up an Aetherflow, do an Energy Drain or two to get MP, summon your pet and you're back in action.

As for little extras that didn't super make the job, but was fun to have:

Eye for an Eye on the tank, to reduce the physical damage they took by roughly 10%.
Ressurrect people. Still around, but it was more important because white mages just couldn't spare too much MP.
Addle was Supervirus. Extremely valuable when used by summoner and scholar because it lowered 15% INT and STR (other classes only lowered STR). And was it good... so good that they nerfed it in 2.1 so when you put it on an enemy, nobody could put it again for 60 seconds. People coordinated those Virus so the tank could survive punishing mechanics such as Twintania's Death Sentence, a tank buster that was absurdly strong at the time.

Due to the nature of summoner DPS, they were absurdly strong in the first raid we got, the first Coil. First boss splits itself in two? Keep your DOTs on both of them! Third boss is a series of enemies? Keep your stuff on all of them. Even the ones that reflected damage back at you! Twintania summons a bunch of things? DOT. Them. Up. Summoner (and scholar, by extension) was just... ridiculous with their DOTs. Every time you could DOT more than one thing, your DPS rose exponentially. They trivialized even a wipe mechanic - on Coil's last boss (Twintania), occasionaly she would summon a Dreadknight thing that slowly marched on the direction of a marked player to kill them. The common strat was naturally to stun him and... summoner/scholar to do their rotation on them. Because of the disease aspect of the Miasma, it became be so slow that as long as people stayed somewhat away from the middle, they wouldn't die.

A similar thing happened in Turn 2 of Second Coil, where you had face & petrify a slow moving add so they don't one shot people, and then a marked person runs behind the petrified add so they didn't petrify everybody. I imagine that the idea was to petrify the add when possible and then the raid adjusted accordingly. But then people discovered that you just make the summoner aggro the add, position it in line with the boss and completely stop it with Miasma. So nobody has to move... trivializing the mechanic.

One last thing that I forgot to mention... summoner and scholar pets acted like characters of their own.They could get hit by mechanics, you had to put them out of harm's way... or abuse this fact by using them to do the mechanic for you hahaha. In Twintania there was a mechanic where you had to stack to soak a fireball that did a lot of damage. But you couldn't stack too many people or else another mechanic became stronger. So what people did? Stack pets on off tank. Whoever gets the marker should stack with the pets. They took reduced damage from AoE, so it was easier to cheese the mechanic this way.

The reduced damage also allowed us to completely trivialize Ramuh extreme. His main mechanic tankbuster was an area effect damage on the tank... players thought, if the tank was Titan egi? Suddenly, the mechanic was much easier to deal with! And of course, the healers healed the tank... that was your chicken nugget. It was funny and fun, but sadly got nerfed.

I loved how the pets could be both an asset and a hidrance.

The hilarious thing about this post is how you call ARR smn simplistic and calming...because that's exactly how it felt for me as well but the people around me were usually perplexed because for them, smn was just this overly complicated, button bloated job. I mean, they were probably right about that last part but to me, playing smn was like playing a piano at different tempo.

Yeah, it's kinda weird. It's probably because when using actions we had massive freedom compared to other jobs that were limited by combos and such.

[Vespar]

WHM. It didnt used to have this pointless lily system. I wish they'd rework it or remove it.
Instead of giving us 3 lilies spaced out over 30seconds of in-combat time only, just give us the abilities that are tied to the timer but put them on a charge based cooldown similar to True North/En avant/etc. And then have that charge restore itself over time just like the rest. It's essentially the same idea just in a different way.

The lily system bugs me to no end... Its a pointless thing when charged based actions exist and are much easier and simpler in design. They would suffice just as well. I'd rather have the actions that use a lily be available at the start of the battle rather than 30secs in. By then half the fight is done in the time it takes me to generate a lily (ie. charge). By the time I have a lily available for use, Ive forgotten it even exists and have moved on to another action instead (ie, cure2 or Medica2 in place of afflatus Solace/Rapture). Even though it cost me MP, atleast I could use it when I need/want to, instead of forgetting its there because I have to "wait" for it.

[HeulGDarian]

Wow... I started as SMN and had no idea they had so much solo potential.
If you dig how high risk high reward SMN was do you play a lot of BLM now? Or is that class too different?
I'm honestly quite curious to see what they do with SMN next. That is my most anticipated 6.0 news.

its a different flavour of risk reward , one that requires positioning rather than planning , it has sustain dmg instead of burst phases. an uncomplicated rotation instead of a complicated one, and even a different kind of mobility to compliment an always cast mentality .im pretty sure i could get good and it would be fun to play blm but im dedicated to smn because its my first job but also cause the lore of summoning or to be more specific arcanima is also extremely good , coincidentaly i also liked sch and it was also ruined.

[Vespar]

I like SMN as it is now. The only change I think it needs is to its base class of Arcanist for new players. Arcanists first pet is a bit annoying at level 1-15 because you start with Emerald Carby and that has no single target functionality anymore, its base attacks are aoes so they can easily get you into sticky situations at low level that you may not be ready for. If anything they should just swap Emerald and Topaz now so you have a single target pet to start with.

Otherwise I love the rotation that they've come up with for summoner's many pets. It works, and really only needs minor tweaks in my opinion. I love it so much it quickly became my new main.