Choosing a job

[patseguin]

I'm new to FFXIV but I'm a long time player of games like WoW, Rift, Asheron's Call. I am playing an arcanist and I only just found out through some reading that you get jobs which gives you a new class. I'm assuming when I hit 30 I want to level an archer to 15 and then go summoner? In WoW I played a mage and had a warlock alt so I really enjoy caster dps. Is there some quest to go get at 30 or do I have to level another class to 15 first?

[Darkstride]

The job is an advancement of the base class, not a separate entity. Once you do your level 30 class quest, you will gain access to a job quest that rewards a job crystal. You simply equip the job crystal to swap your class into job-mode. For instance, Arcanist equips the Summoner crystal and upgrades to Summoner. Remove the crystal and you become an Arcanist again. The Arcanist is what continues to gain experience, level up, and learn abilities. The Summoner makes use of all of the Arcanist abilities and earns exclusive abilities by completing job quests available at every 5 levels. Jobs are a specialization of the base class so while they gain job-exclusive abilities, they become less flexible and lose access to a lot of cross class abilities.

At level 10, you can gain access to the Armoury which will allow you to unlock all other classes by visiting their respective guilds.

Each job quest does require you to have the base class at level 30 and a secondary class at 15.

[patseguin]

That makes sense. So a job like Summoner seems more suited to dungeons and groups and then Arcanist for soloing. Sound right?

[Darkstride]

That makes sense. So a job like Summoner seems more suited to dungeons and groups and then Arcanist for soloing. Sound right?

That would be the intended design, however you can often do just as well or better as the job, even solo.

[Alakazam]

Once you reach 30 level THM (I think) to 15 and get SMN. Stay SMN after that, no need to change back to Arcanist after. As SMN itself gets access to abilities than Arcanist doesn't. As I say, a Summoner is and Arcanist but and Arcanist isn't a Summoner, meaning that Summoner can use any and all Arcanist abilities but Arcanist can't use the abilities you learn from becoming a Summoner.

EDIT: Also you can go Scholar (healer role) with level 30 Arcanist and level 15 Conjurer.

[Niwashi]

So a job like Summoner seems more suited to dungeons and groups and then Arcanist for soloing. Sound right?

I think that may have been the intention at some point in development, that it would simply be a tradeoff of versatility for soloing or specialization for group play. But then, in addition to just trading cross-class skills for job skills, they also added some pretty significant stat boosts to the job stones. The result is that once you get the job unlocked, it's generally better for either one.

I have heard there are some classes that still get enough usefullness from those cross-class skills to make switching back to the base class during PvP worthwhile at times, but since I don't do PvP myself, I'm not too sure on that part, and don't remember which class(es) it was I heard that about.