easy dungeon roles?

[Garlyle]

I'm legit surprised to see people calling Monk the easiest melee to learn, because honestly at low levels Monk has far more room for mastery or error than Lancer or Rogue by a massive margin. By the time you're at Bowl of Embers, you're balancing two combos with variable positioning, a DoT, and learning your key mechanic of maintaining stacks. And before you say "yeah, but you don't have to do all that", you technically don't have to do anything but spam Heavy Shot as an Archer. Except it's a horrific habit to get into and doing yourself no favours down the line.

What's Lancer doing to be played ideally by Bowl of Embers though? Heavy Thrust into near-infinite Impulse Drives. Or your 1 2 1 2 1 2. Really it won't matter much at all. If you want to pick up a melee DPS and haven't played one before I really do recommend Lancer; it's really simple, has the highest natural durability outside of tanks, and while it gets plenty complicated later, has very clearly the easiest low levels.

Archer or Thaumaturge are usually considered the easiest DPS to pick up and play. Archer gets freedom of movement and a relatively simple 'rotation' which is just "Are these effects up? If not I should refresh them, otherwise I spam Heavy Shot". Thaumaturge gets into a fairly familiar rhythm before long - burn MP, transpose, rebuild MP, transpose, burn MP...

If you're wondering how they're all going to look when you get into level 50, for DPS classes:
- Monk is focused on maintaining a constant, 'fluid' rotation. Going too long without attacking costs you a lot of power; letting specific effects drops off costs you a lot of power; and you need to minimize your movement and adapt to what the timers remaining for your effects are to determine what you need to do. Plus, lots of positioning - you lose, on average, about 25% of your damage just by being in the wrong place when you hit buttons.
- Dragoon has simple combos, but they're multi-step combos that you have to commit to, which results in a fairly lengthy rotation of abilities to keep effects up and slip in your 1-2-3 without letting them drop off. In addition, you're weaving in Jumps when it's safe to do so - which will lock or otherwise adjust your position, meaning you need to know what's coming and whether or not it's safe to go all out.
- Ninja has a very simple basic rotation that's entirely static. The difficulty comes from the fact you have an entire second rotation in Ninjutsu, which have to be memorized and executed every twenty seconds to maintain effects and use the appropriate tools for your situation.
- Bard maintains a personal buff and DoTs and then spams Heavy Shot. However, Bard's DoTs also get the ability to start resetting cooldowns and getting procs that enhance the Bard's other actions, and so Bard becomes a very reactive class to maximize.
- Black Mage has a fairly simple rotation as mentioned - blowing MP on huge damage and then going into cooldown mode. Though fairly simple and static to learn the pattern, there is some slight randomness to it (Thundercloud procs); most importantly, Black Mages have to master moving as absolutely little as possible.
- Summoners have to master both manually controlling their pets to maximize damage, and maintaining a constant cycle of duration-based damage effects to stay up. It's a lot of micromanagement and executing a general strategy efficiently, rather than reactive play (bard) or focused rotations (Ninja, Dragoon, Monk, Black Mage).

For Tank, it depends. Overpower is simultaneously the better aggro generation move over Flash and the more difficulty to use (It's a lot more finicky about positioning than Flash). Either way, learning to tank as either of them relies on learning aggro mechanics, learning to watch what your allies are doing just as much as your enemies, etc. etc. - and these skills are pretty much identical for both classes. (Also if you're having to Riot Blade to Flash for your aggro you are doing something wrong)

For healer, absolutely pick up Conjurer instead of waiting 'till 30 to crash course into it as Scholar. The dungeons do a very good job of slowly amping up the stress on healers; it takes a very concentrated effort to wipe in the first couple dungeons, and you'll have lots of practice before the first real tests at around level 30 in Brayflox's Longstop and The Navel. Be aware that healing is a role that really benefits from already knowing fights - after all, if you die because you didn't realise that you can't be standing in the water at point x in a boss fight, that's your entire team that's gonna wipe.