Please explain this job thing :)

[_Babble_]

Good morning!

I just bought the game over the weekend and so far I am having a really great time! Eorzea is beautiful and I love the character customization! I was reading here on the forums about scholars and white mages which confused me a great deal After a little research, however, I now see there is an additional choice of a job.

So, I see that when your main class is 30 and subclass is 15, you can select a job. My first quest is, should you select a job that early? Or should I level to max in my class/subclass and then select my job? Once you have selected a job, do you level it like you did your class choice?

Thanks in advance!

[ChameleonMS]

The job becomes available at level 30. There are job specific skills added from that point onward. Failure to get those job skills will significantly limit your ability to play the role effectively.
E.g. White Mage skills
Regen, Holy, Benediction, Asylum, Assize and Tetragrammaton are all powerful heal spells which are just not available if you do not take up the Job and just stick with the class.

[Chione]

You will want to do the quest to get your job stone as soon as you are able. Skills that you will be expected to have post 30 can only be aquired through the job's story line quests. Regen and Holy, for example, are learned via the white mage job quests and not accessible by the conjurer class.

Some folk opt to make sure they have all their cross class abilities for the role they want to play - such as Thaumaturge's swiftcast for White Mage - before focusing on the job. This is a good thing that will save you the trouble of doing it later. But once you've reached level 30 in the class you're sure you want to make a career of, it's best to get that job unlocked right away. It'll only help.

Edit: Beat by a minute! The rest of the post stands still.

[Naria]

You should unlock the job for your class as soon as you hit 30. By the time the Main Scenario Quest takes you to Brayflox's Longstop (dungeon) at around 32 you will be expected to have it unlocked. When you unlock a job you receive a job crystal for that job which is equipped in the lowest right slot on your character. A job is basically an overlay on it's base class, giving you new abilities and stats, while still allowing you access to the old ones. For example as a White Mage you would still have all of conjurer's abilities (Cure, Protect, Medica etc) but the crystal will also let to access whm's (Regen, Benediction, Holy etc). Job and classes share exp so when you unlock whm at 30 and equip it to your cnj, you will be a 30 whm.

Heavensward jobs (Astrologian, Dark Knight and Machinist) work a bit differently as they start 30 and have no base class, but you won't need to worry about them until you get to Heavensward.

Edit:
Since you mentioned Scholar, Arcanist is the only class in the game with two jobs for it: Scholar (Healer) and Summoner (DPS). It was an experiment by the dev team for ARR, but they seem to be moving away from it now so it is unlikely that any other class will get a second job.

[Niwashi]

A job can be considered essentially a specialization of the class. A White Mage, for instance, is still a Conjurer, and the experience you earn as White Mage will advance your Conjurer class and unlock Conjurer skills. (This is why it's not helpful to max out CNJ first, because you'll end up doing that anyway while playing WHM.) But your job quests will also unlock additional skills that are only available with the job. So while you technically could advance CNJ to 50 or 60 by playing either CNJ or WHM, you're better off doing it as WHM. The same goes for any of the other Realm Reborn jobs and their associated classes. (As Naria mentioned, the new jobs introduced with Heavensward work a little differently, and don't have base classes. They're more like a combination of class and job rolled into one.)

[Canadane]

The way I like to simplify it is, a job is literally just an item you equip. You want it on for all the same reasons you don't want to leave another gear slot empty.

[Frizze]

One other thing to add, just like you can change classes by switching your equipment, you can change jobs too. Once you get access to them, there are very few reasons not to have a job stone equipped on your DoM/W classes. About the only time you see people without them are people who somehow missed the fact that they exist, or in some specific cases people will go without for PvP. The only downside to a job crystal is that it restricts your cross-class skills a little versus the base class, but this is made up for by the more specialized skills related to your class that the job crystal gives you access to instead.

[_Babble_]

Thanks everyone for the advice!

[_Babble_]

One more question on this topic: is it beneficial or maybe even necessary to continue to level my subclass after I hit 15 and choose a job?

[Mimilu]

One more question on this topic: is it beneficial or maybe even necessary to continue to level my subclass after I hit 15 and choose a job?

It's necessary. You have to get the main class to 30 and it's subclass to 15 in order to unlock its job.

For example: For a Conjurer to become a White Mage, it has to be at least level 30 and has to have Arcanist at least level 15.
For Arcanist, who has two jobs, you need it at 30 and either Conjurer (for Scholar) or Thaumaturge (for Summoner) at 15. If you have both Conjurer and Thaumaturge at 15, you can unlock both Scholar and Summoner.

The only jobs that don't follow this rule are the Heavensward jobs (Astrologian, Machinist, and Dark Knight), which require you to beat A Realm Reborn's main story to even get to the area you can unlock them in.

Edit:
Oops, miss read the question. >w>()
I would say yes, you'll get some important Cross-Class abilities you can use.

Using Conjurer as an example, you can get Cross-Class abilities from Arcanist (your subclass) and Thaumaturge. You'll want to get Arcanist to at least level 34 to get the ability Eye for an eye and you'll want to get Thaumaturge to 26 to get Swiftcast.