Returning Player from heavensward.

[Wigett]

I have re-sub, Mainly played bard which has had a lot of changes recently. I finally got all my bars set and have been working on re-mastering the new bard, ...

ALso had to spend a whole night going thru all the new added story quests added since the end of HW. some of them were pretty cool. anyway..

I wanted to give the new Sam a try, how is the learning curve, from some of the videos I have seen. its pretty set. mostly.. seems u have a single target build up and an AOE one. this is one video I was looking at, .. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gvOQLW8j45o

just wanted to know how easy is it to level this class. starting at 50 I think, would enjoy working on this as a alt. to playing ranged all the time...

I just got into the first few story quests of the new stormblood, new area so far looks nice..

any tips things I don't need to do or need to focus on in the new area?

thanks again.

[ManuelBravo]

hmmm depending on your server queue times could be a problem, the good news is you can fate grind while waiting with your chocobo out, if you follow the story line and do SQ you can get min one job to 70 right away. Make sure you do hunts once your in new area and save your your marks ^^.

[Keydah]

hmmm depending on your server queue times could be a problem

Server means nothing for queue times. They've always been datacenter wide.

[Okamimaru]

It took me like 3 days to go from 50 to 60 on Sam... then another week to hit 70..... of course real life kept getting in the way so figure a level and a half a day with casual play.... Sam is easy to play but hard to master...

[LunaFaye]

to be honest, leveling from 50 - 60 on SAM isn't that bad, especially since you have already a lvl 60 bard. You could run a couple of hours/days palace of the dead, and do your daily roulette's and you'll be 60 in no time. Then if you enjoyed that job, continue on with the SB story line and side quests (if that's what you like to do) on your sam instead of your brd.

I wouldn't recommend leveling it on an alt (complete new character instead of just "new" job) because then you would have to get another job to level 50 before you would be able to pick up the sam again, since new characters start from scratch, and while it isn't big of a deal either, it would delay you quite a bit instead of just switching that job on the same previous character.

However, as others have stated, while SAM can be played by even the less experienced players, due to the fact that they come with high end dmg, just pressing a couple of buttons (procs) here and there would be enough for the early on levels, even the non raid dungeons/trials, but I as usual recommend that if you want to play a job, you should at least try to master it, or come close to that. And here's were the fun begins, SAM is not easy to play, despite that some people might want to tell you that it is, this are the people that probably just click here and there. At the beginning it takes a lot of understanding of the skills itself, as well as the fights, to deal as much dmg as possible without having lots of party/team abilities. If you can bring yourself practicing and actually studying the job itself, you might find it very fun. But if you're just planning on it playing it here and there, and don't care about performance itself, well good luck because you might end up bored/overwhelmed or kicked from a lot of higher level parties for under performing later on.

Have to keep in mind that SAM and RDM are the most played jobs at the moment, because they are new, that means that lots of people (even the ones without any knowledge) will look at you and your performance very closely, and might not tolerate hiccups here and there, that wouldn't be an issue if you would have played a other dps job. Due to the sheer amount of players playing these jobs, only the best of the best, gets to enjoy more difficult content. And rightfully tho, because as we were looking for 1 more player to fill our static, I kid you not, we had at least 250 sam's apply but maybe only 25 out of them were actually useful, we still went with taking the DRG but that's a whole different discussion lol. Just like to show you that the performance does matter, and before you start getting all the way to 60/70, that you are well aware or get an insight of the effort you will need, if planning on playing SAM.

[Maero]

I cannot really add anything that was already said.
Sam is fairly simple rotation wise, honestly because queue times Palace of the Dead to level from 50-60 is most likely the quickest route with Beast Tribes and Fates on the side+ Quests