What Class Should You Start As Tips

[CryBloodwing]

This is just some beginning information for those who are trying to decide what class to start as. You can, of course, change classes when you reach level 15.

First, you will want to choose the role you want to play.

1. Tank
- Tanks are the role that tries to keep the attention of enemies on themselves. They have the most health in the game and are almost always the leader in dungeons. Tanks need to learn how to watch aggro(who an enemy is attacking and how much attention they have towards that person) and they also have a lot of mechanics for bosses.

Pros: Very fast queue times(less than 5 minutes), you choose how fast dungeon goes, often many commendations.
Cons: You must know a lot of mechanics and be good at understanding and holding aggro, you are the one who will be most likely to die.


2. DPS
-DPS have the job of simply doing damage. DPS classes have the highest number in the game. You can be a ranged DPS or a close combat DPS. You do have to know some mechanics and also know what is your best rotation. However, there are many rotation guides out there that you can copy.

Pros: Probably one of the easiest roles in the game since you have to know less mechanics and there are simply guides to copy. These classes also tend to have a wide variety of skills that look cool and have cool movement.
Cons: Extremely long queue times(20+ minutes), often so busy doing actions, you have less notice of AOEs and can easily get hit by them, can be somewhat boring if all you have to do is press buttons in the same order.

3. Healer
-Healers have the job of healing and buffing allies. While healers tend to have the less mechanics, they need more practice because a big part of healing is making choices. "What spell should I use?" "Who should I heal first," etc.

Pros: Fast queue times(1-6 minutes), more strategy based, you are likely far back and can watch the whole battlefield which leads to less likely to dodge AOEs, slower paced since more decision making, many commendations, you control who lives and dies.
Cons: You control who lives and dies. You are often blamed for stuff going wrong. Healing at certain levels can be hard. Often arguments if you should heal or do damage.




Next is about the specific classes you can start as.


Tank
Gladiator/Paladin: This class is a one hand and shield. The gladiator tends to be better at hit mitigation and can take more hits. It plays the most similar to tanks in games like WOW. You focus on your cooldowns and holding aggro.

Marauder/Warrior: This class uses a two hand weapon. The marauder tends to have more ability to regenerate HP and do damage. Typically this focuses on building stacks to use for damage or damage mitigation. It has stronger emnity abilities, but they hit less enemies and require positioning.

DPS
Arcanist/Summoner: This class is good for if you want to get a healer(Scholar) and dps(Summoner) job at the same time. This two jobs level together and have many similarities in abilities. This class involves doing damage over time while having a pet summoned for a purpose. The DPS has a tank and damage pets. The tank pet is useful for doing things solo. This class mostly focuses on keeping DOT up on enemies.

Archer/Bard: This class uses a bow to attack from range. While as an archery, your focus is on doing damage, your Bard job also has many support abilities. For example, increasing HP from healing, increase movement speed, etc. This job is good if you like to do Damage but also help support your party.

Lancer/Dragoon: This class uses a spear to attack. The dragoon tends to have slower attacks but can hit hard. It specializes in single target damage. It also has skills that allow you to attack from a distance by jumping or jumping to avoid damage. It does require some positioning so you don't accidentally jump backwards off an edge. Dragoon is good if you like to get close and do single target damage while having some cool looking abilities and spikey armor.

Pugilist/Monk: The pugilist uses fists to get up close and attack. It uses different stances to do more damage, take less damage, etc. It specializes in sustained single target damage. Using abilities changes your stances and certain abilities require certain stances. This is good if you like up close single target damage, and changing stances with abilities. The pugilist also requires positioning

Thaumaturge/Black Mage: This is a ranged dps using staves. The mage attacks using fire and gains stacks to do more damage, but also costs more mana. It can also switch to ice spells that regenerate mana. This class has powerful AOE spells and crowd control. Casting spells takes time though.

Healer

Conjurer/White Mage: This is the only class that starts as a healer. You have very little damage spells until later levels but high healing spells. Many of these are single target but heal more than the other healer classes. You also have a few spells that add healing over time. White Mage is often the easiest healing class. You often can not do healing and damage at the same time though. There are also not really any spells that buff allies.

Arcanist/Scholar: While Arcanist is a DPS class, at lvl 30 you can get Scholar. This class levels along with the Summoner class so you can get two classes with one. This class focuses on healing/support pets. You often have to control where your pet is, what they are doing, while applying DOT spells. This class is great for healing if you also want to do more DPS.

[tntpop]

Thank you for writing this!

[Astrus]

Thank you for taking the time to put this together.

Rogue/Ninja probably deserves an honorable mention somewhere in the guide. While not a starter class afaik you can pick it up as soon as you've unlocked the armory system.

The other additional jobs come along late enough not to factor into starter class considerations but I feel that if picked up after finishing the Hall of the Novice and getting the Brand-new Ring catching up to the MSQ level is reasonably fast for this one with the XP boosts offered by the ring and the armory bonus from whatever class you started as. Especially if you didn't start in Limsa and as such have easy access to unfinished local lowlevel quests to get you started.