Leveling jobs simultaneously

[Belgianbeer]

I'm a returning player (for the trillionth time) and used to pretty much main healers. For this run I'd like to broaden my horizon and not stick to one role , but level all roles simultaneously.

Because the ARR tanks and healers do not interest me at this time, I am planning to lvl a monk to 60 (I assume I'll be 60 before reaching Heavensward) and then pick up dancer as dps and gunblade as tank. Once I'm at HW I'll add Astro as healer.

At that point I would like to lvl all of them at the same pace, but am unsure how to best approach this and how Gil/time/patience intensive that is.

Any tips to make the xp/gear grind bearable or just your opinion why you would or wouldn't do what I'm planning are highly appreciated.

[Rongway]

Many people level two ore more jobs evenly. I think it might be more common to level one first, but nothing says you can't keep every job within 1 level of each other once unlocked (and HW jobs getcaught up) if you really wanted to. A few things worth considering:

• Healers and tanks don't have 20min waits for dungeon queues, so it's easy to level them through dungeons.
• DDs will have to wait about 20min for most dungeon queues.
• Doing the highest available dungeon will take 3~4 runs per level.
• Doing the highest available dungeon, your highest job will take more runs per level because it doesn't get the armoury bonus.
• If you level your DDs through dungeons, you'll need to fill the queue time with other activities. Be careful about starting cutscenes or battles while on a different job than the one you queued on; you don't want the queue to pop and drop you due to not being able to change back to the right job in time.
• Roulettes are probably better spent on DDs because more xp to make up for the longer wait time.

Gear is pretty easy. If you're running lots of dungeons on multiple jobs, you'll probably be able to greed a good amount of the gear you need to level the other jobs, and if you're keeping them within a few levels of each other, you won't have to hoard entire sets for months while they wait to be leveled. Use poetics for gearing too. Regular tomestone gear for each cap level (Lv_0) is the same iLv as the the Lv_1 leveling dungeon gear. Augmented tomestone gear for each cap level ties the Lv_3 leveling dungeon gear, so you won't need to replace it until at least Lv_5. However, you can get away with wearing augmented tomestone gear all the way to the next cap level. No one will notice unless you're a tank (in which case the healer will notice because you will be squishy), but you can (should) mitigate that with gear you have collected along the way.

The biggest issue with leveling multiple jobs at once--and the importance of this will vary by your own opinion--is that most content is MSQ locked. So the longer you take to reach higher levels with any one job, the more content restrictions you have to play with, for a longer time.

[ItMe]

Make sure you do roulettes after hitting 50 to help keep poetics flowing in and start buying augmented raid gear from each expansions end zone ahead of time (so you don't cap on poetics).
You get the augmented shire gear at 60 and it'll last you to 65.
Augmented scaevan stuff at 70 and you'll probably start replacing it around 75.
Takes a lot of stress off of gearing up multiple jobs.

[Belgianbeer]

Thanks for the extensive response!

You weren't kidding about the DD queue times. Those are serious progression killers.
I was thinking of speeding up the leveling process so I can unlock gunbreaker faster and step away from DD's. I realized that the role, at least at this level of content, was not meant for me.

Do you think it's worth the effort to go into the palace of the dead to grind from 50 to 60? Or am I better of following the MSQ's?

At this point I question the requirements for unlocking the newer jobs. Growing with your favourite job is part of the fun and just jumping in at 50 or 60 seems strange. It was dumb of me to set my sights on expansion jobs early on, it just makes my current job seem like a lesser substitute.

[Rongway]

Do you think it's worth the effort to go into the palace of the dead to grind from 50 to 60? Or am I better of following the MSQ's?

I think it depends on the balance between your desire to unlock GNB and your desire to make it through the MSQ "growing with" the job. PotD will definitely get you to GNB faster, but then you'll be overleveled for the MSQ and probably switching to a lower job for the quests anyway so you don't feel like the quest xp will get wasted.

At this point I question the requirements for unlocking the newer jobs. Growing with your favourite job is part of the fun and just jumping in at 50 or 60 seems strange. It was dumb of me to set my sights on expansion jobs early on, it just makes my current job seem like a lesser substitute.

This is a side effect of them introducing jobs at each expansion. Their intent was that people who were already playing could unlock the new jobs and continue the story ASAP, putting them just 10 levels behind the current MSQ instead of much lower. Since continuing players have already done all that leveling (some of us on all jobs), that makes sense at the time of expansion launch, but the reasoning becomes much less relevant by the next expansion launch.

Personally, I think it'd be okay if at each expansion all the jobs from previous expansions got an additional optional unlock quest at Lv30, leaving the original unlock quests in place for those who want to unlock them starting at their original levels but allowing new players to unlock them earlier. Then only the newest jobs would be at the quick-catch-up level. Alas, to my knowledge the devs have no plans for such a change.