Thanks for the reply. I'd been doing everything that you mentioned with the exception of the roulettes and hit 56 on Summoner sometime before I hit the Praetorium, which was why I slipped a gear, went bonkers, and leveled everything else. By the time I hit the end of 2.55, my lowest job was 52 (I don't count BLU or professions) so I wasn't expecting to have an issue with not keeping up with the story. I see that I'm going to have to continue to get xp from outside the MSQ, but I'm still wondering if it was like this before they did the xp squish at the beginning of Endwalker.