What jobs do you consider well designed?

[Nizzi]

With topics of job design, homogenization, simplification, and more happening more frequently, I thought it might raise an interesting question as for what you personally consider well designed jobs in XIV. Keep in mind, this doesn't have to do anything with you liking a job or finding it fun, as something can be well designed and not fun to you, and also similarly poorly designed but still fun for you.

For me personally, I consider Black Mage, Red Mage, and Paladin to be the three best designed jobs in the game. Red Mage and Paladin both have great skill floors that let anyone pick them up and perform well enough, but also offer a great amount of improvement within their skill ceiling. Black Mage, for obvious reasons, is the best designed job in the game to me. Simple to pick up, but offers a lot of growth within it's skill ceiling, and there's always a lot to think about.

So, what do you think are among the best designed jobs in the game at the moment?

[SeiyaSoiya]

dragoon is pretty well designed and hasn't changed much over the years, but it is a very simplistic job
black mage is yoship's main so they simply cannot change it, they butchered it in pvp though so I suspect if yoship didn't main black mage the job would've been butchered for pve too by now

[Ranaku]

Machinist, it's the most well designed job ever! It's a selfish damagedealer that can't deal damage! How awesome is that?!

Jokes aside...blackmage i would say, the core rotation of blackmage never changed much and it's still the same concept, switching between ice and fire, as it was in ARR. Proof to me that the design is what it was intended to be and good, since the other jobs changed so much even got completely overhauled but blackmage still is the same selfish damagedealer he was in ARR.

[Kolsykol]

BLM is just flawless imo, and it has always been good.
I feel like every expansion has just built on it and it has a great sense of escalation and growth in power.

[IdowhatIwant]

Blackmage, Paladin, Drg, Sam(until 6.1), Rdm, and I want to say Ninja but I think ninja mains would say other wise.

That being said, of those listed Sam, Drg, and Rdm I think need a bit of work. Rdm is just a boring Blm. Sam I think was alright before 6.1 but I think it needed a bit more. Drg I just don't care for the jumps making single weaves throw me off.

I really wish we had tank / dps stance as I feel that took a lot of the tanks identity away, also I liked having to use emnity rotations and stuff I just thought it made the classes more fun IMO.

Worst designed: Ranged dps, Summoner, all other tanks, all healers.

Machinest is high APM with little pay off, heat blast + weaves are very difficult with high ping.
Bard I think is a mess, it feels more like an archer than a bard, and way to much RNG.
Dancer is alright, bit boring and there are some QoL changes I would like to see.
Summoner feels like you are playing a level 60 class at level 90. It needs a lot more than what it has. Bring the dots back or add more summons but it needs more.

War, I miss when war felt like a berserker. When you would go into DPS stance and get access to fell cleave for massive damage, then had inner beast for damage reduction and self healing in tank stance. Now, it feels like a fell cleave spamming auto critting 4 button class with too much self healing. This class is boring now.

Drk, I am not a fan of the ShB changes, I think it is some what of an improvement from SB, but it lost a lot of cool things from SB it should have back like abyssal drain spam in large pulls.

GBR, should have never been made get rid of it.

Healers: just go view healer forums they give far more detailed complaints than I ever could.

Can't give much of an opinion on Monk, I haven't play it enough before or after ShB changes.

Edit: I forgot reaper existed. It is well designed I think the tool tips are confusing to read but well designed and pretty fun.

[Gemina]

I have issues with every job I play. Currently MNK and DNC are the jobs I have the least amount of issues with, so I would consider them to be the most well-designed out of the jobs I have put time into. If this thread popped up during ShB, I would have easily said SAM. That is no longer the case.

Oddly enough, SCH falls into both lists. Being a job I consider one of the best and worst designs simultaneously.

[Jeeqbit]

All of the tanks
Black Mage
Blue Mage
Red Mage
Summoner
Dancer
Machinist
Bard
Reaper
Dragoon
Ninja
I would normally say Samurai but now it's Shinten spam so I'm not sure.
Sage
Scholar
Astrologian
White Mage

There was a time when I would say most of these were poorly designed. In Heavensward, most of them were awful with pointless or unused abilities. Aspects of them were too RNG-reliant. At every expansion these issues have been cleaned up more to make kits flow properly.

Paladin used to have an RNG ability called Shield Swipe, a pointless RNG block ability called Bulwark, didn't block magic and had no aoe except Circle of Scorn. The defense kit was well designed but with the issues I mentioned you couldn't say it was well-designed throughout. Dark Knight had to go through a lengthy process of RNG just to be able to use Reprisal, so it wasn't up when you actually wanted it and the way it works now allows for situational use such as when there is a raid-wide. Warrior had a useless dot called Fracture and an ability you could only use when the enemy was at 20% health or lower. It all felt poorly designed.

A lot of the jobs in my list are new and were designed without these problems from the start or received a complete overhaul. They feel smooth and without the sort of problems I explained. You can play all of them well or not play them well.

Although healers could be doing more than just spamming a single attack, when I heal big pulls with heavy damage, I burn through a sort of rotation of Scholar's heals that made me understand that it's designed well. It offers growth because many start out just spamming adlos then learn not to use them often. I've seen a lot of growth with learning to time scholar abilities better in raids or to position the fairy. Astrologian's card system is designed well and you can become better at using it, although I don't like what Minor Arcana does now.

[IdowhatIwant]

I think it's interesting how often I am seeing monk, and how many complaints I have also seen about monk after it's rework.

All of the tanks
Black Mage
Blue Mage
Red Mage
Summoner
Dancer
Machinist
Bard
Reaper
Dragoon
Ninja
I would normally say Samurai but now it's Shinten spam so I'm not sure.
Sage
Scholar
Astrologian
White Mage

Is that a list from best to worst or are you saying they all well designed? Just curious.

[Jeeqbit]

Is that a list from best to worst or are you saying they all well designed? Just curious.

In no particular order. They are all well-designed because they don't have useless and clunky abilities like in Heavensward. They don't have strange problems like not blocking magic, an ability which increases evasion on a DPS that never receives damage in the first place, a weaponskill that can only be used after evading an attack (so never), a dot with a duration and potency that makes it useless, not having any aoe attacks. Abilities like Reprisal can actually be used tactically now. These are the sort of problems they have learned from and when I think of all of these classes, they have their own unique rotations and they all work without lots of it being useless, redundant or clunky. Whatever you want to say about healers having one attack, their kits work together well and under pressure such as wall pulls, their abilities are not redundant. All of the classes can be played poorly, played well or played tactically so there is room for growth on all of them.

Ninja does not play like Dragoon and neither play like a Black Mage. Gunbreaker's explosion carnage doesn't compare to the other tanks at 90. Paladin's GCD rotation is something completely different to the other two tanks. I can't objectively say they that all of these classes have the same rotation and I can't objectively say that there are redundant or clunky parts of their rotation like in Heavensward, because they have gradually removed these problems every time an expansion releases.

[IdowhatIwant]

In no particular order. They are all well-designed because they don't have useless and clunky abilities like in Heavensward. They don't have strange problems like not blocking magic, an ability which increases evasion on a DPS that never receives damage in the first place, a weaponskill that can only be used after evading an attack (so never), a dot with a duration and potency that makes it useless, not having any aoe attacks. Abilities like Reprisal can actually be used tactically now. These are the sort of problems they have learned from and when I think of all of these classes, they have their own unique rotations and they all work without lots of it being useless, redundant or clunky. Whatever you want to say about healers having one attack, their kits work together well and under pressure such as wall pulls, their abilities are not redundant. All of the classes can be played poorly, played well or played tactically so there is room for growth on all of them.

Ninja does not play like Dragoon and neither play like a Black Mage. Gunbreaker's explosion carnage doesn't compare to the other tanks at 90. Paladin's GCD rotation is something completely different to the other two tanks. I can't objectively say they that all of these classes have the same rotation and I can't objectively say that there are redundant or clunky parts of their rotation like in Heavensward, because they have gradually removed these problems every time an expansion releases.

Interesting. I can see that point of view though, things have definitely improved since ARR and HW, but I think some things have suffered as well. I would disagree with your shield swipe opinion from your first post though, I would love if they brought it back as a follow up to holy sheltron after you block with it, that would be sick.

I think if I had to give a critique to class design as a whole in its current iteration, I would really like classes to have more engagement with their gauges. Some do this well, but others it feels like the gauge functions as a fake CD for the one maybe two skills that are tied to it. Examples are Bards soul gauge, War gauge, Drk gauge, Plds gauge, Dnc gauge, Mch gauges, and with the recent changes Sams gauge. When it was first announced I remember being very excited about it, and it felt underwhelming for some classes in SB, and it feels like the gauges have been forgotten since and never expanded upon much. It would be cool to have multiple skills to give players more thought process on how to actively use the gauge vs how it functions for many classes now.

Outside of that some of the stuff I miss is like tank emnity management, which is more of a system mechanic not really a class mechanic. Emnity management, and shirk made me quit tanking.