Quote Originally Posted by dspguy View Post
We sort of had subjobs in ARR. If I recall, you needed CNJ to open PLD. Therefore, PLD could equip spells like Stoneskin, Cure and Raise (out of battle only). Warrior got Bloodbath from DRG. And I think MNK got Fracture from WAR. I don't know, it has been a while. But we sort of had subjobs. It was "ok." Some of these abilities had value. Many did not. They ultimately got rid of all of that and just went with role abilities.
You have to remember, every job pulled from 2 classes, the one they used to unlock the job and an additional one. PLD was Conjurer and Marauder as an example. A typical PLD setup used Stoneskin, Mercy Stroke, Bloodbath (yes, it was a marauder action), Fracture and finally, Foresight. Other things they could use were Skull Sunder (useless), Cure (weak) and Raise, which, as you noted couldn't be used in combat.

Ultimately, every job had 4-5 cross class that were actually useful, the rest weren't, meaning, anyone with any sort of sense didn't even need a guide to equip the best stuff, as it was painfully obvious.

There were a couple of issues though. The amount of times you went into an extreme fight and the Warrior didn't have Gladiator levelled for Provoke (you needed level 22 for Provoke) or the DPS missing a massive damage boost from Blood for Blood (34 Lancer) or even not levelling Thaumaturge to level 26 for Swiftcast as a healer.

Part of this was likely due to people not realising that they were missing them, however, there were cases where people didn't want to level a job they did not want to play, just for the cross class actions, which is why they were likely done away with.