Paladin: sustained damage, fairly rigid rotation with multiple starting points, physical specialist
Warrior: lifesteal, balancing offence and defence
Dark knight: dark arts, sort of halfway between war and pld, mp management, magic specialist
Gunbeaker: Honestly still don’t really get what it is
White mage: elemental counterpart to black mage, limited mobility, high potency gcds with little weaving
Scholar: arcanist that found a sch stone. Commonalities with acn/smn such as rouse, Bane and multiple dots. Control over fairy eg embrace macros, fairies with different roles/actions.
Ast: time mage and cards. Flexible, unique faster cast time to accommodate card play. Cards with different effects and impact on gameplay
Sage:idfk scholar2 I guess
Ninja: trick attack, pseudo caster
Dragoon:long chain of attacks, jumps, the ability to accidentally place yourself in the aoe you’ve just fled
Bard: sort of utility dps, aids party with buffs, proc based
Summoner: pet and dot, a more damage oriented counterpart to scholar with clear shared traits but divergence as it leans more into the allagan primal angle. Also demis should never be until they can work without killing the pet action queue.
Black mage: immobile pyromaniac with no end of movement tools. Continuous high output of damage similar to paladin rewarding fight knowledge rather than being able to give yourself carpal tunnel.
Machinist: random bs go
Samurai: builds up to high damage strikes
Red mage: kind of like a backwards ninja
Dancer: bard but single target
Reaper:leviathan
Blue mage: able to learn whatever with little regard for balance, only fun. 80 update missed the mark somewhat I think.
Edit: I was going to leave monk out as a joke, but for completeness: fluid rotation getting faster as the fight progresses. Greased lightning kind of sucked mechanically when there was forced downtime, but nailed the identity.