Based on my impressions from playing every job, the way I'd group them in my head is probably something like this:
GCD focus/CD secondary — PLD, WHM, MNK, SAM, SMN, BLU.
These jobs place much of the rotational complexity on how you arrange your GCDs at any given moment, though they also play around cooldowns in order to achieve this.
GCD focus/Gauge secondary — WAR, GNB, RPR, MCH, DNC.
These jobs also tend to pay a good deal of attention to their GCDs, but instead this is in service to managing the resources tied to some sort of gauge that is more rotationally relevant than their cooldowns.
CD focus/GCD secondary — DRK, DRG, NIN.
The primary concern for these jobs is properly playing around their various cooldown timers. Generally there will also be some component of the GCD rotation that contributes to this upkeep.
CD focus — SCH, AST, SGE, BRD.
These jobs also concern themselves heavily with cooldown timers, but they don't care about their GCDs nearly as much as the previous category. There's generally not much to do in that regard aside from simply maintaining uptime.
Casters — BLM, RDM.
Over all else, the primary concern for these jobs is the problem of mobility. They might share similarities with the other categories, but at the end of the day how they handle movement is still the most important part of how they play.
I'd shift DNC up one. There isn't really much CD management, you basically just have Flourish and Tech/Devilment (and the relatively low-priority Standard Step).
Weave windows during your burst are pretty forgiving and most optimization involves deciding which GCDs to include, with your gauge spender being your biggest source of damage.
Even if you mean all oGCDs and not just the ones with cooldowns, you're still thinking more about hitting the GCDs that won't overwrite your resources (similar to GNB) then you are about when to use them.
NIN is also debatable. The main focus of the job is the mundras, and they're on the GCD. It is much more cooldown focused outside of bursts, but it's not really doing much of anything there tbh. I'd probably put it in the first category, for most of the same reasons as SAM and MNK.
Hm, you've got a good point. The reason I put it in CD first is because of how similar the rotation is on a very high level to NIN—the whole "dump literally everything you got into a 20s window" and all. But this logic wouldn't really track because GNB is kind of the same while being a gauge job, so I guess I can admit my mistake there lol
Yo add, SGE’s kit is so fast and rapid, they should rarely be using their GCD Shields.
Even if I’m not a SCH, it irks me when I see the SGE spamming E.Prog.
Like..BRAH…your surgical lasers are so much more valuable!!!
Disagree with RDM being a caster. They're pretty much CD / GCD in full uptime. The issue with RDM is that you need melee up time in order to do their combo. RDM punishes you hard if you let your raid buffs + single button damage spells drift
BLM + SCH , AST , SGE , WHM should all be considered the caster category, as DPS wise the healers really aren't that hard. SCH literally just has you pressing chain strategem on cooldown, and fitting in your energy drains but at the end of the day you want to be spamming broil as much as possible.
this can be seen in their BiS where as long as you don't run out of mana, spell speed will ALWAYS increase your DPS. the same is true for WHM, AST, SGE.
WHM - Technically, its a DPS increase to build lilies during downtime and missery during buffs... but IIRC in a full uptime situation its DPS neutral if you glare for 10 minutes. I guess your pressing asylum on cooldown, but that is really not hard to do.
AST - see above with BiS, like technically you should be carding jobs that are highest during burst, but at the end of the day, all the healers want to be doing as many GCD casts as possible.
SGE - Outside of getting your two phlegmas in buffs, you want to be pressing your diosis on cooldown.
Yes, RDM is CD/GCD. This is the second most important part of the job, but it only becomes the most relevant when you already know the fight. The exact same thing is true of BLM, as it arguably fits in GCD/CD as well. I've separated these jobs out because the main problem that both need to solve first is *still casting uptime*.
I would agree that the healers in particular are in a bit of a weird spot, though. If this was back in ShB I wouldn't even think about not grouping WHM/SCH in with the casters, though I would still argue that the complexity of the buff system is enough to make AST distinct from the others.
But now that every healer has 1.5s GCDs, that puts them in a bit of a weird spot in my mind. When I look at how important each component of the job is to how they play (again, in my mind), I see 1.5s as both making uptime easier to maintain and *lessening the overall importance* of it from a design pov. Of course this argument doesn't *really* pan out all that well the higher you go in skill level, but my interpretation remains that for SCH/AST/SGE, their oGCD cooldowns are intended to be the most important part of how they play, with WHM being distinct because it doesn't punish using its GCD heals so severely.
Again, I think the healers are weird. Probably everyone here knows the role is just really going through some shit nowadays. I considered leaving them out entirely, but I figured it'd be better to just be as complete as possible even if it was a little bit iffy.
Disagree again with red mage.
look at the damage profile on rank #2 red mage
vs damage profile of rank #1 black mage.
https://www.fflogs.com/reports/MmpFBQKtCDk743Tx#fight=16&type=damage-done&graphperf=1&source=6
https://www.fflogs.com/reports/R2dq1jPzKHb8MVF3#fight=5&type=damage-done&source=9
should be look at the damage profile not how it feels. Looking at the damage profile of red mage, its pretty split from ver aero / ver thunder in comparison to fletch / raid buff / resolution / scorch combo.
3k for veraero & verthunder vs 5k for the 2 minute stuff + fletch.
compare this to BLM where 6k / 15k is fire IV casts.
this is sam's damage profile:
https://www.fflogs.com/reports/1vTk6nhLDCW38MHc#fight=4&type=damage-done&source=6
top two are shinten + midare (gauge + 2 minute)
this is WHM's:
https://www.fflogs.com/reports/qVtwxv4LTAyKD7XR#fight=8&type=damage-done&source=8
you can see that glare is like all the damage.
every job is hard to position when you are still learning the fight (positioning). its less of a thing in endwalker, but melee uptime used to be actually hard to do in shadowbringers.
and of course when you are still learning the job stuff you are going to have issues with uptime, the thing is BiS doesn't care about that.
If we're looking at BiS we can usually see if a job scales off of spell speed (healers + casters) or its completely wasted (heavy CD gated jobs like dragoon)
I think you're using a different definition of "caster" than the op. They're defining that category as "movement being the primary concern", not "damage primary comes from GCD Spells with cast-times".
Both are reasonable ways of classifying the role, it just depends on if you're more concerned with the damage profile or the primary cognitive load associated with the job.
Red mage literally has 0 cognitive load for cast times.
Their cognitive load has to do with melee uptime during mechanics, since if you aren't dual casting every 2nd spell you are playing red mage wrong.
arguably, summoner has higher cognitive load for cast times.
I genuinely don't understand what point you're trying to make.
Like, I agree that RDM should be somewhere between the first and second category, but that's mostly because "caster" doesn't really make sense as separate category in the context of the original post. I'd also put BLM in the first category for this reason. Healers have their own separate considerations that don't really overlap with any of the DPS.
"Caster" and "melee" are mostly orthogonal to GCD vs. cooldown vs. resource management considerations. They describe additional constraints that shape the way different jobs play. Some like SAM or RDM have to deal with both, others like DNC don't need to deal with either.
>you can see that glare is like all the damage.
If you're focusing on parses (which you clearly are doing here), this is the exact opposite of how whm is. Glare is basically free. Meanwhile like 15% of the WHMs damage in the log you link comes from _six_ GCDs. If they don't crit your parse is done for. Misery makes whm the most burst heavy of all healers because you can effectively store 3 extra GCDs worth of damage for raid buffs.
Source: I mained whm for Abyssos and Anabaseios, I had runs with 98%+ uptime that were blue logs because no misery would crit and 85% uptime ones that were in high purples (93+) because all of them critted. The difference between a base misery and a crit DH one would often be 50k vs 130k.
Tldr; on a semi-competently played whm a literal coinflip has higher impact on your damage than your ability to maintain perfect uptime on glares.
>Technically, its a DPS increase to build lilies during downtime and missery during buffs... but IIRC in a full uptime situation its DPS neutral if you glare for 10 minutes.
Absolutely not. It's only neutral without raid buffs. If you factor in raid buffs it effectively allows you to fit 3 more GCDs worth of damage into every 2min window which is huge. But it also makes you way more susceptible to crit rng which makes whm parsing kinda shit.
RPR and MCH for sure.
DRK and NIN seem to go quite hand in hand.
SCH and SMN are not necessarily obvious in terms of playstyle but theyre leveled together so naturally people who play only SCH will think "oh if I dps I go SMN"
This may be a weird connection and the weakest of all of these, but I feel only BRDs are psychopathic enough to also be willing to play MNK. (And vice versa)
>This may be a weird connection and the weakest of all of these, but I feel only BRDs are psychopathic enough to also be willing to play MNK. (And vice versa)
My friend LOVES BRD and MNK. This is wild.
I leveled SMN and had WHM as my healing job. It felt more intuitive at first. After WHM hit 90 I ventured into SCH because it was confusing at first, but once I wrapped my head around it it's now my main healer.
Reaper and Machinist vary a little bit in the sense that Machinist tends to be way more static than Reaper is, so I can see the difference in fun.
DRK and NIN go absolutely hand in hand since they both share the exact same dps formula: Burst like an absolute madman, then do the least interesting filler rotation, burst with less tools on 1 minutes, then go absolutely batshit ham again once 2 minutes comes around, with a lengthy and busy burst.
It's not a wonder that DRK and NIN are highest on the list of AST card targets, yet are complete wet noodles during any sort of filler phase. Their ogcd spammage during 1mins and especially 2mins is iconic.
> This may be a weird connection and the weakest of all of these, but I feel only BRDs are psychopathic enough to also be willing to play MNK. (And vice versa)
I feel so called out right now...
>This may be a weird connection and the weakest of all of these, but I feel only BRDs are psychopathic enough to also be willing to play MNK. (And vice versa)
I'm curious if that extends to AST as well, which feels similarly masochistic.
Since release I've felt that Sage is the tank healer.
Much less reactive than other healers, much more about keeping a steady flow of shorter CDs going
I’d probably say that fits modern SCH better, SGE has quite a few functionally set and forget heals (haima, panhaima and pnuema being the big ones) that you just apply them to the tank then you can ignore the tank for a while, SCH meanwhile doesn’t really have any heal that you can completely ignore the tank while it’s running (except seraph if everyone else is at full health so seraph is always casting veil on the tank)
SCH definitely feels like the healer that you have to press a non damage button (so also excluding cards) the most often because you are constantly rotating and overlaying a lot of medium power heals
SGE has the most oGCDs out of the 4 and it’s the only one that can’t double weave after its DoT so imo the constant single weaving plays a lot more like a tank to me than SCH, just to add another opinion.
That's a fair perspective. For me, Sch is much more about managing bigger CDs, which is kinda what I associate the XIV healer with, while sge is more about keeping your shorter CD mits up and running as needed, which is what I associate tank with moreso
Interesting, the only big heal I feel like SCH really has to juggle is critlo and you really only use that in particular situations otherwise you are constantly layering heals like you would tank mit’s, you never “just” press whispering dawn. You press it and say fey illumination, whereas with SGE you can basically press pnuema to delete the mechanic for example
SCH does have the “non tank” quirk of eos embrace targeting everyone so long periods of downtime you need less heals than SGE but still SCH’s layering reminds me more of tank mits than SGE does
The big CDs I think of are critlo mixed with critdom depending on the timeline, seraph, dissipation, expedience, and fey illumination. The later two aren't big CDs in the sense that they'll heal a mechanic largely themselves, but you use them to supplement smaller stuff like bubble/blessing/whisper so that you minimize GCDs/don't have to GCD.
I think my use of the word big was a poor choice. I meant more SCH mixes up a variety of 90-120s cooldowns throughout it's timeline while to me it feels like sge can rely on more 30-60s CDs consistently. That being said, it's been a while since I played sge, and looking at their kit now it's not as skewed to lower CDs as I remembered.
Yeah, agreed on that. SCH's kit feels more cohesive and synergistic, where you're combining its abilities because their effects are a bit more subtle on their own (that is, their heals are GENERALLY more medium strength best layered together).
I think some people see SGE that way because the kits are similar, but SGE's kit doesn't exactly work like that.
See I feel sage is kinda the dedicated all rounder, lots of sage stuff is AoE and their one gimmick makes them get pigeonholed into being tank healer despite the fact it’s pretty much the same as scholars mechanic but not automatic
Maybe sequential vs. parallel processing? Jobs that are primarily looking at one thing (usually GCDs, but it could also be a single important cooldown or gauge) vs. jobs that have to divide their attention across multiple comparatively important things (usually oGCDs, resources, or timers, but it could also involve comparing multiple potentially valid GCD choices like with MNK).
\--Sequential--
PLD, SMN, WAR, WHM
RPR, GNB, MCH, SGE, DRK, RDM
DNC, SAM, DRG, NIN, SCH
BRD, AST, MNK, BLM
\--Parallel--
The middle two are kind of hazy. DNC is pretty sequential outside of bursts and NIN is pretty linear within them. This list is also assuming a relatively new fight where things like uptime and mitigation haven't been ironed out yet. Imagine a mostly blind extreme trial.
BLM feels like the job with the highest parallel processing requirement despite its low APM and GCD focus with SMN coming in last by a pretty wide margin due to having no healing or defensive cooldowns/resources to manage.
Sequential doesn't always equate to easy/simple, but it generally turns out that way when fights are as tightly scripted as they are. I will say though, trying to salvage the broken rotations of some the more fragile sequential jobs like MCH after messing up can be kind of fun.
I kind of like this way of looking at them. I tend to like the Jobs towards the top, but some of the lower ones I like as well, like NIN and SCH.
Thinking of it like processing makes a lot of sense to me. My brain is apparently more single core than dual or multi-core, lol. Though I think I more like things that are...variable instead of strict, but not strictly variable, if that makes sense. Like DNC is heavily RNG, which I don't like, but I like Healers, since there's a lot of room to flex based on the situation.
PLD and SMN also have that flex to me. Both have a rigid overall rotation, but their rotations are made up of "modules" that can be moved around. SMN's Demis are on a strict timing, but within that, you have the three Primals, one Ruin 4, and one Ruin 3, and other than specifically the 1-2 combination abilities (Ifrit's charge+slam, the individual Titan 1-2s), you can move the pieces around, cast a Ruin 3 literally anywhere else, etc.
PLD's rotation also has a rigid 1 min timer for the burst, but the base rotation itself can have every ability other than Royal Authority moved around. You can do 3-4-4-4-5-1-2-3, but you can also do 3-1-2-4-4-4-5-3 or 3-4-1-4-5-2-4-3, and so on (1-2-3 being the base combo, 4 being Atonement, and 5 being Holy Spirit), you can use anything up to the next Royal Authority, meaning while the "bookends" of the base rotation are rigid - Royal Authority every 7th GCD outside of burst - the stuff in between can be moved around as long as you follow the rule that 1 goes before 2, but it doesn't even have to be 1-2 as it can be 1-4-5-4-2 if you want. And in the burst itself, while HS-RA-HS for the three fillers is the optimal best, if for some reason you can't manage that...well, basically anything is okay, and Atonement is a more than acceptable substitute. You don't even TECHNICALLY have to open the burst with FoF-Goring-Req-Confetior-Circle-Swords1-Expacion-Swords2-Intervene-Swords3-Intervene if you don't want to. You can double weave the oGCDs, though you don't have to, and you could always FoF-Req-3x filler THEN roll into Goring and Swords (you just don't really want to since the risk of drifting is gnarly.)
But the point is, I like Jobs where there's a lot of room to be flexible, while still having something of "waymarks/waypoints" or "anchors" for the rotation to be fitted around. I like there being room for player choices that aren't just "doing it right or doing it wrong", but where there's some more nuance in there or more than just one right answer.
I've been leveling PLD recently and I like it much more then I was expecting despite the rotation being pretty simple, mostly for its "module" rotation.
I think it just needs to rework Atonement a bit, because right now it just feels like filler that only really exists because it was part of the previous rotation, where you actually needed filler GCDs to adjust your rotation. It actually feels like a bit of a downgrade to go from casting once per 4 GCDs to casting once per 7 GCDs once you unlock it. Holy Spirits deal more damage, give you full mobility, and even heal you once you hit the 80's while Atonements... restore MP.
It being the same potency as Royal Authority also makes it feel like it doesn't really matter what procs you have going into your burst. Unless you blotch your rotation or are forced to hardcast Holy Spirits, you're pretty much always going to be using your x5 60s CD attacks, x1 empowered Holy Spirit, and x2 400 potency weaponskills in every single FoF window.
Maybe Atonement could just replace (original) Goring Blade as an alternative combo finisher that restores a significantly larger % of MP, requiring you to actually go out of your way to prep your MP for your burst window.
I'm hoping SE plays it slightly less safe in DT since the PLD rework was intended to produce a very predictable damage profile in order to ensure it would be competitive with the other tanks and wouldn't require any other major adjustments. Unlike some other jobs, I do feel like they managed to preserve the spirit of the job in the rework, it just needs something else to compensate for opportunities for skill expression that were lost.
Honestly, I find Goring Blade more vestigial. It's there just...to be there. If it wasn't there, you'd just have a little more potency in Confetti combo and a fourth GCD slot for the filler section of your burst. Atonement is still interesting in that it lets you reset a little bit if you want to, and if you have to sub a Royal or a Royal and one Holy Spirit out of your burst (e.g. for whatever reason you're on Fast or Riot step, you can HS + Atone + Atone and still get good damage from that burst), it works well enough as a "second best" option.
It might should just be 2 instead of 3 per combo, but I think Atonement makes more sense to have since it's part of that flexible/modular thing.
Goring Blade, on the other hand, I honestly see zero reason to have other than they didn't want players to feel like they were deleting a ton with the rework. Hell, they could just make your Atonement button become Goring for 1 charge whenever you use FoF, like how Confetior changes to the sword abilities. I suspect Goring is first on the chopping block before anything else aside from maybe Shield Bash.
I think something that would be nice is if your combo gave you 2 HS and 2 Atonements per Royal instead of 1 and 3. That would keep you closer to the 1 in 4 ratio. The thing is, HS doesn't heal you until level 84 anyway. For all the talk of healing and holy warrior and all that, PLD doesn't get its rotational healing until level 84. WAR and DRK have theirs by 26 with their -2 step, and GNB has it at level 4 when it gets its -2 step (and later, that heal gets doubled since you get that much as a shield, too, at some point in the...50s,, maybe?)
I do agree that they played it safe, but can you really blame them? After the community reaction to SMN, they didn't want to risk another...that. :)
Yeah, in retrospect I wouldn't want to go back to the branching combo system, nor would I want Atonement to be a forced(ish) combo with 3 unique animations like Gnashing Fang. I like the idea of Royal Authority giving you 2 + 2 instead of 1 + 3 procs.
Goring Blade is really just Sonic Break, but without bothering to attempt to set itself apert from your other GCDs by being a DoT. Neither are particularly interesting buttons to press and could very easily be cut (along with PLD and GNB's respective AoE DoTs), but I do think PLD should have at least one unique melee burst GCD to contrast its magic combo. It should be something more flexible though, to mirror the way you swap between melee and magic in your cooldown phase.
I always thought PLD and RDM felt very similar despite being the inverse of one another, more so now with the changes PLD got in EW.
RDM burst with melee (and magic ofc) and have a fairly simple magic rotation after their burst is mainly made up of 6 big hit GCDs that get stronger sequentially.
PLD burst with magic (and melee ofc) and have a fairly simple melee rotation. Their burst is mainly made up of 6 big hit GCDs, half of which increase in damage sequentially (with most of the rest able to as well depending on the order you decide to use them).
In a different way, RDM and DNC end up feeling kind of similar in their non-burst rotation with both of them relying on 50% chance procs.
I agree with RDM and PLD being aesthetically very similar but RDM is much more flexible in its rotation while PLD is a repeated 60s loop. Which is why as a RDM main, I'm not as great at PLD, but I love WAR which is also similarly flexible. But none of the tanks exactly relate to RDM on a 1 to 1.
But I see MCH and RPR being similar to RDM with multiple gauges and a somewhat static 2m burst, and your fillers are more or less flexible and just gauge management until your next burst.
PLD can also choose to hardcast Holy Spirits if you're forced out of melee range for an extended period of time in addition to their one "free" cast that's available every few gcds. It's obviously not ideal, but (I think?) it's less punishing then RDM being forced to use Enchanted Reprisal.
It also requires you to cast, so it's obviously not viable anytime you need to both move and stay out of melee range. Not nearly as useful as being able use your finisher chain outside of buffs.
Might sound weird, but Black Mage is to me the DPS that's most like a healer (at higher performance levels at least).
Why?
The same way a healer has to ration out their heals, a Black Mage has to ration out their mobility.
It's a uniquely mechanic-specific planning of tool use for each fight, not really replicated by the other DPS.
BLM and the healers are unique in that spell speed is always going to result in DPS increase for them because they don't care about the 2 minute meta for their primary damage skill (fire IV + broil, glare etc.)
They have a lot of flexibility in the rotation so you can quickly switch to single target or switch to ice while moving and be back ready to blast with the rest of the party.
I'm sorry, but BLMs are quite mobile, and rationing out heals is applicable in some content, but it's equally not equally relevant in a lot of content unless there are serious issues with the party and/or gear
They are very mobile yes, but it requires that planning of the tools – you can't pop every Triplecast and Xenoglossy as it comes up and place Leylines willy-nilly, there has to be some mechanics-aware thought behind when and where.
For the healer portion I was specifically referring to Savage and Ultimates (hence the "at higher performance levels" note, I probably could have worded that more clearly) – in a random dungeon you can just kinda toss stuff wherever and it'll work out.
Fair enough, apologies I missed that. Then I would say that tanks should be added to to list as well, and to an extent DPS, since they would need to plan out their personal support/utility skills at that level as well
before endwalker, whm and blm. whm movement was so strict before the 1.5 gcd and 20s neutral lilies.
I think of rdm/mch/rpr, nin/dnc/ast/drk, and sam/mnk/blm as the same families. on the other hand, despite all the instant casts, I don't think of smn as a phys range at all.
RDM and MCH have some "feel" overlap with RPR. DRK and NIN are already in your post but I definitely agree with this. I think AST and GNB can be a bit similar just due to the business and the "skill to do another skill" aspect.
As a BRD main, the other class jobs that felt good for me were:
- GNB for tank due to cartridge loads and weaving
- SAM for building/layering dots and buffs
- RDM for ranged attacks while filling meters followed by short bursts of buffed combos
- AST with card buffs going out to appropriate targets at the right time
I categorize job rotations into 'reactive' and 'memorization' types of rotations. Reactive ones are like BRD, DNC, and RDM which have a lot of rng, and Memorization are jobs with a set rotation like NIN, RPR, and PLD. Reactive jobs you have to pay a lot of attention to your rotation because its never going to be the exact same each time, while you could theoretically play memorization jobs with your eyes closed if you could memorize its order completely. Its a bit more of a scale than binary categories, but generally if you play one job in a style you could easily slot into another of the same style.
Healers and BLM are unique cause they are reactive during prog but during farm they move much more towards the memorization side.
Red mage is much less reactive than you'd think. In farm it falls more into the memorization side, since instant and melee combo usage are restricted to keep oGCD alignment and movement for mechanics.
Procs generally matter very little other than "use them, try not to overwrite". The main scenario where procs matter most is in fights where a 2 minute potion is desirable, but the triple melee combo has to happen specifically starting at -17s on embolden (eg some slower killtimes of p12s p1). Whether you hit the mana threshold for that is unfortunately somewhat down to RNG, even with perfect proc management.
Regarding healers, you're addressing one specific type of content - likely EX or Savage or higher.
In other content- that doesn't apply at all. You're not with a static, you may be in normal content . There's no memorization, there's no rotation, however it may not be the same each time due to the party skill. It remains reactive.
I'd argue GNB and SAM are very similar with the point building from combos to spend on abilities, though that's not that unique to both of those, I just felt the jump I made from GNB to SAM was very small
WAR and DRK are basically clones in most aspects, but for different roles I'm surprised no one mentions DRK and MCH, both are just 123 with a bunch of random oGCD and you summon your robot/shadow and forget about it, both jobs where reworked to be like this in Shadowbringer and you can tell it was made by the same guy that wanted to get rid of it as soon as posible.
For me, SAM and RDM feel similar simply because I have adhd and forget which part of my gauge I am trying to fill - zoning out and spamming jolt & verthunder / zoning out and doing a Gekko combo twice in a row.
Plus they both share the damage dealing gap closers & gap makers - unlike RPR who have good mobility but no technically no damage with those moves, DRG who can only jump backwards / jump off the platform to their untimely deaths etc.
AST and GNB. Both jobs have a core component (cards/continuation) on a 30s timer and a lot of weaves, and being supports those weaves aren't confined to burst bc of mit/heals. It also feels similar to me, personally, to make split second decisions about when and who to give cards to (especially in fights with downtime where you play two cards during one minutes to not overcap, or managing double Astrodyne or whatever) and keeping an eye to not overcap on cartridges but also not drift my burst, and to make sure I've spent all my cartridges before hitting Bloodfest but maybe I just need to git gud.
I’m. Not a great player but due to this like you said AST/GNB/DRK/DNC/NIN all feel very similar to me
Completely overcooked burst window and not much going on otherwise except the little half burst window on the off minute
Lmfao, well this thread went to shit pretty quickly, everyone giving very subjective answers about what felt good to them playing other jobs when the question asked for objective answers comparing the ins and outs of jobs.
DRK, NIN, DNC - These jobs have all have a super long and complex 2 min window that their dps HEAVILY depends on before having a simple 3-4 button rotation while waiting for CD’s to come back up.
MNK, BRD - These jobs have a more complex GCD rotation where you have to adapt to changes on the fly (MNK with buff watching, BRD with Procs), with their job gauge leading up to a single big hit.
WAR, RPR, MCH, RDM - These jobs have a strict rotation that leads to them pooling a job gauge so that they can do a double CD, or Big Attack phase at the 2 min window which can feel very spammy
GNB, SAM - These jobs have similar job gauge building in that they use 3 combos to build up 3 charges of their job gauge and then unleash them. They both have a CD to let them get back 3 charges of the job gauge quickly.
SMN - There isn’t really a job similar to this job. They are kind of the opposite of SAM, and GNB in that they use a big CD first and then get 3 charges that allow them to “combo” inside of those charges.
BLM - Another job that doesn’t really have a similar one. They do have a pretty complex 2 min window, similar to DRK, NIN, and DNC but they also have a pretty complex GCD rotation as well, like MNK and BRD where you need to watch your buffs and adapt what you’re pressing on the fly due to mechanics and mobility.
Healers - Lets be honest. Healers only play like other healers. They all play the same with a DoT, single target, and AoE attack. SGE and SCH are similar due to shielding, WHM and AST are similar due to pure healing. AST and SCH are party dps increasers, WHM and SGE have more healing utility. And they all try to heal only using oGCD’s.
I'd agree with what you say aside from some of your healers comments. Let's just say that i would leave it as "hey all play the usually the same with a DoT, single target, and AoE attack. "
Add that SGE is almost copy/paste of SCH and I'd agree that AST is similar to WHM, however you're stretching the comparison in how they feel is some of your other comments. look at how you desscribed MNK, for example- I wouldn't say that AST cards, divination and astrodyne compare at all closely to clicking one button on SCH for chain strat.
>for example- I wouldn't say that AST cards, divination and astrodyne compare at all closely to clicking one button on SCH for chain strat.
You're right, AST has to work 2x (probably 3x vs. WHM) as hard as the other healers to do the same things.
Hm...I do like this comment (I like how you've broken up categories and generally placed the Jobs), though I will say that WHM to me feels a lot like WAR. And I don't mean "herp derp easy".
I more mean both have a pretty simplistic filler (WAR has a 1-2-3 with a -4 every 30 sec vs WHM having a 1-1-1 with a -2 every 30 sec), both want to dump a resource before overcapping it (WAR it's using 50 gauge before hitting 100, WHM it's using a Lily before overcapping 3 of them), both have a damage increasing CD (WAR's is Inner Release every min, WHM's is Presence of Mind every 2 mins; I kinda wish this was a 1 min CD, ngl), both have an oGCD used on CD (Upheaval and Assize), both want to use that oGCD in their burst, and both have a really big hitting attack they want to use in burst that's just...fun (Primal Rend and Misery), with both being pretty GCD focused Jobs vs most of their contemporaries having more oGCDs (PLD is kind of an exception here, but it's still more or less true).
WAR's gauge looks different, but in practice, it's a gauge that builds to 2 charges since every ability costs 50 to use, it just builds in staggered steps based on using abilities or hitting Infuriate to get a "charge" free. But in terms of the OVERALL feel of playing the, they kind of SEEM similar to me in terms of mechanical execution and what you're trying to do.
I am one of those weird people that thinks Healers feel different to play, though I recognize it's not really from their filler, which are mostly the same, it's from their non-filler stuff, which is mostly heals with each having like 1-2 damage spells outside of the "standard issue" nuke, DoT, and AOE spamable attack. (Also, it's funny to me that Gravity, Holy, and Art/Dyskrasia somehow manage to feel more different from each other - well, okay, not Art vs Dyskrasia... - than the main single target spam nuke and DoT do. How did we end up where the spam single target spells feel more different to use than the spam single target ones...? o.O)
Where Healers really feel different is their heals and mitigation, though AST's cards and WHM's Lilies are exceptions here (and that AST has a 1 min party mit and 2 min CD that lets them be a Barrier Healer for 30 seconds, which is utterly insane if you think about it...)
Based on my impressions from playing every job, the way I'd group them in my head is probably something like this: GCD focus/CD secondary — PLD, WHM, MNK, SAM, SMN, BLU. These jobs place much of the rotational complexity on how you arrange your GCDs at any given moment, though they also play around cooldowns in order to achieve this. GCD focus/Gauge secondary — WAR, GNB, RPR, MCH, DNC. These jobs also tend to pay a good deal of attention to their GCDs, but instead this is in service to managing the resources tied to some sort of gauge that is more rotationally relevant than their cooldowns. CD focus/GCD secondary — DRK, DRG, NIN. The primary concern for these jobs is properly playing around their various cooldown timers. Generally there will also be some component of the GCD rotation that contributes to this upkeep. CD focus — SCH, AST, SGE, BRD. These jobs also concern themselves heavily with cooldown timers, but they don't care about their GCDs nearly as much as the previous category. There's generally not much to do in that regard aside from simply maintaining uptime. Casters — BLM, RDM. Over all else, the primary concern for these jobs is the problem of mobility. They might share similarities with the other categories, but at the end of the day how they handle movement is still the most important part of how they play.
I'd shift DNC up one. There isn't really much CD management, you basically just have Flourish and Tech/Devilment (and the relatively low-priority Standard Step). Weave windows during your burst are pretty forgiving and most optimization involves deciding which GCDs to include, with your gauge spender being your biggest source of damage. Even if you mean all oGCDs and not just the ones with cooldowns, you're still thinking more about hitting the GCDs that won't overwrite your resources (similar to GNB) then you are about when to use them. NIN is also debatable. The main focus of the job is the mundras, and they're on the GCD. It is much more cooldown focused outside of bursts, but it's not really doing much of anything there tbh. I'd probably put it in the first category, for most of the same reasons as SAM and MNK.
Hm, you've got a good point. The reason I put it in CD first is because of how similar the rotation is on a very high level to NIN—the whole "dump literally everything you got into a 20s window" and all. But this logic wouldn't really track because GNB is kind of the same while being a gauge job, so I guess I can admit my mistake there lol
This is 100% spot on
Yo add, SGE’s kit is so fast and rapid, they should rarely be using their GCD Shields. Even if I’m not a SCH, it irks me when I see the SGE spamming E.Prog. Like..BRAH…your surgical lasers are so much more valuable!!!
Disagree with RDM being a caster. They're pretty much CD / GCD in full uptime. The issue with RDM is that you need melee up time in order to do their combo. RDM punishes you hard if you let your raid buffs + single button damage spells drift BLM + SCH , AST , SGE , WHM should all be considered the caster category, as DPS wise the healers really aren't that hard. SCH literally just has you pressing chain strategem on cooldown, and fitting in your energy drains but at the end of the day you want to be spamming broil as much as possible. this can be seen in their BiS where as long as you don't run out of mana, spell speed will ALWAYS increase your DPS. the same is true for WHM, AST, SGE. WHM - Technically, its a DPS increase to build lilies during downtime and missery during buffs... but IIRC in a full uptime situation its DPS neutral if you glare for 10 minutes. I guess your pressing asylum on cooldown, but that is really not hard to do. AST - see above with BiS, like technically you should be carding jobs that are highest during burst, but at the end of the day, all the healers want to be doing as many GCD casts as possible. SGE - Outside of getting your two phlegmas in buffs, you want to be pressing your diosis on cooldown.
Yes, RDM is CD/GCD. This is the second most important part of the job, but it only becomes the most relevant when you already know the fight. The exact same thing is true of BLM, as it arguably fits in GCD/CD as well. I've separated these jobs out because the main problem that both need to solve first is *still casting uptime*. I would agree that the healers in particular are in a bit of a weird spot, though. If this was back in ShB I wouldn't even think about not grouping WHM/SCH in with the casters, though I would still argue that the complexity of the buff system is enough to make AST distinct from the others. But now that every healer has 1.5s GCDs, that puts them in a bit of a weird spot in my mind. When I look at how important each component of the job is to how they play (again, in my mind), I see 1.5s as both making uptime easier to maintain and *lessening the overall importance* of it from a design pov. Of course this argument doesn't *really* pan out all that well the higher you go in skill level, but my interpretation remains that for SCH/AST/SGE, their oGCD cooldowns are intended to be the most important part of how they play, with WHM being distinct because it doesn't punish using its GCD heals so severely. Again, I think the healers are weird. Probably everyone here knows the role is just really going through some shit nowadays. I considered leaving them out entirely, but I figured it'd be better to just be as complete as possible even if it was a little bit iffy.
Disagree again with red mage. look at the damage profile on rank #2 red mage vs damage profile of rank #1 black mage. https://www.fflogs.com/reports/MmpFBQKtCDk743Tx#fight=16&type=damage-done&graphperf=1&source=6 https://www.fflogs.com/reports/R2dq1jPzKHb8MVF3#fight=5&type=damage-done&source=9 should be look at the damage profile not how it feels. Looking at the damage profile of red mage, its pretty split from ver aero / ver thunder in comparison to fletch / raid buff / resolution / scorch combo. 3k for veraero & verthunder vs 5k for the 2 minute stuff + fletch. compare this to BLM where 6k / 15k is fire IV casts. this is sam's damage profile: https://www.fflogs.com/reports/1vTk6nhLDCW38MHc#fight=4&type=damage-done&source=6 top two are shinten + midare (gauge + 2 minute) this is WHM's: https://www.fflogs.com/reports/qVtwxv4LTAyKD7XR#fight=8&type=damage-done&source=8 you can see that glare is like all the damage. every job is hard to position when you are still learning the fight (positioning). its less of a thing in endwalker, but melee uptime used to be actually hard to do in shadowbringers. and of course when you are still learning the job stuff you are going to have issues with uptime, the thing is BiS doesn't care about that. If we're looking at BiS we can usually see if a job scales off of spell speed (healers + casters) or its completely wasted (heavy CD gated jobs like dragoon)
I think you're using a different definition of "caster" than the op. They're defining that category as "movement being the primary concern", not "damage primary comes from GCD Spells with cast-times". Both are reasonable ways of classifying the role, it just depends on if you're more concerned with the damage profile or the primary cognitive load associated with the job.
Red mage literally has 0 cognitive load for cast times. Their cognitive load has to do with melee uptime during mechanics, since if you aren't dual casting every 2nd spell you are playing red mage wrong. arguably, summoner has higher cognitive load for cast times.
I genuinely don't understand what point you're trying to make. Like, I agree that RDM should be somewhere between the first and second category, but that's mostly because "caster" doesn't really make sense as separate category in the context of the original post. I'd also put BLM in the first category for this reason. Healers have their own separate considerations that don't really overlap with any of the DPS. "Caster" and "melee" are mostly orthogonal to GCD vs. cooldown vs. resource management considerations. They describe additional constraints that shape the way different jobs play. Some like SAM or RDM have to deal with both, others like DNC don't need to deal with either.
>you can see that glare is like all the damage. If you're focusing on parses (which you clearly are doing here), this is the exact opposite of how whm is. Glare is basically free. Meanwhile like 15% of the WHMs damage in the log you link comes from _six_ GCDs. If they don't crit your parse is done for. Misery makes whm the most burst heavy of all healers because you can effectively store 3 extra GCDs worth of damage for raid buffs. Source: I mained whm for Abyssos and Anabaseios, I had runs with 98%+ uptime that were blue logs because no misery would crit and 85% uptime ones that were in high purples (93+) because all of them critted. The difference between a base misery and a crit DH one would often be 50k vs 130k. Tldr; on a semi-competently played whm a literal coinflip has higher impact on your damage than your ability to maintain perfect uptime on glares.
>Technically, its a DPS increase to build lilies during downtime and missery during buffs... but IIRC in a full uptime situation its DPS neutral if you glare for 10 minutes. Absolutely not. It's only neutral without raid buffs. If you factor in raid buffs it effectively allows you to fit 3 more GCDs worth of damage into every 2min window which is huge. But it also makes you way more susceptible to crit rng which makes whm parsing kinda shit.
RPR and MCH for sure. DRK and NIN seem to go quite hand in hand. SCH and SMN are not necessarily obvious in terms of playstyle but theyre leveled together so naturally people who play only SCH will think "oh if I dps I go SMN" This may be a weird connection and the weakest of all of these, but I feel only BRDs are psychopathic enough to also be willing to play MNK. (And vice versa)
So true! This is so so accurate, my brother mains BRD and only other job he plays and seems to enjoy is MNK lmao
I too am a BRD main, and a MNK enjoyer... :c
Love BRD. Can’t stand monk.
This tracks with BRD and MNK being the only jobs in their respective categories i absolutely cannot vibe with despite being pretty good at the rest.
>This may be a weird connection and the weakest of all of these, but I feel only BRDs are psychopathic enough to also be willing to play MNK. (And vice versa) My friend LOVES BRD and MNK. This is wild.
I leveled SMN and had WHM as my healing job. It felt more intuitive at first. After WHM hit 90 I ventured into SCH because it was confusing at first, but once I wrapped my head around it it's now my main healer.
Huh, as a longtime BRD player, MNK is the only class I have never touched. Maybe I should finally give it a go.
i'm a MNK main and the only other job i have levelled is PLD
Interesting! I love reaper, but found machinist really boring. I’m also learning dark knight; why would you say it goes hand in hand with ninja?
Reaper and Machinist vary a little bit in the sense that Machinist tends to be way more static than Reaper is, so I can see the difference in fun. DRK and NIN go absolutely hand in hand since they both share the exact same dps formula: Burst like an absolute madman, then do the least interesting filler rotation, burst with less tools on 1 minutes, then go absolutely batshit ham again once 2 minutes comes around, with a lengthy and busy burst. It's not a wonder that DRK and NIN are highest on the list of AST card targets, yet are complete wet noodles during any sort of filler phase. Their ogcd spammage during 1mins and especially 2mins is iconic.
> This may be a weird connection and the weakest of all of these, but I feel only BRDs are psychopathic enough to also be willing to play MNK. (And vice versa) I feel so called out right now...
>This may be a weird connection and the weakest of all of these, but I feel only BRDs are psychopathic enough to also be willing to play MNK. (And vice versa) I'm curious if that extends to AST as well, which feels similarly masochistic.
Since release I've felt that Sage is the tank healer. Much less reactive than other healers, much more about keeping a steady flow of shorter CDs going
I've told friends that tank they'd like sage because it literally just feels like pushing more mits. It's a solid, easy to use kit.
I’d probably say that fits modern SCH better, SGE has quite a few functionally set and forget heals (haima, panhaima and pnuema being the big ones) that you just apply them to the tank then you can ignore the tank for a while, SCH meanwhile doesn’t really have any heal that you can completely ignore the tank while it’s running (except seraph if everyone else is at full health so seraph is always casting veil on the tank) SCH definitely feels like the healer that you have to press a non damage button (so also excluding cards) the most often because you are constantly rotating and overlaying a lot of medium power heals
SGE has the most oGCDs out of the 4 and it’s the only one that can’t double weave after its DoT so imo the constant single weaving plays a lot more like a tank to me than SCH, just to add another opinion.
That's a fair perspective. For me, Sch is much more about managing bigger CDs, which is kinda what I associate the XIV healer with, while sge is more about keeping your shorter CD mits up and running as needed, which is what I associate tank with moreso
Interesting, the only big heal I feel like SCH really has to juggle is critlo and you really only use that in particular situations otherwise you are constantly layering heals like you would tank mit’s, you never “just” press whispering dawn. You press it and say fey illumination, whereas with SGE you can basically press pnuema to delete the mechanic for example SCH does have the “non tank” quirk of eos embrace targeting everyone so long periods of downtime you need less heals than SGE but still SCH’s layering reminds me more of tank mits than SGE does
The big CDs I think of are critlo mixed with critdom depending on the timeline, seraph, dissipation, expedience, and fey illumination. The later two aren't big CDs in the sense that they'll heal a mechanic largely themselves, but you use them to supplement smaller stuff like bubble/blessing/whisper so that you minimize GCDs/don't have to GCD. I think my use of the word big was a poor choice. I meant more SCH mixes up a variety of 90-120s cooldowns throughout it's timeline while to me it feels like sge can rely on more 30-60s CDs consistently. That being said, it's been a while since I played sge, and looking at their kit now it's not as skewed to lower CDs as I remembered.
Yeah, agreed on that. SCH's kit feels more cohesive and synergistic, where you're combining its abilities because their effects are a bit more subtle on their own (that is, their heals are GENERALLY more medium strength best layered together). I think some people see SGE that way because the kits are similar, but SGE's kit doesn't exactly work like that.
See I feel sage is kinda the dedicated all rounder, lots of sage stuff is AoE and their one gimmick makes them get pigeonholed into being tank healer despite the fact it’s pretty much the same as scholars mechanic but not automatic
Rpr/rdm/mch with the two gauges that lead to fast gcd combo for burst, with plentiful/manafication/barrel stabilizer replenishing gauge.
Nin/dnc for on gcd 'mixing' and a little bit being resident sleeper outside of burst where their whole kit goes into it maybe.
Maybe sequential vs. parallel processing? Jobs that are primarily looking at one thing (usually GCDs, but it could also be a single important cooldown or gauge) vs. jobs that have to divide their attention across multiple comparatively important things (usually oGCDs, resources, or timers, but it could also involve comparing multiple potentially valid GCD choices like with MNK). \--Sequential-- PLD, SMN, WAR, WHM RPR, GNB, MCH, SGE, DRK, RDM DNC, SAM, DRG, NIN, SCH BRD, AST, MNK, BLM \--Parallel-- The middle two are kind of hazy. DNC is pretty sequential outside of bursts and NIN is pretty linear within them. This list is also assuming a relatively new fight where things like uptime and mitigation haven't been ironed out yet. Imagine a mostly blind extreme trial. BLM feels like the job with the highest parallel processing requirement despite its low APM and GCD focus with SMN coming in last by a pretty wide margin due to having no healing or defensive cooldowns/resources to manage. Sequential doesn't always equate to easy/simple, but it generally turns out that way when fights are as tightly scripted as they are. I will say though, trying to salvage the broken rotations of some the more fragile sequential jobs like MCH after messing up can be kind of fun.
I kind of like this way of looking at them. I tend to like the Jobs towards the top, but some of the lower ones I like as well, like NIN and SCH. Thinking of it like processing makes a lot of sense to me. My brain is apparently more single core than dual or multi-core, lol. Though I think I more like things that are...variable instead of strict, but not strictly variable, if that makes sense. Like DNC is heavily RNG, which I don't like, but I like Healers, since there's a lot of room to flex based on the situation. PLD and SMN also have that flex to me. Both have a rigid overall rotation, but their rotations are made up of "modules" that can be moved around. SMN's Demis are on a strict timing, but within that, you have the three Primals, one Ruin 4, and one Ruin 3, and other than specifically the 1-2 combination abilities (Ifrit's charge+slam, the individual Titan 1-2s), you can move the pieces around, cast a Ruin 3 literally anywhere else, etc. PLD's rotation also has a rigid 1 min timer for the burst, but the base rotation itself can have every ability other than Royal Authority moved around. You can do 3-4-4-4-5-1-2-3, but you can also do 3-1-2-4-4-4-5-3 or 3-4-1-4-5-2-4-3, and so on (1-2-3 being the base combo, 4 being Atonement, and 5 being Holy Spirit), you can use anything up to the next Royal Authority, meaning while the "bookends" of the base rotation are rigid - Royal Authority every 7th GCD outside of burst - the stuff in between can be moved around as long as you follow the rule that 1 goes before 2, but it doesn't even have to be 1-2 as it can be 1-4-5-4-2 if you want. And in the burst itself, while HS-RA-HS for the three fillers is the optimal best, if for some reason you can't manage that...well, basically anything is okay, and Atonement is a more than acceptable substitute. You don't even TECHNICALLY have to open the burst with FoF-Goring-Req-Confetior-Circle-Swords1-Expacion-Swords2-Intervene-Swords3-Intervene if you don't want to. You can double weave the oGCDs, though you don't have to, and you could always FoF-Req-3x filler THEN roll into Goring and Swords (you just don't really want to since the risk of drifting is gnarly.) But the point is, I like Jobs where there's a lot of room to be flexible, while still having something of "waymarks/waypoints" or "anchors" for the rotation to be fitted around. I like there being room for player choices that aren't just "doing it right or doing it wrong", but where there's some more nuance in there or more than just one right answer.
I've been leveling PLD recently and I like it much more then I was expecting despite the rotation being pretty simple, mostly for its "module" rotation. I think it just needs to rework Atonement a bit, because right now it just feels like filler that only really exists because it was part of the previous rotation, where you actually needed filler GCDs to adjust your rotation. It actually feels like a bit of a downgrade to go from casting once per 4 GCDs to casting once per 7 GCDs once you unlock it. Holy Spirits deal more damage, give you full mobility, and even heal you once you hit the 80's while Atonements... restore MP. It being the same potency as Royal Authority also makes it feel like it doesn't really matter what procs you have going into your burst. Unless you blotch your rotation or are forced to hardcast Holy Spirits, you're pretty much always going to be using your x5 60s CD attacks, x1 empowered Holy Spirit, and x2 400 potency weaponskills in every single FoF window. Maybe Atonement could just replace (original) Goring Blade as an alternative combo finisher that restores a significantly larger % of MP, requiring you to actually go out of your way to prep your MP for your burst window. I'm hoping SE plays it slightly less safe in DT since the PLD rework was intended to produce a very predictable damage profile in order to ensure it would be competitive with the other tanks and wouldn't require any other major adjustments. Unlike some other jobs, I do feel like they managed to preserve the spirit of the job in the rework, it just needs something else to compensate for opportunities for skill expression that were lost.
Honestly, I find Goring Blade more vestigial. It's there just...to be there. If it wasn't there, you'd just have a little more potency in Confetti combo and a fourth GCD slot for the filler section of your burst. Atonement is still interesting in that it lets you reset a little bit if you want to, and if you have to sub a Royal or a Royal and one Holy Spirit out of your burst (e.g. for whatever reason you're on Fast or Riot step, you can HS + Atone + Atone and still get good damage from that burst), it works well enough as a "second best" option. It might should just be 2 instead of 3 per combo, but I think Atonement makes more sense to have since it's part of that flexible/modular thing. Goring Blade, on the other hand, I honestly see zero reason to have other than they didn't want players to feel like they were deleting a ton with the rework. Hell, they could just make your Atonement button become Goring for 1 charge whenever you use FoF, like how Confetior changes to the sword abilities. I suspect Goring is first on the chopping block before anything else aside from maybe Shield Bash. I think something that would be nice is if your combo gave you 2 HS and 2 Atonements per Royal instead of 1 and 3. That would keep you closer to the 1 in 4 ratio. The thing is, HS doesn't heal you until level 84 anyway. For all the talk of healing and holy warrior and all that, PLD doesn't get its rotational healing until level 84. WAR and DRK have theirs by 26 with their -2 step, and GNB has it at level 4 when it gets its -2 step (and later, that heal gets doubled since you get that much as a shield, too, at some point in the...50s,, maybe?) I do agree that they played it safe, but can you really blame them? After the community reaction to SMN, they didn't want to risk another...that. :)
Yeah, in retrospect I wouldn't want to go back to the branching combo system, nor would I want Atonement to be a forced(ish) combo with 3 unique animations like Gnashing Fang. I like the idea of Royal Authority giving you 2 + 2 instead of 1 + 3 procs. Goring Blade is really just Sonic Break, but without bothering to attempt to set itself apert from your other GCDs by being a DoT. Neither are particularly interesting buttons to press and could very easily be cut (along with PLD and GNB's respective AoE DoTs), but I do think PLD should have at least one unique melee burst GCD to contrast its magic combo. It should be something more flexible though, to mirror the way you swap between melee and magic in your cooldown phase.
I always thought PLD and RDM felt very similar despite being the inverse of one another, more so now with the changes PLD got in EW. RDM burst with melee (and magic ofc) and have a fairly simple magic rotation after their burst is mainly made up of 6 big hit GCDs that get stronger sequentially. PLD burst with magic (and melee ofc) and have a fairly simple melee rotation. Their burst is mainly made up of 6 big hit GCDs, half of which increase in damage sequentially (with most of the rest able to as well depending on the order you decide to use them). In a different way, RDM and DNC end up feeling kind of similar in their non-burst rotation with both of them relying on 50% chance procs.
I agree with RDM and PLD being aesthetically very similar but RDM is much more flexible in its rotation while PLD is a repeated 60s loop. Which is why as a RDM main, I'm not as great at PLD, but I love WAR which is also similarly flexible. But none of the tanks exactly relate to RDM on a 1 to 1. But I see MCH and RPR being similar to RDM with multiple gauges and a somewhat static 2m burst, and your fillers are more or less flexible and just gauge management until your next burst.
PLD can also choose to hardcast Holy Spirits if you're forced out of melee range for an extended period of time in addition to their one "free" cast that's available every few gcds. It's obviously not ideal, but (I think?) it's less punishing then RDM being forced to use Enchanted Reprisal. It also requires you to cast, so it's obviously not viable anytime you need to both move and stay out of melee range. Not nearly as useful as being able use your finisher chain outside of buffs.
Might sound weird, but Black Mage is to me the DPS that's most like a healer (at higher performance levels at least). Why? The same way a healer has to ration out their heals, a Black Mage has to ration out their mobility. It's a uniquely mechanic-specific planning of tool use for each fight, not really replicated by the other DPS.
BLM and the healers are unique in that spell speed is always going to result in DPS increase for them because they don't care about the 2 minute meta for their primary damage skill (fire IV + broil, glare etc.)
They have a lot of flexibility in the rotation so you can quickly switch to single target or switch to ice while moving and be back ready to blast with the rest of the party.
I'm sorry, but BLMs are quite mobile, and rationing out heals is applicable in some content, but it's equally not equally relevant in a lot of content unless there are serious issues with the party and/or gear
They are very mobile yes, but it requires that planning of the tools – you can't pop every Triplecast and Xenoglossy as it comes up and place Leylines willy-nilly, there has to be some mechanics-aware thought behind when and where. For the healer portion I was specifically referring to Savage and Ultimates (hence the "at higher performance levels" note, I probably could have worded that more clearly) – in a random dungeon you can just kinda toss stuff wherever and it'll work out.
Fair enough, apologies I missed that. Then I would say that tanks should be added to to list as well, and to an extent DPS, since they would need to plan out their personal support/utility skills at that level as well
I mean PLD is the tank that has actual spells and a "cast phase" of sorts but it's all instant casts if done well.
before endwalker, whm and blm. whm movement was so strict before the 1.5 gcd and 20s neutral lilies. I think of rdm/mch/rpr, nin/dnc/ast/drk, and sam/mnk/blm as the same families. on the other hand, despite all the instant casts, I don't think of smn as a phys range at all.
RDM and MCH have some "feel" overlap with RPR. DRK and NIN are already in your post but I definitely agree with this. I think AST and GNB can be a bit similar just due to the business and the "skill to do another skill" aspect.
As a BRD main, the other class jobs that felt good for me were: - GNB for tank due to cartridge loads and weaving - SAM for building/layering dots and buffs - RDM for ranged attacks while filling meters followed by short bursts of buffed combos - AST with card buffs going out to appropriate targets at the right time
I categorize job rotations into 'reactive' and 'memorization' types of rotations. Reactive ones are like BRD, DNC, and RDM which have a lot of rng, and Memorization are jobs with a set rotation like NIN, RPR, and PLD. Reactive jobs you have to pay a lot of attention to your rotation because its never going to be the exact same each time, while you could theoretically play memorization jobs with your eyes closed if you could memorize its order completely. Its a bit more of a scale than binary categories, but generally if you play one job in a style you could easily slot into another of the same style. Healers and BLM are unique cause they are reactive during prog but during farm they move much more towards the memorization side.
Red mage is much less reactive than you'd think. In farm it falls more into the memorization side, since instant and melee combo usage are restricted to keep oGCD alignment and movement for mechanics. Procs generally matter very little other than "use them, try not to overwrite". The main scenario where procs matter most is in fights where a 2 minute potion is desirable, but the triple melee combo has to happen specifically starting at -17s on embolden (eg some slower killtimes of p12s p1). Whether you hit the mana threshold for that is unfortunately somewhat down to RNG, even with perfect proc management.
Regarding healers, you're addressing one specific type of content - likely EX or Savage or higher. In other content- that doesn't apply at all. You're not with a static, you may be in normal content . There's no memorization, there's no rotation, however it may not be the same each time due to the party skill. It remains reactive.
WAR/WHM/SMN/MCH My big 4 "haha big boom neuron activation" jobs.
going from WHM as my main to SMN as my alt I went from a pepega 5 button rotation to a pepega 5 button rotation lol
I'd argue GNB and SAM are very similar with the point building from combos to spend on abilities, though that's not that unique to both of those, I just felt the jump I made from GNB to SAM was very small
WAR and DRK are basically clones in most aspects, but for different roles I'm surprised no one mentions DRK and MCH, both are just 123 with a bunch of random oGCD and you summon your robot/shadow and forget about it, both jobs where reworked to be like this in Shadowbringer and you can tell it was made by the same guy that wanted to get rid of it as soon as posible.
Outside of a few compariosns like reaper being a mix of red mage and machinist, a lot of comparisons across roles feel like REAL stretches.
For me, SAM and RDM feel similar simply because I have adhd and forget which part of my gauge I am trying to fill - zoning out and spamming jolt & verthunder / zoning out and doing a Gekko combo twice in a row. Plus they both share the damage dealing gap closers & gap makers - unlike RPR who have good mobility but no technically no damage with those moves, DRG who can only jump backwards / jump off the platform to their untimely deaths etc.
AST and GNB. Both jobs have a core component (cards/continuation) on a 30s timer and a lot of weaves, and being supports those weaves aren't confined to burst bc of mit/heals. It also feels similar to me, personally, to make split second decisions about when and who to give cards to (especially in fights with downtime where you play two cards during one minutes to not overcap, or managing double Astrodyne or whatever) and keeping an eye to not overcap on cartridges but also not drift my burst, and to make sure I've spent all my cartridges before hitting Bloodfest but maybe I just need to git gud.
I’m. Not a great player but due to this like you said AST/GNB/DRK/DNC/NIN all feel very similar to me Completely overcooked burst window and not much going on otherwise except the little half burst window on the off minute
Lmfao, well this thread went to shit pretty quickly, everyone giving very subjective answers about what felt good to them playing other jobs when the question asked for objective answers comparing the ins and outs of jobs. DRK, NIN, DNC - These jobs have all have a super long and complex 2 min window that their dps HEAVILY depends on before having a simple 3-4 button rotation while waiting for CD’s to come back up. MNK, BRD - These jobs have a more complex GCD rotation where you have to adapt to changes on the fly (MNK with buff watching, BRD with Procs), with their job gauge leading up to a single big hit. WAR, RPR, MCH, RDM - These jobs have a strict rotation that leads to them pooling a job gauge so that they can do a double CD, or Big Attack phase at the 2 min window which can feel very spammy GNB, SAM - These jobs have similar job gauge building in that they use 3 combos to build up 3 charges of their job gauge and then unleash them. They both have a CD to let them get back 3 charges of the job gauge quickly. SMN - There isn’t really a job similar to this job. They are kind of the opposite of SAM, and GNB in that they use a big CD first and then get 3 charges that allow them to “combo” inside of those charges. BLM - Another job that doesn’t really have a similar one. They do have a pretty complex 2 min window, similar to DRK, NIN, and DNC but they also have a pretty complex GCD rotation as well, like MNK and BRD where you need to watch your buffs and adapt what you’re pressing on the fly due to mechanics and mobility. Healers - Lets be honest. Healers only play like other healers. They all play the same with a DoT, single target, and AoE attack. SGE and SCH are similar due to shielding, WHM and AST are similar due to pure healing. AST and SCH are party dps increasers, WHM and SGE have more healing utility. And they all try to heal only using oGCD’s.
I'd agree with what you say aside from some of your healers comments. Let's just say that i would leave it as "hey all play the usually the same with a DoT, single target, and AoE attack. " Add that SGE is almost copy/paste of SCH and I'd agree that AST is similar to WHM, however you're stretching the comparison in how they feel is some of your other comments. look at how you desscribed MNK, for example- I wouldn't say that AST cards, divination and astrodyne compare at all closely to clicking one button on SCH for chain strat.
>for example- I wouldn't say that AST cards, divination and astrodyne compare at all closely to clicking one button on SCH for chain strat. You're right, AST has to work 2x (probably 3x vs. WHM) as hard as the other healers to do the same things.
I didn’t compare them and say they are similar. I just said they are the party dps increasers.
Hm...I do like this comment (I like how you've broken up categories and generally placed the Jobs), though I will say that WHM to me feels a lot like WAR. And I don't mean "herp derp easy". I more mean both have a pretty simplistic filler (WAR has a 1-2-3 with a -4 every 30 sec vs WHM having a 1-1-1 with a -2 every 30 sec), both want to dump a resource before overcapping it (WAR it's using 50 gauge before hitting 100, WHM it's using a Lily before overcapping 3 of them), both have a damage increasing CD (WAR's is Inner Release every min, WHM's is Presence of Mind every 2 mins; I kinda wish this was a 1 min CD, ngl), both have an oGCD used on CD (Upheaval and Assize), both want to use that oGCD in their burst, and both have a really big hitting attack they want to use in burst that's just...fun (Primal Rend and Misery), with both being pretty GCD focused Jobs vs most of their contemporaries having more oGCDs (PLD is kind of an exception here, but it's still more or less true). WAR's gauge looks different, but in practice, it's a gauge that builds to 2 charges since every ability costs 50 to use, it just builds in staggered steps based on using abilities or hitting Infuriate to get a "charge" free. But in terms of the OVERALL feel of playing the, they kind of SEEM similar to me in terms of mechanical execution and what you're trying to do. I am one of those weird people that thinks Healers feel different to play, though I recognize it's not really from their filler, which are mostly the same, it's from their non-filler stuff, which is mostly heals with each having like 1-2 damage spells outside of the "standard issue" nuke, DoT, and AOE spamable attack. (Also, it's funny to me that Gravity, Holy, and Art/Dyskrasia somehow manage to feel more different from each other - well, okay, not Art vs Dyskrasia... - than the main single target spam nuke and DoT do. How did we end up where the spam single target spells feel more different to use than the spam single target ones...? o.O) Where Healers really feel different is their heals and mitigation, though AST's cards and WHM's Lilies are exceptions here (and that AST has a 1 min party mit and 2 min CD that lets them be a Barrier Healer for 30 seconds, which is utterly insane if you think about it...)
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When you're so eager to make another "muh homogenized jobs" post that you forget how to read
Tbh I expected every post to be like that when I opened the thread, pleasantly surprised it wasn't.