ok here's one last loporritpost i've kind of wanted to post for months and it's now-or-never:

(ffxiv endwalker spoilers if you don't know what that is)

I have managed, before the demise of Cohost, to level every job in Final Fantasy XIV to 100 and now I am going to inflict my opinions on you. I have organized the jobs into a handy tier list, so you don't actually have to read any of this shit in order to get the gist.

Pictomancer is a hilarious job. It does obscene DPS. At every single capstone (50/60/70/80/90/100) it has something fun and cool you can do, making it by miles and miles the most enjoyable job to go into roulettes with. It has a stronger melee combo than Red Mage. Its has better summons than Summoner. It does more DPS than Black Mage with a far less rigid rotation. It is a perfect job without any flaws or draw backs. As a long time Red Mage main I am slightly, slightly seething fucking mad about PCT and SMN getting melee abilities because that utterly compromises Red Mage's whole identity.

Speaking of which, they do not know what to do with Red Mage. Red Mage, as introduced in Stormblood is a full and complete job that you can only really tack things onto. And it shows because this is now the third expansion in a row where the additions to Red Mage are just adding in a few flashy red explosions. Its unfortunate because the rotation now just kind of feels bloated to me, and the job has moved so far away from the White vs. Black magic dichotomy that it kind of seems irrelevant (when all my biggest hits are clearly neither, and are just, big red explosion). They've tacked on so many finishers that the swordsmanship part of the job is also irrelevant, as again all my melee abilities are complety overshadowed by Big Red Explosion. Add to that Pictomancer and Summoner both getting their own melee combos and Paladin and Ninja both feeling like truer caster/melee hybrids than Red Mage. Its really odd; Red Mage's whole identity is that it is a hybrid job but design wise they keep it locked tightly to Magical Ranged DPS, but allow other jobs (especially Paladin) to step outside of their role despite it not being as core to their identity (Paladin, remember, had almost no magic until Stormblood). The job has kind of lost its identity and feels like it really needs them to look at everything they've added since Stormblood and cut out a bunch of extraneous abilities.

White Mage is so boring that I did two dungeons to finish it off before writing this post and now I'm dozing off in my chair. They've gotta fix healers in general. They all have a thousand buttons for emergency healing that just go completely unused in 99% of content if people know what they're doing. I did the first Endwalker alliance raid on White Mage and it was one of the dullest things I've ever done in a video game; just hitting the same button on my controller a few hundred times because the raid doesn't put out enough damage to require multiple healers in a party. Scholar has by far and away the most enjoyable healing kit to use but last time I played it in Expert Roulette I got 3 commendations which I think was because my party took the variety of abilities I was using for competence and no, I could have just used Indomitability the whole time but I was just kind of cycling through all my different buttons on an 'oh I've not used that one yet this dungeon' basis to keep myself interested. I think the obvious answer is to just give these jobs a slightly more involved DPS rotation. Probably keep White Mage as it is to fulfill its role as the easy healer for beginners.* Sage has the shadow of a ghost of a more interesting rotation, but not much more than that and its overall healing kit is just much less fun than Scholar.

They murdered Dragoon. Killed it dead. It's so boring now. The rotation no longer has any feeling of build up, or strategy - you just hit the buttons as they light up and don't think. The burst phase feels incredibly spammy. The changes to the rotation de-emphasize jumps as a core part of the rotation in favour of big flashy dragon themed explosions and laser beams (for some weird reason). Previously using Jump/High Jump was what allowed you to build resources towards your burst phase - the whole the revolved around jumps. Now they're kind of just another low damage OGCD. I think that when you are playing Dragoon, the jumps should feel important, hot take I know. The worst part is that I have 5 years of muscle memory built up for how Dragoon should flow, which means I genuinely cannot play it any more, because I'm constantly moving and optimizing and strategizing and then going oh right, this is all meaningless and being bummed out.

I think that's all of my Big Thoughts? Gunbreaker is great and has been one of the best jobs since its introduction, Black Mage is still really fun despite Pictomancer eating its lunch and I enjoy playing everything on the tier list from B upwards. Viper goes down low because its a fake job before level 90, and only really a lot of fun at 100 but in the majority of content in the game its dull as dirt. I've never liked Paladin or Bard and I still think the best version of Astrologian I've played is the 5.0 iteration.

*White Mage is actually a terrible beginner healer because the goal of healing in FFXIV is to use as few GCDs as possible and rely on OGCD healing as much as you can. White Mage doesn't have any OGCDs until level 50+ and at level 100 still has the fewest of any healer. Despite being designed as the obviously beginner friendly healer it will teach you nothing but bad habits that you'll then have to unlearn. It truly is one of the worst designed jobs in the game.

Cinnamon Hearts :>

It's Lizard O' Clock and we're setting our sights on the Ridorana Lighthouse as we continue through the Ivalice raids in Final Fantasy XIV: Stormblood! Hope to see you there!