last night I had a dream about a gun that shoots serpents of ronka. as in, fires them as projectiles. in case anyone was wondering how my brain was doing

Commission for @amethyst of her viera

I got all the jobs in FFXIV up to level 100 (not really that hard to do) and now that I've gotten a good taste of each of them, I'm gonna do a loose ranking of each one. These are my opinions so if you read these and get mad, that's on you! For added context I've been playing since about 3.3 or 3.4, not sure which.

The Tanks

Paladin

Paladin feels pretty good. A good middle ground tank between the all-out unflappable nature of Warrior and the "oh my god please hit me" nature of Dark Knight. Getting a free instant cast of Holy Circle and Holy Spirit after every combo and making them heal you is a smart move.

Warrior

Warrior still feels like the undisputed queen of tanks. Oodles of self healing with Bloodwhetting every 45 seconds, on top of Damnation, Equilibrium, and Shake It Off? It's just too good. Plus who can say no to Fell Cleave, Feller Cleave, and Fellerest Cleave?

Dark Knight

I really see the vision here but it still doesn't really click or stand on its own. It feels like watered down Warrior still. It has really cool animations and a good visual identity but that's about it. It's not a bad job by any means, though. I am simply not overwhelmed or underwhelmed by it.

Gunbreaker

Gunbreaker is, I think, the most fun tank to play. The powder gauge combos with continuation feel active and punchy, and the sound effects are clunky and loud, in a good way.

Melee DPS

Monk

Monk is the melee job I can really get into a zen state with, and has been my main job for two expacs now. Something about it just clicks with me in a way I can't really describe. Due to the new beast chakra I can really focus easier on positional and know when I need to switch much easier than before.

Dragoon

Dragoon is also easy to get into a zen state with, although compared to monk, the burst is a lot more chaotic. Dragoon is simply just a lot of fun, but dragoon has always been fun in my opinion.

Ninja

I adore this job just for the mudras. Executing ninja well just feels good. I don't really know how to feel about the kazematoi gauge though. I guess there's not enough feedback?

Samurai

Although I said I can get into a zen state with monk, I actually found myself enjoying actually playing samurai a lot more, and I think it might be my main DPS job now. The animations and sounds are all great and it is a lot of fun to build and execute iaijutsu.

Reaper

Although reaper is cool conceptually, I just can't seem to enjoy it, and part of it is just due to my self-taught finger placement on a keyboard. The way the flow of the rotation goes clashes with my finger placement in a way that actually feels a little uncomfortable. It's hard to explain. I would probably enjoy this job more on a controller.

Viper

Viper is fairly fun and not overly complicated, also easy to get into a zen state with. I enjoy the way the rotation kind of snakes back and forth between GCDs and OGCDs, and the animations and sounds are all really cool.

Healers

White Mage

It's fine. It's white mage. You know what white mage does. Big powerful heals and regens. I don't enjoy it as much as I used to.

Scholar

Scholar is still a lot of fun and still feels very potent. I never feel like I run out of ways to heal and mitigate damage, and the lv100 capstone ability is so cool. I would say Scholar is my second favorite healer, maybe tied with Astrologian.

Astrologian

There is nothing more satisfying in this game than perfectly timing an Earthly Star to explode on its own immediately following raidwide damage

Sage

Sage is easily my favorite healer. It's just so fun to play and whoever came up with the Kardia idea deserves a throne of gold at Square Enix HQ. Attacking enemies automatically healing the Kardia target is so brilliant.

Ranged DPS

Bard

Bard is actually the last job I leveled because I was expecting to not enjoy it, but I actually enjoy it the most out of the three ranged DPS jobs. It just really clicked for me.

Machinist

Double Check Checkmate Double Check Checkmate Double Check Checkmate Double Check Checkmate Double Check Checkmate CHAINSAW help me

Dancer

It's... fine. It's just not for me and likely never will be.

Casters

Black Mage

Black Mage is the job I started with. Overall I think it's in a good place and is just as fun as it's ever been, even if some optimizations were apparently filed off. I think if you have particularly strong opinions on that you're probably playing Pictomancer now though.

Summoner

I don't care for Gob.

Red Mage

Red Mage is a cool job conceptually and I don't necessarily dislike playing it, but to me, it feels "sticky" to play. But it is a lot of fun to zoom in and do the melee combo and backflip away. It's a very stagey job.

Pictomancer

Pictomancer is an absolute blast to play. It's cute, powerful, and has a fun little gimmick. I wasn't expecting much out of it, and it felt a little odd at first, especially since painting a motif during combat takes so long, but eventually it clicked and now it's absolutely my caster of choice. Plus you get to swing a big magic paint hammer! Does it get any better than that?