#ffxiv leveling

Ah, Sage. An interesting concept that I do unfortunately think gets a little ruined by just being meme'd as "gun healer," but that's just me. I played SGE a little during EW, getting it to level 80 or so where the leveling started. I remember stopping just because I didn't think it was as intuitive to me as SCH, my favorite healer, and... I still have this opinion.

Now, with that said, I do actually think SGE is the better designed healer, with a bit more options for damage that break up pressing your 1 by a good amount and actually has some interesting ways to get movement. It just feels a little big brained for me, which I'm cool with. The leveling was quite smooth and with fast queue times for everything. I would similar put it at the same tier of WHM, a solid C tier. I'll basically never play this as my healer over SCH willingly, but I wouldn't hate doing a dungeon or something on it either.

DNC has reached level 100. I believe this was the longest journey, but only by a hair. DNC started at 60 and I believe I picked up BRD for this short series from level 61, but either way. DNC was never a job I was super interested in, but it ended up... pretty solid. I wouldn't say "I would like to raid on this job" levels, but at least like "If I have to do an Expert roulette on this job, I'd be cool with that." Crazy how you can actually make a fun physical ranged job.

Anyway, not much to say, DNC just felt solid. I really like that it is a physical ranged job that actually has to get in close for their AoE, even if that does get a little iffy and weird every so often. I like the dances, I like hitting their burst. I just like DNC. Also, I think it is genuinely one of the more consistently fun jobs, even when downsync'd very low. Solid B tier, I could be argued up to A, but we'll see if I have any "man, I really wish I was playing DNC" right now moments for any other jobs.

Ah, WHM. This was a really quick journey I've just been lazy to write about. 95 - 100 was all that was left. It was a fun little journey though. Healing is pretty fun. Not super interesting or challenging, admittedly, but I still think it is fun. And WHM exemplifies that. It isn't my favorite healer, but it is the most pure healer of the healers.

Solid C tier. Nothing wrong with this, just also nothing mindblowing. At least this has a single button to use that is actually kind of fun to use! Yes, that is in fact a point of hatred against BRD, how could you tell? I do wonder how no cast time Glare will feel in Evolved Mode with Evercold, I honestly think it will make healing a lot less interesting since I think cast times are actually part of the interesting part of healing.

…So, BRD huh? Oh boy. BRD started at level 60 for this leveling project and… I understand why I didn't touch it for that long. BRD bored me to tears. BRD was genuinely rough to get through, to a point that I have now unlocked the combat Allied Society daily quests for SB (only Kojin), ShB, EW and DT to speed along this entire process a bit, because I wanted BRD to be done with. Note: BRD only got 2 days of Pelupelu daily quests, the rest were unlocked for different jobs. I was just so bored that I was like "I need something to distract me from this that isn't just doing my Expert roulette."

BRD was genuinely so awful for my mental, I was just checked out and this didn't really change as I got levels. It got better with Empyreal Arrow giving a guaranteed proc on your songs and Apex Arrow's bar existing and the better RNG on Refulgent Arrow procs with Burst Shot (and the trait that allows both DoT skills and Iron Jaws proc it when used)... but it just wasn't enough to keep me engaged in playing the game. BRD's burst is genuinely kind of fun, but everything outside of that just... wasn't. The second I noticed that BRD's procs can only happen every 3 seconds, I could basically automate what I was doing outside of burst. When people say that the game is so boring, I can now only imagine them as BRD mains.

Genuinely F tier, I don't even think at higher levels it became fun enough for me to want to play it in anything even remotely serious. I think its Evolved Mode, which does look similar to current SMN, can genuinely only be an improvement. If anything scares me for one button combos for Evolved Mode, it is not getting a proc on Burst Shot for 10 uses in a row (yes, I counted). Also, yes, F tier didn't exist on the tier list until this point and it will continue to exist unless I don't have any D tier experiences >:(

So, ever since the Evercold announcement, I've been leveling all my combat classes to level 100, having only previously done the tanks and SCH/SMN. So far I've gotten MNK, RPR and SAM to level 100 and I'm currently working on BRD, which is level 93 at the moment. I just briefly want to talk about how I am feeling about every job I've leveled in that period (so, not counting the tanks and SCH/SMN) and put them into a little tier list. This is absolutely completely subjective, but I just think it is fun. Also, in terms of the order of how I'm leveling them: RNG decided. That's why there will be some funky patterns on what jobs get done in what order. I will also say that I did pick MNK, RPR and SAM for the order to get a few of the melees done and have a more balanced RNG deciding how we move through the jobs. Anyway, let's start with the first of the 3: MNK!

VPR, PIC, and SMN all to 100!

Took some time off the game for burnout and came back to finish these out. I didn't think I'd like Pictomancer for Rein aesthetically, but it and Viper both have such fluid rotations I wound up really enjoying them.