WoWer trying FFXI, best toon for me?

[pixiehawk]

Re: WoWer trying FFXI, best toon for me?

he just made his little dude, let him get a second piece of gear first.

[Ufgt]

Re: WoWer trying FFXI, best toon for me?

ok made a toon.. theres no menu bar for spells/attacks/etc like wow
this seems to be infinitesimally more simplistic of a game

3 weeks, you read it here first, folks.

[Takelli]

Re: WoWer trying FFXI, best toon for me?

ok made a toon.. theres no menu bar for spells/attacks/etc like wow
this seems to be infinitesimally more simplistic of a game

You just did not call FFXI simpler than WoW... WoW is far more simpler than FFXI lol

[Feba]

Re: WoWer trying FFXI, best toon for me?

FFXI starts off very slow, and gets more complicated. Unless you play MNK, a well trained cat could play MNK. Hardest jobs to play are mages, specifically support mages; RDM and BRD traditionally get the ass-end of the work.

Don't confuse an interface made nearly a decade ago for the PS2 for simpler gameplay, though. The entire thing is designed to be managable with a Dualshock, so there's basically zero use in using a mouse. I'm assuming you're a PC player-- if you're using your mouse, stop now. Everything can be accessed quicker using the keyboard, especially once you learn the shortcuts for the various submenus and start setting up macros. Using the mouse only slows down your hands, and thus affects your play quality. Also, having your hands on the keyboard at all times makes it a VERY simple task to make quick comments to party members when you need to; whereas some poor PS2 players have to slam down the controller and race to type in their comments.

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: WoWer trying FFXI, best toon for me?

Noticed the OP said he wished to avoid an overplayed class.

Samurai is deeply overplayed. If you're intent on being a melee in endgame, you not only face an uphill battle for being in events, but if you have anything slight more "useful" in the eyes of endgame (PLD, BRD, COR, BLM, RDM, WHM, SCH) you will play that other role at the expense of your melee

Now is not the time to be deciding on your favorite job class anyway, give them all a try before making a serious decision on where you're going with your character because endgame really sucks when you're playing a role you don't like. A lot of people will pick role that are popular to invite only to be miserable with then at endgame. Others will level melee classes and wonder why they can't make any headway.

Basically, know what you're in for. Jobs like Dancer, Puppetmaster and Beastmaster have a hard time making it in endgame especially because the way they operate is less compatible with conventional (read: Cookie-cutter) strategies.

Thankfully, FFXI's endgame is about to see a major shake up over the course of this year, so perhaps things will be changing for jobs that are disadvantaged now. More or less, things that are "endgame" now are soon going to be intermediate content. Its also going to make the new endgame a longer road, so I wouldn't get worry about rushing to the current endgame too much.

[Pwnagraphic]

Re: WoWer trying FFXI, best toon for me?

3 weeks, you read it here first, folks.

LOL

[ItazuraNhomango]

Re: WoWer trying FFXI, best toon for me?

If you're intent on being a melee in endgame, you not only face an uphill battle for being in events, but if you have anything slight more "useful" in the eyes of endgame (PLD, BRD, COR, BLM, RDM, WHM, SCH) you will play that other role at the expense of your melee

Er, this really depends on the group you're with, and what they lack the most. There's more nuance to this subject/problem than BBQ paints it.

If a healer is needed the most, yes, you'd be asked to go as White Mage, Red Mage, or Scholar. If the regular healer wants a break, the same can happen. The same goes for Paladin, Bard, etc.

However, in just about every group I've ran with, people who prefer certain jobs at the very least were given some considerations. Usually someone else would offer to switch with them, and it's not even unusual to change battle plan a bit to accommodate people's job preferences. Up to a point, of course--if someone's particular job sucks, and it's a critical fight, he'd get shot down and be asked to go as something more useful.

Another factor is that it's much easier to acquire the gears needed to be decent healer or support role jobs. For some jobs like Bard, meeting the minimum performance expectation is so easy, some people complain it's boring(--mostly their own fault, since they don't try to do much beyond the minimum).

For damage dealers, though, the gears make much larger and much more obvious differences. I consider my Samurai's setup to be second tier; I'm missing major endgame gear like Raja's Ring and Byakko's Haidate, and don't have ultra expensive AH gear like Cuchulain's Mantle or Toreador's Ring. Yet, in the last Dynamis run, my total DD output was 52% more than the next closest melee (who was in the same party, getting the same buffs).

That's how large of a gap there is between a second-tier endgame (part-time-)DD and a fresh-to-the-scene DD. Imagine a newly Lv.75 damage dealer who joins a Linkshell with the players who pretty much have the perfect DDs already, and what the performance gap would be like.

As a leader, if you have pick between your well-geared, well-merited long-time endgame Samurai, and a new to the endgame person with a normally geared Samurai, you know you should pick the long-time SAM. The performance gap will be large--if that new person has a useful mage job, he should be on that and let the better geared people go as damage dealers if doing harder fights.

If one job--damage dealing job--is all you have, and you're accepted into an endgame event, of course it's what you will use. Just don't expect to placed in the party with full support buffs unless other DDs can't make it--you won't be able to as much advantage of support and buffs as would a better geared DD. You'll get stuffed into random openings in the tank party, the nuke party, or even stuck in some outside alliance without a healer.

Now is not the time to be deciding on your favorite job class anyway, give them all a try before making a serious decision on where you're going with your character

Great advice, up to this point.

Instead of the reasons BBQ gives, though, I'll just follow that with "because you don't know what you'll end up liking."

Jobs like Dancer, Puppetmaster and Beastmaster have a hard time making it in endgame especially because the way they operate is less compatible with conventional (read: Cookie-cutter) strategies.

Not every group hates Dancer, Puppetmaster, or Beastmaster; I have a hard understanding not wanting a DNC in large-group events, for one.

Of course, YMMV.

[Elwynn]

Re: WoWer trying FFXI, best toon for me?

If you are talking about job (class) then you can change that without changing your toon. As mention before, some will need to be unlocked before you can use them.

This also means you only have to do the quests/missions once. Mule characters are primarly for inventory storage.

And really, you would probably go nuts if you had to do all the missions over and over again because you were limited to one class per character. Some of the mission fights are quite, ah, challenging, and are better done as certain classes. For instance, on some of the nation missions, I've done one as BLM, then the next as WHM, then the one after that as BLM, simply because that was the best thing I had for each fight.

Endgame isn't like that... if they know you have certain jobs, they might not ever let you come as anything else. But there's a metric fuckton of things to do without ever touching the "endgame" stuff, which I see mostly as equivalent to a hamster wheel, where you're forever waiting for rare gear to drop so that you can do more endgame to get more rare gear to drop, etc. I refuse to participate in this, especially with the famously low drop rates. I wouldn't mind going through Dynamis to clear the areas, but almost everyone does it hoping to get the gear they want... "someday... maybe in a year or two... if I can just get enough points from doing runs... and a lucky lot roll".

There are also BCNMs. That stands for "Burning Circle Notorious Monster", and they are 10-30 minute instanced boss fights with level and party size restrictions. You're still hoping for a rare drop, but these are based on "beastmen seals" that you get during regular XP play, and don't require you to play them on a schedule. Each one will have it's preferred jobs, and a few can be soloed with the right job, usually a pet job.

Some jobs are better solo or in "burn" parties (where everyone or almost everyone is the same job), and those can be much more fun or challenging than a traditional xp grind party. For instance, under the right conditions BLM can one-shot something that is of a higher level and gives good XP, and a group of them nuking at the same moment can do even better. BST is probably the ultimate solo job, plus it has some attributes that make it useful as a subjob if you take it to a high level. SE has done some things in the past year and a half such that solo play is at least feasible now. And of course when you play solo, you get to keep ALL the drops.

And then there are areas that are in a battlefield mode. The first one was Besieged from the ToAU expansion, but there are only usually three per 24 hours. WoTG added campaign battles, and I found that much more fun as a WHM than a traditional party. (WHM is special in that you can do okay in CB as low as level 40, while most jobs have to wait for level 60.) The problem is that your combat and magic skills don't increase in CB, so you still have to fight stuff elsewhere to keep from being gimp.

[Hypercube69]

Re: WoWer trying FFXI, best toon for me?

lol

[Aksannyi]

Re: WoWer trying FFXI, best toon for me?

Now is not the time to be deciding on your favorite job class anyway, give them all a try before making a serious decision on where you're going with your character because endgame really sucks when you're playing a role you don't like.

This is the best advice in the thread. I would never recommend a job to someone who is just starting out if they don't know what each job does and whether or not they'll like it. Getting invites is great when you're trying to xp your way to 75 but it sure does suck being told, "<Job you hate> for Dynamis" for the six hundredth time.

It takes a long freaking time to get to 75 on a first job, and quite a long time with a second, too, especially if those jobs are opposites and require different subjobs. I'd highly recommend that he plays each of the starting six jobs to 10(ish) just to get a feel for them, and then after looking around at other jobs, doing some research or just seeing what higher level players are doing (like if they help him out or whatnot), then maybe he can come up with a plan for what job he'd like to take to 75.

[Grizzlebeard]

Re: WoWer trying FFXI, best toon for me?

Good luck getting invites at all on any job lately. I can count on one hand the number of parties I've had in the last week on corsair for merits and dancer for levelling.

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: WoWer trying FFXI, best toon for me?

Good luck getting invites at all on any job lately. I can count on one hand the number of parties I've had in the last week on corsair for merits and dancer for levelling.

If you can't get a merit invite on Corsair, you might want to look into why that is. If you're seeking COR/WAR they might naturally pass you over because they see your intentions right off the bat. If they see something like, say, COR/DNC they might assume you were just doing some solo or that you're more of a full-support COR.

I just have a hard time believing a COR couldn't get an invite while seeking. Populations might have dropped but attitudes and trends among RDM and BRDs have not. And who do PTs go looking for after those two aren't available? COR and WHM, usually.

[Aksannyi]

Re: WoWer trying FFXI, best toon for me?

Depends on the server, though, back when I was playing inviting a COR for a merit party was akin to making out with your own mother.

Attitudes have changed, I'm sure, but I'm betting some servers are still pretty stupid about it, like the everlasting "loldrg" after about five years that still has never changed to some people.

[Takelli]

Re: WoWer trying FFXI, best toon for me?

If you can't get a merit invite on Corsair, you might want to look into why that is. If you're seeking COR/WAR they might naturally pass you over because they see your intentions right off the bat. If they see something like, say, COR/DNC they might assume you were just doing some solo or that you're more of a full-support COR.

I don't understand that though. I solo as Sam/Dnc with my flag up in campaign for about three hours, then as soon as I change to something like /nin, I get invites.

I see a job that the party needs, even if they have an odd sub such as blu or something, I'll invite them anyways and ask them to change their sub. Some people don't even look at the Search comment which is stupid. They see Sam/Dnc and think "lol sam/dnc" but they don't bother to check my comment which is usually {Support job}, {Anything}.

[Mhurron]

Re: WoWer trying FFXI, best toon for me?

Good luck getting invites at all on any job lately. I can count on one hand the number of parties I've had in the last week on corsair for merits and dancer for levelling.

He probably doesn't live in Britain.

Invites were a little slow on Kujata, but you hardly seem to waste much time waiting for invites after Kujata merged.

I solo as Sam/Dnc with my flag up in campaign for about three hours, then as soon as I change to something like /nin, I get invites

Use your search comments and put what your available subjobs are. It's true most won't read them, but you didn't want to party with them anyway.