PLease help me pick a main =(

[Taruking]

I have been playing this game for 2 yrs and yet have to picked a main my highest job is 41 WHM and i just dont know what my main should be soo if anyone could help me out and list what the like/dislike and pros/cons for their main it would be very helpful and my race is taru which makes no difference



ty in advance



----------Tk----------------

[Afran]

Re: PLease help me pick a main =(

Gonna start the game soon myself, unsure which melee class to chose though, they all sound quite appealing :] Though I've always liked constant dps (damage per second), and I do prefer to dual-wield. Monk is probably more suited for this? :]

[Minic]

Re: PLease help me pick a main =(

I dont know either I just joined today so I have no clue!

[Lunaryn]

Re: PLease help me pick a main =(

Each job has a number of distinguishing features that can make them wonderful to play or an incredibly dull slog through the levels depending on your own tastes. I'll recommend the Search function to look through the discussions that have taken place, but let's go ahead and try for a quick rundown.

Warrior - This is a melee powerhouse which has both offensive and defensive potential. Many people like this job for DD, but it also has the capacity to be an effective tank if set up for it. It has many weapons that it can wield semi-effectively, but XP parties are going to want its A-rank weapons, Axe and Greataxe. The pros/cons of GAxe vs. Axe+Shield vs. Axe+Axe (/NIN) have been discussed exhaustively in the Warrior forum, I believe.

The primary con I can see for this job is that with the terse invites that are the norm, you won't really know until you get there whether the party wants you for tank or DD unless you ask, and if you greatly prefer one role over the other, you're likely to get frustrated by the number of parties that will want you to do the opposite of what you're interested in.

If you level this job, you will almost certainly end up having to level either Monk or Ninja as a sub. I'm actually using Ranger for pre-Utsusemi levels myself, but WAR/NIN becomes pretty ubiquitous from 24 on.

Monk - This job is a rather straightforward damage-dealer job, and prior to ToAU the only job that has worthwhile hand-to-hand skill. This is also one of only three jobs that makes a particularly worthwhile subjob in the dunes levels.

I've not run into too many Monks in my time so I don't think I can comment much on the job (I also haven't leveled it to party range). I'd advise looking into the Monk forum for more information.

If you level this job, you will have to level WAR as a sub. Most DDs find themselves in this situation.

Thief - This job is a weak job on its face, but is highly technique-oriented, allowing naturally high Dexterity and Agility to translate into damage spikes on job abilities that can stack with any physical weapon skills. It is a pain to level to 15, but once you master Sneak Attack and get some good DEX+ gear you will be amazed at what you are capable of.

Thief's only A-rank melee weapon is the Dagger, a weapon known for low damage but low delay between attacks. The main difficulty presented is that your key job abilities, Sneak Attack and Trick Attack, only stack with physical weapon skills, and most worthwhile Dagger WSs are magical. Prior to level 33, the only WS you have to stack with SATA is Wasp Sting. Fortunately, two unlikely candidates come to the rescue at lower levels. Thief has a C-rank skill in Sword, and can keep up using this weapon until Viper Bite is yours. Fast Blade stacks nicely with SATA, and even has a DEX modifier that feeds right into your Sneak Attack damage. It's also a two-hit WS, which improves SATA's effectiveness on it (the only reason Viper Bite is particularly worthwhile is because as a two-hit physical, the SATA damage boosts it reasonably well). Further, if you're into Monk, Thief has an E-rank skill in hand-to-hand, and backed by a Monk sub is good in the pre-VB levels, as SATA Combo is godly, while you can still hit with your fists.

The primary con to Thief is that it is a very technical job and your performance will depend a lot on how cooperative your party is. Melee positioning is everything to pulling off successful SATA damage spikes and using your job's hate control potential. If you are easily frustrated by having to compensate for others and losing opportunities because of unhelpful party members, this is not the job for you. If you can take bad parties in stride, or even take lack of cooperation as a challenge and look to take any opportunity you can, you may do well here.

If you level Thief you will almost certainly end up leveling Ninja, as it has a lot of important versatility options to it that improve your defense in pulling and your ability to solo. Warrior is also a popular subjob for maximizing your damage-dealing effectiveness. Ranger is a nice subjob if you know how to make use of it; Wide Scan can be very handy when pulling, and Thief can take advantage of a lot of useful status bolts. THF/RNG also happens to be the classic farming/NM-hunting combo. White Mage also has distinct advantages in soloing, though not in xp parties. Finally, Monk may help ease your way through early levels of Thief.

...going to leave off here so my post doesn't get too terribly long at once, not to mention I probably need a break before going farther anyway.

[Lunaryn]

Re: PLease help me pick a main =(

Hmm... I'd have expected someone else to chime in by now...

White Mage - This is the best healer in the game, having three main advantages over Red Mage in this role: Gains new healing spells at lower levels, has full-party buffs, and has exclusive access at high levels to valuable healing magic.

A White Mage's primary role in a party is to keep everyone in the party alive using curative magic without drawing the attention of the enemy being fought. In a crisis, the 2-hour ability Benediction will restore the entire party to full health, but be warned: unless you have a LOT of -Enmity (e.g. full Crow set) or some other way of removing Enmity, this ability will plaster the mob on you, and there will be little the party can do to distract it until you die.

A White Mage often receives the role of Main Healer, who is responsible for watching everyone's HP and keeping it high without grabbing too much of the mob's attention, as well as providing party buffs like Protect(ra) and Shell(ra). Another common role is Backup Healer, who helps out with healing when many people are taking damage or a lot of damage is taken, to prevent the main healer from running out of MP or taking Hate. In other parties a WHM might end up in the role of Main Debuff; with high MND, a WHM can land white magic enfeebles well if they keep their Enfeebling Magic skill high.

White Mage is one of the better mage jobs at soloing, though it can be a challenge. White Mage is the only job that has access to hammers, an excellent set of weapons which combined with capped Club skill give White Mage a fairly passable melee capability; combined with a variety of buffs such as Protect/Shell, Blink, Stoneskin, Aquaveil, and possibly Blaze Spikes (if subbing BLM) and the ability to heal oneself, not to mention the Auto Regen Job Trait, WHM can solo reasonably well, if slowly.

If you level White Mage, you will level Black Mage. This is simply the single most useful and versatile WHM sub available. If you really don't want to level BLM, you can get by with Red Mage as a subjob as well. Summoner is also useful for both the extremely large MP pool and Auto-Refresh.

I probably won't have time to continue this for a while, so if someone wants to jump in with some more jobs (or more info on MNK, since I haven't played this job much yet) please do so.

[Sabaron]

Re: PLease help me pick a main =(

I like people who play lots of jobs. They're very experienced and they just click better in pts because they require little or no instruction to do what they do because they already have some idea of what everyone else will be doing once they get a look at the roster. Our Shellholder is one such person. He has 3 classes over 50 including his pseudo-main (BST), 1 class @ 40 (SAM), a lot of classes (including all 3 standard mages) in the 30s and the rest in the 20s except MNK and BRD in the teens and PUP not unlocked.

I vote for not picking a main unless one just hits you. If you're a 2 year vet and you still don't have one, just keep going. Eventually, something will end up at 75, but in the interim, you'll have fun playing all the jobs, and be an exceptionally skilled and versatile player in all aspects except end game, but eventually, you'll have that too.

[Icemage]

Re: PLease help me pick a main =(

I think the fascination with having a "main" job is a holdover from other MMORPGs where you're stuck in specific roles once you create a character.

As with all questions of this nature, the best advice I can give is to just "Play what you enjoy." If you enjoy all jobs, then so be it; if you've been playing for 2 years and still haven't fixated on a single job to push to 75 first, that's a pretty good indicator that you're not the sort of player who would enjoy the laser intensity of grinding a single job to 75 before working on the others.

I certainly understand wanting to have a job at 75, though - it makes things much easier as far as clearing things like Artifact Armor... but if grinding one job isn't really your style of play, then I don't know that the benefits outweigh the misery - each player has to make that decision on their own.


Icemage

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: PLease help me pick a main =(

I think one of the best ways to approach the game is to find a couple jobs that you not only enjoy, but also compliment each other on skills and gear. I recently retired (retarued?) my original main character because I always struggled with his focus and, well, two characters became too much work. So Foobar is now my crafter mule. He as lots of inventory space and that rapscallion really get around.

Anyway, in starting my second character, my style of play become more streamlined. I wanted to be a Corsair and when the job was introduced, the gear showed me that RNG gear and the job as a sub would benefit COR, so I began to level RNG. In fact, I came to enjoy it so much I kept moving RNG all the way to 61 before I really started COR.

Now with RNG at 75 and COR at 67, I'm just about hit the top on both. Now I'm looking for future potentials. My only real regret in giving up on Foobar was that I was giving up his BST as well. I won't go back to him because I just don't want to do everything in the game times two.

But I still want to level BST, and I do have a full NIN subjob on Kitten that I never had on Foobar. Another great subjob for BST was WHM, which Foobar did have levelled. Now, turns out a WHM sub wouldn't be bad in certain high level situations for COR and RNG, either, so there would be a benefit to all of them in levelling WHM and the bulk of my work for subjobs on all of them would be done.

But I also want something else to offset BST and I'd like another melee job. Well, turns out SAM is a job that would share a fair bit of gear with BST in the long run and not only that, SAM would make another fine addition to my subjobs on RNG and some PTs situations as BST. The only other base I would have to cover is a THF support job and RNG and COR allow me to draw from some old equipment on that end.

Its pleasing when everything you do goes full-circle. So do a little research on the jobs and when you're able to unlock the advanced jobs, play the field and see which ones you like. Never play something just because it is popular or you feel obligated to, that's mostly where I went wrong with Foobar. I felt obligated to my friends to be certain roles and those roles turned into a chore, thankfully my eventual burn out gave way to a more streamlined way to play. Sucks to give up on the little guy, but his legacy will live on in Woodworking.