Re: Next job

So, besides spamming campaign whenever I can to get merits in anticipation of the update, I've been playing around with other jobs. Last week I managed to finish off my Warrior subjob, though I'm doubtful that I'll use it too much. Still, it's good to get that off the plate and sell my axes xD I've also been toying around with PLD, and as of yesterday, SCH.

Thanks to Zurar and his super-mule-in-training Yasunami, I've actually been able to survive leveling 1-10 twice in the last week or so. I hate soloing at low levels and I tend to die a lot trying to get to 10 xD

So, impressions on the jobs...

Paladin
PLD 22 right now. I figured that I'd enjoy PLD since I was having fun with SAM tanking through 37. Little did I know how different PLD tanking is compared to SAM, NIN, or even BLU tanking >.<

First... I'm surprised by how much I was missing on PLD. Considering that this job has an A+ rating in sword, I figured that I would be hitting a lot more often... I was also figuring that in the future, I'd be using defense foods, so I figured that I shouldn't cheat and use rice dumplings or something to increase accuracy.

Second, I didn't realize how long White Magic takes to cast. I'm constantly getting interrupted when I cast Cure. I'm getting the timing down now, but it's quite annoying to actually always have to time your casts to between mob swings. On NIN (or WAR/NIN), I'd just count shadows and recast just before the last shadow goes down before having to resort to casting between swings. For SAM tanking... well, everything is a job ability, so it can't be interrupted. DNC/NIN can stun the target for a brief moment to recast shadows. BLU magic casts so quickly that it's very rare that I get interrupted in the first place.

Third, so far... Paladin doesn't seem too challenging or interesting ^^; Maybe it's cos I'm being PL'ed all this time so there haven't really been any exciting incidences when leveling up. Still, a PLD's job is to keep the attention of the mob... period. It has lots of tools to do that, but it's not very flexible. I guess that's one of the big reasons I prefer BLU/WHM as I can switch from doing DD, to support & healing, to sleeping and handling links all at the same time.

So, right now PLD is sitting at level 22 and will stay there for a while as I experiment with SCH. I probably need to get into a real, 6-person party situation and tank seriously on PLD to form a more solid opinion on the job. Right now I'm leaning towards retiring it and putting it on the "would be nice to have at 60 cos the AF Armor looks pretty" list together with BST, RNG and COR ^^;

Scholar
Scholar level 12 as of last night, so I only have the most basic of job abilities right now. Again, I'm being PL'ed, so most of my damage is through swinging my pole (and pulling hate with it too! Who says mages can't DD xD) but I've been playing around with switching between arts and using the one strategem available.

Current impression of Scholar is that it's a good hybrid job that can easily switch between support/healing & nuking at a moment's notice. I already do a lot of the support-type stuff on BLU/WHM, but whenever I want to switch over to magical nuking, it always takes me at least 2-3 minutes to switch spells around (1 minute downtime + 2-3 minutes searching for and selecting the correct spells) I'll have to experiment with SCH and see what it plays like at higher levels... This might be the next job I take up for magical nuking + support-type play.