Returning Job Choice

What’s up y’all!? I’ve managed to stay away for 9 years (quit right after SoA release). I’ve read and been following the 1-119 guide on BG and have scanned around here some, but haven’t been able to find the exact answer to my question. I have most jobs leveled to 99 (RUN 77 GEO 0) and have enjoyed most of them, also have 99 Apoc and a few other Empys finished and plan on doing a few more REMAs that are useful. With that being said, which would be the most beneficial job to gear up and run CP parties with (I loved meripos back in the day and hoping these are remotely similar.) Thanks in advance!

PS If you’re still on Bismarck and remember me, give me a holler in game!

Welcome back. With Odyssey, the end game has changed a lot, but having either BRD or COR as a first pick job, will open many doors for you. Other than that, I think that it is the most important thing to play what you enjoy first after returning.

BLU for a majority of the content, BRD will probably make you quit again lol. COR can be fun too now, not that hard to get into with a tp bonus/naegling.

Has it really been 9 years since SoA? fml...

Agree with others, for me RUN/SAM/BLU/COR are all pretty fun, useful and not too hard to build. BRD is great if you have motivation to make it but quite a time investment if you are starting from scratch.

Welcome back though, hope you have fun!

Edit: RUN not so much for CP parties but never hurts to have a tank option for events!

From my own experience only:

Came back from 75 era, did PUP first - would not recommend, it's fun but expensive to even build something basic and after investing it's a very niche thing (automaton tanking allowed me to join a few things though) better spend on more requested jobs

Then did MNK cause gear overlap - would not recommend right away, it's a versatile fun DD with some very unique use cases and good tanking capabilities, great for Omen but not at all sought after by anyone really (I'll prolly get flamed for saying this) and recent content sort of punishes you for not having a variety of weapon types at your disposal as a DD. Still does what it does best though: Blunt dmg with little tp feed. Odyssey shark NM usually wants MNK. So much to say about MNK, better go to their sub forum :>

Then did GEO - very easy to get started, not having Idris makes you feel like ***and you will get ***on for not having it, much like BRD and REMAs but it's actually totally servicable without one, just need people to accept this. Also has a lot of other uses besides bubbles that are often overlooked like enfeebling when there's no RDM and very potent healing/nuking. Recent content punishes Geomancy though and people already tend to look for other support where this applies. Still solid, used, and fun to play imho.

Then did SCH cause backup healing was such a major thing on GEO for me - very easy to equip and play, easy to reach high Regen numbers even without Musa. WHM with Yagrush will often be way more important than SCH though. Still fun and versatile, still used for Skillchaining sometimes even in Odyssey (thunderbird NM).

Then did COR cause had some of the easily accessible rare/ex drops for it - rather expensive job but it's one of the two go-to supports and can push some very good numbers on its own. Absolute recommend. You can make this work without REMAs even, just get yourself a Naegling, Anarchy, some daggers and Molybdosis for ranged option, then start to build from there. Also there can hardly ever be too many CORs around, unlike some other jobs. I'd go as far as to say COR is one of the "meta" jobs.

Then did bandwagon Naegling WAR - Oh boi, this opened up a lot of things all of a sudden. Can be cheap (except relic head+3 which should be a must have), can be expensive, up to you. WAR is fun, even more so if you have a REMA to go with it. High damage, high survivability, go-to DD in recent content. Recommend.

Then did SAM - Boi oh boi...this is the job I'm currently on the most. With a fully augmented Masamune it either destroys or gets destroyed (gotta use Seigan more, totally underrated ability). It's so much fun. Numbers get insane eventually and it's not cheap but not as expensive as some others to build. You'll also usually get appreciated for either solo SC dmg or just plain insanity with Masa R15. Absolutely recommend.

Currently kinda equipping BRD even though I'm not playing very actively - There's not much to say here, besides: Do it. Just build one as early as possible. Be aware that you'll be requested to have all the REMA instruments for max potency max duration max songs but here's what I think: This is THE meta job. Everybody wants a BRD, lots of people get intimidated by the entry barrier. Hence there's always a lack of these. Most jobs need their REMAs to shine anyways. If you anticipate to manage to get your hands on the REMAs necessary, then go BRD and just play the game. Can always build other jobs once you have the possibility to actually enjoy the content. And BRD is not boring to begin with. You'll often end up joining as melee and being a decent support-DD on top of being the single most loved job in the game. Is just my opinion though.

As often with FFXI: actively look for people you enjoy playing with and don't get trapped in fear of missing out (often discussed lately). Have fun! Welcome back!

Edit: Tanks are still a necessity in a lot of situations and definitely wanted. If you already have one it might be wise to join content as such and then take on recommendations. RUN and PLD both have different use cases, they're both equally useful at this point (not great for CP/EP parties though with PLD being the unique exception in Crawlers Nest [S] cleave parties). BTW as for CP (you'll eventually end up in Exemplar points grind, which is very oldschool [read: slow]) I'd say you'll want a job that fits the current setups and gets invites fast to advance and then do quirky jobs as mentioned above, IMHO.

The "most beneficial job" is job that you play exceptionally well and better than most other people. No matter what job you are on, if it's mediocre then there will be 400 other people that can replace you easily. Because everyone else will also pick the "most beneficial job" like you. You aren't going to win the competition by heading to a crowded place like everyone else.

Luckily, since ambuscade weapons are available on many jobs now, so does Nyame, most jobs has multiple builds to handle wide variety of situations if you make sets for them and build party/strategy around it.

tl;dr: forget about most "beneficial jobs", find what you enjoy and play what you enjoy and try to get the most out of it.

I kinda appreciate that comment but also wanna wholeheartily disagree if you don't mind. It sounds idealistically correct. I do indeed enjoy FFXI the most when I play together with people who, as you say, at least try to aim to "play exceptionally well" and possibly even more so if they are not the standard setup.

But there's clearly a lot more job complexity to this game than say in FFXIV and there's jobs that very clearly enable you to find yourself in more of said situations. So why not favor those and then min/max your BST once you can actually afford it and show the whole community how great it can be? ;)

I used to play with a very good friend who only played Summoner. He was incredible at his job, way above any SMN I currently know. Yet we often struggled as a group building around SMN as a fixed member. This is not to say we didn't have fun, or that SMN is not good for current content, but I personally found myself to enjoy the game a lot more once I had a few jobs that were actually "wanted" ones :)

"Find what you enjoy" for me was basically "heading to a crowded place like everyone else" as far as your argument goes haha. Also not "everyone else" goes BRD. If they did, then people wouldn't have to /yell hours on end for one :>

I gotta agree with Afania bigtime on this one. These kinds of questions come up pretty cyclically and honestly- they're almost always coming from a place where a returnee has a strong desire to both succeed and be valued. But the reality is picking the "most valuable" or whatever you call it job is rarely the universal solution, because as Afainia points out, 400 other people who didn't take a multi-year break have also been working on those "most valuable" jobs while you've been gone.

I'm a big fan of having 3 types of jobs available to you ASAP- a self-sufficient job for non-iLvl farming/content that remains relevant either for gear, weapons, or gil; a job that fits into the most common metas from the buffing angle for group content, and a DD or Tank that fits into large scale group content while providing at least some unique trick if needed.

Example- having a BLU, a COR, and a RUN gives you those three things that fit into multiple types of group setups, allows you to farm solo effectively, and to boot also gives you a lot of gear crossover, in particular early on.

There are several types of trios one could build with this concept.

-GEO, RDM, PLD.
-WAR, PLD, WHM.
-DNC, THF, RUN.

Honestly, if given enough time a person can likely justify damn near any combo these days. The only real dangers I see for new people building up jobs are 1. building essentially the same "class" multiple times without real variance in your role and 2. incomplete building of a job without realizing its incomplete because the game has grown a great deal.

I'm going to give a huge caveat here to what the others have said. If you left right when SoA came out, don't pick RUN or GEO, because you've got a 6 month gate to unlocking those job's potential. Get your coalitions and stuff started right away, but know that Idris and Epeo are locked behind that content.

i think i will take another year Break again, square really don't care about this game anymore

Thanks for all the responses! Back in the day I, at least somewhat, played everything, and I like to think I played everything above average. I’m very competitive so I tried to be a high percentage player. DRG was my favorite, from the bird party days, and even highly debating on making a Ryunohige (unless it’s utterly useless) just because I wanted one so bad back then and now it’s attainable. My other two favorite jobs were DRK (99 Apoc and 90 Caladbolg) which I’ve already seen several videos of them soloing what I assume is current relevant content and COR (90 Armageddon) which has been mentioned in a few replies. I enjoyed dualboxing my THF with my RDM alt and killing stuff I wasn’t supposed to be able to as well. And I was also a pretty good WHM but I highly doubt I make a Yagrush. BRD seems fun, but it was my last class to level and I never really got combat experience with it.

I brought two friends over with me from ff14, so I’ve been grouping with them when they’re on trying to catch them up, while it allows me to relearn the things I’ve forgotten, so I’m not exacty sprinting to endgame, but I’m trying to get things accomplished when they’re not on. It’s nice to know there’s a decent amount of freedom when it comes to job choices

Still pretty good, its biggest weakness is still the stupid atk penalty on drakesbane

Depends on what you mean by care. As far as MMO energy is concerned, they haven’t “cared” about 11 since ARR came out way back when. However, the fact that the servers are still going, and there’s still some content being released says a lot. I’ve only been back a week, but from what I can tell, they’re doing exceptionally well with the budget they’re given.

I had to think about this one pretty hard, and essentially EP points forced the decision to eliminate jobs and put into two categories. For example, Sam, Drg, Drk, Mnk, Cor, Thf, Dnc, Rng, Pup, Rdm, Pld, Sch, Geo, Smn became:

Category 1 (no rush on EP points, as in, never going to care but will still play job):
Thf
Cor
Smn
Geo
Run

Category 2 (Heavy focus on EP points)
Sam
Pld

The other jobs all bit the dust.

It might be interesting to rate jobs that need EP points, and those that sortof need em, and those that don't.

Not saying my take on this issue is "the take", but I can say it definitely has been a much more enjoyable way to approach it:

NONE of EP are necessary for existing content. But they can take a job you really love and beef it up to where you get known among your peers as "the dude with the killer <fill in the job>", and that will likely mean you get to play it more. And if the primary thing you're doing these days in game is Odyssey, the added subjobs aren't really even a focus of your EP'ing- its the extra stills/stats. They definitely get noticed more in my experiences on mage jobs and hybrid support jobs- 15 extra levels of Marksmanship matter a ton more to COR than to RNG for example, and 15 extra INT and MND to a RDM on Ngai is going to end up being a bigger improvement means more than 15 extra DEX and STR means to a WAR. Sure, its all important and will change the numbers, I'm just trying to prioritize my time spent EP'ing based on what I like as well as what gets exposed as most beneficial.

The reason is simple: there are entirely way too many people who has "useful jobs".

I have a 2100 JP RUN from years ago but I no longer play it, because everytime when I ask "seg farm anyone?" in LS chat at least one person will have pld or RUN. And even if I can't find one I can still make the pt with DDx3 setup or something and pt still works.

Or if I'm doing ML some jobs like THF DNC evasion build or even my cor evasion build can gather mobs for ML pt and hold hate with AE too. So I rarely feel the need to regear a tank job to do all these things that doesn't need a tank.

War is another job that I have but never really "need" to play for events because I know maybe 100 Nyame war with multiple skill types whenever I need a war. So why would I need to do this role myself?

Many jobs can do multiple dmg type these days, THF DRG DNC war Sam RNG NIN cor brd can all do piercing, MNK pup thf DNC Blu rdm war geo can all do blunt. So most of the time, just changing jobs and using different weapons get problems solved.

People like to complain about needing XYZ jobs for their event but truth to be told, at least 90% of such situation the same can be accomplished with different setup or strategy without their XYZ jobs. You have to be doing the absolutely hardest content in game, like Odyssey T3/T4 v20s to need specific jobs and setup. For rest of the easy stuff, it's whatever.



Except even if I yell for a BRD for 3 hours, it's still less time investment than spending 100 hours to gear up a REMA 2100JP BRD myself. Most of the time I don't yell for a BRD for 3hr anyways. I only do things if my BRD friend is on and if they are not on then I go do something else. Or I yell maybe once or twice, if I get somebody I go. If I don't then I do something else so I don't waste time waiting for 3hr for a BRD.

What if I run out of BRD friends to do things with? I go out and connect with more players so I have longer list of people that I can do things with.

It's like irl if I need a fish I wouldn't fish it myself, I pay a fisherman to fish them for me. Likewise if I need a lawyer/admin or finance person for my company I hire someone to do it instead of doing it myself. FFXI is all about team work with other people. And sometimes team work means letting other people do different roles that they enjoy or good at so you can focus on something you are really good at.

I know my opinion about having useful jobs is unpopular in FFXI endgame community. However, seeing people burn out in this game from gearing many jobs only because they falsely believe they need all these jobs to do things, I think it's a good idea to change how you approach things with a more flexible mindset.

I mean, would you rather burn out gearing up a job that you don't like, or find different strategy/friends to get things done differently? I'd rather pick the latter.

Personally, I really really rarely run into a situation that I'm struggling to find a run pld war cor rdm or even BRD at all. The only job that I slightly struggle to find would be BLM RNG for Odyssey T3. And that's v20 only, because of DPS check so the standard is higher when I pick people for these.

I absolutely don't recommend leveling cor only to be useful despite everyone said it's an "useful job". It's used in every setup but this slot is also often reserved for the weakest player that needs a clear. Only because everyone and their mother has cor and this job is hard to *** up.

I'd rather invite a career thf or nin over an average cor at this point. So what's the point to compete with 500 people for the same slot, and still ended up not bringing anything special to the table? May as well play what you really enjoy and be the best you can be IMO. :P

I would say pick 2 things.

One job you really enjoy that you will work to gear up.

One job that's easy to gear to a 'playable' level that you can use to get into events and make friends. WHM is good for this, 50% cure potency is easy to get. GEO since 900skill and Dunna are pretty easy to get as well.

Honestly you're already doing the biggest most important thing, which is having friends to play with. That's the goal. Make friends. have a solid group of people to do things with.

Doing stuff through pick up groups as a new / returning player sucks. You do not *need* a REMA bard, Idris GEO, Yagrush WHM, etc etc etc for most of the content in this game, but people will insist on having it because it makes things easier. Putting in extra effort to allow random new/returning players into your group -- people don't do that anymore... unless you pay them stupid amounts of gil.

So until you get to the point where you have all that gear that people are asking for, you're going to have more success doing things with friends, or people who see your potential and are willing to do content with you knowing that once you do get geared, you'll be a good person to play with at endgame.

That said, whatever job/s you do play, do your best to become an expert in that job. Ask questions, read guides, learn the formulas. The better you are at your job, the more people will see your potential and want to invite you to content despite your initial lack of equipment.

When I came back to the game after a 10 year break, I started a fresh character, as my brother and I use to share his character. I began as whm to get my foot into the door, since everyone always looks for a healer. As I was doing events, I was gearing up whm and picking up every piece of gear for any other job I may want to begin.

The way I did things had zero gear overlap at the start.

WHM, SAM, PLD, GEO -- with THF for farming stuff solo.

The four pillars of gear that has next to no overlap. :) Having a healer, dd, tank, and support allowed access to practically everything in the game, except for maybe a few ambu months. Once I had gear for these four jobs, I continued branching out, as I had more gear options and a bunch of stuff that other jobs could equip.

I've actually seen DRG destroying other DDs in parses in EP farming recently. Caveat is the guy is someone whose been playing for years and has BiS gear with a comprehensive lua and heavy buffs.


Can't agree more with this. From doing T4s with pick up nirvana smns doing half the damage of ls mates to whms running out of mp where another one in the same situation doesn't to someone coming to an event with a r15 rema and not using a hybrid set and dying to the boss. Gear is one thing but if you don't enjoy the job you won't learn what makes it good and will probably button mash ws etc. lol

Like if you love SAM learn how to make 4-5step skillchains, make hybrid sets and seigan up/down sets etc. People who love their jobs seem to min/max more and perform so much better and also tend to learn content so they don't look an *** in front of others lol

Don't be me and throw a Vajra on a THF and call it finished :)

How quick is it to catch a job up gearwise to being able to do cp parties, and some of the group endgames (which I just realized I don’t know what are the main endgame group events)? I plan on picking a few to deck out, probably DRK COR and maybe THF or PLD (have a 90 Ochain and planned to do Aegis before I quit and it now seems even quicker to do a relic), but is it suffecient to have some of the other more useful(and after reading other posts, I use that term loosely) jobs with avg gear and depend on my skill more, or will I mostly be better off sticking to my better geared jobs?

You can get ambuscade gear pretty quickly which will get you able to work towards escha level gear, Domain invasion allows you to spend points to get some abjurations too so you can get some of the higher tier stuff that way. Between those 2 you should be able to handle most things, if you can luck into an odyssey gaol clear early that can also get you a bit of a head start since the avg gear stats on those are well above most other sets depending on job, like sakpata is fantastic out of the box for war/pld/drk

Yeah odyssey is current endgame and if there is someone selling a basic clear you can buy the pieces for like 1m each from npc.

Just some examples below and they are good even without augments.

Nyame DT/WS set

Sakpata TP set

Also job section of the forum on this site is normally kept up to date with gear discussions.

If the ffxiah job guide OPs arent up to date, the BG community guide likely is instead

I've got geo, whm and brd geared and always get into stuff :) however I'd say play what you enjoy!

One more question, (I’ve been on vacation all week so just be reading up and trying to jog my memory on ffxi in general), if I have the gil, is it worth buying a pulse weapon and making a Naegling, taking into consideration that I currently have the beginner sparks gear and a few high end pieces from Abyssea-WoE era? I think my plan is soloing with BLU and possibly THF first while farming gear to do group content with DRK and DRG. Just trying to decide if Naegling will be worth it, or if buying some level of gear with the gil will be a better boost to my jobs than Naegling. Thanks!

I never bought any pulse weapon to uprade to final form Ambu weapon. The pulse weapons just naturally appeared over time.

I'd just use Kaja Sword till you find one or get the Deeds necessary.

Naegling + Sparks gear vs Kaja + Sparks gear is pretty similar in what content it can do. At your point, I'm not seeing any need to use significant gil for awhile.

As said, naegling wont be that much of an impact vs plain kaja, if you're going to buy gear, better to be armor sets, atleast thats how much a pulse costed to buy off someone

This is what I would love to tell people. The problem with it in FFXI is that all groups are manual and there are multiple ways to play many jobs.

In FFXIV, you can absolutely pick whatever job you want. If I pick even the least desirable tank, I still get a tank spot when I queue up for group finder.

I love Pup but it is definitely not a job that's highly sought after or will get picked over a War or Cor.

The OP says he has an Apoc. Logically, one would believe he really enjoys Drk, which is still a good job. If that's the case, go for it.