So where does that leave Final Fantasy XIV‘s three new additions?
None of the new jobs introduced with the expansion is unusual at this point, but they all still occupy a unique place in player culture simply because they are new. Beyond that, however, all three of them have an odd place in player minds that may just be there until we get another set of new jobs with the next expansion. So let’s take a brief and highly unscientific look at where these jobs are as we steamroll toward the new year.
Dark Knight: Just about there
Out of the three new jobs, Dark Knight has definitely managed to be the most successful. It’s by far the most common of the new jobs, and people seem to have accepted Dark Knights as tanks with only the slightest bit of hand-wringing and jokes about how squishy they were back in Final Fantasy XI. All of that is a good thing.
The biggest problem that Dark Knights have, ironically, is akin to the problem that Warriors had back in 2.0. Only in this case, it’s not a mechanical problem so much as it’s just a perception and playstyle problem.
When the relaunch happened, Warrior tanks were generally seen as being just too squishy. Yes, they had a huge pile of HP, but that pile vanished pretty quickly. The net result was that a lot of healers would be annoyed by seeing a Warrior simply because it meant more time healing and less time dealing damage, which by extension meant the dungeon would take longer. A big set of buffs were brought to the class with the first major patch to address this, and at this point Warriors are quite resilient without nearly taxing healers so much.
Dark Knights are also squishy compared to Warriors and Paladins – when their cooldowns aren’t being rotated, at least. That’s by design. A DRK can tank anything a PLD or WAR can handle without a problem through smart cooldown use, definitely. The problem is that there is still a large number of people who have never played a tank extensively who now want to try DRK… and don’t want to spend time rotating through cooldowns and carefully evaluating when they’re going to be of maximum utility.
Is it a major problem? Yes, in the sense that it leads to squishier tanks and overtaxed healers, which often becomes a recursive cycle that leads to tanks making bad decisions about stats and gearing based on the assumption that healers won’t contribute additional DPS. No, in the sense that it’s a cultural thing, not a mechanical one. The job works. It’s perfectly functional, and when played right it’s a bit squishier than its counterparts but makes up for that with specific utility and solid damage presence. It’s just more starkly divided in terms of player skill.
Machinist: Ersatz casting daze
Machinist is a victim of the same basic problem that Bard has. Whether it’s more or less popular than Bard would take an official census, but I see both in relatively equal numbers. And both jobs are sporting a stance that the players don’t particularly like, both times for a solid reason.
Gauss Barrel is a good mechanical aspect for Machinist, since the job already has ranged damage and gets kind of wonky when it can deal damage from a range while on the run. Dodging AoEs? No need to slow down your DPS! Switching it so that the default is to keep the job rooted keeps things a bit more balanced.
Unfortunately, as has been mentioned elsewhere, the job’s damage is also highly variable and a bit uncomfortable, and I don’t think much of anyone actually likes Gauss Barrel. The visual effect is kind of dopey, and the mechanical side of things brings the job closer to just being another caster from a mechanical standpoint. There are dead periods as a Machinist, points wherein it’s not clear what you should be doing to actually make the job work at dealing damage. That’s not pleasant.
A lot of people are playing it anyway, despite any and all mechanical issues, because guns. Heck, I’m still playing it, albeit while keeping it in an odd place vis-a-vis gearing it up. (It’s my third priority behind Paladin, but all of those Ninja accessories still work for it…) When looked at completely outside of anything external, it’s still a cool job. It has a lot of style, it has some neat tricks, and there’s a great deal of satisfaction when you play it well enough that your overall damage is respectable.
Still, I think it misses the mark in the sense that it was held back until the designers could avoid making it into Bard But With Guns, and the lines of differentiation aren’t as solid as they could be. Although I think the Machinists have won out, on balance.
Astrologian: The healer who healed too much
The whole point of Astrologian was to create a healing class that traded in the healing-and-damage aspect of other jobs for healing-and-support. It shows, too. Astrologian is the job if you really don’t want to rock Cleric Stance in a dungeon, far more focused on buffing party members and providing utility rather than adding direct DPS.
It’s probably the biggest failure of the new jobs, and perhaps even of all the post-launch jobs, period. People just don’t seem to play it in large numbers. It gets tried and then it gets left alone.
What’s the deal? Well, for one thing, it turns out that a large portion of people who play healing jobs really enjoy how FFXIV lets players jump back and forth from healing and damage. I don’t blame them, either. White Mages even have it as an aspect of the job now, and it’s pretty keen. It answers the question of what you’re supposed to be doing at times when the tank or the party isn’t taking a whole lot of damage, and it does so by letting good healers really cut loose instead of only using HP-restoring spells.
Beyond that, however, I think that Astrologian generally is a job with a high skill ceiling, a lot of fiddly bits, and an irritating stroke of randomness. Whether or not you get a good set of draws with cards is entirely relegated to randomness, and while you get a fair amount of control over those cards, you cannot reliably draw the Balance for burn phases. Even if you store it religiously until you get a second instance of it when a single boss will require that damage bonus, you can’t know it’ll even come.
Add to that how irritating it is to level the job in anything other than party content, and I think most people touch upon it briefly and then leave it alone. Which is a shame, really, but also somewhat understandable. It could use a bit more love to bring it more closely in line with the other new jobs.
Feedback, as always, is welcome in the comments below or via mail to eliot@massivelyop.com. Next time around, I want to talk about the state of the game in 2015, what’s gone well and what hasn’t, and so forth – assuming we don’t get another chunk of 3.15 information dropped on our collective heads.
The Nymian civilization hosted an immense amount of knowledge and learning, but so much of it has been lost to the people of Eorzea. That doesn’t stop Eliot Lefebvre from scrutinizing Final Fantasy XIV each week in Wisdom of Nym, hosting guides, discussion, and opinions without so much as a trace of rancor.
