The battle of the most horribly dorky jobs to level.

Dancer - Ok, I totally dig the whole use TP for abilities thing. It just seems that this is so interesting. The status enhancements and enfeebles are innovative and complimentary. The tiered use of the abilities, to enhance others and the player themselves. It breaks the mold for how buffing jobs operate.

Scholar - I like the idea too, but its much more unclear on how they work. First, problem is that it uses MP. I am allergic. Second, I think that it will require leveling other jobs (that I should be leveling anyway) to be useful. The AF is much better than Dancer though.

So its interesting job in a dress versus MP job in cool AF.

There is no way I am going to win here.

So, things I should mention from everything I have gleaned from the available information so far.

70 Inventory slots. Awesomeness in a gobbie-bag. Definitely needed. Quest involved? Maybe, but I will do what it takes.

New macros sets. Pretty much useless. It looks like they just gave us more macro buttons. We don't need more sets, we don't need more buttons, we need more lines. :(

Campaign. Pretty much totally cool. I mean the list of possible activities is quite staggering, and they haven't even been very clear on everything that you can do.

There is more and I may go over other details as the emerge but honestly I think I covered the crux of the information that everyone wants to know about. The information is everywhere now, so I am not sure what else I could provide that you couldn't get with a simple click.

Now, I am going to do something I have done before, but I am going to do it differently. Last week I talked about how I am just embracing SAM, NIN and MNK as my main end-game jobs, this is for two reasons. One, they share a lot of gear so it is much easier on me for these to be my active jobs with the most readily available gear. Two, they are my best equipped jobs, so naturally I will want to use them more. In my rush to level many different jobs I was not doing a very good job of rounding them out and building them up. I was leaving gapping holes in equipment and especially merits. For example, my SAM did not have a six-hit build, my NIN didn't have an insane haste set up, one that was available to me. My MNK, well... my MNK just needs merits, I am pretty happy with it over all.

Part of my problem is that I am very opinionated, and I think this is also good for me, but the point is that I can tend to dig in on my opinion, and not be as adaptable as I can be. For example, I think (I still think I am generally right on this) that a High Breath Mantle, if you can use it without it being dispelled, is better than a Cerberus Mantle. Don't get me wrong, I now have both, so this is not a case of sour grapes, its just practical statistic differentiation for a NIN tank. For a PLD, I have accepted that they can switch different back pieces for different situations but the argument is much weaker for NIN tanks. Back from my tangent, my point is that I tend to pick something and stay with it until proven directly incorrect. There is room for flexibility in everything, and this is the moment in which I am going to be flexible and reevaluate how I can make NIN, SAM and MNK as close to perfect as I can get them.

So, I am going to go over what I think are my absolute best set ups for these key jobs, these are XP/DD set-ups. I feel there is a little less flexibility in these set ups compared to tanking, because with tanking if you don't die and you hold hate you are doing your job, so you can do what makes you comfortable. With DD set-ups there are much more definable perfect gear sets.

And this is where I leave you hanging until after lunch.