Morning in Vana'diel is your daily dose of FFXI and all things Vana'diel. Give us your thoughts on the interesting topics of the day! What are the best subjobs; the ones designed to be the best sub jobs or the old reliable ones?
In the plethora of potential subjobs (and I am not counting those subjobs that you shouldn't be using but are always funny to listen to FFXI noobs profess because of their potential awesometude, one day I will tell you about the value of a Galka BLM/MNK that my co-worker insisted was the way he was going to play FFXI) there are two recent additions that have become near mandatory for at least some jobs. The weird thing is that those subjobs were added to actually be subjobs, at least that is what SE has said in an interview. Those subjobs are Dancer and Scholar. Are these jobs now mandatory for us all? Should they be? Are they really a new option at all?
Dancer - Dancer was added to allow melee to solo, and solo they can do now. They still can't overcome some of the more difficult things they couldn't do before and there are certain melee mixes that more favor subbing Dancer, but for Campaign it makes many jobs not so much of a death sentence. WAR, DRK and at least partially MNK are still kind of boned when it comes to subbing Dancer because they even with the self-healing they can still take a lot of damage and there is a point at which /DNC can't keep up with damage. WAR can use Defender of course, and MNK can use Counterstance, but they both have their obvious drawbacks. DRK is screwed even with /DNC because they don't really have much to help themselves out even with /DNC. The jobs that can best use /DNC are SAM and NIN because they have a way to block damage providing them the time to cure themselves up and regain some precious TP for those cures. SAM even has a built-in generator to supply cures in the form of Meditate.
Scholar - This is a little more controversial for some mages, but there are a variety of ways that Scholar is a beneficial subjob. WHM is the first job I think should consider using /SCH. /SCH provides a big boost to everything that WHM does poorly and also importantly, it artificial boosts some of the stats that are very hard to level for a new WHM like Healing and Divine. The additional benefit of 10% off of casting time and recast (a boon for WHM everywhere) and cuts the MP cost of those spells by 10% too. The stratagems are not as immediately useful for White Mage but situationally can be great for a fast and cheap raise or reraise. For other jobs, /SCH doesn't stand out quite a much, but can still have it's uses. For BLM, I think it is even unappreciated in that the stratagems are much more valuable and it can boost some very important skills if needed. It's real problem is that it lacks some of the defensive capabilities for soloing, but in group play I believe that /SCH is competitive if not better than /RDM or /WHM.
Why consider new sub jobs? Well, I finally finished my /RDM and now I need to do /SCH. :)
Tuesday, September 08, 2009
Morning In Vana'diel: Mandatory Subs.
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#1 ~ Monk
#2 ~ Samurai
#3 ~ Ninja
#4 ~ Dragoon
Chaotic Pellucidity
Teabags and KY Jelly
The Bloggaru!
10 comments:
Sam/Dnc + Soboro + Rose Strap for 5 hit +18% Haste Gear Build in Campaign is off the hook.
RDM/SCH is a relativity rare combination, but unless you really need Erase or AOE cures then RDM/SCH is a good option.
Certainly in the mid levels RDM/SCH make a very good main healer (before erase is available from /WHM).
DRK/DNC certainly isn't as mad as SAM/DNC but with a 6hit (rose strap), absorb spells, stun spells and JAs, spike, Drain (I and II) a DRK can 'Blood tank' most mobs for a few mins.
Although once you have gone through all your JAs and Spells you better hope the mob is dead or looking at some one else or your dead.
Willriker here,
hey man, i really love Qtipus's crafting guides. It came so close to getting me to take time out to go farm/craft... Sadly i have bigger fish to fry at this moment. Keep up the great work. I cant wait to see what you have to say about blacksmithing lol. GL on making that affordable for people. But, if you can, you are better than myself. I realy cant figure how to do it without dumping at least a mil into it.
Oh Ringthree, i noticed the "on the Cheep" guides to the right. I have one on Paladin if you would like it. Since i had to relevel PLD and gear it back up for endgame, quick and dirty style, i took the opportunity to write a few pages on how others can do something similar. Just let me know if you want it, well figure a way to get it to ya.
oh and great job on the blogs guys.
/SCH is great for SMN btw, altough i havent managed to get it to 37 just yet (reminds me of rdm a bit TOO much x.x)
elemental siphon and that refresh thingy is awesome I'm told
Greets Lean
WAR/DNC + forti axe and stones + retaliation is the way to solo with DNC subjob as WAR. you wont have any problems to keep up with TP for curing. And a WAR can wear most of a PLDs gear, so bloodtanking campaign mobs can be possible with a huge amount of defence.
btw: that guy with the tight pink pants in the background, looks super awesome :o
"Willriker here,
hey man, i really love Qtipus's crafting guides. It came so close to getting me to take time out to go farm/craft... Sadly i have bigger fish to fry at this moment. Keep up the great work. I cant wait to see what you have to say about blacksmithing lol. GL on making that affordable for people. But, if you can, you are better than myself. I realy cant figure how to do it without dumping at least a mil into it."
- Thanks for the compliments! The Smithing guide is already done and yeah, it's not really possible to get it from 0-60 w/o blowing some gil. I don't have it written in the guide (left it out due to variations in economies across servers), but my estimates are that the net loss for following the guide to the letters will be in the neighborhood of about 200k.
With the drop in Steel and Mythril ingot prices and the addition of the Erlking's Blade and Dweomer Knife though, it's not anywhere near as bad as it used to be. Darksteel generally sells for your investment and sells fast. There's really only a couple points (Iron Chains and Gauntlets) where the gil just flat goes b'bye. Barring breaks that is.
In this day and age, there is no excuse for a WHM to *not* have SCH @37. In fact, you should be ashamed that you don't have it and hang up your Noble's Tunic until you do.
Light Arts raising your Healing/Divine is not a good enough reason for /SCH. Go to Besieged already! The real bonus is the 10% reduced cost/cast time/recast along with 2 very useful stratagems. Never feel guilty about spending 150mp for RR while exping because it now costs 75mp with Penury. Recovering from a wipe is less painful with Celerity cutting the recharge for your raises by 50% (works while weakened, unlike haste).
Just because you sub SCH doesn't mean you *have* to use Sublimation. I've yet to party with a RDM that will keep me refreshed. Obviously Refresh is better, but Sublimation all the time is better than Refresh you only get sometimes.
I certainly hope you aren't really advocating that WHM is unplayable without /SCH because people have been playing without /SCH for years and doing just fine. While I have no doubts that /SCH is better than /BLM in most situations, there are no situations, absolutely none, where you are unable to do something because you do not have /SCH.
And I hope you aren't advocating a poor subjob selection simply because "it worked just fine before NewToyX came along" so we should just keep using it. That's not a valid argument for anything. It's like saying PLD worked just fine without Atonement or that JobA doesn't need new piece of GearB, despite how much it improves the job in question.
In 95% of situations where you want a WHM, SCH is superior to every other subjob choice. Compared to SCH, BLM only offers Elemental Seal, Sleep/ga (we already have Repose), Tractor, and Escape. Yes, there occasionally *are* reasons to have these things, but they pale in comparison to everything SCH offers. It's the subjob WHM was waiting for all this time.
Did you even read the blog post? Did you even read my comments?
Again I will ask, do you really believe that WHM is unplayable without /SCH? I wonder what all those WHM were doing before SCH was introduced.
Yes, of course /SCH is a great sub job for WHM. I said exactly that in my blog post. You haven't said anything that I didn't say in my post. You are just adding "douche flair" to my comments, and that's all.
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