Good Job, Final Fantasy XIV

At this point, I feel like when I recap the games I've played at the end of the year, I'm going to reach July in the countdown and reflect on the fact that Final Fantasy XIV became the only game I played for the rest of the year. Okay, so that's probably not going to be the case and as soon as Fire Emblem comes out, FFXIV is going to go into definite backburner mode. But for now, it's a game I'm very excited about and even when I'm not playing it, I spend a lot of time thinking about it.

Part of what makes the game so fascinating for me is the variety of classes. I keep running the possibilities through my mind of what classes I'm going to take through their individual journeys. It's gotten to the point that since the post-ARR quests are taking me such a long time to complete, I'm cycling between my level 50+ classes to reach level 52. I'm doing this now just so that when I unlock Heavensward content, I'll already have a couple of classes that can undertake the level 52 job quest to get a new ability! I know for sure this will be the case with ninja and dragoon, but either red mage or samurai will be next up in the rotation assuming I reach 52 on the dragoon soon.

Other classes I'm considering putting some more time into include white mage and warrior, which also happen to be the only other two classes for which I've unlocked a job class soul. Just for some context, the base classes included in the game all start from level 1 and then have the opportunity of undertaking a special quest to obtain a job class soul at level 30 to upgrade to the advanced version of that class. Lancer becomes dragoon, conjurer becomes white mage, etc. In my case, I've gone through this process with rogue to ninja, lancer to dragoon, marauder to warrior, and conjurer to white mage, but the latter two haven't progressed much past that initial upgrade.

I think it's going to be important for me to have access to a high-level healer or tank, but ideally I'd have both. I feel like without performing these roles at least occasionally, I'm missing out on a pretty big chunk of the game. These roles can be pretty tough, though, and honestly stressful since groups depend on you much more to make sure that encounters proceed successfully. There is certainly a level of anxiety present when it becomes clear that the group's success depends so heavily upon me, even if, at the end of the day, I'm only disappointing a group of strangers if things go wrong. Additionally, my poor sense of direction does me no favors when tanking, since the tank typically leads the way through these often labyrinthine dungeons.

I don't mind taking on the challenge, though, and I did my fair share of both roles in World of Warcraft. It got to the point in that game that I was very comfortable with those roles, particularly tanking as a warrior and healing as a paladin. I'm not certain if warrior and white mage are the closest analogues in Final Fantasy XIV (white mage seems to more closely resemble WoW's Holy priest), but they're the ones I've chosen for now. Once I unlock flashy tanks like Gunbreaker or Dark Knight, or the interesting Astrologian healer, I may well try them instead, though!