I Need Some Job Guidance (FFXI)

I've been putting off setting foot in endgame content since I came back about a year ago, and still probably won't be diving in too deep just yet.

My favourite jobs in the 75~99 era were Blue Mage, Thief, Red Mage, and Dancer. Later added to that list is Corsair. And to a lesser extent: Ninja, Paladin, Warrior, and Rune Fencer. So I've got a lot of jobs that I'd be willing to focus on. But me still playing pretty casually, I want to focus on only one at a time.

The problem is, even though I would prefer focusing on Blue Mage, Thief, or Corsair (Red Mage gear seems overwhelming, Dancer is too fast for my brain to keep up, and I feel I need to really deck myself out if I want to tank), those also oddly seem to be my weakest jobs. All of my Dagger and Sword weapon skills deal like 5,000 damage at most, even with all the gear I've accumulated so far, while I can easily pull off 15,000 damage with Warrior or Rune Fencer with scraps of gear I have lying around. And the thought of cleaving with my Blue Mage is hilarious because I'm lucky to break 1000 damage with spells like Spectral Floe.

It makes me flip-flop a bunch, knowing I'd probably need to put a lot more effort into one of the jobs I'd like to main and probably quit by the time I got them anywhere. And the real kicker is, I don't know where to start. A lot of the guides on FFXIAH here are years outdated or focus on explicitly declaring BiS gear without saying what makes it the best or what to use in the meantime or a good progression order to get the gear in terms of effort-over-improvement.

I guess long story short, I'm not sure which jobs are worth putting a casual effort into for a casual reward, and I'm not sure where to start in terms of gear.

COR is used for basically everything and can be geared to a usable level pretty easily so starting with that isn't a bad idea. BLU and THF are more niche for endgame. That said I have clear set tiers for almost everything for BLU in the guide.

I wasn't sure if that was up-to-date or not, just because so many guides on here aren't. My apologies.

Regardless, I'm not really sure which stuff to go for first. Do I aim for a TP set? A magic damage set? Do I try to get Chant du Cygne stronger first or Savage Blade?

Should my first step be to grind Ambuscade for the Jhakri stuff?

My issue is that level 119 stuff is very foreign to me. They've added at least a dozen different endgame events since I last did endgame stuff lol

Seems to me like you may just be lacking the necessary knowledge to gear appropriately for what you are doing. You need to learn which stats and traits modify or affect your damage, and how it works. I think you should really start there, but there's a ton of information to cover in a sinly post. For instance, when nuking on Blue Mage, you want to prioritize stats like INt and Magic Attack Bonus, as well as Magic Accuracy. When dealing damage with sword or Dagger, in general, you want higher attack stats, paired with enough accuracy to land your hits, and then other stats like Weaponskill Damage/Double Attack/Triple Attack, attributes like STR/DEX/AGI etc, so on and so forth.

Something you could do is either post your sets so people can see what you are currently using, or ask someone in-game to help evaluate your sets and offer improvements.

I believe this thread below attempted to help newer players with gearing their own sets, but it's a bit extensive and doesn't cover everything.

https://www.ffxiah.com/forum/topic/56094/how-to-make-equipment-sets-from-scratch

Something I should mention as well, outdated guides can still be useful. A lot of the older gear is still relevant since most of the changes over the last 5-8 years have been to the bleeding edge. Primary considerations are which steps are easier now and which steps can be skipped.

Start by doing things like Ambuscade and Domain Invasion for the free gimmes, those two things will boost your power considerably on their own and you can start looking at getting into Escha and Sortie. You'll need some people to do those things with for the most part as when you're starting out trusts aren't really going to cut the mustard for very long.

Ultimately your most important sets will be tp, WS, magic accuracy, things like that on blu. Magic damage/cleaving sets to speed up job points and make farming things like Omen easier later on can also be a priority as that's one of Blu's main niches.

For cor its really just tp, WS, and phantom roll. Later on you can add in the other things like ranged tp, quick draw, what have you

Try looking at the bgwiki quickstart guide.

Based on the jobs you've mentioned above and some of the things you said you struggle with, I would prioritize a TP/Melee set first. The jobs you mentioned have gear overlap with TP sets, so you can gear one and have the other 2-3 done in the same amount of time. For instance, COR, BLU, THF, and Dancer are all on the Adhemar set. The hands, head, and body are all decent starter TP sets, and they can be obtained fairly easily doing Domain Invasion, or farming them. Alternatively, while the Jhakri set from Ambuscade is a very good starter for BLU, only your RDM and BLU could use it, and I think for your stage, you would be nuking a lot less than meleeing, so I would focus on that later on. The good thing about Ambuscade is you can work progressively towards it monthly, so it doesn't have to be a this or that kind of thing.

Thanks for the input so far, everyone!

yes Cor ..... but most of Comeback player don't realise, than to keep up or to get back to line ( end game ).... its months, and months of work....

Not even mentioning than a Bis Cor .... is probably 2 or 3 Billions gils ....

BLU and THF are more for soloing old content (farming/making weapons) unless endgame groups specifically ask for it. RDM struggles to get into some 6 man groups unless its enfeebles are absolutely necessary for the fight, or you can get away with using it as a healer over a WHM, but the gear you need to be versatile is insane.

COR is essential for most content and you are heavily encouraged to deal damage, whether that be in melee or ranged setups. There's a lot of work to do though. Tanks are great and Rune Fencer isn't as hard to gear (you do not need Epeolatry) compared to Paladin. I'd focus on THF and COR for now, improve BLU so you can AoE old content easily, but after that you can gear WAR and RUN for versatility. Only once you've got all those I'd think about RDM. My career progression from earliest to oldest was (*retired): DRK THF BST* PLD* COR SCH RUN RDM - Thought about BRD, BLM, and bringing BST back but don't have the inventory with two wardrobes.

Career RDM, I can easily say that you need a mountain of gear to be effective and efficient. Other jobs require less to make progress.

If it's really what you enjoy, it can be taken to an absurd level. I still like having other jobs when things get unattractive for RDM because of full dispels or need for a full tank.

With casual gear, COR and WAR do really well and you can kill 2 birds with 1 stone, Kaja Sword/Naegling.

Among the current listed options, I would choose between WAR or NIN.

NIN has incredible solo capability and as a casual player, will assist you with beating the majority of low to mid tier content at 119 once geared reasonably. Ambu/Sortie/DI gear with some random accessories and JSE swaps here and there should do it, with lots of room to expand on niche sets.

WAR would be a better option for parties as their skills and traits give them a lot of power out the gate, but they don't solo as well as other jobs. You have a multitude of weapon options, and can choose your own playstyle a little easier that way.

But the disclaimer I have to give is that every job has it's uses and getting any one of them to the best they can be will be time consuming and expensive. I see so many people quit trying to grind out a half equipped flavor of the month job so they'll be wanted only to burn out. It's important to have goals and a focus to make sure you don't end up in the situation you're in having a bunch of jobs you've messed around with but that can't really do anything. So carefully consider what you wanna do in the game, which job fits your fancy, figure out how to build out from there, and take your time. The game is designed to get you to play month over month to keep paying money for subs, so be realistic and expect things to take months and don't be discouraged.

On BLU, I would suggest working Naegling first, it's the weapon that power up Savage Blade. The sword itself can also be used on other jobs like COR. If you can't get a pulse weapon, you can try getting the Potpurri buff from Emporox and collect 25000 points for exchanging a pulse weapon while you farm for CP and EP. Another weapon to get would be Tauret since it is usable by THF and COR.

To use Savage Blade effectively, you should off-hand a TP Bonus weapon such as Thibron for BLU or Ataktos for COR because the 2000/3000TP Savage Blade is much stronger.

For nuking, instead of Jhakri, you can farm up the new Empyrean +2 set for BLU, each piece comes with a big chunk of MAB and the set bonus can proc an obscene amount of damage. It's not the BIS but is pretty close.
https://www.bg-wiki.com/ffxi/Hashishin_Attire_Set

Naegling will help with BLU nuking too with the big chunk of Magic Damage and MAB. You can offhand a MAB club to help with the nuking.

Meanwhile, you can try to get a few Herculean pieces with MAB bonus augmented via the Oseem in Norg for BLU nuking/Sanguine Blade, COR Leaden Salute/Wildfire or THF Aeolian Edge.
https://www.bg-wiki.com/ffxi/Category:Escha_Rewards/Arcane_Glyptics_Inscription#Herculean_Armor_Set

With THF, you can try farming Malignance set for survivability. I have collected 3 sets of Malignance with my THF farming on VE fights, focusing on proc TH up to 10 minimum before kills.

To bring up the COR damage, try to setup for 4-step skillchain damage,
Leaden Salute (Transfixion) -> Fast Blade (Naegling) or any Scission WS -> Leaden Salute (Gravitation) -> Wildfire (Darkness).

Even with MAB augmented Herculean armor, you will do crazy damage with Naegling or COR daggers.

To go further for BLU or COR, you will need to work on their Mythic Weapons.

Being a mostly solo player myself, I am usually 90% on THF, 9% on BLU and 1% on other jobs for fun.

If you have problems farming gils, you can try farming Omen for Astral Detritus going through the smaller light path. You can probably average 15 per run with TH8 and sell for 9+ mil per stack.

Even if you can't kill effectively, you should also do some Odyssey runs to build up points and try to get a Merc for Nyame set unlock.

I feel like some people answering here aren't really up to date. First of all Blu is not niche in current endgame. It's like one of the best and most used jobs for Sortie and one of the best job in general when fully geared. Both solo and in party. Second of all what you should prioritize first is empy set +2, which is incredibly easy to get even as new player. All you need to do is like 2-3 avg pug runs or several solo runs per piece. Whole set is extremely good as nuking and DT set, which you can use in Sortie itself to farm further, but also to cleave your job points and farm sets like Malignance. I suggest to use last days of campaign and get yourself lots of kupon I-seals if you are lacking empy+1 pieces. With empy+2 on BLU you can forget about Jhakri and Amalric, beside Jhakri hands for WSing until you get Nyame. You should also get af+3 body and relic +3 legs. Also for WS set before you get higher rank Nyame (and relic+3 are bis for magic WS even with Nyame around).

In general Empy+2 for many jobs is new bis beginner set.

You should also start your journey to get Nyame B set, but that can be either very short and fast with friends/Merc carrying you, or slow if you decide to pug yourself through there.

Generally speaking BLU can be optimize a lot and have tons of niche sets, but having Empy+2, Malignance and Nyame B R20-25 are your fundaments.

I recommend you gear up and get skilled up in whm or even geo. They're generally a low ceiling gearwise job and could get you into group events. This will net you gear/gil/experience you can learn from others. You can then use what you gained in gearing up the jobs you actually like.

That said, I'd like to touch in the jobs you currently have and how it relates to todays game.

Blu, huge help in sortie runs, some ambu months, excellent solo potential.

Thf, great for dyna runs to help with TH, farming stuff you need or to make gil. Useful in some Odyssey nm fights that are weak to piercing.

Cor, great for any event, always needed, great for soloing, bolters to speed up questing.

War, odyssey nm or seg farms, viable for any physical fights, can cleave, high damage ceiling, multi weapon versatility, can shine in any non magic only fights.

Rdm, some ambu months, anytime the mobs needs to be stunned or enfeebled, viable for some odyssey nm strat fights.

Dnc, dps powerhouse for piercing weak mobs, can be a powerful support and mob debuffer.

Run, can tank anything plds can tank scenarios, higher skill ceiling to perform at high level.

Sortie is barely endgame content when it comes to difficulty, every job works fine in there. Ironically, the reasons BLU does shine in Sortie also demand an already high investment of gear to perform which is counter to the spirit of the thread. Where BLU only works occasionally is the bleeding edge content like Odyssey, which a new endgame player is going to want to get into sooner than later to kick off that ridiculous grind. Telling someone to gear blu as their first job for endgame is almost griefing.

As has been expressed already in this thread, a job like COR or WHM, and to a lesser extent GEO, is the absolute best first job to try to get into. Any of those three jobs require less time and gear investment to get to a point where you can meaningfully contribute to just about every tier of endgame content and they can be used as a jump off point for more advanced jobs like BLU. It will be much easier to find a group and get the ball rolling for group content, and that includes Sortie.

I'm reticent to suggest NIN as, although it is one of my favorite jobs for general use, it is again quite gear intensive to get there as hybrid weaponskills really want to be fed the nutty stats from Nyame whereas NIN's physical damage output also leans toward some advanced gear sets to really pull ahead of the pack. It gives you a good platform for solo content as it is one of the more durable jobs with a pretty versatile skill set, but at first it isn't going to help you get into groups and frankly even a well geared NIN almost has to build rapport with their peers before you can convince them that it isn't just a meme due to the ignorance of the general player base. WAR is a safer bet here but you have a lot of competition in those party slots, which can make it difficult to find a spot depending on who you plan to play with.

Since the entire premise is casual time spent for casual rewards, you'll want your foot in the door with the easiest, fastest job(s) to fund your more difficult and more time intensive jobs, and since you might not even get to Odyssey if you decide it isn't worth your time, BLU would then be a good second or third job to work on after you have a steady supply of sortie gear, Gil from ambuscade, etc. to work with as you'll need a good amount of those things to be able to contribute on BLU at a similar level to even a thrown together support job in group content and is one of your best options if you want to try to set out on solo adventures.

This, this all day.

All roads go through naegling... that sword is so broken we try not to talk about how broken it is...

Ambuscade points.... do your monthlys so you can get a pulse (don't bother with VWNM. It doesn't drop)....or find a friend and farm Urmahlullu, I've gotten 4 pulse from him. Be patient.

Then get a gun through magian trials with +1000 tp..for warrior offhand that WSD shield (Blurred, +1 if you can swing it).

All that can be done solo. Then focus on any piece of gear that maximizes weapon skill damage.

With generic gear your war will break 30k Savage blades on just about anything, cor will hit 15-25k. With an endgame shell you'll upgrade your other gear and your war will easily break 50k.

Get the naegling. Easiest and most powerful way to level up every job that can use it.

(Spicyryans guide on thf is updated and perfect, BTW. Use it).

Also if you do choose COR, fast track getting staple job ability enhancing gear.

Phantom Roll: Barataria Ring/Regal Necklace (potency, only need one, neck is better but ring is fine to start), Commodore/Lanun head + Compensator + Navarch/Chasseur hands + Ambuscade cape (roll duration, get as much as you can), Luzaf's Ring (double up range)

Random Deal: Commodore/Lanun body

Wild Card: Commodore/Lanun feet

All of this stuff is relatively easy to get, and while COR does a lot of dmg for a support and in some content their dmg can even be top of the line and/or necessary to clear, a lot of the time a majority of your group contribution will come from those three job abilities. Necklace may seem scary/daunting but if you know anyone running Ou most people probably have it by now and you can go into Omen as an alliance member that doesn't necessarily have to contribute the first time through. It drops often.

You should eventually flesh out some excellent TP/WS/Ranged TP sets but don't feel pressured to do maximum dmg right away when you will still contribute a lot to the party just by having proper gear and merits for your job abilities.

I said when fully geared, because person who was talking about Blu in end game didn't specify it's about starting with Blu.

That being said BLU isn't as bad to start with as you suggest, especially with Sortie in mind. You have two very powerful option for blunt and slashing from Ambuscade. You have very easy to get full cleaving set from Sortie which can help you get things like job points in both party and solo and will also help you farm Malignance. Few of the pieces are also amazing idle/dt pieces. With two earlier mentioned Ambu weapons you can play a support DPS role in segments farming (cast def down and occasionally heal) or you can farm segments solo if you mix empy+2 with base nyame (getting into V0 bumba clear shouldn't be that hard) for pulling and cruel joke stuff. Doing that in B or A will also let you farm gils or mats for your own unity upgrades. BLU as first job gives you many opportunities that other job won't, even with beginner equip, especially with empy+2 being so fantastic all around set now.

Whm and geo both requires party setup do do most stuff, which is fine for people who has time for it. Also people remember bad WHMs and it might be hard to be good WHM if it's your first job in end game. It might be a good idea to make geo and whm as 2nd and 3rd job for Sheol Gaol fights tho.

Edit: oh and BLU is also very easy and best entry job for solo farming Sortie after you get empty+2 set.

Seems like more than one of "best" solo farming sortie jobs.

BLU is for sure one. You can start with opening most blue caskets(2 in A, 1 in B, 2 in C), most brown chests and hunt all NMs for at least 2 red and 1 Aurum coffers. This will give you like 3k+ points, more sapphires than you can use and shouldn't be hard. BLU have few amazing spells that helps a ton against fomors and area D NM, which might be very problematic for other solo jobs especially as beginner. It's Occultation, Sudden Lunge, Entomb, White Wind and Cocoon + Might Guard. It makes tanking fomors very easy and let you split/pull them without problem too.

This alone makes BLU great starting job if you plan doing things solo too. You can solo farm a lot of great Empy+2 for many more party oriented jobs like that.

Off topic but:


I've been using BLU/SMN for easy mode pulls. Carby aggros everything, I dart my target from that, Carby dies and I have a solo pull. Do that in a single full party fomor room (pulled in order of WAR, MNK, WHM, BLM, RDM, THF) and you get 2 more chances at old cases (and sapphires).

You can do that, or you can also Entomb any links and either kill main target and keep entombing the rest (in case of 6 formor room) or pull one to device D teleporter, teleport to other area to lose aggro and come back for the one you pulled (in case of NM).

You can do the carby pull trick the same way with trusts. I do it on NIN solo. Summon Valeinaral and aggro everything in DT, then pull away and engage the WAR. Valeinaral will use Uriel blade and tag everything, and then die shortly later (he will survive for maybe a minute or so with a couple of healers, so you have time to kill the WAR before he goes down). I just let Valeinaral die normally, run a bit away and resummon him and repeat. Since you never acted on the other Fomors, they will target your trusts and kill them off first, but you will be enmity-less, meaning you can resummon them right back even when they are aggroing your other trusts, and they wnt ever target you unless they kill off all of the trusts that acted on Valaineral and they go passive then aggro you. I managed to do this and split up the targets enough that after WAR+MNK were done, the others were spaced out (because mages stop to cast) and I could single pull the rest.

Bonus points if you multistep each fomor in order while doing this. Easiest 3 chests.

edit - I was referring to the section that has 6 fomors, one of each job, which is why I mentioned starting with WAR. This trick works with any pack of monsters, though.

BLU was pretty easily peak experience returning to the game after 10 years (meatster/cerberus) and was where all my enjoyment was. Going from doing terrible ***damage on CDC's and wiping to normal mode battlefields to smashing very hard battlefields and soloing Escha stuff was pure kino. Heads up, never multibox if you can help it. I took the multi-box pill and cleaved up 5 alts then the whole game become a joke when you stop playing with mentally ill morons who have no clue how to play their classes.