"A Guide to FFXI That Even A Monkey Could Understand" Part 5 - Advanced Jobs I
Advanced jobs are somewhat more specialized than the basic jobs, and as such, are not available right from the start. Upon reaching 30th level in any other job, you can talk to the appropriate NPC, and go on a quest to gain access to the various advanced jobs. There is a different quest for each advanced job, and once you complete it, the job will become available for you to switch between at your mog house. You do not have to be in the same job you reached 30th level in when you go on the quest, and there is no limit to how many of the advanced job quests you can go on - open them all up if you really want to. Of course, once you begin leveling in your new advanced job, you'll be back at 1st level. ¬_¬
Since they are more specialized, advanced jobs usually do not make very good sub-jobs. (There are a few exceptions, of course.) Usually, if someone is planning to play an advanced job, they will spend their first 30 levels in the basic job which will later become their sub-job, so as to not waste any effort. For example, someone planning to be a PLD/WAR will spend their first 30 levels as a WAR, go on the quest for access to PLD, and then switch WAR to their sub. This way, they won't need to worry about leveling their sub again until their main job exceeds level 60.
Paladin (PLD)
Paladins are holy warriors, and masters of defense, who place the safety of others before themselves. Seriously, no job in this game has as a higher defense then a PLD does. This makes them the absolute best choice to fill the role of "tank" in any given party. They can also use a little white magic, mostly just the healing and protection spells.
Active Abilities
Most of a paladin's abilities are geared towards protection. At 5th level they can create a Holy Circle to temporarily improve the party's defense against undead. At 15th level they gain the ability to perform a shield bash - this attack is very good for interrupting the concentration of enemy spellcasters. At 35th level the gain the infamous "Cover" ability which Cecil had in FF4, which allows you to pick an ally and then jump in front of the next attack aimed for them. As for spells, paladins get access to the cure, protect, and shell series of spells. They also get the banish spells for damaging undead, and waaay down the line, at 72nd level, they can finally learn to cast Raise 1.
Two-Hour Ability "Invincibility" This power is actually very similar in nature to the thief's 2HR, but slightly different. For 30 seconds the paladin will be completely immune to all physical damage. I'm also told that this has a pretty impressive power to draw the monsters' attention, if this is true, that would make this power even more useful for protecting your party.
Passive Abilities
Paladins gain several passive bonuses to their physical defense. They also get the "Undead Killer" ability. All of the "killer"-type abilities will increase the damage you cause to that type of monster, and occaisionally cause a monster of that type to lose their action simply out of fear of you!
Equipment
Much like warriors, Paladins can and should equip all the heaviest types of plate armor. A paladin's best weapon combo is to go with a one-handed sword and a shield. They have access to some 2-handed weapons like greatswords, but without a shield their defense will suffer and they won't be able to use their shield bash. Paladins will never do as much damage as the other fighter classes, since their focus is on defense rather than offense, but they can still do a respectable amount and participate in skillchains.
Recommended Sub-jobs
PLD/WAR This is, without a doubt, the job combination for paladins. Really, you are doing your party a disservice if you choose something else. (Unless they already have a skilled tank, in which case, go nuts.) This is the standard tank design which you will find all over Vana'diel. The PLD's huge defense, combined with a WAR's provoke ability to keep monsters focused on them, works very well. The WAR levels will even help you be a more impressive swordsman.
PLD/WHM This combination will vastly improve your healing magics, giving you more MP and a wider spell selection. Not having provoke will make it harder to tank, but monsters are also drawn to healers, so maybe you can keep their attention that way. Again, this might be something to try if you don't have to serve as your party's main tank.
PLD/MNK? Remember how in FF7 you could max out your Counterattack & Cover materias, stick them both on Cloud, and then sit back and watch him do all the work? Well, you can't do that here - don't even try. ;P First of all, you can only use cover to get in front of one attack every 5 minutes, secondly, I'm told counterattack doesn't activate very often when MNK is subbed.
Paladin as a Sub-job
Paladin has very little to offer as a sub, but it might be chosen instead of WHM by warriors & beastmasters who feel like soloing for the evening and just want a defense boost and a very small amount of healing magic.
Dark Knight (DRK)
Dark knights are, in many ways, the exact opposite of paladins. These fighters focus entirely on offense, and have pretty poor defense as a result. They also dabble in black magic, but unlike paladins, who don't have any spells beyond what white mages have, dark knights actually have a few exclusive spells that black mages don't get.
Active Abilities
At 5th level, dark knights can create an "arcane circle" which will raise their party's defense versus arcana. Arcana include monsters made purely of magic, or animated by magic, such as bombs and golems. They also gain a stunning attack similar to PLDs, but it requires a 2-handed weapon instead of a shield. They also gain an ability which allows them to temporarily sacrifice HP in order to increase the strength of their attacks. In the area of spells, they get access to the basic damage-dealing elemental spells, as well as spells that can poison or put enemies to sleep. They can also learn the spells which drain HP and MP, and have exclusive access to a set of spells which can drain stat points. Thus allowing them to reduce a monster's strength and improve their own at the same time.
Two-Hour Ability "Blood Weapon" When invoked, blood weapon will allow all of your melee attacks for the next 30 seconds to drain enemy HP. It's still up to you to make sure your attacks actually connect, and the amount of HP you drain will be proportional to the damage you deal, rather than equal. Dealing 100 damage may result in you only gaining 10 HP for instance.
Passive Abilities
Dark Knights get several passive bonuses to their attack power. They also gain the "Arcana Killer" ability, not surprising for a class of fighters who also study magic.
Equipment
A Dark Knight's signature weapon is usually a large, 2-handed scythe, although some prefer to go with greatswords. They can equip most of the heaviest metal armors, but even then they might find their defense surprisingly low. Dark Knights usually depend on a skilled tank to draw the attention of monsters away from them, since they can't survive very long if they start taking hits. Also, many a DRK makes the mistake of focusing entirely on maxing-out their power, while neglecting their accuracy. What happens then is that they have the potential to do massive amounts of damage, but they find themselves constantly missing, which can be very dissapointing when you also have a very slow weapon like a scythe and don't attack very often. Naturally then, a lot of DRKs end up fighting over highly-coveted accuracy increasing rings and accessories.
Recommended Sub-jobs
DRK/WAR This is the typical choice of most dark knights. Hopefully, you'll never need to provoke, but WAR will give you some much needed defense, and if the tank is doing his job, you can activate berserk and really go nuts. It also give you something to do for the first 30 levels and seems a natural choice, since you actually need to complete the quest for access to DRK as a warrior.
DRK/SAM This takes a little more work to get into, since you must train an advanced job as your sub, but isn't a bad combo for people who enjoy seeing really high damage numbers. Samurai will let you smack the enemy with weapon skills more often, and as long as you don't miss, the resulting damage should be pretty impressive.
DRK/BLM Surprisingly enough, TaruTaru actually make pretty good DRKs! I think they look deeply disturbing once they complete the DRK artifact armor set, with their little black horned helmets and tiny scythes. Truly the most appropriate job for this disturbing little race... Ahem! Anyway, a dark knight with this sub will be even more fragile than the typical DRK, but they will have a very impressive array of black magic to play around with.
Dark Knight as a Sub-job
You might consider subbing DRK to try and get access to their unique, stat-absorbing spells. Unfortunately, this won't really work, since you won't be able to even begin casting them until your level reaches 62/31, and your level will max-out before you finish getting access to all of them. In fact, the ones you'd miss-out on are the 3 best ones (STR, DEX, & INT).
Ranger (RNG)
Rangers are masters of missile combat, who also have a few skills to support themselves in the wild. Ranger is no-doubt one of the most expensive jobs in Vana'diel, as you must constantly re-equip yourself with an adequate supply of arrows (or bullets, if you prefer guns over bows). However, rangers do get what they pay for, as no one, not even dark knights, can deal as much damage as a ranger can. Many rangers join the carpentry guild, so they can use item synthesis to make their own arrows.
Active Abilities
Rangers have a few skills to help bolster their ranged fighting abiities. They can give themselves temporary boosts to their ranged attack accuracy, and at 30th level, they learn a technique which allows them to fire a barrage of arrows, one after another, which doesn't stop until they miss. They also have some skills which seem to fall into the category of wilderness lore. They can use "scavange" to search the area around them and possibly find some items - this can help pay for all those arrows. They can also use "camouflage" to make it harder for monsters to detect them. This can help them as they scout the area for likely targets.
Two-Hour Ability "Eagle Eye Shot" This ability takes your single next shot, and greatly increases it's accuracy and power. I'm assuming that this must be a truly impressive increase, if it's only going to be available once every 2 hours.
Passive Abilities
Rangers get an increased scan range, so they can see monsters from farther away and pick a likely target. They also gain an ability that makes them generally harder for monsters to detect. This is good since rangers really need to be in control of who, what, and where they fight. Rangers in parties often scout ahead for good targets. Rangers also gain some bonuses to accuracy as they increase in level. Nothing is worse than wasting those arrows you paid precious gil for.
Equipment
Rangers can choose whether they want to focus in longbows & shortbows, or crossbows & guns. It really just seems to be a matter of taste, but some people think it's good to keep yourself trained in all the missile weapons, since you never know which type of ammo will be more readily available. They can equip melee weapons like daggers, but they usually just try to find a dagger that will give them archery bonuses, and then keep that strapped to their belt, rather than actually enter melee. Archers can only equip the lighter armor types, giving them even more reason to try and remain as far from the melee as possible.
Recommended Sub-jobs
RNG/WAR This is a good, solid choice for a ranger which adds a healthy dose of attack power. You can use berserk to sacrifice defense for offense, and if you're staying far away from the melee, there won't be any downside to this.
RNG/THF As mentioned, ranger can be a very expensive job, and a thief sub can help you fill your coffers with arrow money. It also adds some nice bonuses to DEX & AGI, a ranger's most important stats.
RNG/NIN Some people choose this combo simply so they can strap two archery daggers to their belts. It might seem like a waste to use dual-wielding just for a moderate stat increase, but NIN can also give even better bonuses to AGI than a thief sub. You'll gain some ninja techniques aswell, but you'll need even more money to pay for those. Between the archery daggers, the arrows, and the technique items, this is definitely a job combo limited to rich players only.
Ranger as a Sub-job
Ranger has exclusive acces to the bow & gun weapon skills. Subbing ranger won't give classes that can't already wield bows & guns the ability to do so, but it can give classes with existing ranged abilities access to the ranged weapon skills. For example, if you are a thief who prefers to use missile weapons, then a RNG sub can help, and the increased scan range can help if you like to hunt unique monsters for their unique treasures.
Beastmaster (BST)
Beastmasters specialize in taming monsters and getting them to fight for them. They cannot tame any of the "intelligent" races of monsters, such as goblins or orcs, but anything else is fair game. Because of this ability, beastmasters are the only job capable of soloing at very high levels. People either love beastmasters or they hate them. A skilled BST can save their party by taming a monster that joins the fray before they are finished with their current fight, but a sloppy BST can totally clear an area of monsters by wastefully throwing away the life of pet after pet, making it impossible for other parties in the area to find monsters to fight.
Active Abilities
Absolutely all of a beastmasters abilities relate to their pets. Unfortunately, they don't get all of their pet control abilities right at first level, which means that a BST may have to wait until 35th level, when they finally learn them all, before they can be truly effective. Right off the bat, the only ability a BST has is to tame monsters as pets. Monsters all have levels, just like characters, and a BST can only tame creatures of their level or lower. As beastmasters level-up they gain the ability to scan monsters to see how easily they can be tamed, the ability to make monsters easier to tame, abilities to heal their pets, and finally the ability to release their pets. This last ability is most important for BSTs in parties, as having a powerful pet around when a battle ends can make the party gain a lot less exp. from the fight.
Two-Hour Ability "Familiar" Normally pets only stay under your control for a few minutes (or less, if you can choose to release them) and then they revert to normal monsters and turn on you. If you find a pet you particularly like, and want to keep them around for a while, you can use the familiar ability on them. This will bolster their stats significantly and allow them to stay under your control for a full half hour.
Passive Abilities
As masters of monsters, beastmasters will gradually learn a wide variety of the "killer" type of abilities (bird killer, lizard killer, aquan killer..). Eventually they will have gained an attack bonus against every type of naturally occuring monster out there. This can be very nice whether you are soloing or in parties.
Equipment
A beastmaster's best weapon is the one-handed axe, often accompanied by a shield. They can also use scythes and certain types of swords if they prefer. They can wear just about every type of armor short of plate, so you will usually see them wearing metal harnesses or chainmail.
Recommended Sub-jobs
BST/WAR Noticing a pattern yet? Warrior shows-up as the most common sub for anyone who's going to be doing any fighting. It remains just as solid of a choice in this case, and is particularly good if you enjoy jumping into the fray alongside your pets, rather than just sitting back and issuing commands.
BST/WHM If you're planning to solo, a WHM sub is always helpful. Plus, WHM gives a better CHR bonus than most other subs. Remember, charisma is important for most beast-taming abilities. Again, this sort of combo is better pulled-off by Tarus, who can still get a decent amount of MP with a mage sub.
BST/PLD This is just a variant of BST/WHM. You'll have even less healing magic, but you'll get a nice bonus to defense, which is always handy when pets decide to turn on you. ;P
Beastmaster as a Sub-job
Beastmaster is almost never subbed, and with very good reason. Since the level of monsters you can tame is limited by your BST level, a BST sub would only be able to tame monsters half as strong as their main character level. If you are a 50th level character, you are going to be leveling-up in areas with level 50 monsters. If your sub is only 25th, you're not going to be able to tame anything in that area. Even if you do run over to a nearby lower-level area, tame something, and bring it back, it won't be able to stand-up to the local monsters long enough to even be an effective decoy!
Bard (BRD)
Bards have the uncanny power to enhance the abilities of their allies by singing songs. They can also use songs to hamper the abilities of enemies. In this way they are a bit like a combination of both bards & dancers from Final Fantasy Tactics - only with usefullness increased by a factor of about 1,000. People absolutely love having a bard in their party, since it will make their lives much easier and help them bring in exp. at an increased rate. However, there are not a lot of bards out there, since the role of a bard can be extremely tedious. Bards are the only class besides beastmasters who have to worry about their charisma stat, since CHR determines the power of all their songs.
Active Abilities
The only abilities bards have are their songs, but there are a huge variety of them. Just remembering them all and knowing which ones to sing at which times can be extremely challenging. There are ally-effecting songs which regenerate HP or MP, songs for increasing each of the different stats, and songs for warding-off certain status ailments. There are enemy-effecting songs for causing small amounts of sonic damage, songs for making them more vulnerable to certain elements, and even lullabyes for putting them to sleep. Allies can only be affected by two different songs at once, so it's important to choose the right ones for each situation. Bards can sing up to two songs at once by equipping instruments. Either they will sing one song and use an instrument for the second, or more commonly they will use two different instruments, one for each song. Certain intruments can even enhance the power of certain songs. Typically a bard will find themselves running back and forth between the fighters and the spellcasters, singing power & accuracy songs for the fighters, then singing MP regnerating and intelligence-enhancing songs for the mages.
Two-Hour Ability "Soul Voice" When invoked, this ability will enhance the power of your songs for the next minute. I have no idea just how much this enhances them, but it better be pretty good if you can only do it once every 2 hours...
Passive Abilities
The only passive abilities a bard gets are small resistances to the silence status.
Equipment
The most important pieces of equipment for any bard are their instruments. The competition for high-quality instruments can be pretty fierce, and there are even rare instruments out there that bards are considered to be handicapped if they don't have. Instruments use up the ranged equipment slot, so bards can't use any sort of ranged weapons. Bards are passably skilled with daggers, one-handed swords, and staves, but they are usually so busy singing that they never get a chance to attack with them. Many bards (who can afford it) buy this one extremely ugly-looking unique staff, which they then keep strapped to their backs for the rest of their careers, just for the charisma bonus it grants. Bards can equip only light armors such as leather and cannot use shields.
Recommended Sub-jobs
It's hard to select a good sub-job for bards. Bard songs don't use any MP, which means bards have 0MP, so a mage sub is going to have very little MP. Bards are also totally useless at combat, so there seems to be little point to subbing a fighting job.
BRD/WHM This is the most commonly accepted bard sub. You'll have very little MP, but that's fine since you're going to be too busy singing to heal mid-battle anyway. This combo is good since you can do some minor healing between battles or help cure status ailments. WHM also gives a pretty decent boost to CHR - a Bard's prime stat.
BRD/RDM A red mage's fast cast ability will help speed up how fast your song effects go off. This won't let you start another song sooner than you normally could, but it can give you a little more time to run between various party members, or try to sneak in a little melee attack. You'll lose the ability to cure status that a BRD/WHM has, but you can still provide some small amount of back-up healing.
BRD/THF Bards & thieves both have daggers as their best weapons, and they both need to be very mobile during battles, so this almost seems a natural combo. Stealing items between songs isn't too bad, and you help your party find more gil and rare items just by being there. The only drawback is that THF offers the lowest CHR bonus of any sub-job. ;_;
BRD/BST? Some people consider subbing anything under BRD to be so useless anyway, that they just sub BST, since it will give them the highest possible CHR bonus of any other sub-job. These people are crazy - don't do this. ;P
Bard as a Sub-job
Bard is another job which is vey much looked-down upon as a sub-job. You cannot equip any instruments unless bard is your main job, so a bard sub will be limited to singing only one song at a time, and without any instrument-related bonuses either! The power of your songs will be further reduced because your singing skill will be low, and you can only sing songs of half your main level. Still, some people don't mind this, because BRDs are hard to come by, and any type of bard - even an effectively castrated one - is better than no bard at all.
Wait! There's still more to come in Part 6 - Advanced Jobs II