I've put a fair amount of time into FFXIV after writing up my First Impressions a little while ago. I've progressed the story a fair bit to a point where it's starting to really pick up. I've also been giving different classes a go by taking a little step away from my Lancer.
This game honestly only gets better and better. It has a bit of a slow start with a lot of monologue based fetch quests and while that carries on well into your level 40s the game is getting more fun the further I progress. Much due to the story becoming more interesting and the classes/jobs getting both stronger and more fun to play.
Giving the Gladiator a go
As I was progressing the main quest I was constantly 10+ levels above the content I was doing. Much thanks to the double exp buff in place to make new players catch up. Since FFXIV allows you to play all of the classes on one single character and switch between them on the go I decided to start leveling a second class to soak up some exp.
I was already playing a melee DPS class in the Lancer so I decided to go with a Tank class and chose the Gladiator. The Gladiator is pretty much a heavy armor sword and board class with a lot of defensive abilities. In the early levels it plays pretty much exactly like my Lancer in form of rotation but it allows me to get in dungeons quicker as a Tank.
I'll also have to be a little more hands on in the dungeon instead of just standing around dealing damage. As a Tank it's my job to get the enemies to focus their attacks on me while the damage dealers do their thing and the healers keeps us alive.
Tanking is pretty simple in FFXIV. The game comes with an built in threat meter which makes it easy to keep hold of said threat. It's also really easy to hold threat. Two skill attacks is pretty much enough to hold threat on an enemy for the whole fight.
Tanking is actually easier and more chill than DPS-ing in my opinion. Most boss abilities will be cast on the party instead of the tank. It's the DPS classes job to kill off any extra enemies that might spawn. I just need to position the boss and make sure all enemies are attacking me.
Upon reaching level 30 and progressing far enough in the main quest line I can now unlock jobs. Jobs are pretty much advanced classes that each class has access to. The Gladiator can unlock the Paladin job which gives access to even more defensive abilities. Pretty cool!
Arcanist and Dragoon
As I was outleveling the main quest even with two classes I also decided to unlock a third class. This time I went with a ranged DPS caster called the Arcanist. Pretty much just a mage of sorts that also gets to summon a pet. I didn't quite like this class so I ended up dropping it around level 30. I'll probably pick it back up later as the Arcanist can choose two different jobs. I can either choose to be a Summoner (ranged DPS) or a Scholar (healer).
I did however unlock the Dragoon job for my Lancer which saw me going back to that. It's a really cool job that allows me to jump in and out of battle with a bunch of utility skills. I now plan on leveling my Dragoon and Paladin side by side the rest of the way. I'll probably be questing as the Dragoon since that has more damage and doing dungeons as a Paladin since that's more fun and I find groups quicker.
Class quests
I really like that all the classes have their own class quests with interesting stories. Class quests can be done every fifth level up until level 30 and helps us unlock new abilities as well as getting us better gear. After level 30 we unlock the aforementioned jobs which starts a new storyline based on each job with new quests every five levels.
The Gladiator storyline was my favorite so far. It took us all over Thanalan, the desert region, as we took on a mafia like organization called the Alacran who were plotting to assassinate the Sultana of Ul'dah, the main city in Thanalan. The Lancer and Arcanist questlines didn't keep me as engaged as this one did. It had way cooler characters and plot.
This game is getting better by the day and now that the story is starting to ramp up I'm getting quite invested. I've already defeated the titan Ifrit and I'm about to take down the bigger and badder primal Titan which I hope will be a cool fight. Let's hope my tanking skills are up to par for this.
All images in this post are screenshots taken by me.