Ragar travels through Eorzea to see what Square Enix's remade MMO has to offer

Walking the Warrior Way (and other Jobs)

Speaking of Paladin, let’s talk about the Warrior and jobs in general for a bit. For those unfamiliar with Jobs in ARR, these are extensions of the base jobs focused around specific roles. In the case of Warrior and Paladin, these are extensions of Marauder and Gladiator with an even greater focus on tanking; you lose some of your damage and soloing potential from locked out cross-class skill options, but you gain so much in terms of your focus on tanking. Personally I don’t see myself switching out of Warrior in favor of Marauder all that often, but I primarily play with one or two other players so I’m rarely soloing in the first place.

Unlocking these Jobs does require a bit of footwork for new players. First you need to get the base class involved up to level 30: Warriors need Marauder, Paladins use Gladiator, White Mage takes Conjurer, etc. Your next step in the path to Job enlightenment is your secondary requirement; while each Job has two specific classes it draws upon for cross-class skill options, only one of these needs to be leveled to 15 to unlock the Job. For my Warrior unlock, I had to dip into Gladiator for 15 levels which worked out for me anyway since I’d be leveling Gladiator to unlock Paladin eventually. Some of these requirements are fairly obvious (e.g. Summoner takes Thaumaturge, Paladin requires Conjurer, etc.), but there are a couple that new players may not expect (i.e. why on earth did Bard get changed from Conjurer to Lancer?). Of course getting these levels is only part of the journey. If you want to walk the Job path, I hope you’ve been keeping up on your Class quests. I hope you’d be doing this anyway since it meant a new weapon upgrade every five levels in addition to new skills and armor upgrades, but it’s also required to unlock your Job quest chain.

Assuming you’ve done all of the prerequisites for unlocking your Job, now it’s time for your Job questline. This is strictly from the perspective of someone who’s only unlocked one Job, so bear in mind your Job may involve more work than mine. When it came time to unlock my Job, I was sent off to Costa Del Sol where I fought my way through an instanced battle with multiple waves. In the end I ran over to an NPC down the road where I was rewarded with my Warrior Soul Crystal, the item you equip to actually change to your new Job, and my first Job skill, with more to follow from Job quests every five levels after 30. While I was hoping for something a bit more “epic” than my Class questline had been (nothing wrong with Marauder’s questline, mind you), this quest was obviously a setup for a new questline that shows potential. I’m looking forward to hitting 35 and onward and seeing what I need to do to attune myself further with the spirits of the ancestors or whatever else I need to do to become more skilled at Axe-Fu.

Looking at these Class and Job questlines, I’m actually reminded of something I’ve missed in other MMOs and one of the reasons I enjoyed leveling my monk in Mists of Pandaria. Sure, these quests may have been just class-flavored versions of quests I was already doing, but even a small connection to my character’s class goes a long way to making me feel more connected to what I’m doing. It’s not just another “kill 10 boars” or “collect five bear carcasses” quest – it’s part of a training sequence from my class trainer to progress further along the path of the Warrior/Gladiator/”insert name of your class here”. Minor details like that go a long way to helping make questing feel more alive and I wish more games included details like that these days alongside their primary storylines.