The Hardest Mage in Endwalker!

[@astrealove1]

Personally I think Pictomancer is the hardest one. It's so hard that it's currently unplayable.

[@CaetsuChaijiCh]

You know, good point!

[@raarasunai4896]

You cheeky bastard 😂

[@IchiExorz]

Nobody can play it.

[@iantaakalla8180]

That is a very damning point. Nobody can play Pictomancer? After they said it would be playable? That is a deal-breaker for me 😂

[@rafagd]

Devs are looking into patching the job real soon.

[@primadamus8520]

Summoner is the hardest because I always forget to summon Carbuncle

[@TheKeyblader133]

The Arcanists Guild wants to know your location

[@BriahnAznable]

Having to resummon Lil’ Carbie after dying is the equivalent of having your groin kicked after being pushed down MUH UPTIIIIIIME ☠️

[@GrimViridian]

See I don't have this problem unlike forgetting tank stance I get to press the look at cute carbuncle button XD

[@raarasunai4896]

I made it easier by including a fun macro. “The source of heaven, earth, and everything in between! The ruler of all! I summon you, come, Carby!”

[@GrimViridian]

@@raarasunai4896 incredible, I plan on (when i one day actually level smn) making all my summons carbuncles XD

[@firby7341]

leveling summoner is really easy...you just equip scholar and...

[@brightestbiscuit3918]

The most challenging part of playing any caster DPS isn't their rotation, or their materia melds, or anything of the sort... It's the Duty Roulette: Levelling...

[@CaetsuChaijiCh]

Oof. The waiting! 😅

[@brightestbiscuit3918]

@@CaetsuChaijiCh OH NO, I didn't even consider that--I meant just getting the job to high level! But it's gonna get even worse in a few weeks! 😭

[@LycanFayn]

Totally agree! I played black mage at 90 for a gimmick recently, having *hated* it for all of the levelling process, and I actually quite enjoyed it! At 90, they're a lot nicer than the process of levelling!

[@spark9189]

having to play black mage below level 35 just isn't worth the daily exp

[@Osteichthyes]

Red Mage, because I will always backflip to my death, and I refuse to not press the backflip button.

[@joelazaro461]

I was a little sad when they removed the extra potency from backflip. Let me risk jumping off the edge for that 20 potency gain 😠

[@backslash4141]

Don't even 😂 The trial that got added with the last stage of the manderville quests took me about 5 deaths to get it in my head that the arena was too small to backflip in.

[@VGPorage]

One thing I will add for Black Mage is learning to play it well will make you a master at slide casting for all the other casters and healers aswell.

[@GarnetDust24]

THIS! Slide casting makes me feel so powerful

[@ItsASleepySheepy]

BLM was my first class to 90, when I started poking at Samurai to see how I felt about it, I was confused as to why everyone said it was so immobile, as I wasn't running in to any issues. That's when I realized I was just already good at slide casting and boy lemme tell you I felt like a god.

[@spasoldatin6258]

One thing about Red Mage raid optimisation that wasn't mentioned in this video but I think is worth noting is how much the rotation can change depending on the clear time. For fast clears usually it's fine to just hold Manafication to align it with raidbuffs every two minutes. But once you start getting into longer fights, the 110 second cooldown on Manafication becomes relevant and you then have to decide whether to hold Manafication to align with raidbuffs, hold Manafication the first x times and then start using it on cooldown to get an extra use but still gain raidbuff bonuses on the first x number of uses, or to use it strictly on cooldown to gain an extra use (without having the time to spare on holding it once or twice to align with raidbuffs.) Additionally there is a little bit of timing-related optimisation that I imagine is mostly only relevant at the highest levels of content, like timing your uses of corps a corps/engagement/displacement to land under buffs (assuming you don't have to hold them for long enough to lose any benefit that would gain you anyway), or changing your opener to fit an extra use of Fleche or Contre Sixte into the clear time. And I don't know if this is something unique to Red Mage (I imagine probably not, but I'm gonna say it anyway lol) is that if you have too much spell speed your oGCDs will gradually become misaligned even if you are actively using your realignment tools just on account of the recast time, which is super frustrating if you don't play the right kind of content to access gear that lacks spell speed. So there is a bit more depth to Red Mage than I think some folks realise, but overall I strongly agree with your analysis of Red Mage and I wish the barriers to entry weren't so severe (the number of Slow Mages I see is so tragic

[@CaetsuChaijiCh]

Indeed, I know red mage played OPTIMALLY is surprisingly hard, and is often overlooked. I hadn't actually thought too much about the part that over a long enough fight, you could get an extra manafication by using it exactly on cooldown! 😅

[@Gameplayr95]

As a Summoner player still in HS, the Summoner section of this video felt like it worded my issues with learning this job perfectly.

[@asmonull]

I tend to learn jobs by first looking at their kit, trying to understand how all parts of it work and synergize together and getting in some playtime before even looking at a guide or proper rotation - and, funnily, from that perspective Black Mage was by far the easiest to learn with Summoner being hardest; each gimmick Black Mage has is very straightforward in isolation, and any complexity comes from how they interact together to make a rotation - to a point where, while leveling, you tend to land at optimal rotation surprisingly often. Same thing applies to situational optimizations - most are just seeing what's your best available option in current state, it only gets hard if you try to memorize all options and their conditions. Summoner, on the other hand, was and still is a major pain to figure out; might be easier to just memorize what you're supposed to do in each level range and stick to it without trying to delve deeper. It's not even complexity - just available info is unnecessarily obscure and hard to process with ingame tooltips and wiki at hand. For learning red mage, I'd heavily recommend doing some palace of the dead - starting at level 1 and moving through the kit at a decent pace while incorporating new spells makes it a lot more approachable than getting stuck in low level dungeons for 15 minutes each. You don't need whole dungeon to figure out how dualcast works and how to keep gauge balanced.

[@CaetsuChaijiCh]

This all I think matches with my explanation about how summoner is absurdly overwhelming if you try to learn it by reading! 😊 It makes sense!

[@MajoraZero]

Funny you mention red mage and potd. At level 1, red mage has no spells! You have to kill your first enemy by spamming the first part of the non-enhanced melee combo.

[@pedroscoponi4905]

@@MajoraZero ...Oh god 😨 Now I know I'll never run potd on red if I can help it... that would feel so _wrong!_

[@GrimViridian]

Potd was how I've learned every non starter job so far except red mage lol it's so nice to be able to break them down like that

[@Strider_Shinryu]

No real disagreement at all with the votes. As a RDM main, though, I'll just throw in the fact you are in a lot of cases the defacto last line of defence if things go really wrong. This leads me to having to be more aware of exactly what is going on with the rest of the group in a way I don't have to when playing a more "selfish DPS." So while the basic gameplay of RDM isn't "hard" I always find at least some of my mind occupied with watching things like other's Vuln stacks or other debuffs, how they are doing with mechanics, how much MP the healers have, have the healers just insta rezzed someone and likely don't have their own Swiftcast left, is that healer too busy doing something else to realize the tank is about to die, etc.

[@BunnyWitchcraft]

RDM deserves a lot of credit! It has a lot of weaves for a caster, which can make it easy to drift cds out of buffs.

[@CadeAid1]

It also has the least movement of all casters… it’s very reliant on slide casting to get around. I find it so easy to die as a Red Mage because I’m so used to BLM and SMN movement.

[@FarZeroDark]

You have to slide cast less than every second cast. How is that less than BLM? @@CadeAid1

[@felixryan9798]

​@@FarZeroDarkyour only tools of movement are two acceleration stacks and swiftcast (to not lose potency). Of course if you are in melee then it's a lot more, but if you are not then it's going to be rough. BLM on the other hand, has 2 stacks of triplecast or 6 instants, a swiftcast, 2-3 banked xenoglossy's, thunderstorm proc, and even an ice paradox transpose if you needed. In DT that will only increase with the guaranteed firestarter proc and a possible 4th banked xenoglossy. All of that is also ranged.

[@raarasunai4896]

Black Mage is difficult, but fun. I know I’m one of the few Black Mage mains who likes the new changes(other than the loss of Ice Paradox). Then again, the only non-standard play I ever did was the AF1 F3P transpose line

[@brokenevolution5426]

Literally me and I still love Black Mage. It just feels good to me lol

[@raarasunai4896]

@@brokenevolution5426 I do hope we get Ice Paradox back, and have Umbral Soul knocked down about 14 levels in learning. In my opinion, that’s all the job needs to really be optimal(and maybe a bump to Flare Star’s potency. Only 10 more than Despair? Even with AF3 and enochian, that doesn’t come out to much.)

[@TNobody0214]

BLM is easily the hardest. But as a RDM main the optimization can be killer. Alot of the hign end skill is just knowing what is worth holding and what isnt. The fact manafication doesnt always need to line up to raid buff window is confusong to learn. Fighting urges to accelerate/swift and calculating multiple timers to make sure you keep fleeshe and conte sixte always on cd. Trying to always line corp and engagement to buff windows but also using them as much as you can. Not the mention some fights do pull some benefiet from the movent, like reducing the walk time needed to do to towers in p10s with displacemt. Its why i always tell new players to keep one stack corp and displacement on hand cause holding one technically isnt loss unless you just dont use it during buffs. Like none of it is major dps loss but all these tiny things can just rack up alot of think time.

[@brontome]

No blue mage? We were robbed!

[@TheKillerman3333]

riot for blue mage!!! justice for blue mage!!!

[@SnowflakeVee]

never heard of it

[@NastyMick]

I always kind of liked BLM but once I figured out their gap closer was on a 10 second cooldown, I fell in love. They're nowhere near as immobile as you initially think, at least once you get used 'Aetherial Manipulation', 'Between The Lines,' and all your other movement options. But all those caveats are exactly why they're hard to learn, yet so rewarding. 😩👌

[@Coolio_Ash]

Your videos are SO informative. Seriously you have such a deep knowledge of all the jobs, thats awesome.

[@CaetsuChaijiCh]

Thank you so much! I'm glad to hear that! 😄🥰

[@TheMrMarkx]

i actually played red mage a bit last week to lvl it up & you can also just cast vercure on yourself to get dualcast pre pull if you dont know when the pull will start. cool video

[@double_joseph327]

Genius idea

[@orciencor6001]

Having played all three of them now to max level, I certainly agree with the final outcome of the vote. BLM really caused me a lot of confusion as I leveled it up, just having little to idea if I was doing rotations right, or how they changed. At this point, I think I've got the basics down, enough to be a mediocre BLM at least. But I'm going to do a LOT better as a RDM, which is my main caster thus far (rezmaging is just too much fun). But even that one confused me when I initially picked it up, so much so I dropped it for Dancer for a while, before I eventually went back to it, figured it out, and started to enjoy it only slightly less then WHM. Summoner... I didn't really pick that one up till after the rework, so.. yeah, pretty easy now.

[@ninjamonkey5697]

I dont see a ton of people do this on red mage but I always prepull vercure for the instant cast so that I dont have to bother timing the 5 second verthunder cast time.

[@CaetsuChaijiCh]

This is a pretty good idea for casual content where there won't be a pull timer! 😊

[@Spiritchuckpvp]

​@@CaetsuChaijiCh And even in high end content this is a good tip for forced downtime/phase transitions!

[@TheTech1337]

The biggest way I rank casters in ffxiv is by how much movement is available to them while not breaking casting. The more instant casts the easier, as you will most likely die less. Summoner is by far the easiest by this standard, where black mage can have bursts of free movement on demand. The paradoxical thing about red mage is that while it does get duel cast, it only is able to move after it gets a cast off, meaning its more like stutter stepping in order to do things, and then a burst of freedom with their melee combo. I honestly find that red mage is the most restrictive in movement because of this, even with their gap closer and backstep moves. Hells, I remember when we only had Displacement and didn't have Engagement, meaning positioning was way more important to not fling myself off of the arena. Things are getting easier with Acceleration giving a free cast along with Swiftcast, but optimally you should be using those off of cooldown and not saving them.

[@Spiritchuckpvp]

If you want a great example of how crazy BLM movement can be, check out a BLM pov from TOP and look at how they move for Pantakrator. We save up all of our instant casts for that one section of movement that lasts around 30 seconds.

[@thestarstwinklebrite]

Same for me. My only complaint is the atrocious leveling experience for BLM, because I'm too ADHD to remember that many different rotations that I may or may not have to use within a given week lol. But BLM absolutely has way more mobility than most people give it credit for.

[@erwark]

Acceleration having charges means you can hold it without much trouble. Definitely requires a little planning, though.

[@wezzco_br8169]

Ngl, when progging this last raid tier on Summoner, there were times where I just zoned out and missed mechanics because the rotation didn't have any "urgency feeling". When I played BLM, at least I was forced to pay attention to enochian timer and always remember mechanics to position myself properly beforehand.

[@ThePizzabrothersGaming]

for coordinated groups you also want to get your garuda DoT down with all party buffs up, unless you know the boss will leave the area

[@stevegs76]

Rdm is the hardest! Not only you have to keep up damage but also take the responsability to never die so to save the raid. The other day i was the last alive and ressed people up in an extreme. Hard job, hard life. RDM ftw! 😂

[@steveaustin4118]

I've had to do that on my SMN

[@Xorua]

I didn't bother to detail this in the comments of the poll, but despite Black Mage being executionally more difficult, I find Red Mage somewhat less intuitive at times. Reprise not giving a mana stack, AoE combo taking 60 mana (Hooray for Dawntrail), double melee combo no longer fitting into your raid buff at 90, and the fact that getting too many procs can somehow make the job feel... Bad? It's an odd job. Love the burst, HATE the filler.

[@Raika63]

While I understand the theory, I can't imagine a black mage main ever voting that it's easy. They will usually let you know it's the hardest one.

[@siliur24]

I just came back on FF14 dews days ago … fun fact summoner used to be the most (by far) difficult job in the game with a full rotation of … 3 entire minutes (before the rework) 😅 I was a bit confused at first haha

[@LightningFlare95]

It's nice to hear someone actually talk about how weird SMN's kit is at lower levels these days. I've been maining SMN since SB, so while I don't regularly have to deal with it, if I ever que into a roulette and end up in lower level content, there's a constant thought of "What's even correct at this level?? The potencies are so wack!"

[@CaetsuChaijiCh]

I absolutely agree! It also feels like the gains from doing it right in these low levels are so small so it is hard to tell 😅

[@frostfire5208]

One thing I found odd as a new Black mage coming from wow - the abilities start off themed elemental (fire, ice, thunder) makes sense. Then it goes into just random words. Flare (ok its a fire-ish kinda spell) Despair, Polyglot, Xenoglossy, Foul and Paradox. Which made no sense by themselves. Yes you read it and see what they do but thematically they don't make sense name wise. At least with Sage you know its all Greek and its all medical/heal terms so at least it makes sense thematically. In addition being one of the hardest specs, the names having a theme you could follow then just changing to random words made it that much harder to memorize the rotation. Obviously veterans memorize it no matter what but imagine for a new player, you say, ok cast fire fire fire, then cast PENGUIN, ice ice ice then cast CHAIR, thunder then cast MEATBALL, and if its aoe use fire 4 fire 4 fire 4 then cast ONCOLOGIST. Like ok - I'll commit that to memory eventually but it doesn't make it easy to learn at first in the slightest.

[@samthorne3765]

Brother what are you TALKING about lmao. "At least on Sage all the ability names are medical terms" yeah it's a healer mate. If they weren't then you should still be able to intuit that they are for healing. Red Mage's off-globals aren't all called "fast sword attack", and Summoner has a spell called "tridisaster" that doesn't even have anything to do with the number 3!! If your ability to learn what spells do is based entirely on the real world meaning of their names then ig enjoy all your wiping in ARR dungeons, you crackhead xD

[@patrickarraes4422]

I play black mage, and yes the level rotation screws with your brain very fast adter level 50, but you get use to it. However when I went to red mage I saw that I was pressing more button and needed more coordination. Using a controller on Red mage is a bit more difficult as well. The dual cast mechanic gets me confused if am not paying attention + the need to go for the burst melee combo.

[@red5robb1]

BLM is the one DPS job that i constantly see in my roulettes that have no idea what they are doing. whether it be ice mage, using only the next highest 'fire/ice/lightning' spell (using fire 2 over fire 1, using fire 3 over fire 2/1 etc) pushing random buttons, or just...never going to ice and not casting anything for 30 seconds waiting for mana to regen for a single use of fire 3.... BLM i feel like is one of the few jobs that if you arent doing the rotation properly its the highest DPS loss by far out of all the DPS jobs. people also tend to say RDM is really easy...i personally dont think so, i understand how it plays and what im supposed to do but my brain has trouble wrapping around all 'extra' stuff or even when to use my melee combo, do i save up till im at 100/100 for 2 sets of the combo? why is there a gap closer attack but also a normal attack that shares a CD with it? you can just use the gap closer again for damage. and SMN....i enjoy summoner cause i can focus less on the job and more on the mechanics, its also why i like playing healer

[@BLM_main]

I'm a BLM who doesn't mind the long cast times because it feels like I'm charging up a Kamehameha or Spirit Bomb xD. And the big damage and big spell animations are satisfying to look at. But yeah, having to move when casting and having that cast get canceled because of it sucks. Generally, people don't like edging so I can see why people don't take to playing Black Mage (lol). But when you know the fight and were to move ahead of time you can heavily reduce the need to move in the first place.

[@Shak562]

Ranking was what I expected though I'm surprised that red mage and summoner was as close as they were

[@CaetsuChaijiCh]

Same! I had expected at least some more votes for red mage! 😊

[@samthorne3765]

@@CaetsuChaijiCh It's a natural consequence of a "just vote for the one best option" poll system, rather than having people actually order the full list. RDM and SMN having similar vote amounts doesn't at all mean that they're considered similar in difficulty, it just means that an overwhelming majority agree that they're both definitely easier than BLM so any votes they get at all are outliers that don't mean a whole lot.

[@ThePizzabrothersGaming]

around level 60 in Dungeons it can get really messy trying to keep up astral fire. especially cause you also unlock enhanced flare. And keeping up astral fire for more fire 4 would be easy if we had paradox, but that's 30 levels away ...

[@CaetsuChaijiCh]

It's not that bad! You are supposed to use a fire 1 to extend the timer, in the same way paradox is used 30 levels later. That's the reason why fire 1 turns into paradox! 😊 It is however, a bit confusing to learn this I think!

[@ThePizzabrothersGaming]

@@CaetsuChaijiCh aye, but you're not ready for it yet, because before fire 4 you'll be casting fire I's till you run out of MP, which keeps refreshing. so all of a sudden your astral fire disappears until you're used to it

[@Arsen1cpop]

Forgot to mention that SMN has 2 openers depending on team comp.

[@MajoraZero]

I love blm but I struggle so much with it. Just so much to keep track of. Whenever I feel I did a great job I realise I forgot about thunder

[@BLM_main]

Mastery takes time. But once a master, always a master. Keep going :)

[@minty_priv]

I just like, really got used to BLM its really fun and actually really mobile! I do feel mixed on the dawntrail changes but mostly will just miss ice paradox :c

[@TheGreatDanish]

I just can't figure out smn no matter how much I try I que up, start a fight, and then I fall asleep. How do I stay awake?

[@alloounou6900]

Black mage was the hardest for me for a long while. It took playing it off and on for all of Shadowbringer and half of Endwalker before it finally clicked. Now it's easier for me than summoner. I mean I'm not top tier but I can hold my own in savage on it.

[@Scerttle]

It's all definitely very subjective. I've seen some SMNs that struggle, and I personally find BLM more approachable than RDM. That may change after DT comes out though. RDM changes look very smooth, BLM looks like it's going to punish mistakes even harder.

[@CaetsuChaijiCh]

Hard to say! With the changes, each astral fire state will have three guaranteed instant casts at minimum if you need them, due to both having thunder, instant paradox, and a guaranteed Firestarter, which also means, if you need it, you can reset your astral fire timer an extra time. In a way I feel it is far more lenient, although the strictness of flare star does add its own challenges! I am very curious if red mage (or perhaps pictomancer) will be the harder jobs come late dawntrail! 😁

[@Yokai_Yuri]

BLM is easy to use and understand but by far the hardest mage job to master. You MUST know the boss rotation by heart and know when exactly pop up your cooldowns. BLM can't get away with the bs mobility RDM and SMN have. BLM have a fake mobility in triple cast and that's it.

[@Scerttle]

@@CaetsuChaijiCh I'm super duper excited to see how Picto compares. I haven't watched any media tour videos on it so I can go in without any biases, so I'm sure I'll be very bad at it whether it's easy or not lmao

[@Strider_Shinryu]

This may actually be the most interesting race to watch come Dawntrail, especially if you take the BLM Army at their word and accept that DT BLM is going to be extremely on rail and dumbed down. RDM is getting some real optimization potential with Acceleration now proccing Grand Impact so there will be a real choice between using it for movement or DPS. And it seems like Picto will be a real roadblock to some players, with a lot of fight to fight optimization as well when you have to find the best times to paint your canvases and when to use things like Hammer. And for SMN! ... well... anyway.

[@iko8465]

Honestly when i hear that Summoner was getting a rework, i was very interested by how they would integrate the Eikons into a pet job. Needless to say that i was dissatisfied with what came out. Thematically, Summoner makes sense (Except Lunar Bahamut because Bahamut V.2 is just boring) and i like summoning the previous Primals we defeated in the past. But the gameplay is quite simply less engaging than before. Ifrit summon is the only unique one with a melee cast or very long cast time. Garuda and Titan is just instant cast spam. I ended up mindlessly spamming their respective spell once until i runned out of gemshines and moved to the next on or to the demi Bahamut or Demi Phoenix Phase. All the spells feels the same despite being very flashy (All little too much, my friends deactivated the Spells effect because i would blind the with Titan Summon).

[@Terraflare94]

I started with rdm I picked blm at the start and kind of used a skip. I played during stormblood so... but I was able to pick up rdm pretty quickly. Jolt into verthinder/aero then when one of your other spells proc use that then the melee combo 💀 then you have AoE combos for pulls in dungeons and adds. Plus at least rdm has utility. I'm totally not coping 😅

[@NyaboyNeko-wb1fr]

Summoner is hardest Undisputed Whenever you use your summons you go blind from a giant monster blocking your view on top of changing colors so you have no chance to see attacks about to massacre you.

[@TheKillerman3333]

i havent gotten to level 70 with these classes, except summoner, and it was becuase shared exp. up to level 60 was easy

[@CadeAid1]

I feel like I’m one of the few who believe that Red Mage is harder to play than Black Mage is, at least on a basic level. It’s got a lot more resource management and no movement other than a backflip that rarely gets value. It’s so easy to die as a Red Mage trying to squeeze out that last cast than a Black Mage who can just teleport across the arena every 10 seconds, or have several on-demand instant casts. Not to mention strong defensive skills like Manaward, never needing to use Lucid Dreaming, people “babying” you (even in casual content), and being completely selfish.

[@samthorne3765]

"No movement" brother you're supposed to be using dualcast

[@laceyclark311]

Any caster dps is hard when you're too focused on your hotbar casts to realize you've got several aoes under your feet.

[@dupazbita6103]

As a SMN main, I don't understand any of these strange things, but it does not matter, because I can make things go boom fast and summon big ass titan = W

[@Myrtneough]

Hopefully the DT changes to BLM makes it feel better to play, even if non-standard users are up in arms over it

[@ZerokaiX]

I dont understand the point of Fire/ice 3. I dont see any more damage when using it and starting with The aoe fire/ice gets you the 3 stack immediately. BLM just has a lot going on for it that causes it to feel overwhelming overall. And the lack of mobility for casting also makes it feel a little stale compared to summoner or red.

[@samthorne3765]

Fire/Ice 2 is for AoE because it is an AoE spell. Fire/Ice 3 is for single target because it is a single target spell. If you're using the former on single targets because you "don't see any more damage" between spells with 200 potency between them then idk what to tell you.

[@Spyrit2011]

Pictomancer. It looks like it has a rotation , like ninja.

[@ahmki52298]

Actually yea I can confirm summoner is the only class that literally puts me to sleep

[@JohnDCrafton]

Cae, Ruin 3 is used _twice_ per minute 🙃

[@CaetsuChaijiCh]

Once in the opener, once per minute after that 😊 The other ruin would be ruin 4 if anything 😉 You would only use it twice if you just HAVE to make bahamut align with searing light, which is a damage loss 😊

[@JohnDCrafton]

@@CaetsuChaijiCh once per demi primal isn't the same as once per minute _unless_ you are aligning bahamut with searing light

[@CaetsuChaijiCh]

@JohnDCrafton in that case it's only two per minute rounded up! 😂 But okay you got me! Indeed, it would be more than one if it is per minute rather than per bahamut! 😂

[@xvxvcaspervxvx]

I thought getting into BLM would be harder, but it becomes second nature after a while, but I still struggle with RDM.

[@terrificlife1576]

Min Max Red Mage is the Hardest be far!

[@CaetsuChaijiCh]

It certainly makes red mage a lot harder than people think it is!

[@DevilSeiji]

Smn is the hardest one bec you keep pressing the same button over and over again, making it break sooner than the others and suddnly you are wondering why your skills arent going on cd properly. T.T I had to buy a new mouse bec of 1 key

[@DrakeFury1]

I think RDM is more complicated than BLM.... but I'm a BLM main, so I guess that's normal in my case XD

[@ksemanr]

I think BLU is worth talking about too cause it's actually my favorite caster

[@CaetsuChaijiCh]

I love blue mage too, but I feel the job, being limited, makes it always play in a different world than the other jobs 😅

[@Avenus112]

Rotations got ridiculous for every dps. I dont know how any of you keep at it.

[@CaetsuChaijiCh]

With a lot of practice!

[@Spiritchuckpvp]

Eh, I wouldn't say that. Most jobs still have a pretty basic rotation even during burst windows, and if you want a simpler rotation you can always play SMN/RPR/DNC/Any healer.

[@Avenus112]

@@Spiritchuckpvp ive seen some diagrams as to dps priority and they look insane to me. Leveled dragoon and samurai to 90, samurai seemed intuitive enough with some practice in spite of the language. Dragoon i never did anything with ex ept fate grind but theirs looked confusing. Monk looked utterly absurd. I remember black mage *looked* simple enough on the surface til I actually did it. The hardest part seemed planning how long you could sit still to complete a cast for and how many fire iv's per second you could cast and i guess planning your mana bar and casting circles was the hard part? I dont know, struck me as a very impractical class.

[@double_joseph327]

@@Avenus112so I leveled black mage, monk, ninja and red mage. They are all complicated as hell. Red mage I think is the easiest of what I’ve leveled. I actually find tanking and healing easiesr then DPS lol

[@Avenus112]

@@double_joseph327 very much so, especially tanking. But ive only done so as paladin and white mage so my perspective may be limited.

[@solisimperium1203]

black mage without a doubt is hardest caster. Cause it actually has casts lol. summoner is just press the glowy buttons and get instant casts with the exeception to ifrit. easy, and doesnt even feel like a caster. Redmage has more casts than summoner but, they are short casts, and they also have access to melee and more mobility. Black mages have long ass casts, some mobility tools, but black mages need to stand still most of the time just casting unlike the other casters. This is what makes black mage difficult compared to other casters. black mage for life.

[@CrabSage111]

Black Mage actually has more mobility than Red Mage in harder fights. instacasts x6, paradox ice, thunder procs, xenoglossy. More than... acceleration + the finisher to RDM's combo. In short bursts RDM is plenty fine, but for sustained mobility BLM has it beat easily.

[@solisimperium1203]

@CrabSage111 not exactly, red mage has short cast times and lots of melees. that alone boost its mobility drastically than blm. yes blm has triple cast, and xenoglossy but these are resources that must be managed depending on the fight so you can move and cast those long cast spells. rdm has short cast times so rdm does not need the mobility tools like black mage does. all I'm saying is, redmage and summoner are more mobile and are easy to move around with than Black mage. black mage has to think on more on when to use these mobility skills.

[@Spiritchuckpvp]

​@@solisimperium1203The difference is that RDM doesn't have as much access to on demand mobility as BLM does. While RDM will technically have more mobility overall with slide casting, if there is a big mobility check (TOP P1 Pantokrator for example), all RDM can do is stockpile resources for back to back melee combos. While BLM can pool all of their instant casts to use there and basically be a physical ranged for 30 seconds.

[@solisimperium1203]

@@Spiritchuckpvp i suppose youre right

[@fishbread9208]

The only reason I have summoner maxed is because scholar is my main healer

[@azul86]

I admit, my biggest beef with BLM is having to stand still for casting time. I know slide casting is a thing, but even still, I prefer my mobility

[@BLM_main]

What do you main? I main BLM but the mobility and ease of use on Reaper has me playing it more. If it wasn't for my attachment to BLM I'd be a Reaper main for the mobility. So I wonder if people who have a general dislike for BLM has to do with being someone who has a mobility-based playstyle (on top of other things).

[@azul86]

@@BLM_main I kinda have several I think of as my mains. For story and new-content/first runs, I go PLD. Content I am familiar and confortable with, I go SCH or SGE. Content I don't know well, or if I'm looking to switch things up, NIN, DNC, or SMN.

[@user-zn1db9fe5w]

I hate rotation summoner in low levels. And heal should stack with INT like red mage THIS MUST BE CHANGED...

[@asdsad17]

blu hardest. if you're slow you miss phantom flurry.

[@fuzzwobble]

Wrong. Blue Mage is the hardest mage. You have to travel the world collecting spells like Pokemon, even from Savage content, just to get your kit. Then you have to build your kit from the spells with limited slots, and make things all fit together well. Only then do you get to play the class for real, and your 'rotation' changes when you change your spells out.

[@Tython82]

Only 2 spells, Feather Rain and Glass require you to do Extreme boss fights, there are no spells in which you have to do a Savage. All spells that come from raids are available in the Normal version of the raid.

[@karasutsuki1733]

0:51 "Whats the point? How is it even *remotely* up for debate that the hardest one is BLM"

[@DrakonLameth]

As a red mage main, I'm not surprised we're considered not very hard. Also, I dislike Acceleration outside of 'here, instant Scatter/Impact to throw while chasing the trash pull in a dungeon', partly because for much of its life it was "keep this on cooldown because VerFire/VerStone is more important than Jolt/II" and I've never enjoyed those kinds of buffs because I feel that, if a buff is so important that it needs to be kept on cooldown, then it needs to be baked into the class as an automatic/passive effect and not something I should be smashing the second it fades in.

[@orciencor6001]

I miss the old Acceleration, the one that just granted a guaranteed verfire/verstone thrice. It felt more useful to me, even if proc luck could sometimes make it unrequired for extended periods of time. Now, I also just really use it for the instant impact in dungeon pulls (which I admit IS at least kinda nice to be able to do), or just to raise whatever mana is needs it most at any given time. Sure, it means it's regularly used, but its use just feel so very arbitrary now.

[@zombiegodsire]

This mentality is why jobs are becoming so dumbed down and dull. Put everything as a passive, press 1-2-3. Stellar gameplay

[@SREDISKRAD]

If summoner gets to be counted as a caster, so does Samurai, it has more casts per minute than standard crit summoner builds /s I will say, Black Mage is a job I actually enjoyed when it was fire 3 fishing; you got to do a whole load of damage phase, and it felt good every time you got a proc - just let 'er rip. I started hating BLM after fire 4, and the only reason I somewhat got over that is I run full spell speed caster gear. When you cast so fast you cast in shadow (of the other dps who's build correctly)

[@clackjaw4017]

Red Mage is actually the hardest to min max, oddly. It also has less freedom of movement than black mage if a black mage manages all their instants and triplecasts well.

[@Erothaur]

Black Mage main here to confirm the class is impossible to play.

[@bleh491]

Us blu mages in the forgotten corner

[@CaetsuChaijiCh]

Not forgotten, rather remembered that Blu is a limited job and is such a different experience from the other mages that it would be unfair to compare them directly 😅

[@ItsASleepySheepy]

THANK YOU for actually addressing why Summoner might give people trouble instead of just going along with the idea that it's brain dead easy. I enjoy both BLM and SMN, but SMN having essentially 4-5 different tooltips per skill that you often can't see until you use the corresponding summon or look in the action guide can definitely be a lot. I also got jumpscared when I hit lv 90 in the middle of a dungeon and suddenly had a gap closer!

[@CaetsuChaijiCh]

Indeed, I feel myself too that sometimes the funny memes can get so overwhelming that the details are forgotten, such as summoner possibly having their own challenges 😊

[@GuerreiroAventureiro]

Smn>Rdm>Blm in terms of difficulty Smn is the most simple job to play. The only flaw is when you use Ifrit cause you are being punished to go BLM for 1 summon. Rdm is the most balanced job if you want a balanced gameplay. I love to play this job, its my 3rd main and i use when duty roulette wants a healer so i join as a backup. Blm is the most punishing job the only reason why is because you need to stand still for 5 seconds to cast a spell. When a aoe falls on you and need to move but you not gonna do it. Its greedy for damage and you are always forced to move and you lose too much damage

[@mismismism]

Lol the fact SMN got any votes is wild. If you're struggling on SMN, may Hydaelyn bless your poor, unfortunate heart lol. I'm so sorry but if you can't look up and learn how to optimize SMN... The other jobs are just gonna be beyond a disaster.

[@Spiritchuckpvp]

Yeah.... if those votes aren't ironic, I've got a lot of delicious glue I can sell to them :)

[@SubduedRadical]

This is...more or less what I expected. I hate BLM. I love SMN. I like RDM. But...I've always hated BLM. I'm glad it's in the game because I'm mature enough (to toot my own horn, but it's an important point) to realize not every Job is for me and not every Job SHOULD be for me. Some Jobs SHOULD be for people not like me, so they have a place in this world, and that means they may not appeal to me. Likewise, some Jobs SHOULD be for me and not them for the same reason, and still others may appeal to us both. I love the Caster subrole, despite disliking BLM, because all three of the Jobs feel different, something some other roles (like healers/tanks) can sometimes miss out on. Say what you will about them, but BLM, RDM, and SMN all feel and play different, and can appeal to very different types of people (like I'm a healer main that doesn't like DPS rotations, so I like SMN since it's straightforward and has a Raise! :D), and I suspect PCT will also feel unlike any of the three, making the Caster role feel even more diverse and come even closer to having something for everyone. More roles like this are good since it means more options for all of us to play in this sandbox together and enjoy this world as friends. And, at least to me, that's a good thing. :D And that's why I'm glad even BLM is in the game, despite not liking it personally myself. See you all in DawnTrail! o/

[@davidmaclean2734]

SMN - i operate in reverse, summoning garuda first to activat my machine gun as i call it RDM - during mechanic heavy foghts i more often than not mess up my double casts and my mana gague is never balanced right, please say im not the only RDM main that does this 😮😮

[@zombiegodsire]

Definitely summoner

[@lance5817]

Summoner is the hardest becausei have to fight myself to not fall asleep.

[@wontononionslicer1004]

Real man chose Blue mage😑

[@Dndstories]

I just want black mage to be viable at lower levels. The dps is just not there without the rng fire/lightning procs. Hopefully this will change in dawntrail 🤞🤞

[@Adonteon21]

It's always gonna be black mage, well maybe not with next expansion dumbing down.

[@realityveil6151]

I'm the hardest mage when the skimpy WHMs show up to the duty. 🤤🤤

[@shadieeryaqati4514]

‘Hard to play’ Bruh, there’s no difficulty. It’s just ‘generic builder spender’ coupled with homogenized bland rotations xD

[@Spiritchuckpvp]

If you could even call SMN a builder-spender, that is. However BLM does have substantially more depth than the other two if you are (were 😢) willing to delve into the world of non-standard lines.