What Is The Most ... In FFXI?

I surprisingly found myself conversing w/ Google's search "AI Mode" and having some fun talking about FFXI. I was trying to see what information it would get right, get wrong and if it would accept corrections. It was surprisingly fun. and it turns out to be a constant yes-man and accepts corrections. I'm not sure if it will make it better. I'm curious what answers others will get if they approach the information I fed to it.

However, I wanted to throw out some questions to the community which were fun and curious to get answers to.

What are the best support jobs (in order) for Physical Weaponskill Damage?

What are the best support jobs for Magical Weaponskill damage?

What is the most versatile job in FFXI?

I'm going to avoid the best dd, and best tank, cuz I think those have been argued to death. :D

cor cor and cor :)

1 and 2 if just ws damage; GEO SMN BRD COR RDM(fury frailty malaise)

1 and 2 If you include gaining tp it changes to COR BRD GEO SMN RDM(sam and war roll)

1 and 2 if you include tp gain, and include that said support must also be the ONLY source of haste, it's GEO BRD COR SMN RDM(Indi haste, haste, frailty/malaise)

Most versatile is BLU, or RDM, depending on how define it. Both tank, heal, buff, debuff, cover all elements, BLU has AOE without sub blm, RDM has zero tp feed and 2 additional weapons, daggers and archery.
(I would argue for bst, if it weren't so limited by call beast timers)((Bst tanks, heals, buffs, debuffs, has pierce/blunt/slash/magic damage))

Cor is too big of a candidate for front and back line support with damage dealing capabilities.

A close second would go to Dnc. Healing and some support with much better physical damage and front line support.

Bed is third imo. Better support but less DD.

sorry sorry if its not clear.

Not a support job as in cor, brd, geo, rdm to be in the party to help deal damage... what support job maximizes damage as in /blm /drk /war /drg /nin /dnc

I know we say subjob all the time, but the game term is actually support job.

Though I do find those lists pretty interesting as well.

That was definitely unclear

Not even a discussion then. Best sub is nin or dnc, tp bonus offhands. Period. (kc if you're feelin froggy)

DRG if you cannot dw, or your main has default dw

/drg for phys if atk capped, /war otherwise
/nin or /dnc for magic, staff ws excluded
probably /dnc again for utility that doesn't rely on sub-level magic skill

you are 100% correct since the first 3 replies all had the other interpretation. I was unclear.

I would also say, the last questions about versatility, was not about subjobs. though thats interesting too.

makes me wonder how AI deal with lots of bad or opinionated data. can definitely agree the couple times I used it for actual FFXI game information it was happy to be completely wrong even when corrected. lots of things are subjective or misinterpreted and I'm certainly guilty myself of putting some bad data out there at least more than once :)

If you mean sub jobs then it depends on the main job imo.

Best is probably War because it's sort of in the middle and every job find something useful in War. Probably best for versatility. You get smite, berserk and DA for damage dealing, defender, warcry and provoke for tanking.

Drk is for jobs without smite and when you need that Drk stub magic. Especially when they need extra attack.

Otherwise Drg is the best sub for higher WS damage overall.

Why are so many people shortening SuPport job as suB job?

I am not sure. I just gonna blame that strategy guide I bought from GameStop back in 2002.

Is that the one that said only Drk is a real dd job and others jobs are not as strong as Drk.

/drg literally has a weaponskill boosting job trait, which all jobs get the 2nd tier of at ML30 from Level 55 DRG sub. This boosts physical weaponskill damage by a sizeable degree, while the DRG subjob also offers jumps for TP on demand/if you get slowed, and Super Jump to shed hate. Almost unmatched.

/drk is a bit of a dark horse that gets overlooked for weaponskill damage with the advent of master levels. For 2handers and hand-to-hand users, it provides Smite III at ML30 with DRK sub of level 55. This provides a +19.9% attack bonus at all times when using hand to hand or 2handers. So it's a giant passive attack boost to any two hander jobs, and then you get Last Resort on top of it. Last Resort still plays nice with a Berserk level atk boost even to 1handed weapons, and this goes nicely into the overlooked Physical Damage Limit III, also gained at ML30 with DRK 55 sub. Nice dollop of Attack Bonus III too. Issue is offers nothing defensive, and you can't do the drain or absorb minigame very well with just the sub on most jobs.

/war is still really good. Berserk is a big boost if you're lowman/low buff, and +12% double attack never hurts (shuddap SAMs!). Also get defensives in Defense Bonus and Defender if you need them

/sam offers Hasso, PDL1, and Store TP III. So you get slight buffs to physical WS, along with more frequent weaponskills. Lower power, higher frequency.

For magical weaponskill damage...

/nin and /dnc offer dual wield, allowing you to offhand TP bonus as most all magic WS do dramatically higher damage at high TP values. It really is that simple. Barring those though...

/blm /drg and /rdm I guess. /blm and /rdm give +MAB trait, with /blm's being one tier higher. /drg gives the WSD bonus, and it applies to magic WS as well. Not sure if it beats the +30 MAB or whatever, but it wouldn't surprise me if it did.

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Most versatile job is somewhat subjective. Most versatile soloing job? Most versatile by party demand? Most versatile by job that has the most traits/abilities/spells?

RDM and BLU butt heads a bit in both the soloing/traits/abilities/spells list, but COR takes the cake for most versatile by party demand.

Corsair is a job that can buff literally any job's specific traits/skillsets in the game. This means Corsair is a good fit in any party composition, because they always have something good to offer the whole party. Corsair also gets access to two damage types, ranged weaponskills innately, and strong magical weaponskills, to boot. Then there's Quick Draw, which gives Corsair the only instance of Job Ability based sleep in the entire game, as well as a Job Ability based Dispel. So when you add a COR to your party you get:

Every kind of buff.
Dispel
Sleep
Two types of physical damage.
Physical ranged damage.
Six types of magical damage.
High powered magical WSes.

All without any spells.

What is the most AFK money maker?

What is the most time-rewarding money maker?

What is the most easy-time-rewarding money maker?

What is the most sexiest mithra?

BR74
Farming crabs for Rock Salt
Steam Clocks
Trick question, all Mithras are dudes, so have Zeid instead

I have 2 blue mage on 2 characters which I used to run thru omen to farm S. Astral Detritus.
One is Galka, one is Mithra. The Galka is a bit better geared on blu than the Mithra, but that doesn't change the efficiency much. Takes about 15 min to clear thru omen tagging everything w/ th4 and aoe nuking it all down.

The mithra often gets 50% more detritus than Galka.

Conclusion: Japanese simp hard for catgirls.

Side note, I asked AI the other day how many cards are needed to upgrade artifact gear from +1 to +3 and it actually gave me the right answer. It's shocking how fast this is getting good.

the AI Mode could not count the number of unique jug pets beastmaster has. Then when I counted, it agreed with me telling me I was right. Then I said I mistyped the reply, gave a different number, then I had miscounted by 1 and updated it 3 times. it agreed with me every time that I was correct

/drg is > /blm for magical weaponskills according to my testing. granted things can vary per job, but MAB is much more available than WSD still so WSD improvements matter more.
Followed by /rdm > /blu > /geo > /sch
cuz hachirin no obi + storm spells are worth something even if very little.

for physical methinks the pdl+1~3 bonus of /drk beats /drg when overcapped on attack. so greatest potential is /drk imo. then /drg then between /war and /dnc cuz you can boxstep and building flourish for /dnc. not sure which comes out on top.

/drk will only win out on jobs that do not have pdl III on thier own though.

mnk, rng, drg will not have greater physical weaponskill damage from /drk and /war is better than either /drk or /drg for mnk at least. I'm rather surprised that warrior only has pdl 2 trait.

Also the difference between multi-hit and single hit is going to affect it alot.

As far as versatility goes... I think RDM comes solidly in 3rd. Its a wonderfully versatile job, but Blu and Pup both beat it imo. Both Blu and pup can reconfigure to a different party role on the fly. They have all the tools for it.

Furthermore they can fill any party roll. RDM is very capable, but it is not equipped to tank. sure back in the day, they would supertank and blink tank stuff, but they don't have any enmity tools at all. RDM can dd both melee and ranged nuking. It can crowd control, it can cure, and it can survive, but tanking is different.


Behind RDM in versatility, I would put Beastmaster and Dancer. I'm not sure what order. Dancer has healing and dd galore, and even though everyone wants to say it can tank, its really squishy. then again I think I found a good tanking build for dancer w/ fan dance + counterstance.

Beastmaster has all sorts of versatility with pets ofcourse. Some uniquely useful support debuffs, crowd control, physical and magical dd options, a great curebombing bunny, but not really statues removal or other curing and buffing. It needs support job for all that. Snarl is a great enmity tool, but not quite enough for full time tanking. /run or /blu makes tanking feasible if not ideal. but bst has one of the beefiest loadouts of gear and abilities for mitigating damage of many a job. Capping DT in 3 pieces of gear, 87.5% damage reduction for pet is not too hard to obtain. Capping out Killer effects is also quite feasible. The tankiness is unique and very potent. let alone the self buffing 50% shell effect, +100% defense, and tp suppression tools.

I would also add Summoner and Scholar to the list, also not sure what order, but after beastmaster and dancer imo.

As great as corsair is, its not really versatility. Its support. Pure power multiplier for any group, sure, but corsair isn't tanking, isn't curing, has 1 limited crowd control tool, and is a phenomenal buffer and great dd. 2 roles done very well, but its only 2.

DRGs WSD bonus is a seperate multiplier so it has more value than regular WSD, so its generally always going to be better for magic WS minus cases where you have a really strong OH(magian, daybreak, or high levels of fencer for example)

/drk vs /drg is very close and like you said relies more on if you can make full use of PDL or not, /drg wins out over other subs just due to how the WSD bonus works and how much total DPS values WS in general, again unless you have a really strong OH to use then /nin or more ideally /dnc for better TP/hit(cost of samba though) and SC bonus + def downs/acc bonus

IDK, I think you're dismissing a few aspects of what it means to be "versatile". It's true that COR's value lies mostly in the two aspects of "buffs" and "damage", but within those categories it has a good bit of flexibility.

From a DD perspective, COR has some additional versatility in the variety of damage types. It's strong as a melee DD with a Naegling, but also a potent ranged attacker to perfectly fit into ranged setups when needed. It can do good physical damage with stuff like Savage Blade and Last Stand, but also has a some excellent magical WS options in Leaden and Wildfire. You have access to good piercing (melee or ranged), slashing, and magical damage.

It's also versatile as a buffer in that it fits well in a variety of setups. Your standard melee party buffs are, of course, always welcome. But COR is also absolutely vital to pet DD setups where BRD brings little to the table, and it has great buffs to enhance a magic-focused party too. You get valuable utility with Bolter's Roll, as seen to great effect in Sortie.

I get what you're saying that it's not the same thing as a job like BLU (or even PUP) being able to DD, tank, cure, nuke depending on setup. Or DNC being able to do that minus the nuking and with potent debuffs. But COR does have some nuance to shift its play style and contribute in a variety of situations. It's less of a one-trick pony than like... a MNK or SAM or DRG or something.

Serious lack of /SAM for 2handers to increase TP generation and increase WS frequency. Hasso, Meditate, Store TP are all great.

Standard DRK and DRG subjob, and often useful for WAR depending on weapon type (e.g., WAR/SAM if going Chango).

/drk with last resort gives JA haste as well, and higher than hasso.

Can't keep it up full time but for short fights like in Sortie it's a good option for 2 handers (giggety).

That's a preconceived notion on your part. I listed what Corsair brings to the table, and you've glossed over everything about it.

Have you ever looked at every Phantom Roll? Have you ever considered COR doing things other than increasing damage?

Because it can, you know.

For instance, if a COR wanted to try to main heal for a party, it actually wouldn't be half bad. There's tons of MP gear in the game, and there's a lot more all jobs Cure Potency than there was in the past. With Master Levels both WHM and SCH sub become quite potent even for subjobs for party healing.

So I'll give you an example for COR main healing. A main healer COR would sub Scholar. This would give them Light Arts, Cure IV, Accession Stoneskin, and Accession Regen II/III.

They would pair these things for the party with Gallant's Roll(or Dancer's Roll) and Runeist's Roll(or Magus's) to make the party extra durable and extra resistant to status ailments.

With Dancer's Roll, this allows a COR/sch to give the whole party a 52 tic regen(at ML50, 47 tic before then).

For MP concerns it gets to stack Evoker's Roll and Sublimation. Evoker's Roll can give as much as +12tic refresh on top of Sublimation.

It can also reset its own Stratagem pool with Random Deal when necessary.

No one's ever gonna do this, but it is technically something COR can do. If a COR really tried, they could main heal fairly well. It's just you know, good luck getting a COR to want to do that, and good luck in getting people to believe it'll work out OK.

But it actually wasn't uncommon in the past to have COR sub mage jobs, and participate in backline healing support like used to be standard for BRDs in a lot of circles.

And afaik, Phantom Rolls all produce 80VE/1CE per person hit by the roll, so for your whole party, you get 480VE/6CE for rolling. Quick Draw generates enmity based on damage dealt for both CE/VE. If a COR were to try to tank, they probably could with the approriate sub and gearsets. Probably decently easy with a kiting oriented strat, too.

Sounds crazy right? Well... Think about it this way...

Imagine a party that is 6 CORs. COR/pld, COR/dnc, COR/nin, COR/war, COR/sch, and COR/whm. We have 12 Roll slots available to modulate the party's functionality.

Gallant's (+42% defense for the whole party/the tanking cor mainly)
Magus's Roll (MDB+41 for the whole party/tanking cor)
Dancer's Roll (+32 Regen for the whole party/Healer cor)
Runeist's Roll (+90 MEVA for the whole party/Healer cor)
Blitzer's Roll (+23% delay reduction for the whole party/DD cor)
Samurai's Roll (+72 Store TP for the whole party/DD cor)
Evoker's Roll (+12tic refresh for the whole party/backline cor)
Healer's Roll (+24% cure potency received for the whole party/backline cor)
Chaos Roll (+56% atk for the whole party/DD cor)
Hunter's Roll (+90acc/racc for the whole party/DD cor)
Tactician's Roll (+66TP per tic for the whole party/DD cor)
Miser's Roll (+370 Save TP for the whole party/DD cor)

Note, these are the highest roll values without associated job buffs that you could possibly gain through relic hat.

You get all of that, on top of COR's inset abilities and weapon skills. COR's a job that gets to glide along both sides of the skillchain chart and make Double Light(Radiance) or Double Dark(Umbra) depending on what you need.

You can have the 3 DD CORs adjust their own rolls if they need different damage types. There are still defensive rolls that can be swapped in like Avenger's Roll if the Tank needs more durability like with super tanking and a counter build etc.

You get to 68% delay reduction for all CORs, with the dual wielding CORs able to hit delay cap with appropriate dual wield gear.

You can inflict 3 of the 4 Defense down effects. Box Step from sub for -13%, Dia II from the Cor/whm with light shot for another -17%. Then you can inflict general defense down by having one or more CORs offhand a Melt Kukri and using its enchantment until it procs for another -12.5% defense. This allows an all COR party to lower monster defense by -42.5%.

The COR/sch can crowd control if necessary with Manifestation sleep, but you also have 12 light based sleeps at a time across the whole party without it.

About the only thing you can't do is use Magic Bursts as an effective means of damage. Everything else is on the table for Corsair.
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TL;DR - By, "Versatility by Party Demand" I guess I meant versatility gained by job stacking in a party. This is the sort of reason that they made content like Sheol Gaol where subs are restricted.

Like, if you were to stack RDMs into a party, they predominantly would not gain anymore than if you had just one RDM in the party.

Its not "preconceived". its just my analysis. Sure you can disagree, and such, but its not" preconceived". as if I listened to a group of uninformed spectators comment about the game and went along w/ whatever they said instead of playing it myself and coming to my own conclusions.

and Yes I have looked at all the phantom rolls and the things Corsairs can do. They are pretty cool.

You could make the same argument about brd because bard has so many buffs as well. More abilities do add a level of versatility, but its just not on the same scale as the other jobs on my list.
By that logic, I could argue whm is the most versatile cuz it can cure ANY other job! while I think whm is probably the most specialized job in the game.

Sch is probably the lowest in versatility on my list, and it can fill 3 or 4 roles, and change on the fly: healer, Nuker, buff support/enfeebling, crowd control.

Versatility is not always an advantage. the jobs I listed, aside from rdm, rarely have high demand in parties. Parties tend to benefit more from specialization than versatility.

I disagree with your assessment for enmity generation for cor because I've tried it. I've also tried it with bard. swapping into enmity gear with rolls or songs, its not reliable. It doesn't generate enough enmity. You are not going to keep cycling rolls to generate enmity and flop the party buffs left an right constantly.

Even if you get enmity, you are not nearly well enough equipped to deal with it. 50% dt is pretty standard across the board now. its not enough.

You either need to be able to mitigate all that damage, or crowd control by sleeping them all, or some other tool. and make sure you survive when they wake up, long enough to sleep or paralyze or bind or gravity or whatever again. Brd would tank better than corsair in this way because it could crowd control better.

This is why I list dancer and beastmaster lower than the others in versatility. it is because they are completely dependent on support jobs for things like tanking (for different reasons: dancer needs /mnk for counter to manage alot of enemies, while bst needs /run or /blu for enmity, then help from another party for mp management to tank)

When you talk about corsair healing, that's the power of the support job, not the versatility of the master. You can just say that sch is so good, it can make any job viable to cure.

IIRC the max corsair rolls you can have in a party is 6. and the max brd songs is 10.So the full corsair party doesn't work. or at least you lose the advantage of 1/2 the parties potential buffs.

if you are talking about job stacking, pup and blu still win out 100%. I would even argue that by that metric, bst and summoner would surpass rdm. Dancer might lose out w/ more than 2 in a party. you would cap all the steps so quickly, they would slow down a dancer's ability to use more flourishes.

I'm glad you are passionate about the corsair job. its a great job. I'm very passionate about beastmaster myself, but just because its not the most versatile, doesn't mean its not the best, or great, or anything.

I think I might have sold ninja short. It might need to be on the list. It can melee, and ranged, physical and magical, and tank. It doesn't have curing or support tools very much. a few unique debuffs, although yagyu makes utsusemi an awesome defensive party support tool. It probably should be at least the same level as sch.

I see sub in subjob as the prefix sub- and not shorthand for support. Like submarine, subway, or subgroup. Meaning secondary or subordinate job.

Like Cor/Brd/Geo are Sup. Jobs

The /XXX jobs that you can set after the quests in Selbina/Mhaura are subjob.

I gotta disagree here somewhat. I seem to recall when ppl were transitioning from mage strat to melee strat sortie that rdm/run had a time as the defacto tank. It takes some investment, and gets better w/ certain supports (sch for animus) but rdm can do tanking.

Might not move it out of 3rd versatile for you, but it can't be ignored either.

EDIT: I would consider rdm/blu niche but viable as well. I got my ls through our first run of aeonics supertanking adds in Escha Ru'Aun.

All that and forgot to add that COR is the only support with an ability to directly buff pets.

When new/returning players ask me which job to play first, I tell them COR everytime, almost all of them come back to me 2-3 months later to tell me how correct my suggestion was.

Just for clarification:
Sub in those instant does not mean secondary but below

Sub-marine it under water
Sub-way its under the ground
Sub-ordinater well...