Is Final Fantasy 14's job identity dying?

After the latest Savage Tier was cleared in record time in an extremely close race, we can once again turn to everyone's favorite discussion: what is wrong with the job balance and its design? It is a question as old as the MMORPG itself, but it has been gaining more and more traction since Endwalker introduced the two-minute-meta. But things are not as simple and many of the issues can be attributed to the growing pains of an always online title that keeps expanding in content.

If you have been around the critically acclaimed MMORPG, the constant pruning and adjustment from expansion to expansion is nothing new. Dawntrail didn’t introduce sweeping changes like the removal of damage types, a resource to manage, or making buff times align better with each other. Like Endwalker before it, Dawntrail trimmed some of the fluff on individual jobs while expanding on their existing kit.

Viper, a job newly introduced in Dawntrail fell victim to that process just a few weeks after its initial release. The removal of Noxious Gnash seemed weird at first, especially with the explanation that it would make the job easier. However, it ended up giving the job a little more flexibility by giving players one less thing to worry about.

“One less thing to worry about” seems to be the general design philosophy of Final Fantasy 14’s job design. Little by little, bit by bit longtime players feel like the identity of their favorite jobs is being compromised. A lot of it has to do with the fact that the game keeps evolving and changing and sooner or later that job will no longer fit in the way content is currently designed. During A Realm Reborn, Heavensward, and to a degree Stromblood, FF14 content revolved around resource management and party composition. The release of Shadowbringers sort of reset the core of every Job, all of them have the same tools to work while also featuring a core combat mechanic they revolve around. All of them have to be viable, all of them have to be roughly the same level of difficulty, and all of them have to be able to pull their weight.

But when honing in on certain jobs and their problems, we always have to look at other jobs to gain some perspective. On paper, all the healers play very similar to each other with one half of each type focusing more on buffs while the other has more raw healing power. Tanks have also the dedicated off-tank in Paladin and Dark Knight while the DPS’ tend to be balanced around overall utility and flexibility vs. damage output. It will never be perfect, but as it stands now: every job can clear any content when played as expected.

The discussion around jobs getting easier and less unique also tends to ignore how battle content has evolved over the last few expansions. Combat encounters require more coordination than ever, and the worst thing you can do in this is make Jobs with rotations that draw too much focus from the player or are hard to jump back into if you screw up.

Dawntrail is meant to be the first step into the future of FF14, the new battles themselves are more creative than anything we had in the last few expansions, and the next is supposed to ‘fix’ the issue of job identity. But that might as well just mean another ground-up rework of the very core of every job's basic kit. Hopefully, by then Square Enix can also figure out how to make these jobs play fully functionally while leveling. Especially when the 1-60 level range is dreadful for most of them.

Overall I believe we’re still in a good spot even if (as of this writing) most jobs feel a little overtuned for current content. This discussion popping up over and over, louder and louder always seems a little disproportionate to what is happening. The Balance of jobs, their overall feel, damage output, and the content they participate in is a delicate one that the developers will never be able to nail down 100 percent. While you should always hope for improvements to the game you paying for, just keep in mind how good we have it and how much worse it used to be back in the dark days of Heavensward.

For more on Final Fantasy 14, why not check out our impressions of Dawntrail or our guide for making lots of Gil?

Timo Reinecke

Contributing Editor

Timo is an avid enjoyer of all things video games hailing from Germany. After being abandoned as a child on the Rolanberry Fields of Final Fantasy XI, he has since developed an undying love for the digital worlds of MMOs. But if you can't find him crafting up a storm in Final Fantasy XIV, you'll probably find him workshopping combos in action/fighting games or being extremely passionate about the latest mobile title.

Outside of gaming, Timo is usually skimming through the Criterion Collection or praying to whatever Eldritch horror that his latest favorite manga doesn't get damaged in shipping. You can find live reactions to all of that on X @ALahftel.