FFXIV Gladiator (GLD) Leveling Guide & Rotation | ShB UPDATED

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So – if you’ve found yourself here you’re leveling a Gladiator. While not the most exciting of classes, the upside is you wont be dying anytime soon. Hopefully this Gladiator Leveling Guide will help you get past the early levels.

BEFORE ANYTHING ELSE, this Gladiator Leveling Guide is meant to be used with the FFXIV General Leveling Guide. Just a reminder, if this is your first character – follow your story quest! If you need to know more about the: basics of a Gladiator, you can check that out. Don’t know where the GLD guild is? It’s in Ul’Dah. If you have any Accuracy Food, good. Is your battle Chocobo ready? Good.

Hold on, I’m above L30 – I’m a Paladin! Then get over to the PLD Leveling Guide.

Gladiator: the early levels

If you’re a brand spankin’ new Gladiator – go start up with your hunting log. A level one character doing hunting logs + participating in level appropriate FATES is the most practical way to get EXP early on. In the case of Gladiators, you’re gonna be walking around Central and Western Thanalan a lot. Your goal is to GTFO of the early levels ASAP. if you really wanted to, you can get more EXP here by doing levequests in  (Level 1 & Level 5), it’s north of Steps of Nald from Ul’dah (Western Thanalan).

protip: Got some cross-class skills? Protect (CNJ 8), Second Wind (PGL 8) and Bloodbath (MRD 8) are the best for now. They increase your survivability by a ton, and decrease downtime the most. Try it!

Level 4 skill reminder – Savage Blade: Your first combo skill! It introduces you to the combo system, and, if it isn’t obvious – you should be doing this.

Level 6 Skill reminder – Fight or Flight: On a short cooldown, ‘FoF’ provides a significant damage boost. There’s literally no reason to hold on to this – use it often! Later on, it’s important for tanking in dungeons too.

Level 8 Skill reminder – Flash: Ahh Flash… love it or hate it, this skill is the ultimate FATE tagging skill. I wont go into detail here, but ‘tagging’ enemies with flash is a good thing in FATES.

You can get to level 10 Gladiator just doing the above. Hit level 10? Double check to  complete all unfinished hunting logs before doing anything else. Also, check your unspent attribute points – put them all in STRENGTH.  Again, Go back to the Gladiator guildmaster every 5 levels – level 1 5 and 10 – ensure your class quests are done before moving on. Do this as soon as possible for each 5 level interval in the future!

Why allocate to STR? You don’t need VIT for low level content as GLD – STR makes your journey to endgame just a little bit quicker. Fear not, you can respec on the cheap at any time.

Gladiator Level 10 to 16

Once reach level 10, you should do Guildhests. Haven’t unlocked them? Go to the nearest town (likely Horizon) and unlock it. Guildhests give big EXP bonuses for first time completion with any class. AAAAND you can queue up for Daily Roulette: Guildhests, to get bonus exp once a day! For now, queue up the guildhests Under the Armor and Basic Training: Enemy Parties. AGAIN: you get the bonus for EACH CLASS on your first completion!

Now make the trip to Aleport in Western La Noscea. Aleport is the ultimate place to FATEgrind in this range – FATES are many and close together, plus a lot of people level here. No FATES coming up? Do Levequests from Aleport. Too easy? Slide the difficulty to +4. Too hard? Leve in Swiftperch. Do your thing here and grind to L16

Level 12 Skill Reminder: Riot Blade, THIS SKILL IF OFTEN OVERLOOKED. It does MORE damage than Savage Blade comboed. So until you get Rage of Halone (30), use Riot Blade as your DPS while soloing. Oh, you get mana when you do it, too.

Reminder Level 15: Queue up for the two new Guildhests – Basic Training: Enemy Strongholds, and Hero on the Halfshell.

Level 15 Skill Reminder: Shield Lob, learned when completing the L15 GLD class quest, is your only ranged attack. Not the best for soloing, but useful for dungeons. Speaking of dungeons…

Level 16 – the turning point: Once your Gladiator hits 16, you can unlock Duty Roulette: Low level  dungeon. This gives a BEEFY EXP BONUS ONCE A DAY. Haven’t unlocked Challenge Log? You should. (It initially unlocks at level 16) Find out how to unlock Challenge Log in the General Leveling Guide. Once you hit Level 16, the rest of the way is much faster. Queue up ASAP!

Dungeons as a GLD: Shield lob the the guy you want people to attack first, then flash the group twice before doing your single target combo. This little sentence will get you FAR.

Level 18 Skill Reminder – Shield Bash: a niche skill you should be aware about. You know those annoying AoE skills that you’re lazy to run away from? Shield bash is your friend. Interrupt them!

Gladiator: finishing up to level 20: Complete your hunting log if you haven’t. If you’re sick of Aleport: Bentbranch Meadows (East Shroud) and Camp Drybone (Eastern Thanalan) are also L15+ areas. Once again: allocate all stat points to STR, and finish all GLD class quests before moving on.

Gladiator Level 20 – 30

Just grind it up as you have been doing till now: Daily Guildhest, Daily Low Level Roulette. Travel to Quarrymill (South Shroud) and do Fates/Leves in this area. Having sucky gear at this point sucks – but you’ve been doing the Dungeon Roulette – haven’t you? Again, Accuracy Food is a larger help than you might imagine.

Reminder Level 20: Queue up for the two new Guildhests – Pulling Poison Posies & Stinging Back.

Level 22 Skill Reminder – Provoke: Useful for an ultimate long range pull, but more useful still – it ‘provokes’ any monster to hit you (placing you at the top of its aggro list). Obviously a useful tool for dungeons.

Alternate FATE spot mid 20’s: A great place to actively (or AFK camp) fates around the Highbridge area (Like this), there’s a bunch of FATES here and they’re chained up. This place is value if you’re waiting for your queue to come up (Not likely a problem for Gladiators).

Reminder Level 25: Queue up for the two new Guildhests – All’s Well that Ends in the Well & Flicking Sticks and Taking Names.

At Level 28: Move on to Costa Del Sol, Eastern La Noscea. FATE and Leve it up here till you hit 30. Once you’re 30, make sure to allocate all unused stat points to STR, complete all GLD hunting log entries, and GLD class quests.

You can also breathe a sigh of relief as you’ve finally learned Rage of Halone.

Gladiator 30 onwards: What to do?

After completing your (final) L30 GLD class quest(You’ve done it if you have Rage of Halone). From here you have two main choices:

• Paladin (requires Conjurer 15 and GLD 30)
• Alternate job path not yet released

If you’re planning to level a PLD – you can jump right to our Paladin Leveling Guide. You may still need the Conjurer Leveling Guide, too.

Sadly, there is no second job path for Gladiators yet – but i’m looking forward to updating this filler sentence in the near future :)

Hope you found our Gladiator Leveling Guide useful! But, you still got quite a bit more Halones to Rage – For more awesome FFXIV updates, go ahead and Like us on Facebook – and if you need to drop a line, follow us on Twitter!