Tag: Base Class Leveling Guides

FFXIV Conjurer (CNJ) Leveling Guide & Rotation | ShB UPDATED

How to level up your Conjurer (CNJ) fast! Important reminders, and the best places to be in any level – HERE!

DAWNTRAIL Guides! Dawntrail L90-100 Miner Leveling, Botanist Leveling
Dawntrail Normal Raid Guide (Quick, Spoiler Free)
See: Viper STARTER Guide / Rotation | Pictomancer Starter Guide / Rotation

 

Tempted by the song of “ez ranged deeps”, ey? Aren’t we all! Well if you’re looking to have a shot at Conjurer, you’ve found the right place. Hopefully, our Conjurer Leveling Guide helps you out!

While this page focuses on Conjurer info like skills, traits, rotation, and playstyle notes. The GENERAL PROCESS that you follow is outlined in our FFXIV General Leveling Guide – use it alongside this guide. Looking at that, we’re in the “A Realm Reborn Tier” as we’re only looking to level our Conjurer up to 30.

Conjurer Unlocking? Other basics?

How to unlock the CNJ Class? Taken from Conjurer General Guide & FAQ – which you should read if you need more basic info about CNJ.

Location: Old Gridania, Conjurer’ Guild (6, 10)
NPCs: E-Sumi-Yan, Madelle
Related Quests: (all in the same place)
> So you want to be an Conjurer
> Way of the Conjurer
> My First Cane
— Others: You may also begin the game as Conjurer

Conjurer is a Disciple of Magic, falling under the Disciple of Magic category. Also, if you’re curious about the job you turn into, Conjurer are the prerequisite class for unlocking White Mage.

This guide has three major segments:

  • Conjurer Leveling Rotation & Skill Changes – How new skills affect your play.
  • Conjurer L1 to L16 – General reminders and notes.
  • Conjurer L15 to 30 – General reminders and notes.
  • I’ll mention it again, knowledge from General Leveling Guide is REQUIRED.

I put rotation changes up top as you might reference it often. Without further ado, let’s get to it.

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Conjurer Rotation for Leveling, Skills, Traits, Etc.

In this segment we run down how each skill and trait affects your Conjurer’s rotation during the leveling process.

L1 Skill Unlocked Stone – Your basic DPS spell. Nothing special here!

L2 Skill Unlocked Cure – Aaaand your basic Healing spell. Healing capability really improves a healers chances at soloing things (albeit slowly). You’ll be using this often in group content soon!

L4 Skill Unlocked Aero – Damaging DoT (Damage over time) spell with no cast time. Always open up fights with this DoT, or if you’re fighting multiple enemies DoT them all! Keep in mind that enemies must have a certain “life expectancy” to be effective. If an enemy dies too quickly, then the DoT isn’t worth it.

L8 Role Action Unlocked Repose –  An underused spell that’s oft forgotten. Used as an emergency long duration CC that can save you in many scenarios. An example is, tank wiped in dungeon? Sleep everything. The “true” use of this skill is sleeping enemies in quests or fates so you can interact with NPC’s and objects!

L10 Skill Unlocked Medica – is a somewhat weak AoE heal, but it’s not like you have other choices right now. If you need to heal multiple targets – this is all you’ve got right now. You’ll likely use this in dungeons, and almost never soloing. A quick tip, sometimes you need to focus on tank healing before AoE healing. 

L10 Role Action Unlocked Esuna – Erases most debuffs on your allies. Keep in mind that debuffs you can Esuna are marked by a white line on top of the debuff icon. Generally speaking, you want to Esuna all debuffs on allies – yes I know there are exceptions to this but try to build the habit unless you’re ABSOLUTELY sure.

L12 Skill Unlocked Raise – Resurrect fallen allies, albeit at a hefty mana cost and cast time. FFXIV has a weakness system wherein recently resurrected friends get a penalty to stats – but it’s better than kissing the floor right?

L15 Skill Unlocked Fluid Aura – A simple, instant, OGCD bind. Not bad for soloing? Bind enemies so you can talk to and interact with objects. Bind so you can run away… Not much else to say.

L18 Skill Unlocked Stone II – No change in gameplay, but simply improves the damage of your basic spell Stone, and turns it into Stone II automatically. Value.

L18 Trait Unlocked Stone Mastery – This is the trait that allows the use of / transforms Stone into Stone II.

L18 Role Action Unlocked Swiftcast – Makes your next spell instant, which naturally pairs best with Resurrection! Another common use is to cast Stone while moving. For the most part, as long as you’re in a dungeon you want to save this for dressing your buddies.

L20 Trait Unlocked Maim and Mend – No effect on gameplay whatsoever. It simply increases your damage and healing passively. Great!

L24 Role Action Unlocked Lucid Dreaming – Gives you mana! Use this early and often as there’s almost no point holding on to it. Don’t wait until you’re low on mana.

L30 Skill Unlocked Cure II – A stronger Cure. Generally speaking you will use this more often than not in combat. While the basic good ‘ol Cure is great for mana efficiency, Cure II is very “GCD” efficient. And as you learn more about being a healer, the GCD is your most important resource.

Completing this quest and unlocking Cure II marks your final class quest as Conjurer. You now have the right to become a White Mage!

Conjurer Rotation – L1 to 30 SUMMARY

Here’s the rundown of what your CNJ rotation is in the early leveling process. Adjust to your currently learned skills.

CNJ 30 Single Target RotationCNJ AoE Rotation

CNJ L30 Single Target Rotation

    • Aero (Open, keep up and refresh only if enemy life expectancy is high)
    • Stone
    • Repeat

CNJ L30 AoE Rotation

    • Any number of targets above 1 (2+), multi DoT with Aero.
    • Stone
    • Downgrade to single target rotation at 1 enemy.
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It’s sadly, that simple. It doesn’t get much more complex! However, in L30+ WHM or other Healer leveling guides I’ll give additional HEALING insights for dungeons.

Conjurer Leveling: L1 to 30

As per the general leveling guide, this tier is divided into two sub-chunks. So I’ll be sub-chunking the following segments into two “tabs” as well. These two tabs represent A) L1 to 16, and B) L16 to 30.

Conjurer Leveling L1 to 30 Activity Flowchart

A rundown of things you can do to gain EXP – again split “to 16”, and “to 30”.

CNJ 1 to 16CNJ 16 to 30

CNJ Leveling Activities to L16

Remember the universal truths: Main Scenario Quest is king, and always have your passive EXP buffs (FC, Food, Chocobo, etc)

Renewable EXP sources

    • FATES (Great when you're in queue)
    • Levequests (Actually good EXP but better saved for DoH or DoL)
    • Deep Dungeon -Palace of the Dead (Repetitive, terrible for LOW levels)

Burst EXP sources

    • Challenge Log* (Complete passively until nearing reset, then force it)
    • Guildhests (First completions per class is mega bonus EXP)
    • Hunting Log (Great source of EXP this early on)
    • Sidequests (Personal preference. Better if in tandem with MSQ!)
    • Duty Roulette: Guildhest (Pretty irrelevant...)

*Challenge Log won't be unlocked in this tier if it's your first time around. While you need to be L16 to initially unlock it, it can be used by any level character thereafter. 

Well, there’s not much to point your bow at this early on, but here’s where the arrow falls nonetheless. It’s slim, but you gotta start somewhere.

Of course, adjust this to your own personal preference.

CNJ Leveling Activities to L30

Remember the universal truths: Main Scenario Quest is king, and always have your passive EXP buffs (FC, Food, Chocobo, etc)

Renewable EXP sources

    • Dungeons (Stable, "fun", massive EXP easpecially with rested bonus)
    • FATES (Great when you're in queue)
    • Deep Dungeon -Palace of the Dead (Repetitive, but fast)
    • Levequests (Actually good EXP but better saved for DoH or DoL)
    • Beast Tribe (EXP is meh, but great for getting cosmetic items)

Burst EXP sources

    • Duty Roulette: Leveling (The ultimate EXP source until L50)
    • Challenge Log (Complete passively until nearing reset, then force it)
    • Guildhests (First completions per class is mega bonus EXP)
    • Hunting Log (More for completionism or first timers, it's "alright")
    • Sidequests (Personal preference. Better if in tandem with MSQ!)
    • Duty Roulette: Guildhest (Pretty irrelevant...)

A few adjustments to your leveling mentality here, mainly the addition of  Duty Roulette: Leveling, as a daily burst, and straight queuing Dungeons as an option as well.

Of course, adjust this to your own personal preference.

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Conjurer Leveling L1 to 30 Important Notes

Here are the important things to keep in mind during the process.

CNJ L1 to 30 Gear Updates:  Needed?

TLDR: Not really significant. This applies to both sub-tiers. Just make sure to pick up whatever along the way, or find dirt cheap upgrades in the MB or wherever (quests etc).

More detailed answer?

In all honesty you DO NOT NEED to put much thought into your gear from Level 1 to Level 30. Simply “get what you can”, with Weapons being the highest priority. You can get gear from Quests, buy from NPCs, Marketboard, Crafting, GC – it’s purely up to you and your budget as to what you wanna get.

Of course getting gear will increase your efficiency (being a little stronger helps kill speed), but this tier is pretty “newb friendly”, and designed as such – PLUS you “outgrow” gear by gaining levels so rapidly that tryharding on gear up to Level 30 is pretty irrelevant.

Just try not to run around naked, and get “what you can” without being outright negligent.

Important notes to keep in mind

CNJ 1 to 16CNJ 16 to 30

As always, Main Scenario Quest takes the highest priority.

There are too many skills that get unlocked here for me to talk about individually, which is why the skill unlock / rotation segment above should be your guiding light in that regard.

Limited Burst EXP sources take priority: Newly unlocked Guildhests, Challenge Log entries, Hunting Log.

Renewable EXP sources if you need to grind: FATE’s are great, followed by Levequests and if so you choose, Sidequests. (Deep Dungeon: POTD – can you zone it from Level 1? Even if you could, I don’t think I would…)

At level 15 you get access to your first Dungeon, Sastasha, but I don’t see much reason to grind there, unless you wanna burn rested EXP and want to hit 16 ASAP.

At 15 you should catch up and do your class quests, as you do get a skill form it – Fluid Aura. It’s a little irrelevant, admittedly. It can help you while questing (bind enemies then run or interact), and sometimes saving from wipes in dungeons…

A note on Levequests: Can be an attractive source of EXP. Every tier has “good and bad” levequests so it’s up to you if you wanna go try them out. Main downside is using them up in place of DoH / DoL. Consider using them if you’re at or near the Levequest allowance cap!

As always, Main Scenario Quest takes the highest priority.

Starting L16, you open up Duty Roulette: Leveling, which is you should be doing everyday! This is an important source of EXP – it’s a huge daily burst! Also at L16 you can unlock Challenge Log if you haven’t already.

Overall, the same concept applies. Daily and Weekly bursts of EXP > Basic Renewable EXP sources of your choice > Other side activities to alleviate boredom or monotony.

 Renewable EXP sources? At this point it’s Dungeons, FATES and Deep Dungeons, and maybe some Levequests. Burst EXP sources? Roulettes, new Guildhests, Hunting and Challenge Logs.

Dungeons (and to a lesser extent PotD) are best for healers since
your SOLOING SPEED is the absolute worst.
You have short queue times as well!

at L20 If you haven’t unlocked your Companion (combat Chocobo), do so now. You can begin the process now – it entails getting your first mount as well (at least for most new players).

At level 30 get your class quests done, as it’s one of the prerequisites to transform into White Mage!

Levequests notes, same as usual. Sad to take ’em away from crafters and gatherers, but it’s viable EXP. Definitely use them up if you’re overcapped on allowances.

Stop at Level 30! Unlock your advanced job as soon as you can!
(CNJ turns into White Mage at Level 30)

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Conjurer L30 Onward: Unlocking White Mage

STOP WHAT YOU’RE DOING ONCE YOU HIT Conjurer LEVEL 30.
Unlock WHITE MAGE ASAP!

How to become a White Mage? Unlocking White Mage requires a Level 30 Conjurer, and completion of the L30 CNJ Class Quest. From there, return to your guild and it should point you to the quest! See: Unlocking all jobs.

The reason we unlock ASAP is, not only to get a new skill at L30 (In your case Presence of Mind), but most if not all new skills and traits going forward are for WHITE MAGE and not CONJURER, so you have no reason to stay as an CNJ any longer.

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Conjurer Leveling – Related Reads

Some good reads and related links here:

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Summary and Closing

And with that YOU’RE DONE WITH LEVELING Conjurer! Congrats! Hopefully our Conjurer Leveling Guide helped you out. Thanks for, literally, sticking it out with CNJ (into WHM) and healing in general!

Join our IRL Cross-World Linkshells (socials lol): 

Contact us about anything and everything. Don't be shy! Love our guides and want to let us know? Got questions or corrections? Suggestions for improvement? TALK TO US! How, you say?

Comment below if it's about this guide. Message us on any of our socials above about anything.  We're organizing our email situation if you're into that.

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FFXIV Lancer (LNC) Leveling Guide & Rotation (Shb Updated)

How to level up your Lancer (LNC) fast! Rotation, useful reminders, and the best places to be in any level – HERE!

DAWNTRAIL Guides! Dawntrail L90-100 Miner Leveling, Botanist Leveling
Dawntrail Normal Raid Guide (Quick, Spoiler Free)
See: Viper STARTER Guide / Rotation | Pictomancer Starter Guide / Rotation

 

Piercing through the early game? If you’re going to thrust yourself to level a Lancer, you’ve found the right place. Hopefully, our Lancer Leveling Guide helps you out!

While this page focuses on Lancer info like skills, traits, rotation, and playstyle notes. The GENERAL PROCESS that you follow is outlined in our FFXIV General Leveling Guide – use it alongside this guide. Looking at that, we’re in the “A Realm Reborn Tier” as we’re only looking to level our Lancer up to 30.

Lancer Unlocking? Other basics?

How to unlock the LNC Class? Taken from Lancer General Guide & FAQ – which you should read if you need more basic info about LNC.

Location: Old Gridania, Lancer’ Guild (14, 6)
Related Quests: (all in the same place)
> So you want to be an Lancer
> Way of the Lancer
> My First Spear
— Others: You may also begin the game as Lancer

Lancer is a melee dps class, falling under the Disciple of War category. Also, if you’re curious about the job you turn into, Lancer is the prerequisite class for unlocking Dragoon.

This guide has three major segments:

  • Lancer Leveling Rotation & Skill Changes – How new skills affect your play.
  • Lancer L1 to L16 – General reminders and notes.
  • Lancer L15 to 30 – General reminders and notes.
  • I’ll mention it again, knowledge from General Leveling Guide is REQUIRED.

I put rotation changes up top as you might reference it often. Without further ado, let’s get to it.

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Lancer Rotation for Leveling, Skills, Traits, Etc.

In this segment we run down how each skill and trait affects your Lancer’s rotation during the leveling process.

L1 Skill Unlocked True Thrust – Your basic attack and very first skill! Spam this until you unlock the combo skill at L4.

L4 Skill Unlocked Vorpal Thrust – This combos from True Thrust. Combo actions need to be pressed within a certain timeframe or else the combo opportunity falls off. 

L6 Skill Unlocked Life Surge – Causes your next weaponskill to do increased damage and heal you. Basically, always use this right before your most powerful weaponskill – at this point that’s Vorpal Thrust. 

L8 Role Action Unlocked Second Wind – A personal, instant self-heal. Useful both in soloing and leveling, dungeons, raids, ANYTHING! For the purpose of this guide, Second Wind will definitely help you in the leveling process. One habit to get into is, USE IT EARLY so you can use it again soon  (for example, when soloing a FATE boss). 

L10 Role Action Unlocked Leg Sweep – An instant OGCD stun. Interrupting enemy spells is the most basic use case here, but honestly keep in mind that in dungeons stunning an enemy will greatly reduce the damage your tank receives, and helps your healer out. 

L12 Role Action Unlocked Bloodbath – Your third “self-heal”, this one essentially gives you a “lifesteal” effect that scales on your own DPS. This is actually great. Again, it’s better to use these kinds of skills early if you know you’re soloing a long fight, or just to help your healer out.

L15 Skill Unlocked Piercing Talon –  a ranged attack that’s typically only used if you’re not in range of your enemy. Generally speaking do not use this simply when “approaching” an enemy as it’s typically a DPS loss compared to just using your skill straight up.

L18 Skill Unlocked Disembowel – Gives you an increased damage buff that you have to try and keep up at all times!

L22 Role Action Unlocked Feint – Reduces an enemy’s physical damage dealt. Almost useless in soloing (reduces mostly auto attacks and the rare physical boss skill). Of course, very good in terms of group mitigation options in a group scenario. In the leveling process, however, this will almost never be used.

L26 Skill Unlocked Full Thrust – Your combo finisher! Anytime you would press Vorpal Thrust

L30 Skill Unlocked Lance Charge – A straight up damage steroid. In solo, leveling, and dungeon type content simply use this early and often. Not much to optimize here right now, but optimizing DPS cooldowns are something you will grow into over time.

Completing this quest and unlocking Windbite marks your final class quest as Lancer. You now have the right to become a Dragoon!

Lancer Rotation – L1 to 30 SUMMARY

Here’s an overarching shot of what your LNC rotation is in the early leveling process. Adjust to your currently learned skills.

LNC 30 Single Target RotationLNC AoE Rotation

LNC L30 Single Target Rotation

    • Lance Charge if you have the opportunity to maximize its duration.
    • True Thrust > Disembowel – Keep this buff up at all times!
    • True Thrust > Vorpal Thrust > Full Thrust – is your basic filler.
      • Life Surge + Full Thrust, is pretty much the only time you should use it.

LNC L30 AoE Rotation

    • None

Not even kidding, there’s no AoE skill for Lancers at L30. You’ll wait a while, sadly.

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Lancer Leveling: L1 to 30

As per the general leveling guide, this tier is divided into two sub-chunks. So I’ll be sub-chunking the following segments into two “tabs” as well. These two tabs represent A) L1 to 16, and B) L16 to 30.

Lancer Leveling L1 to 30 Activity Flowchart

A rundown of things you can do to gain EXP – again split “to 16”, and “to 30”.

LNC 1 to 16LNC 16 to 30

LNC Leveling Activities to L16

Remember the universal truths: Main Scenario Quest is king, and always have your passive EXP buffs (FC, Food, Chocobo, etc)

Renewable EXP sources

    • FATES (Great when you're in queue)
    • Levequests (Actually good EXP but better saved for DoH or DoL)
    • Deep Dungeon -Palace of the Dead (Repetitive, terrible for LOW levels)

Burst EXP sources

    • Challenge Log* (Complete passively until nearing reset, then force it)
    • Guildhests (First completions per class is mega bonus EXP)
    • Hunting Log (Great source of EXP this early on)
    • Sidequests (Personal preference. Better if in tandem with MSQ!)
    • Duty Roulette: Guildhest (Pretty irrelevant...)

*Challenge Log won't be unlocked in this tier if it's your first time around. While you need to be L16 to initially unlock it, it can be used by any level character thereafter. 

Well, there’s not much to point your bow at this early on, but here’s where the arrow falls nonetheless. It’s slim, but you gotta start somewhere.

Of course, adjust this to your own personal preference.

LNC Leveling Activities to L30

Remember the universal truths: Main Scenario Quest is king, and always have your passive EXP buffs (FC, Food, Chocobo, etc)

Renewable EXP sources

    • Dungeons (Stable, "fun", massive EXP easpecially with rested bonus)
    • FATES (Great when you're in queue)
    • Deep Dungeon -Palace of the Dead (Repetitive, but fast)
    • Levequests (Actually good EXP but better saved for DoH or DoL)
    • Beast Tribe (EXP is meh, but great for getting cosmetic items)

Burst EXP sources

    • Duty Roulette: Leveling (The ultimate EXP source until L50)
    • Challenge Log (Complete passively until nearing reset, then force it)
    • Guildhests (First completions per class is mega bonus EXP)
    • Hunting Log (More for completionism or first timers, it's "alright")
    • Sidequests (Personal preference. Better if in tandem with MSQ!)
    • Duty Roulette: Guildhest (Pretty irrelevant...)

A few adjustments to your leveling mentality here, mainly the addition of  Duty Roulette: Leveling, as a daily burst, and straight queuing Dungeons as an option as well.

Of course, adjust this to your own personal preference.

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Important Notes (LNC L1 to 30)

Here’s the straight and pointy about what to keep in mind during the leveling process.

LNC L1 to 30 Gear Updates:  Needed?

TLDR: Not really significant. This applies to both sub-tiers. Just make sure to pick up whatever along the way, or find dirt cheap upgrades in the MB or wherever (quests etc).

More detailed answer?

In all honesty you DO NOT NEED to put much thought into your gear from Level 1 to Level 30. Simply “get what you can”, with Weapons being the highest priority. You can get gear from Quests, buy from NPCs, Marketboard, Crafting, GC – it’s purely up to you and your budget as to what you wanna get.

Of course getting gear will increase your efficiency (being a little stronger helps kill speed), but this tier is pretty “newb friendly”, and designed as such – PLUS you “outgrow” gear by gaining levels so rapidly that tryharding on gear up to Level 30 is pretty irrelevant.

Just try not to run around naked, and get “what you can” without being outright negligent.

Important notes to keep in mind

LNC 1 to 16LNC 16 to 30

As always, Main Scenario Quest takes the highest priority.

There are too many skills that get unlocked here for me to talk about individually, which is why the skill unlock / rotation segment above should be your guiding light in that regard.

Limited Burst EXP sources take priority: Newly unlocked Guildhests, Challenge Log entries, Hunting Log.

Renewable EXP sources if you need to grind: FATE’s are great, followed by Levequests and if so you choose, Sidequests. (Deep Dungeon: POTD – can you zone it from Level 1? Even if you could, I don’t think I would…)

At level 15 you get access to your first Dungeon, Sastasha, but I don’t see much reason to grind there, unless you wanna burn rested EXP and want to hit 16 ASAP.

At 15 you should catch up and do your class quests, as you do get a skill form it – Piercing Talon. Just use it if you can’t reach your target. Don’t use it when “approaching”, it’s not optimal.

A note on Levequests: Can be an attractive source of EXP. Every tier has “good and bad” levequests so it’s up to you if you wanna go try them out. Main downside is using them up in place of DoH / DoL. Consider using them if you’re at or near the Levequest allowance cap!

As always, Main Scenario Quest takes the highest priority.

Starting L16, you open up Duty Roulette: Leveling, which is you should be doing everyday! This is an important source of EXP – it’s a huge daily burst! Also at L16 you can unlock Challenge Log if you haven’t already.

Overall, the same concept applies. Daily and Weekly bursts of EXP > Basic Renewable EXP sources of your choice > Other side activities to alleviate boredom or monotony.

 Renewable EXP sources? At this point it’s Dungeons, FATES and Deep Dungeons, and maybe some Levequests. Burst EXP sources? Roulettes, new Guildhests, Hunting and Challenge Logs.

As a DPS class, you’ll likely queue up for dungeons or POTD then do FATES and “other activities” while you’re in queue.

at L20 If you haven’t unlocked your Companion (combat Chocobo), do so now. You can begin the process now – it entails getting your first mount as well (at least for most new players).

At level 30 get your class quests done, as it’s one of the prerequisites to transform into Dragoon!

Levequests notes, same as usual. Sad to take ’em away from crafters and gatherers, but it’s viable EXP. Definitely use them up if you’re overcapped on allowances.

Stop at Level 30! Unlock your advanced job as soon as you can!
(LNC turns into Dragoon at Level 30)

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Lancer L30 Onward: Unlocking Dragoon

STOP WHAT YOU’RE DOING ONCE YOU HIT Lancer LEVEL 30.
Unlock Dragoon ASAP!

How to become a Dragoon? Unlocking Dragoon requires a Level 30 Lancer, and completion of the L30 LNC Class Quest. From there, return to your guild and it should point you to the quest! See: Unlocking all jobs.

The reason we unlock ASAP is, not only to get a new skill at L30 (In your case, the famous Jump skill – your first of many), but most if not all new skills and traits going forward are for DRAGOON and not LANCER, so you have no reason to stay as an LNC any longer.

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Lancer Leveling – Related Reads

Some good reads and related links here:

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Summary and Closing

And with that YOU’RE DONE WITH LEVELING Lancer! Congrats! Hopefully our Lancer Leveling Guide helped you out. As you enter into the Dragoon tier, I wish you luck in your literal flight.

Join our IRL Cross-World Linkshells (socials lol): 

Contact us about anything and everything. Don't be shy! Love our guides and want to let us know? Got questions or corrections? Suggestions for improvement? TALK TO US! How, you say?

Comment below if it's about this guide. Message us on any of our socials above about anything.  We're organizing our email situation if you're into that.

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FFXIV Pugilist (PGL) Leveling Guide & Rotation (Shb Updated)

How to level up your Pugilist (PGL) fast! Rotation, useful reminders, and the best places to be in any level – HERE!

DAWNTRAIL Guides! Dawntrail L90-100 Miner Leveling, Botanist Leveling
Dawntrail Normal Raid Guide (Quick, Spoiler Free)
See: Viper STARTER Guide / Rotation | Pictomancer Starter Guide / Rotation

 

Looking for a fistful of EXP? If you’re leveling a Pugilist, you’ve found the right place – avoid all the hooks go for the straights! Hopefully, our Pugilist Leveling Guide helps you out!

While this page focuses on Pugilist info like skills, traits, rotation, and playstyle notes. The GENERAL PROCESS that you follow is outlined in our FFXIV General Leveling Guide – use it alongside this guide. Looking at that, we’re in the “A Realm Reborn Tier” as we’re only looking to level our Rogue up to 30.

Pugilist Unlocking? Other basics?

How to unlock the PGL Class? Taken from Rogue General Guide & FAQ – which you should read if you need more basic info about PGL.

Location: Ul’dah – Stept of Nald, Pugilist’s Guild (9, 10)
Related Quests: (all in the same place)
> So you want to be an Pugilist
> Way of the Pugilist
> My First Hora
— Others: You may also begin the game as Pugilist

Pugilist is a melee dps class, falling under the Disciple of War category. Also, if you’re curious about the job you turn into, Pugilist is the prerequisite class for unlocking Monk.

This guide has three major segments:

  • Pugilist Leveling Rotation & Skill Changes – How new skills affect your play.
  • Pugilist L1 to L16 – General reminders and notes.
  • Pugilist L15 to 30 – General reminders and notes.
  • I’ll mention it again, knowledge from General Leveling Guide is REQUIRED.

I put rotation changes up top as you might reference it often. Without further ado, let’s get to it.

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Pugilist Rotation for Leveling, Skills, Traits, Etc.

In this segment we run down how each skill and trait affects your Pugilist’s rotation during the leveling process.

L1 Skill Unlocked Bootshine – An attack that always crits from BEHIND. Your combo starter – but don’t bother with the positional bonus if soloing…

That being said, for 99% of situations you’ll be ignoring positional bonuses for solo content. Barring niche scenarios like Stun / True North etc.

L4 Skill Unlocked True Strike – Your first combo attack. Combo actions should be pressed within a certain timeframe or else they fall off. As an aspiring Pugilist and Monk, you’ll be learning A LOT about combo’s lemme tell ya. 

L6 Skill Unlocked Snap Punch – Weirdly, Pugilists gain a combo finisher at such an early level. Bootshine > True Strike > Snap Punch (Back Back Flank) is your basic rotation.

What is GREASED LIGHTNING
Is a buff you get typically from your combo finishers.
It DECREASES your GCD (Increases skillspeed), and increases your damage.
It’s the PGL/MNK cornerstone buff. Keep it up as often as you can!

L8 Role Action Unlocked Second Wind – A personal, instant self-heal. Useful both in soloing and leveling, dungeons, raids, ANYTHING! For the purpose of this guide, Second Wind will definitely help you in the leveling process. One habit to get into is, USE IT EARLY so you can use it again soon  (for example, when soloing a FATE boss). 

L10 Role Action Unlocked Leg Sweep – An instant OGCD stun. Interrupting enemy spells is the most basic use case here, but honestly keep in mind that in dungeons stunning an enemy will greatly reduce the damage your tank receives, and helps your healer out. 

L12 Role Action Unlocked Bloodbath – Your third “self-heal”, this one essentially gives you a “lifesteal” effect that scales on your own DPS. This is actually great. Again, it’s better to use these kinds of skills early if you know you’re soloing a long fight, or just to help your healer out.

L15 Skill Unlocked Fists of Earth – A toggleable stance skill. No reason to ever off this for now, as it’s a “free and passive” damage reduction. We take those.

L18 Skill Unlocked Twin Snakes –  “second attack” flank combo that gives you an increased damage buff. Keep this buff up at all times!

Instead of using the “animal stances”  I’ll be calling them
“first, second, and third” attack, or something a little more “intuitive”.

L20 Trait Unlocked Enhanced Greased Lightning – allows you to stack a second pip or Greased Lightning! Zoom zoom! Doesn’t really affect your active gameplay, except for your GCD that will get increasingly faster as you unlock more and more “GL” stacks.

L22 Role Action Unlocked Feint – Reduces an enemy’s physical damage dealt. Almost useless in soloing (reduces mostly auto attacks and the rare physical boss skill). Of course, very good in terms of group mitigation options in a group scenario. In the leveling process, however, this wil almost never be used.

L26 Skill Unlocked Arm of the Destroyer – An AoE “first skill”. You DO NOT have to continue the combo, you can simply spam it if you choose (wise at 4+ enemies). Typically this is safe to use at 2 enemies, but continue your normal combo after.

L30 Skill Unlocked Demolish – A rear attack DoT (Damage over time) combo finisher, which should only be used on enemies that have a longer life expectancy. As a quick rule, you don’t wanna use this on enemies with less than 15 or so seconds of life remaining. Of course, against bosses just keep this DoT up!

Completing this quest and unlocking Demolish marks your final class quest as Pugilist. You now have the right to become a Monk!

Pugilist Rotation – L1 to 30 SUMMARY

Here’s an overarching shot of what your PGL rotation is in the early leveling process. Adjust to your currently learned skills.

PGL 30 Single Target RotationPGL AoE Rotation

PGL L30 Single Target Rotation

    • Demolish (DoT) if enemy will live for more than 15s~ ish.
    • Keep Twin Snakes buff up. (Bootshine > Twin Snakes > Either finisher)
    • Otherwise, Bootshine > True Strike > Snap Punch

PGL L30 AoE Rotation

    • 4+ Enemies, straight up spam Arm of the Destroyer.
    • 3 or 2 Enemies, Use single target rotation but Arm of the Destroyer replaces Bootshine.

At 3 enemies or less, Demolish on every target is good. Basically it’s your single target rotation but you swap Bootshine for Arm of the Destroyer.

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Keeping up Greased Lightning is your highest priority
in essentially almost all cases.

Pugilist Leveling: L1 to 30

As per the general leveling guide, this tier is divided into two sub-chunks. So I’ll be sub-chunking the following segments into two “tabs” as well. These two tabs represent A) L1 to 16, and B) L16 to 30.

Pugilist Leveling L1 to 30 Activity Flowchart

A rundown of things you can do to gain EXP – again split “to 16”, and “to 30”.

PGL 1 to 16PGL 16 to 30

PGL Leveling Activities to L16

Remember the universal truths: Main Scenario Quest is king, and always have your passive EXP buffs (FC, Food, Chocobo, etc)

Renewable EXP sources

    • FATES (Great when you're in queue)
    • Levequests (Actually good EXP but better saved for DoH or DoL)
    • Deep Dungeon -Palace of the Dead (Repetitive, terrible for LOW levels)

Burst EXP sources

    • Challenge Log* (Complete passively until nearing reset, then force it)
    • Guildhests (First completions per class is mega bonus EXP)
    • Hunting Log (Great source of EXP this early on)
    • Sidequests (Personal preference. Better if in tandem with MSQ!)
    • Duty Roulette: Guildhest (Pretty irrelevant...)

*Challenge Log won't be unlocked in this tier if it's your first time around. While you need to be L16 to initially unlock it, it can be used by any level character thereafter. 

Well, there’s not much to point your bow at this early on, but here’s where the arrow falls nonetheless. It’s slim, but you gotta start somewhere.

Of course, adjust this to your own personal preference.

PGL Leveling Activities to L30

Remember the universal truths: Main Scenario Quest is king, and always have your passive EXP buffs (FC, Food, Chocobo, etc)

Renewable EXP sources

    • Dungeons (Stable, "fun", massive EXP easpecially with rested bonus)
    • FATES (Great when you're in queue)
    • Deep Dungeon -Palace of the Dead (Repetitive, but fast)
    • Levequests (Actually good EXP but better saved for DoH or DoL)
    • Beast Tribe (EXP is meh, but great for getting cosmetic items)

Burst EXP sources

    • Duty Roulette: Leveling (The ultimate EXP source until L50)
    • Challenge Log (Complete passively until nearing reset, then force it)
    • Guildhests (First completions per class is mega bonus EXP)
    • Hunting Log (More for completionism or first timers, it's "alright")
    • Sidequests (Personal preference. Better if in tandem with MSQ!)
    • Duty Roulette: Guildhest (Pretty irrelevant...)

A few adjustments to your leveling mentality here, mainly the addition of  Duty Roulette: Leveling, as a daily burst, and straight queuing Dungeons as an option as well.

Of course, adjust this to your own personal preference.

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Important Notes (PGL L1 to 30)

Here’s the one-two about the leveling process. Make sure to hit the unlocks so you won’t miss out on unique EXP sources.

PGL L1 to 30 Gear Updates:  Needed?

TLDR: Not really significant. This applies to both sub-tiers. Just make sure to pick up whatever along the way, or find dirt cheap upgrades in the MB or wherever (quests etc).

More detailed answer?

In all honesty you DO NOT NEED to put much thought into your gear from Level 1 to Level 30. Simply “get what you can”, with Weapons being the highest priority. You can get gear from Quests, buy from NPCs, Marketboard, Crafting, GC – it’s purely up to you and your budget as to what you wanna get.

Of course getting gear will increase your efficiency (being a little stronger helps kill speed), but this tier is pretty “newb friendly”, and designed as such – PLUS you “outgrow” gear by gaining levels so rapidly that tryharding on gear up to Level 30 is pretty irrelevant.

Just try not to run around naked, and get “what you can” without being outright negligent.

Important notes to keep in mind

PGL 1 to 16PGL 16 to 30

As always, Main Scenario Quest takes the highest priority.

There are too many skills that get unlocked here for me to talk about individually, which is why the skill unlock / rotation segment above should be your guiding light in that regard.

Limited Burst EXP sources take priority: Newly unlocked Guildhests, Challenge Log entries, Hunting Log.

Renewable EXP sources if you need to grind: FATE’s are great, followed by Levequests and if so you choose, Sidequests. (Deep Dungeon: POTD – can you zone it from Level 1? Even if you could, I don’t think I would…)

At level 15 you get access to your first Dungeon, Sastasha, but I don’t see much reason to grind there, unless you wanna burn rested EXP and want to hit 16 ASAP.

At 15 you should catch up and do your class quests, as you do get a skill form it – Fists of Earth. Meh, it makes you tougher – which is only relevant when soloing. Even if this skill ain’t so hot, it’s best to keep up with class quests.

A note on Levequests: Can be an attractive source of EXP. Every tier has “good and bad” levequests so it’s up to you if you wanna go try them out. Main downside is using them up in place of DoH / DoL. Consider using them if you’re at or near the Levequest allowance cap!

As always, Main Scenario Quest takes the highest priority.

Starting L16, you open up Duty Roulette: Leveling, which is you should be doing everyday! This is an important source of EXP – it’s a huge daily burst! Also at L16 you can unlock Challenge Log if you haven’t already.

Overall, the same concept applies. Daily and Weekly bursts of EXP > Basic Renewable EXP sources of your choice > Other side activities to alleviate boredom or monotony.

 Renewable EXP sources? At this point it’s Dungeons, FATES and Deep Dungeons, and maybe some Levequests. Burst EXP sources? Roulettes, new Guildhests, Hunting and Challenge Logs.

As a DPS class, you’ll likely queue up for dungeons or POTD then do FATES and “other activities” while you’re in queue.

at L20 If you haven’t unlocked your Companion (combat Chocobo), do so now. You can begin the process now – it entails getting your first mount as well (at least for most new players).

At level 30 get your class quests done, as it’s one of the prerequisites to transform into Monk!

Levequests notes, same as usual. Sad to take ’em away from crafters and gatherers, but it’s viable EXP. Definitely use them up if you’re overcapped on allowances.

Stop at Level 30! Unlock your advanced job as soon as you can!
(PGL turns into Monk at Level 30)

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Pugilist L30 Onward: Unlocking Monk

STOP WHAT YOU’RE DOING ONCE YOU HIT Pugilist LEVEL 30.
Unlock Monk ASAP!

How to become a Monk? Unlocking Monk requires a Level 30 Pugilist, and completion of the L30 PGL Class Quest. From there, return to your guild and it should point you to the quest! See: Unlocking all jobs.

The reason we unlock ASAP is, not only to get a new skill at L30 (In your case Rockbreaker, another AoE), but most if not all new skills and traits going forward are for MONK and not PUGILIST, so you have no reason to stay as an PGL any longer.

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Pugilist Leveling – Related Reads

Some good reads and related links here:

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Summary and Closing

And with that YOU’RE DONE WITH LEVELING Pugilist! Congrats! Hopefully our Pugilist Leveling Guide helped you out. In no time you’ll be striking fear, among other things, into your enemies.

Join our IRL Cross-World Linkshells (socials lol): 

Contact us about anything and everything. Don't be shy! Love our guides and want to let us know? Got questions or corrections? Suggestions for improvement? TALK TO US! How, you say?

Comment below if it's about this guide. Message us on any of our socials above about anything.  We're organizing our email situation if you're into that.

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FFXIV Rogue (ROG) Leveling Guide & Rotation (Shb Updated)

How to level up your Rogue (ROG) fast! Rotation, useful reminders, and the best places to be in any level – HERE!

DAWNTRAIL Guides! Dawntrail L90-100 Miner Leveling, Botanist Leveling
Dawntrail Normal Raid Guide (Quick, Spoiler Free)
See: Viper STARTER Guide / Rotation | Pictomancer Starter Guide / Rotation

 

Gettin’ Restless, rolling a Rogue? If you’re leveling a Rogue, you’ve found the right place! Take a stab at it, and hopefully our Rogue Leveling Guide helps you out!

While this page focuses on Rogue info like skills, traits, rotation, and playstyle notes. The GENERAL PROCESS that you follow is outlined in our FFXIV General Leveling Guide – use it alongside this guide. Looking at that, we’re in the “A Realm Reborn Tier” as we’re only looking to level our Rogue up to 30.

Rogue Unlocking? Other basics?

How to unlock the ROG Class? Taken from Rogue General Guide & FAQ – which you should read if you need more basic info about ROG.

Location: Limsa Lominsa – Lower Decks, Rogue’s Guild (8, 16)
Related Quests: (all in the same place)
> So you want to be an Rogue
> Way of the Rogue
> My First Daggers
— Others: Rogue is the ONLY base class you can’t start the game with.

Rogue is a melee DPS class, falling under the Disciple of War category. Also, if you’re curious about the job you turn into, Rogue is the prerequisite class for unlocking Ninja.

This guide has three major segments:

  • Rogue Leveling Rotation & Skill Changes – How new skills affect your play.
  • Rogue L1 to L16 – General reminders and notes.
  • Rogue L15 to 30 – General reminders and notes.
  • I’ll mention it again, knowledge from General Leveling Guide is REQUIRED.

I put rotation changes up top as you might reference it often. Without further ado, let’s get to it.

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Rogue Rotation for Leveling, Skills, Traits, Etc.

In this segment we run down how each skill and trait affects your Rogue rotation during the leveling process.

L1 Skill Unlocked Spinning Edge – Your “basic attack”, essentially your combo starter. Spam this until you get Gust Slash at L4.

L2 Skill Unlocked Shade Shift – A self-shield that scales with your max HP. It’s a welcome defensive cooldown. Use it early and often when soloing tough encounters. Very similar to Second Wind, which you’ll unlock soon (and the notes I place there are applicable here).

L4 Skill Unlocked Gust Slash – Your first combo! Basically Spinning Edge combos into Gust Slash. You have a limited time to press this (or any combo skill) before your combo “expires”. 

L8 Role Action Unlocked Second Wind – A personal, instant self-heal. Useful both in soloing and leveling, dungeons, raids, ANYTHING! For the purpose of this guide, Second Wind will definitely help you in the leveling process. One habit to get into is, USE IT EARLY so you can use it again soon  (for example, when soloing a FATE boss). 

L10 Skill Unlocked Hide – Avoid monsters by moving stealthily. While this has more uses in the future – this is it for now. (At L15, Trick Attack is a skill you can only use while hidden)

Hide Macro

Here’s a useful macro that we will evolve over time…. This functionality should honestly be baked into the base game.

/micon “Hide”
/ac “Hide”
/statusoff hidden

How this works is press it once to hide, and press it again to reveal yourself.

L10 Role Action Unlocked Leg Sweep – An instant OGCD stun. Interrupting enemy spells is the most basic use case here, but honestly keep in mind that in dungeons stunning an enemy will greatly reduce the damage your tank receives, and helps your healer out. 

L12 Role Action Unlocked Bloodbath – Your third “self-heal”, this one essentially gives you a “lifesteal” effect that scales on your own DPS. This is actually great. Again, it’s better to use these kinds of skills early if you know you’re soloing a long fight, or just to help your healer out.

L14 Trait Unlocked All Fours – Pretty much a throwaway “thematic” passive. Reducing fall damage is almost never relevant.

L15 Skill Unlocked Throwing Dagger – A ranged attack primarily used to hit enemies while you’re not in range. Generally speaking you do not want to use this “while approaching an enemy”, as it’s likely a DPS loss.

L15 Skill Unlocked Mug – I would honestly ignore the “stealing an item” half of this skill, and just simply treat is as an off-gcd bonus attack. Use it often.

L18 Skill Unlocked Trick Attack – Very difficult to use at this low level. It’s an extremely powerful attack that “softens up” your enemy. However, this is only usable with Hide. Use it when you open on an enemy and bosses! 

L20 Trait Unlocked Fleet of Foot – Now this, this is a useful passive. Increased movement speed is welcome EVERYWHERE. Soloing and questing? Great! Dungeons and RAIDS? AMAZING! 

L22 Role Action Unlocked Feint – Reduces an enemy’s physical damage dealt. Almost useless in soloing (reduces mostly auto attacks and the rare physical boss skill). Of course, very good in terms of group mitigation options in a group scenario. In the leveling process, however, this will almost never be used.

L26 Skill Unlocked Aeolian Edge – Ah, finally! Your combo finisher! Anytime you press Gust Slash – press Aeolian Edge next. This rather benign addition is actually quite a significant increase in DPS. 

L30 Skill Unlocked Shadow Fang – A long duration DoT (Damage over time) skill. Only use this against fat enemies. It has a hefty cooldown so it’s not all that regularly you press it. While it does affect your rotation somehow, it’s very minimal.

Completing the L30 ROG class quest and unlocking Shadowfang marks your final class quest as Rogue. You now have the right to become a Ninja!

Rogue Rotation – L1 to 30 SUMMARY

Here’s an overarching shot of what your ROG rotation is in the early leveling process. Adjust to your currently learned skills.

ROG 30 Single Target RotationROG AoE Rotation

ROG L30 Single Target Rotation

    • Shadowfang on enemies with a long life expectancy (or an “off-target”)
    • Use Mug as often as you can.
    • Spinning Edge > Gust Slash > Aeolian Edge

Opening with Trick Attack is “optional”, can be a hassle.
Check the Hide macro posted above…

ROG L30 AoE Rotation

    • None

Yeahp, there’s no AoE skill for Rogues at this level range. Feelsbadman.

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Rogue Leveling: L1 to 30

As per the general leveling guide, this tier is divided into two sub-chunks. So I’ll be sub-chunking the following segments into two “tabs” as well. These two tabs represent A) L1 to 16, and B) L16 to 30.

Rogue Leveling L1 to 30 Activity Flowchart

A rundown of things you can do to gain EXP – again split “to 16”, and “to 30”.

ROG 1 to 16ROG 16 to 30

ROG Leveling Activities to L16

Remember the universal truths: Main Scenario Quest is king, and always have your passive EXP buffs (FC, Food, Chocobo, etc)

Renewable EXP sources

    • FATES (Great when you're in queue)
    • Levequests (Actually good EXP but better saved for DoH or DoL)
    • Deep Dungeon -Palace of the Dead (Repetitive, terrible for LOW levels)

Burst EXP sources

    • Challenge Log* (Complete passively until nearing reset, then force it)
    • Guildhests (First completions per class is mega bonus EXP)
    • Hunting Log (Great source of EXP this early on)
    • Sidequests (Personal preference. Better if in tandem with MSQ!)
    • Duty Roulette: Guildhest (Pretty irrelevant...)

*Challenge Log won't be unlocked in this tier if it's your first time around. While you need to be L16 to initially unlock it, it can be used by any level character thereafter. 

Well, there’s not much to point your bow at this early on, but here’s where the arrow falls nonetheless. It’s slim, but you gotta start somewhere.

Of course, adjust this to your own personal preference.

ROG Leveling Activities to L30

Remember the universal truths: Main Scenario Quest is king, and always have your passive EXP buffs (FC, Food, Chocobo, etc)

Renewable EXP sources

    • Dungeons (Stable, "fun", massive EXP easpecially with rested bonus)
    • FATES (Great when you're in queue)
    • Deep Dungeon -Palace of the Dead (Repetitive, but fast)
    • Levequests (Actually good EXP but better saved for DoH or DoL)
    • Beast Tribe (EXP is meh, but great for getting cosmetic items)

Burst EXP sources

    • Duty Roulette: Leveling (The ultimate EXP source until L50)
    • Challenge Log (Complete passively until nearing reset, then force it)
    • Guildhests (First completions per class is mega bonus EXP)
    • Hunting Log (More for completionism or first timers, it's "alright")
    • Sidequests (Personal preference. Better if in tandem with MSQ!)
    • Duty Roulette: Guildhest (Pretty irrelevant...)

A few adjustments to your leveling mentality here, mainly the addition of  Duty Roulette: Leveling, as a daily burst, and straight queuing Dungeons as an option as well.

Of course, adjust this to your own personal preference.

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Important Notes (ROG L1 to 30)

Here are the important things to keep in mind during the process.

ROG L1 to 30 Gear Updates:  Needed?

TLDR: Not really significant. This applies to both sub-tiers. Just make sure to pick up whatever along the way, or find dirt cheap upgrades in the MB or wherever (quests etc).

More detailed answer?

In all honesty you DO NOT NEED to put much thought into your gear from Level 1 to Level 30. Simply “get what you can”, with Weapons being the highest priority. You can get gear from Quests, buy from NPCs, Marketboard, Crafting, GC – it’s purely up to you and your budget as to what you wanna get.

Of course getting gear will increase your efficiency (being a little stronger helps kill speed), but this tier is pretty “newb friendly”, and designed as such – PLUS you “outgrow” gear by gaining levels so rapidly that tryharding on gear up to Level 30 is pretty irrelevant.

Just try not to run around naked, and get “what you can” without being outright negligent.

Important notes to keep in mind

ROG 1 to 16ROG 16 to 30

As always, Main Scenario Quest takes the highest priority.

There are too many skills that get unlocked here for me to talk about individually, which is why the skill unlock / rotation segment above should be your guiding light in that regard.

Limited Burst EXP sources take priority: Newly unlocked Guildhests, Challenge Log entries, Hunting Log.

Renewable EXP sources if you need to grind: FATE’s are great, followed by Levequests and if so you choose, Sidequests. (Deep Dungeon: POTD – can you zone it from Level 1? Even if you could, I don’t think I would…)

At level 15 you get access to your first Dungeon, Sastasha, but I don’t see much reason to grind there, unless you wanna burn rested EXP and want to hit 16 ASAP.

At 15 you should catch up and do your class quests, as you do get a skill form it – Throwing Dagger. Just use it if you can’t reach your target. Don’t use it when “approaching”, it’s not optimal.

A note on Levequests: Can be an attractive source of EXP. Every tier has “good and bad” levequests so it’s up to you if you wanna go try them out. Main downside is using them up in place of DoH / DoL. Consider using them if you’re at or near the Levequest allowance cap!

As always, Main Scenario Quest takes the highest priority.

Starting L16, you open up Duty Roulette: Leveling, which is you should be doing everyday! This is an important source of EXP – it’s a huge daily burst! Also at L16 you can unlock Challenge Log if you haven’t already.

Overall, the same concept applies. Daily and Weekly bursts of EXP > Basic Renewable EXP sources of your choice > Other side activities to alleviate boredom or monotony.

 Renewable EXP sources? At this point it’s Dungeons, FATES and Deep Dungeons, and maybe some Levequests. Burst EXP sources? Roulettes, new Guildhests, Hunting and Challenge Logs.

As a DPS class, you’ll likely queue up for dungeons or POTD then do FATES and “other activities” while you’re in queue.

at L20 If you haven’t unlocked your Companion (combat Chocobo), do so now. You can begin the process now – it entails getting your first mount as well (at least for most new players).

At level 30 get your class quests done, as it’s one of the prerequisites to transform into Ninja!

Levequests notes, same as usual. Sad to take ’em away from crafters and gatherers, but it’s viable EXP. Definitely use them up if you’re overcapped on allowances.

Stop at Level 30! Unlock your advanced job as soon as you can!
(ROG turns into Ninja at Level 30)

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Rogue L30 Onward: Unlocking Ninja

STOP WHAT YOU’RE DOING ONCE YOU HIT Rogue LEVEL 30.
Unlock Ninja ASAP!

How to become a Ninja? Unlocking Ninja requires a Level 30 Rogue, and completion of the L30 ROG Class Quest. From there, return to your guild and it should point you to the quest! See: Unlocking all jobs.

The reason we unlock ASAP is, not only to get a new skill at L30 (In your case the infamous NINJUTSU and your first Mudra), but most if not all new skills and traits going forward are for NINJA and not Rogue, so you have no reason to stay as an ROG any longer.

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Rogue Leveling – Related Reads

Some good reads and related links here:

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Summary and Closing

And with that YOU’RE DONE WITH LEVELING Rogue! Congrats! Hopefully our Rogue Leveling Guide helped you out.

Join our IRL Cross-World Linkshells (socials lol): 

Contact us about anything and everything. Don't be shy! Love our guides and want to let us know? Got questions or corrections? Suggestions for improvement? TALK TO US! How, you say?

Comment below if it's about this guide. Message us on any of our socials above about anything.  We're organizing our email situation if you're into that.

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FFXIV Arcanist (ACN) Leveling Guide & Rotation | ShB UPDATED

How to level up your Arcanist (ACN) fast! Rotation, skills, reminders, and the best places to be in any level – HERE!

DAWNTRAIL Guides! Dawntrail L90-100 Miner Leveling, Botanist Leveling
Dawntrail Normal Raid Guide (Quick, Spoiler Free)
See: Viper STARTER Guide / Rotation | Pictomancer Starter Guide / Rotation

 

Aching to level yer’ Arcanist? Lured in by the pets? Don’t sweats. Well you’ve found the right place. Hopefully, our Arcanist Leveling Guide helps you out!

While this page focuses on Arcanist info like skills, traits, rotation, and playstyle notes. The GENERAL PROCESS that you follow is outlined in our FFXIV General Leveling Guide – use it alongside this guide. Looking at that, we’re in the “A Realm Reborn Tier” as we’re only looking to level our Arcanist up to 30.

Arcanist Unlocking? Other basics?

How to unlock the ACN Class? Taken from Arcanist General Guide & FAQ – which you should read if you need more basic info about ACN.

Location: Limsa Lominsa – Lower Decks, Arcanist’s Guild (6, 10)
Related Quests: (all in the same place)
> So you want to be an Arcanist
> Way of the Arcanist
> My First Grimoire
— Others: You may also begin the game as Arcanist

Arcanist is a Magical Ranged DPS class (commonly referred to as “caster), falling under the Disciple of Magic category. Also, if you’re curious about the job you turn into, Arcanist are the prerequisite class for unlocking Scholar and Summoner.

This guide has three major segments:

  • Arcanist Leveling Rotation & Skill Changes – How new skills affect your play.
  • Arcanist L1 to L16 – General reminders and notes.
  • Arcanist L15 to 30 – General reminders and notes.
  • I’ll mention it again, knowledge from General Leveling Guide is REQUIRED.

I put rotation changes up top as you might reference it often. Without further ado, let’s get to it.

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Arcanist Rotation for Leveling, Skills, Traits, Etc.

In this segment we run down how each skill and trait affects your Arcanist’s rotation during the leveling process.

L1 Skill Unlocked Ruin – Essentially, this is your “basic attack”. Or basic spell, I guess.

L2 Skill Unlocked Bio – An instant cast DoT (Damage over time) spell. Always open fights with it, and renew it when its duration is 3s or less. While this is a good habit to form, the initial form of this DoT is actually horrible – the enemy life expectancy has to be 24 seconds for it to be good.

L4 Skill Unlocked Physick – A basic healing spell. Nothing else to say here! 

L4 Skill Unlocked Summon – Calls forth a blue caster-type minion that helps you DPS! Emerald Carbuncle is cute ain’t it? 

L2 Skill Unlocked Miasma – A second DoT! Like its predecessor, it’s still quite unimpressive. Only worth if enemy life expectancy is around 21 seconds. 

L8 Role Action Unlocked Addle – Reduces targets INT (reduces enemy magic damage). Has almost no use in non-boss encounters and basic leveling activities.

L10 Skill Unlocked Egi Assault – Has different effects depending on which summon you’re using. Blue pet: AoE attack. Yellow pet: gives you a chunky self shield. 

L12 Skill Unlocked Resurrection – Revives a dead ally, even in combat, but at the cost of a lot of mana, a huge cast bar, and your newly returned friend suffering a stat penalty. That being said, this is one of the most important skills in group content.

L15 Skill Unlocked Summon II – Brings Topaz Carbuncle by your side – a yellow “support” / tank type pet. The self-shield (from Egi Assault) is pretty useful for tougher solo encounters.

Summon I – Blue is more suitable for AoE (dungeons), while
Summon II – Yellow is more suitable for single target and most solo content.

L18 Role Action Unlocked Swiftcast – Primarily used to speed up Resurrection. Advanced usage is “continuing to DPS while moving”. In group content, I highly suggest simply saving it for res during the leveling process.

L18 Skill Unlocked Energy Drain – An off-gcd nuke that gives you your first stack of Aetherflow! USE THIS AS OFTEN AS YOU CAN, but never “overcap” your Aetherflow. Aetherflow is used to execute certain skills. The first of which is Fester. This is the cornerstone mechanic of any Arcanist-evolved class.

L18 Skill Unlocked Fester – Ah, your first skill which REQUIRES Aetherflow to use . It’s a single target nuke that is stronger for each of YOUR DoT’s on the target. 

While your DoT’s may not be the best, keeping them up so you have a more powerful Fester is worth it.

L24 Role Action Unlocked Lucid Dreaming – Gives you mana! Use this early and often as there’s almost no point holding on to it. Don’t wait until you’re low on mana.

L26 Trait Unlocked Corruption Mastery – Transforms Bio into Bio II, which is just better all around. Stronger initial damage, stronger DoT. Doesn’t change your rotation in any way – the key even rebinds itself…

L26 Skill Unlocked Bio II – This isn’t really an unlock – the previously mentioned trait simply upgrades your old Bio. 

L30 Skill Unlock Bane – Finally, some consistent AoE! Spreads your DoT’s to all nearby targets, but weakens them on the “new targets”. There’s some math and situationality of when to bane and when to manual DoT – let’s save that discussion for Summoner related discussion as it’s irrelevant now, and irrelevant for Scholar. 

Completing the L30, “Sinking Doesmaga” quest and unlocking Bane marks your final class quest as Arcanist. You now have the right to become a Scholar or Summoner!

Arcanist Rotation – L1 to 30 SUMMARY

Here’s a by the book summary of what your ACN rotation is in the early leveling process. Adjust to your currently learned skills.

ACN 30 Single Target RotationACN AoE Rotation

ACN L30 Single Target Rotation

    • Energy Drain up? Use as an OGCD if possible.
    • Have Aetherflow? Fester, use as an OGCD if possible. DoTs must be up!
    • Miasma > Bio (Unless enemy is on brink of death)
    • Egi Assault (If Blue)
    • Ruin Spam

ACN L30 AoE Rotation

    • Apply DoT’s one one guy, then Bane (Definitive value at 3+ targets, not bad at 2)
    • Energy Drain up? Use as an OGCD if possible.
    • Have Aetherflow? Fester, use as an OGCD if possible. DoTs must be up!
    • Egi Assault (If Blue)
    • Ruin Spam
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Wow, now that I typed it out – pretty much Bane is the only difference.

While your DoT’s may not be the best, keeping them up so you have a more powerful Fester is worth it, even if your full or “good enough” DoT duration won’t tick. Don’t sweat about optimizing it this early on.

Arcanist Leveling: L1 to 30

As per the general leveling guide, this tier is divided into two sub-chunks. So I’ll be sub-chunking the following segments into two “tabs” as well. These two tabs represent A) L1 to 16, and B) L16 to 30.

Arcanist Leveling L1 to 30 Activity Flowchart

A rundown of things you can do to gain EXP – again split “to 16”, and “to 30”.

ACN 1 to 16ACN 16 to 30

ACN Leveling Activities to L16

Remember the universal truths: Main Scenario Quest is king, and always have your passive EXP buffs (FC, Food, Chocobo, etc)

Renewable EXP sources

    • FATES (Great when you're in queue)
    • Levequests (Actually good EXP but better saved for DoH or DoL)
    • Deep Dungeon -Palace of the Dead (Repetitive, terrible for LOW levels)

Burst EXP sources

    • Challenge Log* (Complete passively until nearing reset, then force it)
    • Guildhests (First completions per class is mega bonus EXP)
    • Hunting Log (Great source of EXP this early on)
    • Sidequests (Personal preference. Better if in tandem with MSQ!)
    • Duty Roulette: Guildhest (Pretty irrelevant...)

*Challenge Log won't be unlocked in this tier if it's your first time around. While you need to be L16 to initially unlock it, it can be used by any level character thereafter. 

Well, there’s not much to point your bow at this early on, but here’s where the arrow falls nonetheless. It’s slim, but you gotta start somewhere.

Of course, adjust this to your own personal preference.

ACN Leveling Activities to L30

Remember the universal truths: Main Scenario Quest is king, and always have your passive EXP buffs (FC, Food, Chocobo, etc)

Renewable EXP sources

    • Dungeons (Stable, "fun", massive EXP easpecially with rested bonus)
    • FATES (Great when you're in queue)
    • Deep Dungeon -Palace of the Dead (Repetitive, but fast)
    • Levequests (Actually good EXP but better saved for DoH or DoL)
    • Beast Tribe (EXP is meh, but great for getting cosmetic items)

Burst EXP sources

    • Duty Roulette: Leveling (The ultimate EXP source until L50)
    • Challenge Log (Complete passively until nearing reset, then force it)
    • Guildhests (First completions per class is mega bonus EXP)
    • Hunting Log (More for completionism or first timers, it's "alright")
    • Sidequests (Personal preference. Better if in tandem with MSQ!)
    • Duty Roulette: Guildhest (Pretty irrelevant...)

A few adjustments to your leveling mentality here, mainly the addition of  Duty Roulette: Leveling, as a daily burst, and straight queuing Dungeons as an option as well.

Of course, adjust this to your own personal preference.

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Important Notes (ACN L1 to 30)

Here are the important things to keep in mind during the process.

ACN L1 to 30 Gear Updates:  Needed?

TLDR: Not really significant. This applies to both sub-tiers. Just make sure to pick up whatever along the way, or find dirt cheap upgrades in the MB or wherever (quests etc).

More detailed answer?

In all honesty you DO NOT NEED to put much thought into your gear from Level 1 to Level 30. Simply “get what you can”, with Weapons being the highest priority. You can get gear from Quests, buy from NPCs, Marketboard, Crafting, GC – it’s purely up to you and your budget as to what you wanna get.

Of course getting gear will increase your efficiency (being a little stronger helps kill speed), but this tier is pretty “newb friendly”, and designed as such – PLUS you “outgrow” gear by gaining levels so rapidly that tryharding on gear up to Level 30 is pretty irrelevant.

Just try not to run around naked, and get “what you can” without being outright negligent.

Important notes to keep in mind

ACN 1 to 16ACN 16 to 30

As always, Main Scenario Quest takes the highest priority.

There are too many skills that get unlocked here for me to talk about individually, which is why the skill unlock / rotation segment above should be your guiding light in that regard.

Limited Burst EXP sources take priority: Newly unlocked Guildhests, Challenge Log entries, Hunting Log.

Renewable EXP sources if you need to grind: FATE’s are great, followed by Levequests and if so you choose, Sidequests. (Deep Dungeon: POTD – can you zone it from Level 1? Even if you could, I don’t think I would…)

At level 15 you get access to your first Dungeon, Sastasha, but I don’t see much reason to grind there, unless you wanna burn rested EXP and want to hit 16 ASAP.

At 15 you should catch up and do your class quests, as you do get a skill form it – Summon II, which is pretty alright. It’s a better summon for soloing.

A note on Levequests: Can be an attractive source of EXP. Every tier has “good and bad” levequests so it’s up to you if you wanna go try them out. Main downside is using them up in place of DoH / DoL. Consider using them if you’re at or near the Levequest allowance cap!

As always, Main Scenario Quest takes the highest priority.

Starting L16, you open up Duty Roulette: Leveling, which is you should be doing everyday! This is an important source of EXP – it’s a huge daily burst! Also at L16 you can unlock Challenge Log if you haven’t already.

Overall, the same concept applies. Daily and Weekly bursts of EXP > Basic Renewable EXP sources of your choice > Other side activities to alleviate boredom or monotony.

 Renewable EXP sources? At this point it’s Dungeons, FATES and Deep Dungeons, and maybe some Levequests. Burst EXP sources? Roulettes, new Guildhests, Hunting and Challenge Logs.

at L20 If you haven’t unlocked your Companion (combat Chocobo), do so now. You can begin the process now – it entails getting your first mount as well (at least for most new players).

At level 30 get your class quests done, as it’s one of the prerequisites to transform into either Scholar or SUmmoner!

Levequests notes, same as usual. Sad to take ’em away from crafters and gatherers, but it’s viable EXP. Definitely use them up if you’re overcapped on allowances.

Stop at Level 30! Unlock your advanced job as soon as you can!
(ACN turns into Scholar or Summoner at Level 30)

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Arcanist L30 Onward: Unlocking ADVANCEJOB

STOP WHAT YOU’RE DOING ONCE YOU HIT Arcanist LEVEL 30.
Unlock Scholar or Summoner ASAP!

How to become a Scholar or Summoner? Unlocking Scholar or Summoner requires a Level 30 Arcanist, and completion of the L30 ACN Class Quest. From there, return to your guild and it should point you to the quest! See: Unlocking all jobs.

The reason we unlock ASAP is, not only to get a new skill at L30 (SCH gets Adloquium, SMN gets Summon III – Ifrit), but most if not all new skills and traits going forward are for SMN/SCH and not ARCANIST, so you have no reason to stay as an ACN any longer.

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Arcanist Leveling – Related Reads

Some good reads and related links here:

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Summary and Closing

And with that YOU’RE DONE WITH LEVELING Arcanist! Congrats! Hopefully our Arcanist Leveling Guide helped you out.

Join our IRL Cross-World Linkshells (socials lol): 

Contact us about anything and everything. Don't be shy! Love our guides and want to let us know? Got questions or corrections? Suggestions for improvement? TALK TO US! How, you say?

Comment below if it's about this guide. Message us on any of our socials above about anything.  We're organizing our email situation if you're into that.

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FFXIV Thaumaturge (THM) Leveling Guide & Rotation | ShB UPDATED

How to level up your Thaumaturge (THM) fast! How your rotation evolves, reminders, and what to do at any level – HERE!

DAWNTRAIL Guides! Dawntrail L90-100 Miner Leveling, Botanist Leveling
Dawntrail Normal Raid Guide (Quick, Spoiler Free)
See: Viper STARTER Guide / Rotation | Pictomancer Starter Guide / Rotation

 

If you’ve tempered yourself into the hot and cold journey of leveling Thaumaturge into Black Mage, you’ve found the right place. Hopefully, our Thaumaturge Leveling Guide helps you out!

While this page focuses on Thaumaturge info like skills, traits, rotation, and playstyle notes. The GENERAL PROCESS that you follow is outlined in our FFXIV General Leveling Guide – use it alongside this guide. Looking at that, we’re in the “A Realm Reborn Tier” as we’re only looking to level our Thaumaturge up to 30.

Thaumaturge Unlocking? Other basics?

How to unlock the THM Class? Taken from Thaumaturge General Guide & FAQ – which you should read if you need more basic info about THM.

Location: Ul’dah – Steps of Nald, Thaumaturge’s Guild (7, 12)
NPCs: Yayake, Cocobuki
Related Quests: (all in the same place)
> So you want to be an Thaumaturge
> Way of the Thaumaturge
> My First Scepter
— Others: You may also begin the game as Thaumaturge

Thaumaturge is a Magical Ranged DPS class (commonly referred to as “caster), falling under the Disciple of Magic category. Also, if you’re curious about the job you turn into, Thaumaturge are the prerequisite class for unlocking Black Mage.

This guide has three major segments:

  • Thaumaturge Leveling Rotation & Skill Changes – How new skills affect your play.
  • Thaumaturge L1 to L16 – General reminders and notes.
  • Thaumaturge L15 to 30 – General reminders and notes.
  • I’ll mention it again, knowledge from General Leveling Guide is REQUIRED.

I put rotation changes up top as you might reference it often. Without further ado, let’s get to it.

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Thaumaturge Rotation for Leveling, Skills, Traits, Etc.

In this segment we run down how each skill and trait affects your Thaumaturge’s rotation during the leveling process.

L1 Skill Unlocked Blizzard – Your basic and only spell for now. You gain a buff called “Umbral Ice” when casting this, which massively improves mana regen. I’ll explain in more detail once you reach L4 to get skill “Transpose”. 

L2 Skill Unlocked Fire – The other half of your basic spells. You gain a buff called “Astral Fire” when casting this, which causes your MP regen to be 0, but giving you a massive damage boost.. I’ll explain in more detail once you reach L4 to get the skill “Transpose”. Basically, use Fire until your mana says you can’t, then use Ice.

L4 Skill Unlocked Transpose – Transforms your buff from Umbral Ice to Astral Fire, and vice versa. Now, let’s take a little break to talk about how these buffs interact.

How does Umbral Ice, Astral Fire, and Transpose Work?

Here goes! This is the very basic groundwork for THM and BLM so you might as well drill it into your head now. Here’s the absolute basics of how this rotation works, but it will be modified as you gain levels.

You have no buff?

      • Casting Ice spell gives you Umbral Ice
      • Casting Fire spell gives you Astral Fire

You have Umbral Ice?

      • Casting Ice refreshes buff duration, and at higher levels, more stacks of Umbral Ice.
      • Casting Fire spell ERASES ALL BUFFS. Now, you’re at “You have no buff?” phase.
      • Casting Transpose switches you to Astral Fire.

You have Astral Fire?

    • Casting Ice spell ERASES ALL BUFFS. Now, you’re at “You have no buff?” phase.
    • Casting Fire refreshes buff duration, and at higher levels, more stacks of Astral Fire.
    • Casting Transpose switches you to Umbral Ice.

Transpose notes, continued: Basically you can use Transpose to FOREVER AVOID the “No buff phase”. Continually cycling between the buffs. Being in “No Buff” phase sucks because you have to use up another spell just to gain the desired buff which is a huge waste of damage and “side effects”.

There’s much more to this then meets the eye, such as “mana regen tick” and “estimating what spell is BEST to cast when you hit ice“, and all that jazz that I suppose I’ll introduce to you slowly as you level up.

L6 Skill Unlocked Thunder – Your basic DoT (Damage over Time) spell. Use this as an opening spell, and typically speaking ONLY MANUALLY CAST IT DURING YOUR ICE PHASE. And just in case that isn’t clear enough, DO NOT MANUALLY THUNDER DURING FIRE. Also, do not Thunder if your enemy will die shortly after – try to maximize the DoT.

L8 Role Action Unlocked Addle – Reduces targets INT (reduces enemy magic damage). Has almost no use in non-boss encounters and basic leveling activities.

L10 Skill Unlocked Sleep – An AoE sleep (damage wakes the targets, careful), that’s hardly useful in any serious content. In solo and leveling, however it’s great. In the outside world you can sleep enemies when you need to escape, interact with objects or talk to NPCs without interruption. In dungeons, you can single handedly save your group from a wipe by just chain sleeping if your tank dies, for example. Not a bad skill for clutch moments. 

L12 Skill Unlocked Blizzard II – An AoE version of blizzard, of which the same rules of single target blizzard apply.

L15 Skill Unlocked Scathe – This is a desperation spell that you simply cast if you cannot cast anything else while moving. It’s also great for killing low level trash. Basically, in any serious content Scathe is almost a “fail case”. 

L18 Skill Unlocked Fire II – An AoE version of Fire, of which the same logic from Fire applies. Take note that this has an absolute titanic MP cost.

L18 Role Action Unlocked Swiftcast – For THM (a caster without resurrection), this is basically used to cast while moving, that’s it. While this may not seem like much this early on, this is a HUGE BOON as you learn more and more about THM / BLM, and appreciate every inch of mobility you can afford. 

L20 Trait Unlocked Magick and Mend – Just a passive 

L24 Role Action Unlocked Lucid Dreaming – Weirdly useless for THM. This skill will only work if you ABSOLUTELY BREAK and MESS UP your rotation. Only use it if you got stuck on “no buff” phase with no mana. Why is this useless? Ice generates gigantic MP regen on demand (making this unneeded), and FIre disables all forms of external MP regen (making this useless). 

L26 Skill Unlocked Thunder II – An AoE version of thunder, which is godlike. The same rules apply, avoid reapplication on Fire phase (do it on Ice). Start the fight and refresh it as long as the enemy survives a long time… yada yada.

L28 Trait Unlocked Thundercloud – Your first proc! Proc basically means “chance of occurring”.  Basically, each time Thunder ticks, you get a chance to get Thundercloud, which basically allows you to INSTANTLY cast for FREE a FULL DAMAGE (FULL DOT DURATION) THUNDER SPELL. Did you catch all that?  FREE, FULL, AND FAST like when I skip the bill.

Typically using these “procs” give you a chance to move – something you shouldn’t take lightly in more difficult content

L30 Skill Unlocked Manaward – a very welcome defensive ability that isn’t game breaking in the solo or leveling department, but very useful in endgame content. Be aware you have it, and use it when appropriate to help your healers out.

Completing this quest and unlocking Windbite marks your final class quest as Thaumaturge. You now have the right to become a Black Mage!

Thaumaturge Rotation – L1 to 30 SUMMARY

Here’s what your THM rotation is in the early leveling process, that hopefully, “Works like magic”. Adjust to your currently learned skills.

THM 30 Single Target RotationTHM AoE Rotation

THM L30 Single Target Rotation

ADJUST DEPENDING ON WHICH ELEMENT YOU’RE AT or at NO ELEMENT. Instead of typing this out in a priority, I’ll go thru it in terms of a cycle…

    • Slam Thundercloud (Thunder I) procs whenever you can.
    • Gain Umbral Ice (via Transpose hopefully, or Blizzard)
    • Thunder I is usually best to reapply here.
    • Cast Blizzard (or whatever, or wait) until MP is full
    • Gain Astral Fire (via Transpose hopefully, feelsbad to double fire)
    • Spam Fire until no more MP
    • Gain Umbral Ice (via Transpose)
    • Repeat

THM L30 AoE Rotation

ADJUST DEPENDING ON WHICH ELEMENT YOU’RE AT or at NO ELEMENT. Instead of typing this out in a priority, I’ll go thru it in terms of a cycle…

    • Slam Thundercloud (Thunder II) procs whenever you can.
    • Gain Umbral Ice (via Transpose hopefully, or Blizzard)
    • Thunder II is usually best to reapply here.
    • Cast Blizzard (I or II, whatever, or wait) until MP is full
    • Gain Astral Fire (via Transpose hopefully, feelsbad to double fire)
    • Spam Fire until no more MP
    • Gain Umbral Ice (via Transpose)
    • Repeat

There’s only two differences from single target and AoE The Thunder you use is obviously affected, and the Blizzard too. Don’t sweat not using the AoE blizzard if it affects your movement too much.

Scathe should only very rarely serve as a Filler, typically in the Ice phase if your mana regen wont be affected. It’s very niche.

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Thaumaturge Leveling: L1 to 30

As per the general leveling guide, this tier is divided into two sub-chunks. So I’ll be sub-chunking the following segments into two “tabs” as well. These two tabs represent A) L1 to 16, and B) L16 to 30.

Thaumaturge Leveling L1 to 30 Activity Flowchart

A rundown of things you can do to gain EXP – again split “to 16”, and “to 30”.

THM 1 to 16THM 16 to 30

THM Leveling Activities to L16

Remember the universal truths: Main Scenario Quest is king, and always have your passive EXP buffs (FC, Food, Chocobo, etc)

Renewable EXP sources

    • FATES (Great when you're in queue)
    • Levequests (Actually good EXP but better saved for DoH or DoL)
    • Deep Dungeon -Palace of the Dead (Repetitive, terrible for LOW levels)

Burst EXP sources

    • Challenge Log* (Complete passively until nearing reset, then force it)
    • Guildhests (First completions per class is mega bonus EXP)
    • Hunting Log (Great source of EXP this early on)
    • Sidequests (Personal preference. Better if in tandem with MSQ!)
    • Duty Roulette: Guildhest (Pretty irrelevant...)

*Challenge Log won't be unlocked in this tier if it's your first time around. While you need to be L16 to initially unlock it, it can be used by any level character thereafter. 

Well, there’s not much to point your bow at this early on, but here’s where the arrow falls nonetheless. It’s slim, but you gotta start somewhere.

Of course, adjust this to your own personal preference.

THM Leveling Activities to L30

Remember the universal truths: Main Scenario Quest is king, and always have your passive EXP buffs (FC, Food, Chocobo, etc)

Renewable EXP sources

    • Dungeons (Stable, "fun", massive EXP easpecially with rested bonus)
    • FATES (Great when you're in queue)
    • Deep Dungeon -Palace of the Dead (Repetitive, but fast)
    • Levequests (Actually good EXP but better saved for DoH or DoL)
    • Beast Tribe (EXP is meh, but great for getting cosmetic items)

Burst EXP sources

    • Duty Roulette: Leveling (The ultimate EXP source until L50)
    • Challenge Log (Complete passively until nearing reset, then force it)
    • Guildhests (First completions per class is mega bonus EXP)
    • Hunting Log (More for completionism or first timers, it's "alright")
    • Sidequests (Personal preference. Better if in tandem with MSQ!)
    • Duty Roulette: Guildhest (Pretty irrelevant...)

A few adjustments to your leveling mentality here, mainly the addition of  Duty Roulette: Leveling, as a daily burst, and straight queuing Dungeons as an option as well.

Of course, adjust this to your own personal preference.

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Important Notes (THM L1 to 30)

Important things to keep in mind during the process, so you don’t miss out on any potential value.

THM L1 to 30 Gear Updates:  Needed?

TLDR: Not really significant. This applies to both sub-tiers. Just make sure to pick up whatever along the way, or find dirt cheap upgrades in the MB or wherever (quests etc).

More detailed answer?

In all honesty you DO NOT NEED to put much thought into your gear from Level 1 to Level 30. Simply “get what you can”, with Weapons being the highest priority. You can get gear from Quests, buy from NPCs, Marketboard, Crafting, GC – it’s purely up to you and your budget as to what you wanna get.

Of course getting gear will increase your efficiency (being a little stronger helps kill speed), but this tier is pretty “newb friendly”, and designed as such – PLUS you “outgrow” gear by gaining levels so rapidly that tryharding on gear up to Level 30 is pretty irrelevant.

Just try not to run around naked, and get “what you can” without being outright negligent.

Important notes to keep in mind

THM 1 to 16THM 16 to 30

As always, Main Scenario Quest takes the highest priority.

There are too many skills that get unlocked here for me to talk about individually, which is why the skill unlock / rotation segment above should be your guiding light in that regard.

Limited Burst EXP sources take priority: Newly unlocked Guildhests, Challenge Log entries, Hunting Log.

Renewable EXP sources if you need to grind: FATE’s are great, followed by Levequests and if so you choose, Sidequests. (Deep Dungeon: POTD – can you zone it from Level 1? Even if you could, I don’t think I would…)

At level 15 you get access to your first Dungeon, Sastasha, but I don’t see much reason to grind there, unless you wanna burn rested EXP and want to hit 16 ASAP.

At 15 you should catch up and do your class quests, as you do get a skill form it – Scathe. Not a bad skill, great for finishing off trash while moving. Don’t expect to integrate it too heavily into your rotation is it IS a “mistake” more often than not.

A note on Levequests: Can be an attractive source of EXP. Every tier has “good and bad” levequests so it’s up to you if you wanna go try them out. Main downside is using them up in place of DoH / DoL. Consider using them if you’re at or near the Levequest allowance cap!

As always, Main Scenario Quest takes the highest priority.

Starting L16, you open up Duty Roulette: Leveling, which is you should be doing everyday! This is an important source of EXP – it’s a huge daily burst! Also at L16 you can unlock Challenge Log if you haven’t already.

Overall, the same concept applies. Daily and Weekly bursts of EXP > Basic Renewable EXP sources of your choice > Other side activities to alleviate boredom or monotony.

 Renewable EXP sources? At this point it’s Dungeons, FATES and Deep Dungeons, and maybe some Levequests. Burst EXP sources? Roulettes, new Guildhests, Hunting and Challenge Logs.

at L18 THM becomes one of the best dungeon classes this early on due to Fire II. It’s an incredibly powerful AoE spell!

at L20 If you haven’t unlocked your Companion (combat Chocobo), do so now. You can begin the process now – it entails getting your first mount as well (at least for most new players).

L26, unlocks Thunder II – makes THM a GODLIKE AoE DPS. For such a low character level, Thunder II and Thundercloud is GODLIKE.
This makes Dungeons a juicy choice.

At level 30 get your class quests done, as it’s one of the prerequisites to transform into Black Mage!

Levequests notes, same as usual. Sad to take ’em away from crafters and gatherers, but it’s viable EXP. Definitely use them up if you’re overcapped on allowances.

Stop at Level 30! Unlock your advanced job as soon as you can!
(THM turns into Black Mage at Level 30)

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Thaumaturge L30 Onward: Unlocking Black Mage

STOP WHAT YOU’RE DOING ONCE YOU HIT THAUMATURGE LEVEL 30.
Unlock Black Mage ASAP!

How to become a Black Mage? Unlocking Black Mage requires a Level 30 Thaumaturge, and completion of the L30 THM Class Quest. From there, return to your guild and it should point you to the quest! See: Unlocking all jobs.

The reason we unlock ASAP is, not only to get a new skill at L30 (In your case Manaward), but most if not all new skills and traits going forward are for BLACK MAGE and not THAUMATURGE, so you have no reason to stay as a THM any longer.

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Thaumaturge Leveling – Related Reads

Some good reads and related links here:

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Summary and Closing

And with that YOU’RE DONE WITH LEVELING Thaumaturge! Congrats! Hopefully our Thaumaturge Leveling Guide helped you out. May your fire light your way, and they who bar it. GL AoE’ing in deez dungeons.

Join our IRL Cross-World Linkshells (socials lol): 

Contact us about anything and everything. Don't be shy! Love our guides and want to let us know? Got questions or corrections? Suggestions for improvement? TALK TO US! How, you say?

Comment below if it's about this guide. Message us on any of our socials above about anything.  We're organizing our email situation if you're into that.

Go to top
Pages: Page 1, Page 2, Page 3

FFXIV Marauder (MRD) Leveling Guide & Rotation | ShB UPDATED

How to level up your Marauder (MRD) fast! Learn all about your skills, role actions, and how to level up HERE!

DAWNTRAIL Guides! Dawntrail L90-100 Miner Leveling, Botanist Leveling
Dawntrail Normal Raid Guide (Quick, Spoiler Free)
See: Viper STARTER Guide / Rotation | Pictomancer Starter Guide / Rotation

 

Leveling Marauder? Learn the different “axes” of gaining EXP, and how to best “leverage” them. If you’re looking to “grind” Marauder, you’ve found the right place. Hopefully, our Marauder Leveling Guide helps you out!  (I can only think of so many axe puns… I’m sorry)

While this page focuses on Marauder info like skills, traits, rotation, and playstyle notes. The GENERAL PROCESS that you follow is outlined in our FFXIV General Leveling Guide – use it alongside this guide. Looking at that, we’re in the “A Realm Reborn Tier” as we’re only looking to level our Marauder up to 30.

Marauder Unlocking? Other basics?

How to unlock the MRD Class? Taken from Marauder General Guide & FAQ – which you should read if you need more basic info about WAR.

Location: Limsa Lominsa – Upper Decks, Marauder’s Guild (11, 6)
Related Quests: (all in the same place)
> So you want to be a Marauder
> Way of the Marauder
> My First Axe
— Others: You may also begin the game as Marauder

Marauder are a Tank class, falling under the Disciple of War category. Also, if you’re curious about the job you turn into, Marauder are the prerequisite class for unlocking Warrior.

This guide has three major segments:

  • Marauder Leveling Rotation & Skill Changes – How new skills affect your play.
  • Marauder L1 to L16 – General reminders and notes.
  • Marauder L15 to 30 – General reminders and notes.
  • I’ll mention it again, knowledge from General Leveling Guide is REQUIRED.

I put rotation changes up top as you might reference it often. Without further ado, let’s get to it.

Go to top

Marauder Rotation for Leveling, Skills, Traits, Etc.

In this segment we run down how each skill and trait affects your Marauder’s rotation during the leveling process.

L1 Trait Unlocked Tank Mastery – Passive free stats. It’s basically the groundwork that says, “This is a tank class”. Nothing that really affects your gameplay here.

L1 Skill Unlocked Heavy Swing – your basic attack, pretty much. Spam it until you unlock Maim in 3 levels.

L4 Skill Unlocked Maim – your first combo. Admittedly it’s a cute 2 step one only. Heavy Swing into Maim. Neither skill has any interesting side-effects. 

L6 Skill Unlocked Berserk – Oh boy. So this unlocks at Level 6 now huh? This basically defines most players who pick Warrior. Whether that’s a dis or not is up to you. But I hear critical direct hits are good. Use it often! Maximizing your offensive cooldowns is something you’ll learn over time.

L8 Role Action Unlocked Rampant – Your super basic tank damage mitigation / toughness cooldown. Don’t look down on it, though! Rampart is the “gold standard” of tank CD’s. It’s long, it’s strong enough, it doesn’t have a super long CD. This is great! Protip: Never pop CD’s when you’re “about to die” – try to pop it “when things are starting to get hairy, or a little before that”. 

L10 Skill Unlocked Overpower – an incredibly overpowered (Yeah, I know, genius pun right) AoE cone attack with. This is, no joke, really powerful especially for a L10 skill. This is worth doing at TWO targets (until L26), and Godly at 3+ targets. If you have Berserk and/or Rampart up, I would gather up two packs in dungeons and pop my CD’s – then Overpower them to death.

L10 Skill Unlocked Defiance – A stance that switches on or off that increases your enmity generated. Simple as that. Honestly, as long as you’re the only tank around (Soloing, Dungeons, anything non-raid) just have it on. 

L12 Role Action Unlocked Low Blow – An instant OGCD (Off-GCD) Stun. Nothing much to say here. An important note is, in dungeons a Stun acts like a mini defensive cooldown, essentially bringing that enemy’s DPS to zero.

L15 Skill Unlocked Tomahawk – A basic ranged attack that has increased enmity. It’s never bad to pull a mob with this as it usually tells your friends to focus on that guy. Aside from an opener, it’s pretty bad unless you’re too far to attack your target. 

L15 Role Action Unlocked Provoke – An ABSOLUTELY CRITICAL tank skill for dungeons and raids. Please bind it in such a way where it won’t be too hard for you to press it. In terms of leveling and early dungeons, use it to pull back enemies that aggro to others, just make sure you follow it up.

L18 Role Action Unlocked Interject – A “pure interrupt” not tied to a silence or stun. What else can I say, you can randomly interrupt enemy skills with this. It’s only very rarely used on boss monsters. 

L22 Role Action Unlocked Reprisal – an incredibly powerful cooldown that isn’t typically useful in the leveling process – but shines in raids. Practice on using it during boss cast bars! 

L26 Skill Unlocked Storm’s Path – an extremely powerful combo finisher that also heals you. That’s right. It’s your strongest attack right now, that, you read that correctly – “Also heals you”. Heavy Swing > Maim > Storms Path all the way.

L30 Skill Unlocked Thrill of Battle – a self-heal that increases your MAX HP for the whole duration. Not bad, not great for now. Of course, defensive cooldowns are always welcome when it comes to piling up mobs in dungeons.

Completing the “Pride and Duty (Will take you down the Mountain)” L30 MRD quest and unlocking Thrill of Battle marks your final class quest as Marauder. You now have the right to become a Warrior!

Marauder Rotation – L1 to 30 SUMMARY

Here’s an overarching shot of what your MRD rotation is in the early leveling process. Adjust to your currently learned skills.

WAR 30 Single Target RotationWAR AoE Rotation

MRD L30 Single Target Rotation

    • Heavy Swing > Maim > Storm’s Path
    • Liberal use of Berserk if you can maximize its duration

It’s a bit unexciting, I know. I suppose its more about “tanking knowledge”, but pretty much every dungeon pre level 30 doesn’t really lend to skill expression…

MRD L30 AoE Rotation

    • Overpower if 2 enemies or more (before you learn Storm’s Path)
    • Overpower if 3 enemies or more (After L26, Storm’s Path)
    • Downgrade to single target rotation if there are too few targets.
    • Liberal use of Berserk if you can maximize its duration

Warrior is a little unique, in that its AoE becomes more worth it to use at only TWO targets . Other than that, yeah, tank rotations are pretty unexciting this early on.

I know dungeons are pretty junk early on, but here’s the lowdown:
Tomahawk your preferred “main target”, then Overpower a few times to gain aggro (continue spam if 2+ enemies), then do single target combo.

Liberal use of stuns (Low Blow is free!), more so if your healer is derping.

Go to top

Marauder Leveling: L1 to 30

As per the general leveling guide, this tier is divided into two sub-chunks. So I’ll be sub-chunking the following segments into two “tabs” as well. These two tabs represent A) L1 to 16, and B) L16 to 30.

Marauder Leveling L1 to 30 Activity Flowchart

A rundown of things you can do to gain EXP – again split “to 16”, and “to 30”.

MRD 1 to 16MRD 16 to 30

MRD Leveling Activities to L16

Remember the universal truths: Main Scenario Quest is king, and always have your passive EXP buffs (FC, Food, Chocobo, etc)

Renewable EXP sources

    • FATES (Great when you're in queue)
    • Levequests (Actually good EXP but better saved for DoH or DoL)
    • Deep Dungeon -Palace of the Dead (Repetitive, terrible for LOW levels)

Burst EXP sources

    • Challenge Log* (Complete passively until nearing reset, then force it)
    • Guildhests (First completions per class is mega bonus EXP)
    • Hunting Log (Great source of EXP this early on)
    • Sidequests (Personal preference. Better if in tandem with MSQ!)
    • Duty Roulette: Guildhest (Pretty irrelevant...)

*Challenge Log won't be unlocked in this tier if it's your first time around. While you need to be L16 to initially unlock it, it can be used by any level character thereafter. 

Well, there’s not much to point your bow at this early on, but here’s where the arrow falls nonetheless. It’s slim, but you gotta start somewhere.

Of course, adjust this to your own personal preference.

MRD Leveling Activities to L30

Remember the universal truths: Main Scenario Quest is king, and always have your passive EXP buffs (FC, Food, Chocobo, etc)

Renewable EXP sources

    • Dungeons (Stable, "fun", massive EXP easpecially with rested bonus)
    • FATES (Great when you're in queue)
    • Deep Dungeon -Palace of the Dead (Repetitive, but fast)
    • Levequests (Actually good EXP but better saved for DoH or DoL)
    • Beast Tribe (EXP is meh, but great for getting cosmetic items)

Burst EXP sources

    • Duty Roulette: Leveling (The ultimate EXP source until L50)
    • Challenge Log (Complete passively until nearing reset, then force it)
    • Guildhests (First completions per class is mega bonus EXP)
    • Hunting Log (More for completionism or first timers, it's "alright")
    • Sidequests (Personal preference. Better if in tandem with MSQ!)
    • Duty Roulette: Guildhest (Pretty irrelevant...)

A few adjustments to your leveling mentality here, mainly the addition of  Duty Roulette: Leveling, as a daily burst, and straight queuing Dungeons as an option as well.

Of course, adjust this to your own personal preference.

Go to top

Important Notes (MRD L1 to 30)

Here are the important things to keep in mind during the process – it’s best to get a ‘grip’ about these mechanics and how to best ‘handle’ gaining EXP.

MRD L1 to 30 Gear Updates:  Needed?

TLDR: Not really significant. This applies to both sub-tiers. Just make sure to pick up whatever along the way, or find dirt cheap upgrades in the MB or wherever (quests etc).

More detailed answer?

In all honesty you DO NOT NEED to put much thought into your gear from Level 1 to Level 30. Simply “get what you can”, with Weapons being the highest priority. You can get gear from Quests, buy from NPCs, Marketboard, Crafting, GC – it’s purely up to you and your budget as to what you wanna get.

Of course getting gear will increase your efficiency (being a little stronger helps kill speed), but this tier is pretty “newb friendly”, and designed as such – PLUS you “outgrow” gear by gaining levels so rapidly that tryharding on gear up to Level 30 is pretty irrelevant.

Just try not to run around naked, and get “what you can” without being outright negligent.

Important notes to keep in mind

MRD 1 to 16MRD 16 to 30

As always, Main Scenario Quest takes the highest priority.

There are too many skills that get unlocked here for me to talk about individually, which is why the skill unlock / rotation segment above should be your guiding light in that regard.

Limited Burst EXP sources take priority: Newly unlocked Guildhests, Challenge Log entries, Hunting Log.

Renewable EXP sources if you need to grind: FATE’s are great, followed by Levequests and if so you choose, Sidequests. (Deep Dungeon: POTD – can you zone it from Level 1? Even if you could, I don’t think I would…)

At level 15 you get access to your first Dungeon, Sastasha, but I don’t see much reason to grind there, unless you wanna burn rested EXP and want to hit 16 ASAP.

At 15 you should catch up and do your class quests, as you do get a skill form it – Tomahawk. Not typically the most useful skill… But you’re gonna need to do these quests anyway so do ’em while they’re relevant.

A note on Levequests: Can be an attractive source of EXP. Every tier has “good and bad” levequests so it’s up to you if you wanna go try them out. Main downside is using them up in place of DoH / DoL. Consider using them if you’re at or near the Levequest allowance cap!

As always, Main Scenario Quest takes the highest priority.

Starting L16, you open up Duty Roulette: Leveling, which is you should be doing everyday! This is an important source of EXP – it’s a huge daily burst! Also at L16 you can unlock Challenge Log if you haven’t already.

As a Tank class, you have MASSIVE agency on how quick (or slow) a dungeon can go. If you’re new, don’t be too cocky. A protip is only gather “more than one pack” if you’re sure your healer isn’t panicky, and DPS can kill them “in time”.  Your own cooldowns, FoF and Rampart GREATLY help this.

Overall, the same concept applies. Daily and Weekly bursts of EXP > Basic Renewable EXP sources of your choice > Other side activities to alleviate boredom or monotony.

 Renewable EXP sources? At this point it’s Dungeons, FATES and Deep Dungeons, and maybe some Levequests. Burst EXP sources? Roulettes, new Guildhests, Hunting and Challenge Logs.

Again, as a Tank, don’t expect long queue times for dungeons – so it’s a great source of EXP. A “geared” low level tank that spams dungeons can actually pull 2~ groups at a time, to maximize your own AoE Overpower.

at L20 If you haven’t unlocked your Companion (combat Chocobo), do so now. You can begin the process now – it entails getting your first mount as well (at least for most new players).

At level 30 get your class quests done, as it’s one of the prerequisites to transform into Warrior!

Levequests notes, same as usual. Sad to take ’em away from crafters and gatherers, but it’s viable EXP. Definitely use them up if you’re overcapped on allowances.

As you start doing dungeons and start looting gear, make sure you loot TANK GEAR and not generic “Disciple of War” LEFT-SIDE pieces.

Tanking Gear and YOU

So by now you may have noticed that some left-side pieces are for “Disciple of War”. These generic pieces are often bad for you. Why? The tanking class specific gear (usually “usable by GLD MRD etc etc”) have vastly higher armor and magic defense ratings. Get those!

This info is important from here on, since doing dungeons/roulette is a very good source of EXP.

If you’re one of those “pure POTD” types. Well… Back into the hole for you, I suppose!

Stop at Level 30! Unlock your advanced job as soon as you can!
(MRD turns into Warrior at Level 30)

Go to top

Marauder L30 Onward: Unlocking Warrior

STOP WHAT YOU’RE DOING ONCE YOU HIT Marauder LEVEL 30.
Unlock Warrior ASAP!

How to become a Warrior? Unlocking Warrior requires a Level 30 Marauder and completion of the L30 MRD Class Quest. From there, return to your guild and it should point you to the quest! See: Unlocking all jobs.

The reason we unlock ASAP, most if not all new skills and traits going forward are for WARRIOR  and not MARAUDER, so you have no reason to stay as an MRD any longer.

Go to top

Marauder Leveling – Related Reads

Some good reads and related links here:

Go to top

Summary and Closing

And with that YOU’RE DONE WITH LEVELING Marauder! Congrats! Hopefully our Marauder Leveling Guide helped you out. Don’t be bummed out about the relatively simple tanking for now – the time for Axe and Hax is nigh, don’t worry…

Join our IRL Cross-World Linkshells (socials lol): 

Contact us about anything and everything. Don't be shy! Love our guides and want to let us know? Got questions or corrections? Suggestions for improvement? TALK TO US! How, you say?

Comment below if it's about this guide. Message us on any of our socials above about anything.  We're organizing our email situation if you're into that.

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Pages: Page 1, Page 2, Page 3

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

How to level up your Gladiator (GLD) fast! Learn all about your skills, role actions, and how to level up HERE!

DAWNTRAIL Guides! Dawntrail L90-100 Miner Leveling, Botanist Leveling
Dawntrail Normal Raid Guide (Quick, Spoiler Free)
See: Viper STARTER Guide / Rotation | Pictomancer Starter Guide / Rotation

 

Friends suckered you into the shield? Or are you one of those “career tanks”?  Jokes aside, if you’re looking to rise as a Gladiator, you’ve found the right place. Hopefully, our Gladiator Leveling Guide helps you out!

While this page focuses on Gladiator info like skills, traits, rotation, and playstyle notes. The GENERAL PROCESS that you follow is outlined in our FFXIV General Leveling Guide – use it alongside this guide. Looking at that, we’re in the “A Realm Reborn Tier” as we’re only looking to level our Gladiator up to 30.

Gladiator Unlocking? Other basics?

How to unlock the GLD Class? Taken from Gladiator General Guide & FAQ – which you should read if you need more basic info about GLD.

Location: Ul’dah – Steps of Thal, Gladiator’s Guild (6, 10)
Related Quests: (all in the same place)
> So you want to be a Gladiator
> Way of the Gladiator
> My First Gladius
— Others: You may also begin the game as Gladiator

Gladiator are a Tank class, falling under the Disciple of War category. Also, if you’re curious about the job you turn into, Gladiator is the prerequisite class for unlocking Paladin.

This guide has three major segments:

  • Gladiator Leveling Rotation & Skill Changes – How new skills affect your play.
  • Gladiator L1 to L16 – General reminders and notes.
  • Gladiator L15 to 30 – General reminders and notes.
  • I’ll mention it again, knowledge from General Leveling Guide is REQUIRED.

I put rotation changes up top as you might reference it often. Without further ado, let’s get to it.

Go to top

Gladiator Rotation for Leveling, Skills, Traits, Etc.

In this segment we run down how each skill and trait affects your Gladiator’s rotation during the leveling process.

L1 Trait Unlocked Tank Mastery – Passive free stats. It’s basically the groundwork that says, “This is a tank class”. Nothing that really affects your gameplay here.

L1 Skill Unlocked Fast Blade – Your first, and most basic attack! Don’t worry, you’ll get combo skills soon enough.

L2 Skill Unlocked Fight of Flight – Is a DPS cooldown. While FFXIV players can go on and on about burst windows, just keep in mind that in the leveling process, use this LIBERALLY. Optimization can come later, heh.

L4 Skill Unlocked Riot Blade – You can now chain Fast Blade into Riot Blade  is now your basic “rotation”. It restores MP, but that isn’t relevant right now.

L6 Skill Unlocked Total Eclipse – An AoE attack that’s typically best used against 3 or more targets. This is also your default method of gaining threat against multiple enemies for now.

L8 Role Action Unlocked Rampant – Your super basic tank damage mitigation / toughness cooldown. Don’t look down on it, though! Rampart is the “gold standard” of tank CD’s. It’s long, it’s strong enough, it doesn’t have a super long CD. This is great! Protip: Never pop CD’s when you’re “about to die” – try to pop it “when things are starting to get hairy, or a little before that”.

L10 Skill Unlocked Shield Bash – A spammable, long duration stun. Keeping it real, this only has one use early on. If you’re in a dungeon and your healer is a little slow… Simply help your group out by Shield Bashing every enemy in a cycle, so your healers can keep up.

L10 Skill Unlocked Iron Will – A stance that switches on or off that increases your enmity generated. Simple as that. Honestly, as long as you’re the only tank around (Soloing, Dungeons, anything non-raid) just have it on.

L12 Role Action Unlocked Low Blow – An instant OGCD (Off-GCD) Stun. Newer Gladiators and Paladins might laugh at this given you have Shield Bash, this is undoubtedly superior as it doesn’t interrupt your own GCD – think of it as your primary stun.

L15 Skill Unlocked Shield Lob – A basic ranged attack that has increased enmity. It’s never bad to pull a mob with this as it usually tells your friends to focus on that guy. Aside from an opener, it’s pretty bad unless you’re too far to attack your target.

L15 Role Action Unlocked Provoke – An ABSOLUTELY CRITICAL tank skill for dungeons and raids. Please bind it in such a way where it won’t be too hard for you to press it. In terms of leveling and early dungeons, use it to pull back enemies that aggro to others, just make sure you follow it up.

L18 Role Action Unlocked Interject – A “pure interrupt” not tied to a silence or stun. What else can I say, you can randomly interrupt enemy skills with this. It’s only very rarely used on boss monsters.

L22 Role Action Unlocked Reprisal – an incredibly powerful cooldown that isn’t typically useful in the leveling process – but shines in raids. Practice on using it during boss cast bars!

L26 Skill Unlocked Rage of Halone –  Ah, finally! Your combo finisher. Fast Blade > Riot Blade > Rage of Halone is your bread and butter. For quite a while, this will be your strongest attack sequence. It has a bonus of having increased enmity gained, which is welcome in any dungeon.

Completing “The Rematch” at L30 marks your final class quest as Gladiator. You now have the right to become a Paladin!

Gladiator Rotation – L1 to 30 SUMMARY

Here’s the shell of what your GLD rotation is in the early leveling process. Adjust to your currently learned skills.

GLD 30 Single Target RotationGLD AoE Rotation

GLD L30 Single Target Rotation

      • Fast Blade > Riot Blade > Rage of Halone
      • Fight or Flight whenever you can maximize its duration.

It’s a bit unexciting, I know. I suppose its more about “tanking knowledge”, but pretty much every dungeon pre level 30 doesn’t really lend to skill expression…

GLD L30 AoE Rotation

      • 3 Targets is the bare minimum for Total Eclipse spam (4+ preferred).
      • Once a there’s only 2 enemies left, revert to single target.
      • Fight or Flight whenever you can maximize its duration.

Yeah, tank rotations are pretty unexciting this early on.

I know dungeons are pretty junk early on, but here’s the lowdown:
Shield Lob your preferred “main target”, then Total Eclipse a few times to gain aggro (continue spam if 3+ enemies), then do single target combo.

Liberal use of stuns (Low Blow is free!), moreso if your healer is derping.

Go to top

Gladiator Leveling: L1 to 30

As per the general leveling guide, this tier is divided into two sub-chunks. So I’ll be sub-chunking the following segments into two “tabs” as well. These two tabs represent A) L1 to 16, and B) L16 to 30.

Gladiator Leveling L1 to 30 Activity Flowchart

A rundown of things you can do to gain EXP – again split “to 16”, and “to 30”.

GLD 1 to 16GLD 16 to 30

GLD Leveling Activities to L16

Remember the universal truths: Main Scenario Quest is king, and always have your passive EXP buffs (FC, Food, Chocobo, etc)

Renewable EXP sources

    • FATES (Great when you're in queue)
    • Levequests (Actually good EXP but better saved for DoH or DoL)
    • Deep Dungeon -Palace of the Dead (Repetitive, terrible for LOW levels)

Burst EXP sources

    • Challenge Log* (Complete passively until nearing reset, then force it)
    • Guildhests (First completions per class is mega bonus EXP)
    • Hunting Log (Great source of EXP this early on)
    • Sidequests (Personal preference. Better if in tandem with MSQ!)
    • Duty Roulette: Guildhest (Pretty irrelevant...)

*Challenge Log won't be unlocked in this tier if it's your first time around. While you need to be L16 to initially unlock it, it can be used by any level character thereafter. 

Well, there’s not much to point your bow at this early on, but here’s where the arrow falls nonetheless. It’s slim, but you gotta start somewhere.

Of course, adjust this to your own personal preference.

GLD Leveling Activities to L30

Remember the universal truths: Main Scenario Quest is king, and always have your passive EXP buffs (FC, Food, Chocobo, etc)

Renewable EXP sources

    • Dungeons (Stable, "fun", massive EXP easpecially with rested bonus)
    • FATES (Great when you're in queue)
    • Deep Dungeon -Palace of the Dead (Repetitive, but fast)
    • Levequests (Actually good EXP but better saved for DoH or DoL)
    • Beast Tribe (EXP is meh, but great for getting cosmetic items)

Burst EXP sources

    • Duty Roulette: Leveling (The ultimate EXP source until L50)
    • Challenge Log (Complete passively until nearing reset, then force it)
    • Guildhests (First completions per class is mega bonus EXP)
    • Hunting Log (More for completionism or first timers, it's "alright")
    • Sidequests (Personal preference. Better if in tandem with MSQ!)
    • Duty Roulette: Guildhest (Pretty irrelevant...)

A few adjustments to your leveling mentality here, mainly the addition of  Duty Roulette: Leveling, as a daily burst, and straight queuing Dungeons as an option as well.

Of course, adjust this to your own personal preference.

Go to top

Important Notes (GLD L1 to 30)

A few tough nuts you gotta pick up on, so you don’t end up with aggro when you discover you missed something big.

GLD L1 to 30 Gear Updates:  Needed?

TLDR: Not really significant. This applies to both sub-tiers. Just make sure to pick up whatever along the way, or find dirt cheap upgrades in the MB or wherever (quests etc).

More detailed answer?

In all honesty you DO NOT NEED to put much thought into your gear from Level 1 to Level 30. Simply “get what you can”, with Weapons being the highest priority. You can get gear from Quests, buy from NPCs, Marketboard, Crafting, GC – it’s purely up to you and your budget as to what you wanna get.

Of course getting gear will increase your efficiency (being a little stronger helps kill speed), but this tier is pretty “newb friendly”, and designed as such – PLUS you “outgrow” gear by gaining levels so rapidly that tryharding on gear up to Level 30 is pretty irrelevant.

Just try not to run around naked, and get “what you can” without being outright negligent.

Important notes to keep in mind

GLD 1 to 16GLD 16 to 30

As always, Main Scenario Quest takes the highest priority.

There are too many skills that get unlocked here for me to talk about individually, which is why the skill unlock / rotation segment above should be your guiding light in that regard.

Limited Burst EXP sources take priority: Newly unlocked Guildhests, Challenge Log entries, Hunting Log.

Renewable EXP sources if you need to grind: FATE’s are great, followed by Levequests and if so you choose, Sidequests. (Deep Dungeon: POTD – can you zone it from Level 1? Even if you could, I don’t think I would…)

At level 15 you get access to your first Dungeon, Sastasha, but I don’t see much reason to grind there, unless you wanna burn rested EXP and want to hit 16 ASAP.

At 15 you should catch up and do your class quests, as you do get a skill form it – Shield Lob. Not the most useful skill, I’ll admit, but you gotta do these quests anyway so do them while they’re relevant.

A note on Levequests: Can be an attractive source of EXP. Every tier has “good and bad” levequests so it’s up to you if you wanna go try them out. Main downside is using them up in place of DoH / DoL. Consider using them if you’re at or near the Levequest allowance cap!

As always, Main Scenario Quest takes the highest priority.

Starting L16, you open up Duty Roulette: Leveling, which is you should be doing everyday! This is an important source of EXP – it’s a huge daily burst! Also at L16 you can unlock Challenge Log if you haven’t already.

As a Tank class, you have MASSIVE agency on how quick (or slow) a dungeon can go. If you’re new, don’t be too cocky. A protip is only gather “more than one pack” if you’re sure your healer isn’t panicky, and DPS can kill them “in time”.  Your own cooldowns, FoF and Rampart GREATLY help this.

Overall, the same concept applies. Daily and Weekly bursts of EXP > Basic Renewable EXP sources of your choice > Other side activities to alleviate boredom or monotony.

 Renewable EXP sources? At this point it’s Dungeons, FATES and Deep Dungeons, and maybe some Levequests. Burst EXP sources? Roulettes, new Guildhests, Hunting and Challenge Logs.

Again, as a Tank, don’t expect long queue times for dungeons – so it’s a great source of EXP. A “geared” low level tank that spams dungeons can actually pull 2~ groups at a time, to maximize your own AoE Total Eclipse.

at L20 If you haven’t unlocked your Companion (combat Chocobo), do so now. You can begin the process now – it entails getting your first mount as well (at least for most new players).

At level 30 get your class quests done, as it’s one of the prerequisites to transform into Paladin!

Levequests notes, same as usual. Sad to take ’em away from crafters and gatherers, but it’s viable EXP. Definitely use them up if you’re overcapped on allowances.

As you start doing dungeons and start looting gear, make sure you loot TANK GEAR and not generic “Disciple of War” LEFT-SIDE pieces.

Tanking Gear and YOU

So by now you may have noticed that some left-side pieces are for “Disciple of War”. These generic pieces are often bad for you. Why? The tanking class specific gear (usually “usable by GLD MRD etc etc”) have vastly higher armor and magic defense ratings. Get those!

This info is important from here on, since doing dungeons/roulette is a very good source of EXP.

If you’re one of those “pure POTD” types. Well… Back into the hole for you, I suppose!

Stop at Level 30! Unlock your advanced job as soon as you can!
(GLD turns into Paladin at Level 30)

Go to top

Gladiator L30 Onward: Unlocking Paladin

STOP WHAT YOU’RE DOING ONCE YOU HIT Gladiator LEVEL 30.
Unlock Paladin ASAP!

How to become a Paladin? Unlocking Paladin requires a Level 30 Gladiator and completion of the L30 GLD Class Quest. From there, return to your guild and it should point you to the quest! See: Unlocking all jobs.

The reason we unlock ASAP is, not only to get a new skill at L30 (In your case Spirits Within), but most if not all new skills and traits going forward are for PALADIN and not GLADIATOR, so you have no reason to stay as a GLD any longer.

Go to top

Gladiator Leveling – Related Reads

Some good reads and related links here:

Go to top

Summary and Closing

And with that YOU’RE DONE WITH LEVELING Gladiator! Congrats! Hopefully our Gladiator Leveling Guide helped you out. Keep your hopes and shields up high, tanking gets funner and funner as you level up, don’t worry :)

Join our IRL Cross-World Linkshells (socials lol): 

Contact us about anything and everything. Don't be shy! Love our guides and want to let us know? Got questions or corrections? Suggestions for improvement? TALK TO US! How, you say?

Comment below if it's about this guide. Message us on any of our socials above about anything.  We're organizing our email situation if you're into that.

Go to top
Pages: Page 1, Page 2, Page 3

FFXIV Archer (ARC) Leveling Guide & Rotation | ShB UPDATED

How to level up your Archer (ARC) fast! Learn all about your skills, role actions, and how to level up HERE!

DAWNTRAIL Guides! Dawntrail L90-100 Miner Leveling, Botanist Leveling
Dawntrail Normal Raid Guide (Quick, Spoiler Free)
See: Viper STARTER Guide / Rotation | Pictomancer Starter Guide / Rotation

 

Tempted by the song of “ez ranged deeps”, ey? Aren’t we all! Well if you’re looking to have a shot at Archer, you’ve found the right place. Hopefully, our Archer Leveling Guide helps you out!

While this page focuses on Archer info like skills, traits, rotation, and playstyle notes. The GENERAL PROCESS that you follow is outlined in our FFXIV General Leveling Guide – use it alongside this guide. Looking at that, we’re in the “A Realm Reborn Tier” as we’re only looking to level our Archer up to 30.

Archer Unlocking? Other basics?

How to unlock the ARC Class? Taken from Archer General Guide & FAQ – which you should read if you need more basic info about ARC.

Location: Old Gridania, Archers’ Guild (15,12)
NPCs: Athelyna, Luciane
Related Quests: (all in the same place)
> So you want to be an Archer
> Way of the Archer
> My First Bow
— Others: You may also begin the game as Archer

Archers are Physical Ranged DPS classes, falling under the Disciple of War category. Also, if you’re curious about the job you turn into, Archers are the prerequisite class for unlocking Bard.

This guide has three major segments:

  • Archer Leveling Rotation & Skill Changes – How new skills affect your play.
  • Archer L1 to L16 – General reminders and notes.
  • Archer L16 to 30 – General reminders and notes.
  • I’ll mention it again, knowledge from General Leveling Guide is REQUIRED.

I put rotation changes up top as you might reference it often. Without further ado, let’s get to it.

Archer Rotation for Leveling, Skills, Traits, Etc.

In this segment we run down how each skill and trait affects your Archer’s rotation during the leveling process.

L1 Skill Unlocked Heavy Shot – ROTATION AFFECTED:  This is your “basic attack”.

L2 Skill Unlocked Straight Shot – ROTATION AFFECTED:  There is a small chance after using Heavy Shot that Straight Shot becomes usable. Basically, “Spam Heavy Shot, then Straight Shot when Available”.

L2 Trait Unlocked Heavier Shot  – This trait is what allows you to use Straight Shot. How it affects your rotation is already mentioned above.

L4 Skill Unlocked Raging Strikes – ROTATION AFFECTED: Your first DPS cooldown! Use it liberally while soloing or in dungeons. In dungeons, I suggest using this at the start of a new pack, and during bosses. Don’t hold on to it too much. Ultimately DPS cooldowns can be a very high level topic, but this is not the place for that.

L6 Skill Unlocked Venomous Bite – ROTATION AFFECTED: Your first DoT (Damage over Time) skill! OPEN every fight with this skill (Unless the monster is so weak that the DoT isn’t worth it – just heavy shot instead). Obviously, refresh it if it’s about to fall off. Typically in FFXIV you want to refresh DoT’s with a duration of 3s or less. If you’re fighting multiple monsters, using this on all of ‘em is legit.

L6 Role Action Unlocked Leg Graze – Your first Physical Ranged DPS Role Action! Causes Heavy on an enemy (slows movespeed). There is really not much of a use here, except letting enemies get to you slower. Only for desperation in dungeons or soloing… Very slim usage – can often be left unbinded as there are very few encounters where this is irrelevant.

L8 Role Action Unlocked Second Wind  – A burst self-heal which you’ll grow to be very familiar with. Helps with all types of content! Sustain during Boss FATES, emergency healing in Raids, etc.

L10 Role Action Unlocked Foot Graze –  A ranged Bind (Target cannot move)! Useful for preventing melee enemies from reaching you. Practically speaking, this skill is great for stopping enemies so you can run away or interact with objects / NPC’s without being interrupted by damage.

L12 Skill Unlocked Bloodletter – ROTATION AFFECTED: Use it every time it’s available. Simple as that. It’s Off-GCD (OGCD) So you have no reason to delay firing this off ASAP.

L15 Skill Unlocked Repelling Shot – (Requires CLASS QUEST completion) Your basic mobility skill. For soloing, it simply helps you move faster in between mobs. For dungeons and especially raids, this is a great repositioning tool. 

L18 Skill Unlocked Quick Nock – AoE ROTATION AFFECTED: An INCREDIBLY EFFICIENT AoE attack that’s effective to use even against 2 targets. Obviously incredible at 3+ targets.

L20 Trait Unlocked Increased Action Damage – This does nothing that actually affects your gameplay, but simply increases your damage dealt by a %. Can’t complain.

L20 Role Action Unlocked Peloton – AMAZING skill for movement! You’ll be surprised how much time this cuts in towns, questing, dungeons, make it a habit to always have Peloton up when you can! Keep note it doesn’t stack with Sprint. Newer players might think I’m memeing, but you too will come to love Peloton!

L24 Role Action Unlocked Head Graze – A ranged interrupt! Stop enemies from casting their skills – while not super useful solo, it has niche applications in dungeons and raids. Just be aware you have it!

L30 Skill Unlocked Windbite – ROTATION AFFECTED: (Required CLASS QUEST completion) Another DoT, which has many OP connotations in 2/3 multi-target scenarios. Windbite should be your opening shot on enemies that will survive majority of its duration. Simply add it into your rotation “BEFORE” you’d usually do Venombite. 

Completing this quest and unlocking Windbite marks your final class quest as Archer. You now have the right to become a Bard!

Archer Rotation – L1 to 30 SUMMARY

Here’s an overarching shot of what your ARC rotation is in the early leveling process. Adjust to your currently learned skills.

ARC 30 Single Target RotationARC AoE Rotation

ARC L30 Single Target Rotation

    • Fire Bloodletter whenever it’s available.
    • Windbite if enemy will survive more than 9s
    • Venombite if enemy will survive more than 9s
    • Straight Shot if available.
    • Heavy Shot spam.
    • Use Raging Strikes liberally.

ARC L30 AoE Rotation

    • Quick Nock spam if 4+ Targets (Don’t Multi DoT)
    • Quick Nock if 3 Targets (Multi DoT still viable)
    • Multi DoT’s if 2 Targets  > Quick Nock spam.
    • For any scenario, use Bloodletter whenever available.
    • Use Raging Strikes liberally.

DoT’s still have the quick “9s lifespan” rule. If they die too quickly after the DoT, value is lost.

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Archer Leveling: L1 to 30

As per the general leveling guide, this tier is divided into two sub-chunks. So I’ll be sub-chunking the following segments into two “tabs” as well. These two tabs represent A) L1 to 16, and B) L16 to 30.

Archer Leveling L1 to 30 Activity Flowchart

A rundown of things you can do to gain EXP – again split “to 16”, and “to 30”.

ARC 1 to 16ARC 16 to 30

ARC Leveling Activities to L16

Remember the universal truths: Main Scenario Quest is king, and always have your passive EXP buffs (FC, Food, Chocobo, etc)

Renewable EXP sources

    • FATES (Great when you're in queue)
    • Levequests (Actually good EXP but better saved for DoH or DoL)
    • Deep Dungeon -Palace of the Dead (Repetitive, terrible for LOW levels)

Burst EXP sources

    • Challenge Log* (Complete passively until nearing reset, then force it)
    • Guildhests (First completions per class is mega bonus EXP)
    • Hunting Log (Great source of EXP this early on)
    • Sidequests (Personal preference. Better if in tandem with MSQ!)
    • Duty Roulette: Guildhest (Pretty irrelevant...)

*Challenge Log won't be unlocked in this tier if it's your first time around. While you need to be L16 to initially unlock it, it can be used by any level character thereafter. 

Well, there’s not much to point your bow at this early on, but here’s where the arrow falls nonetheless. It’s slim, but you gotta start somewhere.

Of course, adjust this to your own personal preference.

ARC Leveling Activities to L30

Remember the universal truths: Main Scenario Quest is king, and always have your passive EXP buffs (FC, Food, Chocobo, etc)

Renewable EXP sources

    • Dungeons (Stable, "fun", massive EXP easpecially with rested bonus)
    • FATES (Great when you're in queue)
    • Deep Dungeon -Palace of the Dead (Repetitive, but fast)
    • Levequests (Actually good EXP but better saved for DoH or DoL)
    • Beast Tribe (EXP is meh, but great for getting cosmetic items)

Burst EXP sources

    • Duty Roulette: Leveling (The ultimate EXP source until L50)
    • Challenge Log (Complete passively until nearing reset, then force it)
    • Guildhests (First completions per class is mega bonus EXP)
    • Hunting Log (More for completionism or first timers, it's "alright")
    • Sidequests (Personal preference. Better if in tandem with MSQ!)
    • Duty Roulette: Guildhest (Pretty irrelevant...)

A few adjustments to your leveling mentality here, mainly the addition of  Duty Roulette: Leveling, as a daily burst, and straight queuing Dungeons as an option as well.

Of course, adjust this to your own personal preference.

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Archer Leveling L1 to 30 Important Notes

Here we talk about important things to keep in mind during the process – essentially some straight shots to make sure you hit so you don’t get shafted.

ARC L1 to 30 Gear Updates:  Needed?

TLDR: Not really significant. This applies to both sub-tiers. Just make sure to pick up whatever along the way, or find dirt cheap upgrades in the MB or wherever (quests etc).

More detailed answer?

In all honesty you DO NOT NEED to put much thought into your gear from Level 1 to Level 30. Simply “get what you can”, with Weapons being the highest priority. You can get gear from Quests, buy from NPCs, Marketboard, Crafting, GC – it’s purely up to you and your budget as to what you wanna get.

Of course getting gear will increase your efficiency (being a little stronger helps kill speed), but this tier is pretty “newb friendly”, and designed as such – PLUS you “outgrow” gear by gaining levels so rapidly that tryharding on gear up to Level 30 is pretty irrelevant.

Just try not to run around naked, and get “what you can” without being outright negligent.

Important notes to keep in mind

ARC 1 to 16ARC 16 to 30

As always, Main Scenario Quest takes the highest priority.

There are too many skills that get unlocked here for me to talk about individually, which is why the skill unlock / rotation segment above should be your guiding light in that regard.

Limited Burst EXP sources take priority: Newly unlocked Guildhests, Challenge Log entries, Hunting Log.

Renewable EXP sources if you need to grind: FATE’s are great, followed by Levequests and if so you choose, Sidequests. (Deep Dungeon: POTD – can you zone it from Level 1? Even if you could, I don’t think I would…)

At level 15 you get access to your first Dungeon, Sastasha, but I don’t see much reason to grind there, unless you wanna burn rested EXP and want to hit 16 ASAP.

At 15 you should catch up and do your class quests, as you do get a skill form it – Repelling Shot. It’s not much, but it does help walking around. Typically you don’t want to keep your class quests incomplete anyway.

A note on Levequests: Can be an attractive source of EXP. Every tier has “good and bad” levequests so it’s up to you if you wanna go try them out. Main downside is using them up in place of DoH / DoL. Consider using them if you’re at or near the Levequest allowance cap!

As always, Main Scenario Quest takes the highest priority.

Starting L16, you open up Duty Roulette: Leveling, which is you should be doing everyday! This is an important source of EXP – it’s a huge daily burst! Also at L16 you can unlock Challenge Log if you haven’t already.

Overall, the same concept applies. Daily and Weekly bursts of EXP > Basic Renewable EXP sources of your choice > Other side activities to alleviate boredom or monotony.

 Renewable EXP sources? At this point it’s Dungeons, FATES and Deep Dungeons, and maybe some Levequests. Weirdly enough, Archer feels terrible in Deep Dungeons, but great in Dungeons (and “ok” in FATEs). Burst EXP sources? Roulettes, new Guildhests, Hunting and Challenge Logs.

L18 unlocks Quick Nock skill: This is a pretty damn underrated “breakpoint” for Archer leveling. Honestly, this skill is so unbelievably powerful for this level. It allows you to AoE down mobs efficiently while most other classes simply don’t even HAVE an AoE skill. This places dungeons a little higher on your “priority” list, as there’s quite a bit of AoEing down mobs here.

The early ARR dungeons aren’t that exciting, but at least Quick Nock makes it a little faster for you. No joke, it’s relevant. Imagine running a dungeon with zero AoE (It’s the reason why most tanks will not speedrun / pile up these low level dungeons).

at L20 If you haven’t unlocked your Companion (combat Chocobo), do so now. You can begin the process now – it entails getting your first mount as well (at least for most new players).

At L20, you unlock the Role Action Peloton, which you should get used to using all the time. I mentioned it in the rotation segment, but it bears repeating here – any increase in speed is welcome.

At level 30 get your class quests done, as it’s one of the prerequisites to transform into Bard!

Levequests notes, same as usual. Sad to take ’em away from crafters and gatherers, but it’s viable EXP. Definitely use them up if you’re overcapped on allowances.

Stop at Level 30! Unlock your advanced job as soon as you can!
(Archer turns into Bard at Level 30)

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Archer L30 Onward: Unlocking Bard

STOP WHAT YOU’RE DOING ONCE YOU HIT ARCHER LEVEL 30.
Unlock Bard ASAP!

How to become a Bard? Unlocking Bard requires a Level 30 Archer, and completion of the L30 ARC Class Quest. From there, return to your guild and it should point you to the quest! See: Unlocking all jobs.

The reason we unlock ASAP is, not only to get a new skill at L30 (In your case Mage’s Ballad), but most if not all new skills and traits going forward are for BARD and not ARCHER, so you have no reason to stay as an ARC any longer.

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Archer Leveling – Related Reads

Some good reads and related links here:

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Summary and Closing

And with that YOU’RE DONE WITH LEVELING Archer! Congrats! Hopefully our Archer Leveling Guide helped you out. May your arrows always find their mark.

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