I was going to write a thoughtful analysis of the various classes I've played so far in Final Fantasy XIV, but one of the Puglist class quests references DOOM, so obviously that's the best class.
Even if were not for the exhortations to rip and tear monsters that are huge and therefore have huge guts I'd still probably consider the Pugilist my favourite of the four classes I've spent time on. It puts me in mind of the Scrapper in City of Heroes - good damage and survivability, but not rivalling those classes that specialise in one or other of those roles. These are early impressions of course, and based only on my experience of the first 20 levels or so, but this feels like a good all rounder. I'm also finding the class quest story more engaging than a couple of the others.
The Pugilist Guild is situated in Ul'dah, so as I'd started in that city as a Gladiator it was a natural choice for my first additional class, followed by Thaumaturge since that guild is also in the same place. I have less experience in MMOs with casters than with melee classes so it's no surprise that I've found this one to be the least involving. Thaumaturge does have some interesting mechanics, but having to interrupt a cast to move out of an AoE is... welll, I can understand why they like to stay far back behind the tank in dungeons. Of these first four this feels like the one I'll put the least time into.
Rogue is the last class I've picked up so far, due to the Rogues Guild being located in Limsa Lominsa and therefore inaccessible to me up until about the midway point of this run. Even if I had started in LL I'd have still had to reach level 10 in another class before switching to Rogue, something which the writing of the first class quest makes a point of mentioning. The guild leader observes that the character is already an experienced fight but not with daggers.
I'm enjoying the writing in the Rogue quests a lot - they use a lot of 17th and 18th century figures of speech which makes the dialogue stand out, and many buckles are swashed. In combat the class is hitting harder and faster than the Pugilist, but doesn't feel quite so resilient. Damage output is very high though, and running Fates as a Rogue feels like playing the game in fast forward compared to running them as a Gladiator.
Gladiator is still my main class, and likely to remain so. Not terribly interesting solo, but good fun in group content. If I were to switch focus at this stage it would likely be to Pugilist, due to it striking a good balance between the tough as a brick (and about as interesting) Gladiator and the glass cannon Rogue. I am thinking about a return to Sastasha as a Pugilist before I finish up this run in a couple of days to see how dungeons look through the eyes of a DPS, but I'm iffy about the idea of entering any group content in this game in anything other than a tanking mindset.
Either way these won't be the last classes I look at in this game. My first post on FFXIV mentioned how alt-unfriendly this game is, and in one sense that is true, but the ability to switch classes at wll is allowing me to indulge my altitis to unexpected levels without the need to run additional characters. I daresay I will narrow my focus to just one class when I want to make more progress deeper into the game, but then again I've been saying that about City of Heroes for over a year now.
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