So I made a Conjuror from scratch and was able to get to 32 by the end of phase 3 and run Blayflox's Longstop (Dragon!). I easily finished all of the main story quests, leveled all sub classes to 15 (got THM to 19), and completed all level 15 class quests (Pugilist was by far the hardest IMO).
Tanking: I did tank the lower dungeon, Sashara (sp?) as a Gladiator. I found the aggro mechanics pretty easy to handle unless someone else pulled or started dps before I could start gaining aggro. I loved having one CC class in my one group where I tanked. Made things go smoothly for my undergeared Gladiator. I did notice that Marauders seemed to be able to take aggro more easily than Gladiators, but they also took more damage, probably because of the shield.
Healing: Easy, except a few fights. Heals were plenty large enough. When there was difficulty it was always because of lack of time OR because I had to move out of something on the floor. I was not impressed with Esuna. Whenever a boss had a mechanic that needed cured, it always seemed that it had another status ailment (usually a weak poison) to "cover" up the one I wanted to dispel. Tanks need to carry antidotes is really what that means...
DPS:
- Lancer: Lancers came off to me as semi offtanks, I kept getting the Lancers that wanted to offtank no matter what and would basically double my healing and spread out dps onto several mobs. Saw a few good ones however and I liked those, lancers can apply a Slow effect on demand which is amazing!
- Pugilist: This is a Thief Lite for those missing the Thief class. They have positional DPS moves which is about the end of that similarity. They can also apply a slow like the Lancer, but they have to "Evade" an attack before they can apply it. Great dps!
- Thaumaturge: Love these guys! Great dps, because of how they manage mana, they can never truly run out. There is a huge difference between the good Thaumaturge's and the bad ones. The bad ones do not know what Sleep is. The good ones know when to AOE and when to Sleep adds. Also since they have Magic related stats, and unlimited mana, they are able to heal a group somewhat in a pinch. The heals are smaller, but effective. Extra emergency heals are always a nice option if needed.
- Archer: Able to do amazing dps while being 100% mobile. This class has aggro issues if your not a patient player. I had a few groups of the Archer shooting before the tank established aggro, which basically turns into a kiting festival with the tank trying to herd cats. Great class, takes a steady hand to master.
Disciples of the Land: Mining, Botany & Fishing, was different than most MMO's. I only did gathering and crafting at sub level 10. My initial thought was to run around doing fates and have the detect thingy on for the specific gathering skill like every other mmo out there. Not necessary... Harvest nodes were so abundant that I was able to gather from the same 4-5 trees over and over in a very small "route" and they would respawn before I would have to move on. Doing this like WoW or Rift would be impractical since resources were so abundant you would constantly be gathering rather than fighting. So my thought here is that gathering time gets its own specific time separate from adventure time.
Disciples of the Hand: I did not spend nearly enough time with this side of the game. I can see how handy it will be with being able to craft gear for your other classes. Also this is needed to make and "install" materia on your gear. I did not find out if other players can install materia on your gear for you (hopefully someone knows), so I will go under the assumption that I will need to level my tradeskills to keep materia on my gear.
Bugs:
- I found a few spelling or formatting mistakes on a few Levequests.
- On the level 15 Archer class skill, the description had a spelling mistake (15 Yarls instead of Yards).
- I had found a bug that could cause items in your Armory box thing to disappear occasionally, seems like they had it fixed with this last weekends build.
Feedback:
- Ifrit encounter needs loot bad, hoping this is just a beta thing.
- A few enforced solo encounters need buffed, mainly low level class quests or main story quests
- Pugilist class quest marauders need to have their aoe range & damage lowered on their cleave, so you don't instantly die.
- Increase the amount of Levequests you can do in a day!!!
- Increase the range on being informed of a new Fate when its basically a raid boss, was frustrating to be sitting at a fate with one other person when you knew it would take 10-15+ to take it down in time. Maybe give these fates a different name? Super fate?
- The "Buddy System" really needs more said about it when it becomes available. I did not find out what this was until today...Wow I missed out!
- Guildheists were challenging and the first time reward was great! However I fail to see the use of redoing these beyond the first time. Increase the xp on these past the first, or make the original bonus a "daily" thing. They are a bit steep in gil & xp, so adjust the amount accordingly.
- Company Levequests seemed a bit underwhelming in reward, yeah they had seals, but meh. Especially when you can only do so many a day. Are Fates going to continue giving seals after release? If not then that makes Company Leve's much more valuable.
- Fates, take a page from Rift here and have the players join a "public raid" by pressing a button. As a Conjurer I was struggling to heal people (in range) that got hit by an AoE ability on the opposite side of a huge Fate raid boss. If it auto joined you into a raid group I could easily heal those taking damage on the other side of a huge boss and also increase my contribution for the reward at the same time.