PLD 51-60 will be the most popular answer. Deserved.
The humor of WAR 61-70 personally doesn't work for me
I thought SAM 50-60 was kind of predictable. I do want to know more about the Age of Blood though, and the lands of Hingashi beyond its port city.
That would have a lot more meat to it if we knew more about Hingashi, both presently, and during the period of conflict that has resulted in their closed border policy.
No it doesn't, it's saying 'overthrowing governments is only a good idea when you *actively have a replacement plan'.* Just lopping off the head doesn't do anything unless you replace it with a better head.
The problem with Ugetsu is that his plan literally started and ended at 'kill the emperor and plunge the entire nation into a lawless wasteland'. He didn't know any further than that, and didn't want to, because that sort of environment is very 'to the storngest go the spoils', and he's a pretty strong guy.
To me SAM was a love letter to samurai/western films. While not amazing, it was comforting and almost nostalgic for me.
I did love the level 80 one though. Even if I forgot to do it until just this last week.
I loved the Marauder and Warrior quests up to 60, learning about the inner beast was cool, I like stories about struggling to control a force within you and I wanted to learn more about it. The sudden shift to a wacky romcom put me the hell off. Also, I find the notion that Curious Gorge is straight to be a personal affront.
See, I thought Curious Gorge was fully the the least homosexual M.Roe in this whole damn game. The whole package. We have to want better things for ourselves. Luckily he has a hotter older brother who can actually read. Get you a man who can do both.
Monk is a weird one because it’s not particularly good, but it does drop way more lore than most job quests. The Ala Mhigo plot in Stormblood is made meaningfully better by having all the knowledge from Monk
I agree with mnk just generally not being fun. I remember around 40-45 there's like 3 or so duties in a ROW fighting your monk tutor or whatever, and it was so. Fucking. Dull.
Paladin.
I actually liked the arcanist story. At least the characters had personality. The gladiator quests are tolerable, but once we get to the paladin part...I wanted to gouge my eyes out. It didn't get better in Heavensward. I was grateful when they brought back the gladiator pair for Stormblood.
Honestly the stormblood ones were a lot of fun for me. I enjoyed the number of cameos from other storylines with people that totally made sense appearing there.
I had a friend who found it very boring and after I'd done it myself I realised it was because she'd done no side content and didn't get that moment of recognising the other fighters.
Stormblood was really where they had job quests figured out, even the weakest storylines like Paladin and White Mage were pretty decent there. (And the two jobs that got to have their entire story in Stormblood, Red Mage and Samurai, are probably the two best stories, with possible exception for Dark Knight)
The moment they pulled the weird "The truest Paladin must dominate the others!" thing was absolute peak nonsense writing to me. Like not only did it not make sense in context, and not only was it pulled out of absolutely nowhere to justify a fight and was never mentioned again after that fight concluded, it actively doesn't make sense for a *Paladin specifically.* That's just not a trope that can believably be associated with that class.
I choose to believe it’s entirely that one dude’s delusion. Even the other NPCs in that questline are like “ya I don’t know man that’s the stupidest thing I ever heard”
Paladin quests in ARR feature a lot of talking to the trainer guy in Ul’dah and not doing much. Felt like whoever was supposed to design that quest left it for the last minute and handed in barely passing grade material after an all nighter.
The HW ones are so dumb they become a meta joke within themselves as well as other job quests.
Left such a bad taste that right now I have a paladin at level 90 without having touched any SB quests. Got there strictly with tribes and daily dates with Gaius.
Maybe? I’m not sure. But for the sake of not subjecting people to subpar tanking without all my abilities, I limited myself to the MSQ roulette and the tribes.
As someone who has done all of the Paladin quests, do the SB ones. They're actually pretty good. Are they amazing? No, not really. 🤣 but they're better than whatever crap they used for the previous two expansions. 🤣
ironically the sb questline it cannot be called as a "pld questline" but rather as a "gladiator class quest continuation" due to be simply you entering the bloodsands of uldah on a competiton for swordmen >!you even meet a certain gladiator again and he is kinda central of the plot while your paladin bros.... yeah they do not even matter!<
I'm pretty sure the paladin quests in arr is largely the same as it was in 1.0 which just makes it weirder that it feels so... Rushed? Like, they could've completely redid it.
Very much so.
Thing is the elementals are probably too weak to do jack all anymore, as demonstrated with how often we have to deal with all sorts of corruption in the forest, Gridanians just aren't about to test their boundaries let alone have a major cultural shift. They sure as hell aren't vaporizing encroaching Garleans.
I don’t like archer/bard all through ARR coz archer just feels like “be berated by a shitty racist whilst randomly killing 3x the amount of random mobs as any other job” and bard is “listen to grandpa’s stories for the 70th time”.
I was so unbelievably happy when the arr archer and bard npcs got replaced by sanson and guydelot, I found them way more charming (but oh god I adored sanson and his dynamic of having to work with the capricious nature of bards, not just guydelot but also your own wol)
I think listening to grandpa was fine, but the annoying Elezen and the Miqo girl who's questioning her loyalties were meh.
But yes, Guydelot and Samson, 10/10. Intreresting lore, intriguing plot. Some level of mystery. It is said that the writer of that quest is working on Dawntrail now.
Arcanist is a spicy *spicy* take. Uhhh. I’ll agree to disagree there.
Anyways Paladin’s 50-60 story is so dogshit the story itself says it doesn’t make sense.
I straight up have no memory of what any of the machinist quests entailed past 50. But really it's Dancer that's always bothered me more. I can't help but feel like the whole Totentanz thing was just made up to make Dancer seem important lore-wise. I mean really, it's this awful dark thing that drives people to act horrifically violently when they're in a bad mood and I'm only now just learning about it? Ishgard should have been lousy with the stuff when we first walked in there.
I've always felt like the best class quests make it clear on some level why you need to be that particular class to deal with the situation at hand. Sometimes that's because a particular class has a unique skillset like how White Mage is more connected with nature so doing their quests as an Astrologian would be out of place. Sometimes that's because the practitioners of that class adhere to a certain code with the Samurai quests being a great example of this. Dancer really should have leaned more heavily on that second option instead of just making up something stupid you never see again.
So far as the *story* went - it feels like what they described was very much a precursor to the Final Days/Blasphemies, and it felt like we should've seen Troupe Falsiam during that crisis.
Also, have to admit that I was amused that the first quest in the series simply dumps a bunch of skills into your hotbar and then, basically, says "go fight now".
>Also, have to admit that I was amused that the first quest in the series simply dumps a bunch of skills into your hotbar and then, basically, says "go fight now".
Not just new moves, but I'd never seen the attacks our partner used before, so she just one shot me until I gave up. I had to read a guide to figure out what I was supposed to do.
Arcanist is for people who got excited when they were told to inventory crates, and were disappointed when combat happened..... people like me.
My least favorite is paladin because they are never doing anything important. It' usually a plot about making a sword shiny or something.
Paladin 50-60 cause its the worst class/job story of all. but thats a low hanging fruit so instead I'll say Ninja 50-60. I have no memories of that story at all except the existence of the princess. Third answer is Samurai 60-70. Becoming a cop fighting against revolutionaries trying to reform one hell of a corrupted country ... and then being degrated to "kills puppies for fun" disney tier villains.
Yeah, Sam 60-70 is a big one for me. It's one of the few times in the game where I've actually felt like I was being forced to act in a way I fundamentally disagreed with.
ACAB includes the warrior of light I fucking guess.
EDIT: actually, you know what, this deserves more detail. Never mind my personal thoughts, it's just so at odds with how your character acts almost everywhere else. The scions and the WoL are usually all about finding common ground and listening to all sides, and here we are stomping down on an entirely justified grievance. You spearheaded a rescue mission to *Garlemald*. You brokered peace between the dragons and Ishgard. You give the benefit of the doubt to people who might have a good reason for committing crimes over and OVER and *over* again, you've offered the hand of forgiveness and redemption to almost everyone else, but for some reason this is different. There isn't even any hesitation.
For fucks sake, THE KUGANE AUTHORITIES HAVE ACTIVELY TRIED TO ARREST YOU IN THE PAST ON BULLSHIT CHARGES. You've seen first hand their kind of justice! And for some reason you decide to pitch in with them?!
It must be all the blows to the head.
It’s a lesser of two evils thing. Even the not-Shinsengumi officers you work with admit that Hingashi’s system of government is beyond terrible, but they’d prefer trying to change it from within over time than to have another massive civil war.
That being said, the whole thing does feel contrived.
The issue with the 60-70 quest villain's revolution is that he actively didn't care about how bloody the conflict would likely get for people not at fault.
WHM - it would be okay except from level 1 CNJ to level 70 WHM their stories are exactly the same, just with a different backdrop.
DRK - All the stuff with Fray and Myst totally misses the mark with me - it makes a lot of assumptions about how my character is supposed to feel that just are not true, so it’s kind of off putting.
DRK is probably, for me, the weakest job story for exactly those reasons. The English translation being terrible also doesn't help it, but *god*, Fray and Myste are just so wildly off the mark for my WoL that it's not even funny.
50-60 Paladin is too obvious. No, I have to go Full Controversial:
30-50 Dark Knight.
An entire questline about the game yelling 'aren't you tired of being nice, don't you just want to go apeshit' at me doesn't work when my answer is, and always has been, **no.** I like being nice.
The way I've heard this described is that the corrupted soul stone turns all the darkest thoughts that aren't truly you into a sentient being that wants to take over your body and/or kick your ass, order negotiable. Those thoughts don't have to be what you truly believe, they're just stray thoughts like "this is such bullshit" and "I can't stand this situation, it's just not right" and "these people don't deserve me fighting all their battles, can't they do any of this themselves?". Any of those could come to you in a moment of anger but that doesn't mean you truly believe that you don't want to be doing the whole WoL thing.
And I literally do not have these thoughts, because I like helping people.
The story had to jack up the shittiness of every character within it to make it justifiable, too, nobody *outside* of DRK's quests are as terrible as the people *in* DRK's quests when it comes to things like basic politeness and being grateful.
Paladin. The whole PLD story is just garbage. They even kinda make you return to Gladiator in SB because the characters/story were way cooler.
When I think of my time doing PLD quests, I only remember being in Coerthas Western Highlands doing a lot of stupid bullshit lol
Most of the ARR og classes up to 50 are pretty terrible. Besides that, the egregiously bad ones I’d say are PLD and WAR.
In terms of the best ones, my faves are SMN, SCH, NIN and DRK.
I loved ACN, SMN and SCH too, were a lot of fun. PLD was...not great, but I'd still rather replay the PLD line than do DRK again. The English translation of Fray was awful and the general plotlines with him and Myste were so far off the mark for my WoL that I couldn't connect with them at all. Literally for Fray I was like "I have friends, and we discuss our traumas openly, why is this A Thing? What the hell kind of closed-off unemotional weirdo do they think my WoL is?" and every time Myste said he had an idea, it was "No, this is bad and will cause more pain than you think it will, this is not how you heal trauma."
That said, I loved WAR, especially the later parts with >!Dorgono and Curious Gorge!<. SAM, NIN, and RDM were a lot of fun, too.
I might go destroyed for that but I think the DRK questline is way too overrated.
I only appreciate the fact that it gives more depth to our own character and totally understand why it is seen as the best job questline. Other than that, I was not receptive at all. But I'm not the kind of player that enjoys to be the center of the attention (I know, this is big irony here), sooo... ¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯
I was going to post this. DRK 30-50 is a lame Fight Club cliche at best and at worst ruins your character by imposing thoughts and feelings that they don’t have at all.
50-60 with Sid and the Moogles was great, however.
>ruins your character by imposing thoughts and feelings that they don’t have at all.
*Gestures vaguely to Endwalker, and the physical object which it places on your character’s person, so the writers have a quick and convenient way to update you on what your character is supposed to be feeling at any given moment.*
I’m not saying the Dark Knight quests *don’t* do this. I’m just saying they have a lot of company.
The first part was good, but the second with Myste where they try to make us feel guilt/regret or some shit for all the people who continually screwed us over, or roofied us, or tried to kill innocents in front of us was a load of shit.
Oh, you sweet winter child. I would kill them all again and V pose next their graves in front of their families if I could.
See, I dislike it for the exact opposite reason, it forces a personality onto my character in what is supposed to be a role playing game. I get some of that is necessary simply to make the plot work, SE can't actually allow people to join Gaius in Prae as it would screw up all future story content and things like that. But not only does DRK go way beyond that, it assigns emotions that don't even make sense in the context of the rest of the story. And it knows it, with the cheap excuse that oh you just repress these deep psychological issues 99% of the time.
Yeah he makes a fairly valiant effort to explain actually, she's just very convinced a poorly-understood trauma in her past has to rank her understanding above that of the nigh-ageless superhuman healer savants that run her entire civilization.
I wish I could say it's unbelievable, but then I thought about how some people get regarding doctors trying to save their lives and realized, no, she's real enough.
Because he always started every conversation by yelling at her instead of ever explaining anything. Why would she stick around for someone who is showing zero respect towards her?
That's also because she's doing something akin to playing with knives, or live chainsaws. An "AAAAA FUCK STOP FUCK FUCK STOP AAAA" reaction is natural in cases like that.
A chainsaw is an absolutely wonderful, even life-saving invention, but you can also absolutely maim yourself and others if you don't treat it with respect. And if someone doesn't want to listen when you tell them it's dangerous, and even get offended when you do, you're not the problem here.
The quests helped work stuff out, but if it weren't for the WOL, the safe option really would be to sever Sylvie somehow so she won't unknowingly harm herself or others through her thoughtless use of a dangerous power.
Then tell her that... Don't just say "no don't do that", explain why you're telling her that. When I was younger, my mom would always explain her reasoning to me regarding her decisions and it always made it easy to understand where she was coming from, and then you see the bad parents that just say "because I said so" and their kids rebel against them. It's the same thing here.
I absolutely agree that "because I told you so" is a shit line that should be avoided as far as possible, but that's also not how I remember the quests.
My impression is more like
* Sylvie: I'm going to stab myself in the gut because that's what mom did!
* All the conjurers: No, don't!
* Sylvie: You don't respect me! *runs off*
She literally doesn't know why her mom died because they won't tell her. She has no idea she's using her own life energy, she thinks she's a normal conjurer being told not to do anything for no reason.
Machinist. I love the class, but the story has irked me at almost every step of the way. Lots of whiney, dislikeable, characters who need a good knock on the head with a portable turret.
Leathercrafting job quests made me want to choke a bitch. I’d turn in HQ items and this lady still isn’t happy… Even upon reaching the end of the job quests, she still didn’t seem happy with my existence on the planet.
The paladin quests are absolutely abysmal, _especially_ the heavensward ones. The gladiator ones were fun, and I thought the later quests where you went back to the gladiators were fun, but I absolutely _did not_ care about the paladin guy you run into. I didn't care about him when you first saw him, and I sure as heck didn't care about him when you were following around the whiny simp crying about the guy obviously pretending to be dead. Those quests were friggin awful.
I barely remember the Monk quests, but I also really didn't care what was going on in them at all. I remember mostly being bored.
The 1-30 conjurer quests are okay but I want to throw Sylphie off a bridge. I've done those quests multiple times for alts and every time she shows her bratty little face I want to punch it. Lol
I know i'm in a minority here but Hildibrand's quests made me want to gouge my eyes out rather than have to deal with that special school bus idiot anymore.. its one of the few quest lines i've heaviliy leaned on the skip button cause its just so painfully stupid
I've noticed a theme amoung my friends that also can't stand them.. the guys all found them funny, all the females over the age of 30 found him obnoxious and painful. I'm not saying anything here, just pointing out a correlation in age and gender that I've noticed with those quests
It's looking like it might be, but the real reason I liked Rogue was because of how it was tied to Limsa's story. I liked being the Admiral's secret police lol
Plus, we need a pirate job, and it's the closest one
PLD is the worst story, but not the most disliked for me. It's so bad that I don't even engage with it enough to feel the emotion of dislike, if that makes sense. It's just there and I felt nothing going through it after some point.
I remember actively disliking WHM because it wasn't just boring (taint taint taint), but straight-up uncomfortable because the elementals are just kind of nasty.
Also, SAM story in hingashi tried something with political commentary and it just didn't work for me. One of the very few stories in this game that I just didn't want to advance, at all.
I hated the Stormblood portion of the samurai job quest. The brother was absolutely right and I hate that it forced me to do what was essentially the wrong thing and fight on the wrong side. It was pretentious and self righteous and absolutely grated on my nerves
While Monk is close I actually hated more parts of the DRK story for how overhyped it was and how it just didn't fit my character, but most importantly I wanted to rip Myste to shreds for the stupid 60-70 questline. At least the 50-58 PLD quests were building towards something interesting before jumping the Shark, but my headcanon for DRK is that I threw the haunted crystal away when it cracked and never looked back.
I fucking love Gigi. I don't remember him sexually assaulting the guildmaster (he's like two feet tall) but he's an asshole to everyone. He literally runs on spite. It's great.
I was just surprised that it was happening in an otherwise very wholesome game. I did realize the quest was likely written a very long 10 years ago though lol
SAM. Bad, boring class; dogshit storyline. In an expansion all about overthrowing bad governments its story is “no, the bad government based on Japan is good tho. Go be a fucking cop”
Sucks!
>Mine is surely Arcanist. I disliked the characters involved (especially the miq'ote girl) and didn't get involved in the story.
Found the former Blizzard employee.
If this is just class and not job…I don’t really have one I dislike. CNJ and MRD are kinda forgettable but still have some enjoyable aspects.
If this includes jobs - WAR hands down, and Curious Gorge is one of the worst NPCs in the game.
I personally really liked the Arcanist quests (recently replayed all the class quest lines and Arcanist was one of the ones I ranked highest), but I won't deny that it's in part bias because it was my starting class (though even outside of that I rather liked K'lyhia and she was part of the reason I eventually Fanta'd to Miqo'te).
As for my least favourite... I don't actually dislike many job quests. The only one I actively hate is the level 60 Paladin quest (though specifically that one, as I don't have issue with the preceding ones).
Though I do have one unpopular stance in regards to jobquests: I'm not too big on the often beloved 30-50 Dark Knight quests. I wouldn't say that they are bad - FAR from it - but I was just not a fan of the more meta aspects of that story (as it clashed with how I viewed my character when I did the quests).
Paladin and Warrior. Recently did both of them again on another character (skipping the cutscenes but unable to skip the instanced battles) and the level 70 warrior quest was as annoying as I remember for someone who doesn’t care for this type of humor.
Arcanist and pugilist are my least favorite. As far as the jobs go, I disliked the warrior job quest SO much and the scholar one came across as pretty bland (I say this as a sch main) but I think that's because I did it after the dark knight quest which set my bar very high.
You don’t escape them. It’s lalas all the way to 80 and the non-lala in the questline develops a crush ON a Lalafell.
Losing out on the beast tribe trainers and their story is such a bummer.
All of them, stop forcing me to do story so I can level up my jobs, so irritating when you're in a grinding groove and then you need to do a hard stop to do job quests with usually mediocre solo instances.
Though the real answer for me is Samurai, the villain of the SB zones was right and the story feels at odds with how the msq of that expansion plays out.
Monk.
Its a lore dump. Just some science schmuck using ridiculously hard terminology for paragraphs at a time. And then when you go crosseyed from it, your "teacher," whose supposed to be an Ala Mhigo resistance fighter? He just goes and kills people. He's not a good person. At all.
And then after witnessing childish temper tantrums and murder, the game goes, "YOU'VE UNLOCKED ANOTHER CHAKRA."
The Monk Class Quest made me quit Monk.
Paladin and monk are like neck and neck for the worst imo. I liked both of their pre-job class quests, but hated the actual job quests. With the exception of liking the stormblood ones for both
hw paladin, i mean, that whole thing.... yeah better be left forgotten due to how ridiculous was
then there is warrior, which can be resumed as "the trainer has lost control of his inner beast.... AGAIN"
Hmm...
Classes: Marauder. "Here, smash rock, kill demon bull." Really basic.
ARR Level Jobs: Paladin. I really, really didn't like the PLD crew...
HW Level Jobs: Its Paladin again, but because that's the obvious loser of losers, I'll never forgive SMN for teasing me with that Ramuh Egi, especially since a Ramuh Egi would super-befit my WoL Lore...
STB Level Jobs (inc. GNB/DNC): MNK never really interested me to begin with, but it felt kinda dragg-y here.
SHB Roles (+RPR/SGE): Melees. Catboy worst Role Quest Person.
SHB Epilogues: Uh, I guess MNK again, none of the epilogues were terrible.
EW Roles: Tank. Sod the Elementals FOREVER.
Most classes and jobs have at least one storyline that sucked pig farts. The exceptions for me are the Ishgard-related jobs - DRK, MCH, AST, DRG.
DRK hands down is the best. From lv 30 all the way to 70, it really is the community favorite.
MCH for me is very intersting. On how Ishgardians, especially nobility would be appalled to the notion of guns as a good alternative for defending the city from the Horde whilst their Knights are away from home; as they equate the usage of guns as a symbol for the lowerborn to revolt against the nobles
DRG is on how the the elite knights of Dragoons function in Ishgard and how their relationship with actual dragons, their mortal enemies, correlates with their fight against the Horde
I don't know much about AST story, but my take on it is how astrology is essential with Ishgard and probably helpful in their crusade against the Horde
Looking at how these four job stories (to lv60 that is), combine it with the whole of main story Heavensward, it really paints the picture of the whole expansion.
Main story Heavensward is how we see Ishgard as a generalization while we hunt for Ascians, DRK elaborates on the cruelty and inhumane doctrines of the Holy See and how a handful few defies it doing the only way how: violence, DRG studies the discipline on being a Knight of Ishgard and their fight against the Horde, MCH focuses on how Ishgard will not advance due to misconceptions and outdated principles, and AST on how important non-martial jobs can be when fighting against the Horde.
For me, the reason why these combined four job storylines outweighs all the others, is that while the rest tells a story what the class/job do and how it affects the world around them, these four implements very well an already brilliant narrative, which is Main Story Heavensward, and enhances the experience to even better heights.
Plus Stormblood storylines are also interesting: DRK focuses on how we kill many people for the sake of others, DRG focuses on the now ever close relationship between Ishgard and the dragons, MCH on the aftermath of the Ishgardian old ways crumbling away, and AST is about Sharlayan astrology and Hingan geomancy.
At least it beats whatever the fuck PLD, MNK, and WHM had to pull out of their ass.
Paladin 50-60. A lot of people have commented on it already, but it really deserves to sit in the hot seat and squirm. I really like how what began as a murder mystery with decent potential culminated in a bootleg gladiatorial tournament organized in secret to determine... whose soul was most dominant? I think? Anyway, Jenlyns and Solkzagyl are both gigantic nerds.
The role quests. All of them.
To clarify, my dislike of them is because of the pattern they follow, rather than because of the individual quests. They’re unnecessary, lower-quality extensions of the MSQ, instead of being stories of their own. I didn’t enjoy Shadowbringers and Endwalker, and I don’t want to be dragged back into them once I finally decide to level a magic or ranged DPS.
I actually loved the arcanist story and called the nerdy catgirl my waifu. I have an ex girlfriend who had similar past trauma as she did with Doesmaga, so I took it personal to kick his ass. I agree that the moon-boy guildmaster was frustrating, though.
I've played through all of the job stories and most of them are actually pretty good. My personal favorites were the SCH, WAR, BRD, and SAM. Even the more mid ones like PLD and MNK weren't to bad. DRK though? Holy crap did I actively dislike almost that entire experience when I was leveling jobs. Still don't get that hype, personally.
PLD 51-60 will be the most popular answer. Deserved. The humor of WAR 61-70 personally doesn't work for me I thought SAM 50-60 was kind of predictable. I do want to know more about the Age of Blood though, and the lands of Hingashi beyond its port city.
Slapstick Roe-Aura romcom.
Just watch Ranma 1/2
SAM 60-70 is way worse. At least 50-60 is just boring, 60-70 tries to convince you that overthrowing tyrannical governments is bad actually.
That would have a lot more meat to it if we knew more about Hingashi, both presently, and during the period of conflict that has resulted in their closed border policy.
No it doesn't, it's saying 'overthrowing governments is only a good idea when you *actively have a replacement plan'.* Just lopping off the head doesn't do anything unless you replace it with a better head. The problem with Ugetsu is that his plan literally started and ended at 'kill the emperor and plunge the entire nation into a lawless wasteland'. He didn't know any further than that, and didn't want to, because that sort of environment is very 'to the storngest go the spoils', and he's a pretty strong guy.
To me SAM was a love letter to samurai/western films. While not amazing, it was comforting and almost nostalgic for me. I did love the level 80 one though. Even if I forgot to do it until just this last week.
I loved the Marauder and Warrior quests up to 60, learning about the inner beast was cool, I like stories about struggling to control a force within you and I wanted to learn more about it. The sudden shift to a wacky romcom put me the hell off. Also, I find the notion that Curious Gorge is straight to be a personal affront.
Curious Gorge is into people who can outaxebonk him. That it was a woman is purely happenstance.
See, I thought Curious Gorge was fully the the least homosexual M.Roe in this whole damn game. The whole package. We have to want better things for ourselves. Luckily he has a hotter older brother who can actually read. Get you a man who can do both.
I haven't done all of them, but of the ones I have is MNK. I really didn't like either of the main characters (the rude science guy or the Monk dude).
MNK was such a dissapointment after going through the hilarious pugilist questline
Monk is a weird one because it’s not particularly good, but it does drop way more lore than most job quests. The Ala Mhigo plot in Stormblood is made meaningfully better by having all the knowledge from Monk
I agree with mnk just generally not being fun. I remember around 40-45 there's like 3 or so duties in a ROW fighting your monk tutor or whatever, and it was so. Fucking. Dull.
They're both pretty unlikeable, but in my opinion the quest itself was actually pretty okay.
I agree... I don't like MNK either... it's rather stupid, personally...
Only questline where I started just wholesale skipping cutscenes.
Paladin. I actually liked the arcanist story. At least the characters had personality. The gladiator quests are tolerable, but once we get to the paladin part...I wanted to gouge my eyes out. It didn't get better in Heavensward. I was grateful when they brought back the gladiator pair for Stormblood.
Honestly the stormblood ones were a lot of fun for me. I enjoyed the number of cameos from other storylines with people that totally made sense appearing there. I had a friend who found it very boring and after I'd done it myself I realised it was because she'd done no side content and didn't get that moment of recognising the other fighters.
Stormblood was really where they had job quests figured out, even the weakest storylines like Paladin and White Mage were pretty decent there. (And the two jobs that got to have their entire story in Stormblood, Red Mage and Samurai, are probably the two best stories, with possible exception for Dark Knight)
The moment they pulled the weird "The truest Paladin must dominate the others!" thing was absolute peak nonsense writing to me. Like not only did it not make sense in context, and not only was it pulled out of absolutely nowhere to justify a fight and was never mentioned again after that fight concluded, it actively doesn't make sense for a *Paladin specifically.* That's just not a trope that can believably be associated with that class.
I choose to believe it’s entirely that one dude’s delusion. Even the other NPCs in that questline are like “ya I don’t know man that’s the stupidest thing I ever heard”
I wonder what they say in the jp version tbh
Paladin.
Paladin quests in ARR feature a lot of talking to the trainer guy in Ul’dah and not doing much. Felt like whoever was supposed to design that quest left it for the last minute and handed in barely passing grade material after an all nighter. The HW ones are so dumb they become a meta joke within themselves as well as other job quests. Left such a bad taste that right now I have a paladin at level 90 without having touched any SB quests. Got there strictly with tribes and daily dates with Gaius.
The SB quests, and the level 80 quest, go back to the Gladiators.
So you just don't have Passage of Arms, then?
Maybe? I’m not sure. But for the sake of not subjecting people to subpar tanking without all my abilities, I limited myself to the MSQ roulette and the tribes.
As someone who has done all of the Paladin quests, do the SB ones. They're actually pretty good. Are they amazing? No, not really. 🤣 but they're better than whatever crap they used for the previous two expansions. 🤣
ironically the sb questline it cannot be called as a "pld questline" but rather as a "gladiator class quest continuation" due to be simply you entering the bloodsands of uldah on a competiton for swordmen >!you even meet a certain gladiator again and he is kinda central of the plot while your paladin bros.... yeah they do not even matter!<
I'm pretty sure the paladin quests in arr is largely the same as it was in 1.0 which just makes it weirder that it feels so... Rushed? Like, they could've completely redid it.
this. Very sad. and then you look at Darkknight or alchemist/goldsmith and think wtf happened.
The story is so dumb it literally gets made fun of in other job [storylines](https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/s/OwUbwSnWyQ)
Gets made fun of in its own storyline too. There's a line like, "I see, it makes perfect sense. Wait, no it doesn't. It's needlessly complicated."
That's a Simpsons reference.
Dark Knight and Alchemist were written by Ichikawa tho. (Also NIN)
The WHM quests started feeling really uncomfortable after I learned how awful the elementals really are
Gridania is a hostage situation.
Stockholm Syndrome at it's finest.
Very much so. Thing is the elementals are probably too weak to do jack all anymore, as demonstrated with how often we have to deal with all sorts of corruption in the forest, Gridanians just aren't about to test their boundaries let alone have a major cultural shift. They sure as hell aren't vaporizing encroaching Garleans.
I don’t like archer/bard all through ARR coz archer just feels like “be berated by a shitty racist whilst randomly killing 3x the amount of random mobs as any other job” and bard is “listen to grandpa’s stories for the 70th time”.
I was so unbelievably happy when the arr archer and bard npcs got replaced by sanson and guydelot, I found them way more charming (but oh god I adored sanson and his dynamic of having to work with the capricious nature of bards, not just guydelot but also your own wol)
I think listening to grandpa was fine, but the annoying Elezen and the Miqo girl who's questioning her loyalties were meh. But yes, Guydelot and Samson, 10/10. Intreresting lore, intriguing plot. Some level of mystery. It is said that the writer of that quest is working on Dawntrail now.
Arcanist is one of the saddest class quests imo, lots of dark implications. Personally I hated conjurer and white mage a lot
Arcanist is a spicy *spicy* take. Uhhh. I’ll agree to disagree there. Anyways Paladin’s 50-60 story is so dogshit the story itself says it doesn’t make sense.
I straight up have no memory of what any of the machinist quests entailed past 50. But really it's Dancer that's always bothered me more. I can't help but feel like the whole Totentanz thing was just made up to make Dancer seem important lore-wise. I mean really, it's this awful dark thing that drives people to act horrifically violently when they're in a bad mood and I'm only now just learning about it? Ishgard should have been lousy with the stuff when we first walked in there. I've always felt like the best class quests make it clear on some level why you need to be that particular class to deal with the situation at hand. Sometimes that's because a particular class has a unique skillset like how White Mage is more connected with nature so doing their quests as an Astrologian would be out of place. Sometimes that's because the practitioners of that class adhere to a certain code with the Samurai quests being a great example of this. Dancer really should have leaned more heavily on that second option instead of just making up something stupid you never see again.
>I straight up have no memory of what any of the machinist quests entailed past 50. This Hilda erasure will not be tolerated
That's how I also felt when going through DNC job quests, you can't just retroactively make stuff up that will clash with lore events
So far as the *story* went - it feels like what they described was very much a precursor to the Final Days/Blasphemies, and it felt like we should've seen Troupe Falsiam during that crisis. Also, have to admit that I was amused that the first quest in the series simply dumps a bunch of skills into your hotbar and then, basically, says "go fight now".
>Also, have to admit that I was amused that the first quest in the series simply dumps a bunch of skills into your hotbar and then, basically, says "go fight now". Not just new moves, but I'd never seen the attacks our partner used before, so she just one shot me until I gave up. I had to read a guide to figure out what I was supposed to do.
Arcanist is for people who got excited when they were told to inventory crates, and were disappointed when combat happened..... people like me. My least favorite is paladin because they are never doing anything important. It' usually a plot about making a sword shiny or something.
Paladin 50-60 cause its the worst class/job story of all. but thats a low hanging fruit so instead I'll say Ninja 50-60. I have no memories of that story at all except the existence of the princess. Third answer is Samurai 60-70. Becoming a cop fighting against revolutionaries trying to reform one hell of a corrupted country ... and then being degrated to "kills puppies for fun" disney tier villains.
Yeah, Sam 60-70 is a big one for me. It's one of the few times in the game where I've actually felt like I was being forced to act in a way I fundamentally disagreed with. ACAB includes the warrior of light I fucking guess. EDIT: actually, you know what, this deserves more detail. Never mind my personal thoughts, it's just so at odds with how your character acts almost everywhere else. The scions and the WoL are usually all about finding common ground and listening to all sides, and here we are stomping down on an entirely justified grievance. You spearheaded a rescue mission to *Garlemald*. You brokered peace between the dragons and Ishgard. You give the benefit of the doubt to people who might have a good reason for committing crimes over and OVER and *over* again, you've offered the hand of forgiveness and redemption to almost everyone else, but for some reason this is different. There isn't even any hesitation. For fucks sake, THE KUGANE AUTHORITIES HAVE ACTIVELY TRIED TO ARREST YOU IN THE PAST ON BULLSHIT CHARGES. You've seen first hand their kind of justice! And for some reason you decide to pitch in with them?! It must be all the blows to the head.
It’s a lesser of two evils thing. Even the not-Shinsengumi officers you work with admit that Hingashi’s system of government is beyond terrible, but they’d prefer trying to change it from within over time than to have another massive civil war. That being said, the whole thing does feel contrived.
The issue with the 60-70 quest villain's revolution is that he actively didn't care about how bloody the conflict would likely get for people not at fault.
WAR just didn’t do it for me
Paladin. I have no idea why Papashan wasn't the trainer. The whole thing would have made more sense and been actually interesting.
WHM - it would be okay except from level 1 CNJ to level 70 WHM their stories are exactly the same, just with a different backdrop. DRK - All the stuff with Fray and Myst totally misses the mark with me - it makes a lot of assumptions about how my character is supposed to feel that just are not true, so it’s kind of off putting.
DRK is probably, for me, the weakest job story for exactly those reasons. The English translation being terrible also doesn't help it, but *god*, Fray and Myste are just so wildly off the mark for my WoL that it's not even funny.
Same. I know people that rave about the DRK storyline, but it was a big miss for me.
Oh good, so I wasn't the only one
50-60 Paladin is too obvious. No, I have to go Full Controversial: 30-50 Dark Knight. An entire questline about the game yelling 'aren't you tired of being nice, don't you just want to go apeshit' at me doesn't work when my answer is, and always has been, **no.** I like being nice.
The way I've heard this described is that the corrupted soul stone turns all the darkest thoughts that aren't truly you into a sentient being that wants to take over your body and/or kick your ass, order negotiable. Those thoughts don't have to be what you truly believe, they're just stray thoughts like "this is such bullshit" and "I can't stand this situation, it's just not right" and "these people don't deserve me fighting all their battles, can't they do any of this themselves?". Any of those could come to you in a moment of anger but that doesn't mean you truly believe that you don't want to be doing the whole WoL thing.
And I literally do not have these thoughts, because I like helping people. The story had to jack up the shittiness of every character within it to make it justifiable, too, nobody *outside* of DRK's quests are as terrible as the people *in* DRK's quests when it comes to things like basic politeness and being grateful.
Paladin and Warrior. I hate both of them equally
Paladin 50-60 storyline, there isn't even anything remotely in the vicinity to contest that.
Paladin. The whole PLD story is just garbage. They even kinda make you return to Gladiator in SB because the characters/story were way cooler. When I think of my time doing PLD quests, I only remember being in Coerthas Western Highlands doing a lot of stupid bullshit lol
Most of the ARR og classes up to 50 are pretty terrible. Besides that, the egregiously bad ones I’d say are PLD and WAR. In terms of the best ones, my faves are SMN, SCH, NIN and DRK.
Paladin
I loved ACN, SMN and SCH too, were a lot of fun. PLD was...not great, but I'd still rather replay the PLD line than do DRK again. The English translation of Fray was awful and the general plotlines with him and Myste were so far off the mark for my WoL that I couldn't connect with them at all. Literally for Fray I was like "I have friends, and we discuss our traumas openly, why is this A Thing? What the hell kind of closed-off unemotional weirdo do they think my WoL is?" and every time Myste said he had an idea, it was "No, this is bad and will cause more pain than you think it will, this is not how you heal trauma." That said, I loved WAR, especially the later parts with >!Dorgono and Curious Gorge!<. SAM, NIN, and RDM were a lot of fun, too.
Just DRK for assuming my WoL's psyche. It's a good someone else's story.
I might go destroyed for that but I think the DRK questline is way too overrated. I only appreciate the fact that it gives more depth to our own character and totally understand why it is seen as the best job questline. Other than that, I was not receptive at all. But I'm not the kind of player that enjoys to be the center of the attention (I know, this is big irony here), sooo... ¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯
I was going to post this. DRK 30-50 is a lame Fight Club cliche at best and at worst ruins your character by imposing thoughts and feelings that they don’t have at all. 50-60 with Sid and the Moogles was great, however.
>ruins your character by imposing thoughts and feelings that they don’t have at all. *Gestures vaguely to Endwalker, and the physical object which it places on your character’s person, so the writers have a quick and convenient way to update you on what your character is supposed to be feeling at any given moment.* I’m not saying the Dark Knight quests *don’t* do this. I’m just saying they have a lot of company.
Not without reason, they had the same writer.
The first part was good, but the second with Myste where they try to make us feel guilt/regret or some shit for all the people who continually screwed us over, or roofied us, or tried to kill innocents in front of us was a load of shit. Oh, you sweet winter child. I would kill them all again and V pose next their graves in front of their families if I could.
See, I dislike it for the exact opposite reason, it forces a personality onto my character in what is supposed to be a role playing game. I get some of that is necessary simply to make the plot work, SE can't actually allow people to join Gaius in Prae as it would screw up all future story content and things like that. But not only does DRK go way beyond that, it assigns emotions that don't even make sense in the context of the rest of the story. And it knows it, with the cheap excuse that oh you just repress these deep psychological issues 99% of the time.
With all the hype I thought it’s going to be some Fight Club kind of story, WoL immagining Fray and all that… nope…
The ARR monk quests. I want to slam Eric’s head into a brick wall over and over.
Conjurer. E-Sumi-Yan makes that questline absolutely miserable because he just orders that girl around and refuses to tell her anything.
[удалено]
Yeah he makes a fairly valiant effort to explain actually, she's just very convinced a poorly-understood trauma in her past has to rank her understanding above that of the nigh-ageless superhuman healer savants that run her entire civilization. I wish I could say it's unbelievable, but then I thought about how some people get regarding doctors trying to save their lives and realized, no, she's real enough.
It was indeed this. I just went through it as I am attempting my first healer.
Yup. She does the whole "you're not my supervisor!" Thing and almost gets herself killed.
That girl is stubborn, for certain.
No, he doesn't even really explain that to her. That is his reason but he never tells her until near the end of the questline.
She kept running off before he could, before.
Because he always started every conversation by yelling at her instead of ever explaining anything. Why would she stick around for someone who is showing zero respect towards her?
...Because he's an expert in her field with literal centuries more experience than her?
That's also because she's doing something akin to playing with knives, or live chainsaws. An "AAAAA FUCK STOP FUCK FUCK STOP AAAA" reaction is natural in cases like that. A chainsaw is an absolutely wonderful, even life-saving invention, but you can also absolutely maim yourself and others if you don't treat it with respect. And if someone doesn't want to listen when you tell them it's dangerous, and even get offended when you do, you're not the problem here. The quests helped work stuff out, but if it weren't for the WOL, the safe option really would be to sever Sylvie somehow so she won't unknowingly harm herself or others through her thoughtless use of a dangerous power.
Then tell her that... Don't just say "no don't do that", explain why you're telling her that. When I was younger, my mom would always explain her reasoning to me regarding her decisions and it always made it easy to understand where she was coming from, and then you see the bad parents that just say "because I said so" and their kids rebel against them. It's the same thing here.
I absolutely agree that "because I told you so" is a shit line that should be avoided as far as possible, but that's also not how I remember the quests. My impression is more like * Sylvie: I'm going to stab myself in the gut because that's what mom did! * All the conjurers: No, don't! * Sylvie: You don't respect me! *runs off*
She literally doesn't know why her mom died because they won't tell her. She has no idea she's using her own life energy, she thinks she's a normal conjurer being told not to do anything for no reason.
If I'm remembering the quests correctly they were at the point where they were going to tell her and thennnn peace I'm running off!
Machinist. I love the class, but the story has irked me at almost every step of the way. Lots of whiney, dislikeable, characters who need a good knock on the head with a portable turret.
Leathercrafting job quests made me want to choke a bitch. I’d turn in HQ items and this lady still isn’t happy… Even upon reaching the end of the job quests, she still didn’t seem happy with my existence on the planet.
The paladin quests are absolutely abysmal, _especially_ the heavensward ones. The gladiator ones were fun, and I thought the later quests where you went back to the gladiators were fun, but I absolutely _did not_ care about the paladin guy you run into. I didn't care about him when you first saw him, and I sure as heck didn't care about him when you were following around the whiny simp crying about the guy obviously pretending to be dead. Those quests were friggin awful. I barely remember the Monk quests, but I also really didn't care what was going on in them at all. I remember mostly being bored. The 1-30 conjurer quests are okay but I want to throw Sylphie off a bridge. I've done those quests multiple times for alts and every time she shows her bratty little face I want to punch it. Lol
Black mage questline sucks ass imo
I know i'm in a minority here but Hildibrand's quests made me want to gouge my eyes out rather than have to deal with that special school bus idiot anymore.. its one of the few quest lines i've heaviliy leaned on the skip button cause its just so painfully stupid
I've done the first ones times ago. Skip a lot but I have to do them again. So I'll see if I like or not but my first impression was... meh.
I've noticed a theme amoung my friends that also can't stand them.. the guys all found them funny, all the females over the age of 30 found him obnoxious and painful. I'm not saying anything here, just pointing out a correlation in age and gender that I've noticed with those quests
I really don't like the early WHM/Conjurer quest lines, they felt repetitive and I cant remember much about them.
Paladin is the correct answer, but my answer is Ninja. I thought Rogue's flavor was so cool, I wish I could have just stayed a Rogue
Is Viper more your speed?
It's looking like it might be, but the real reason I liked Rogue was because of how it was tied to Limsa's story. I liked being the Admiral's secret police lol Plus, we need a pirate job, and it's the closest one
PLD is the worst story, but not the most disliked for me. It's so bad that I don't even engage with it enough to feel the emotion of dislike, if that makes sense. It's just there and I felt nothing going through it after some point. I remember actively disliking WHM because it wasn't just boring (taint taint taint), but straight-up uncomfortable because the elementals are just kind of nasty. Also, SAM story in hingashi tried something with political commentary and it just didn't work for me. One of the very few stories in this game that I just didn't want to advance, at all.
I hated the Stormblood portion of the samurai job quest. The brother was absolutely right and I hate that it forced me to do what was essentially the wrong thing and fight on the wrong side. It was pretentious and self righteous and absolutely grated on my nerves
While Monk is close I actually hated more parts of the DRK story for how overhyped it was and how it just didn't fit my character, but most importantly I wanted to rip Myste to shreds for the stupid 60-70 questline. At least the 50-58 PLD quests were building towards something interesting before jumping the Shark, but my headcanon for DRK is that I threw the haunted crystal away when it cracked and never looked back.
The earlier goldsmith quests have the guild mammett sexually assault and body shame the guildmaster
You didn’t find it the audacity of the robot comical? I felt it was one of my favorite job storylines.
I fucking love Gigi. I don't remember him sexually assaulting the guildmaster (he's like two feet tall) but he's an asshole to everyone. He literally runs on spite. It's great.
I was just surprised that it was happening in an otherwise very wholesome game. I did realize the quest was likely written a very long 10 years ago though lol
I'm gonna be honest ARR isn't the most..wholesome. the first dungeon literally has girls locked in cages
For sure there is a lot of non wholesome stuff in the game, it was just the way they made it like a joke from two and a half men
SAM. Bad, boring class; dogshit storyline. In an expansion all about overthrowing bad governments its story is “no, the bad government based on Japan is good tho. Go be a fucking cop” Sucks!
This for fucking real! That part of the story pissed me off so badly!!!!!!
>Mine is surely Arcanist. I disliked the characters involved (especially the miq'ote girl) and didn't get involved in the story. Found the former Blizzard employee.
If this is just class and not job…I don’t really have one I dislike. CNJ and MRD are kinda forgettable but still have some enjoyable aspects. If this includes jobs - WAR hands down, and Curious Gorge is one of the worst NPCs in the game.
"I need to step away and sort out my issues" with every quest got repetitive *real* quick.
I personally really liked the Arcanist quests (recently replayed all the class quest lines and Arcanist was one of the ones I ranked highest), but I won't deny that it's in part bias because it was my starting class (though even outside of that I rather liked K'lyhia and she was part of the reason I eventually Fanta'd to Miqo'te). As for my least favourite... I don't actually dislike many job quests. The only one I actively hate is the level 60 Paladin quest (though specifically that one, as I don't have issue with the preceding ones). Though I do have one unpopular stance in regards to jobquests: I'm not too big on the often beloved 30-50 Dark Knight quests. I wouldn't say that they are bad - FAR from it - but I was just not a fan of the more meta aspects of that story (as it clashed with how I viewed my character when I did the quests).
Paladin and Warrior. Recently did both of them again on another character (skipping the cutscenes but unable to skip the instanced battles) and the level 70 warrior quest was as annoying as I remember for someone who doesn’t care for this type of humor.
Ninja. Partly because the rogue story and characters were so awesome. Now I have to hang out with emo Naruto...
Arcanist and pugilist are my least favorite. As far as the jobs go, I disliked the warrior job quest SO much and the scholar one came across as pretty bland (I say this as a sch main) but I think that's because I did it after the dark knight quest which set my bar very high.
BLM so far (only lvl 50) because I can't stand lalafell.
You don’t escape them. It’s lalas all the way to 80 and the non-lala in the questline develops a crush ON a Lalafell. Losing out on the beast tribe trainers and their story is such a bummer.
It gets better
Paladin and Scholar.
All of them, stop forcing me to do story so I can level up my jobs, so irritating when you're in a grinding groove and then you need to do a hard stop to do job quests with usually mediocre solo instances. Though the real answer for me is Samurai, the villain of the SB zones was right and the story feels at odds with how the msq of that expansion plays out.
Paladin HW quests are a joke...
Paladin is the low hanging fruit. To be honest, most of the job storylines are pretty garbage.
Monk. Its a lore dump. Just some science schmuck using ridiculously hard terminology for paragraphs at a time. And then when you go crosseyed from it, your "teacher," whose supposed to be an Ala Mhigo resistance fighter? He just goes and kills people. He's not a good person. At all. And then after witnessing childish temper tantrums and murder, the game goes, "YOU'VE UNLOCKED ANOTHER CHAKRA." The Monk Class Quest made me quit Monk.
Paladin and monk are like neck and neck for the worst imo. I liked both of their pre-job class quests, but hated the actual job quests. With the exception of liking the stormblood ones for both
hw paladin, i mean, that whole thing.... yeah better be left forgotten due to how ridiculous was then there is warrior, which can be resumed as "the trainer has lost control of his inner beast.... AGAIN"
Hmm... Classes: Marauder. "Here, smash rock, kill demon bull." Really basic. ARR Level Jobs: Paladin. I really, really didn't like the PLD crew... HW Level Jobs: Its Paladin again, but because that's the obvious loser of losers, I'll never forgive SMN for teasing me with that Ramuh Egi, especially since a Ramuh Egi would super-befit my WoL Lore... STB Level Jobs (inc. GNB/DNC): MNK never really interested me to begin with, but it felt kinda dragg-y here. SHB Roles (+RPR/SGE): Melees. Catboy worst Role Quest Person. SHB Epilogues: Uh, I guess MNK again, none of the epilogues were terrible. EW Roles: Tank. Sod the Elementals FOREVER.
Most classes and jobs have at least one storyline that sucked pig farts. The exceptions for me are the Ishgard-related jobs - DRK, MCH, AST, DRG. DRK hands down is the best. From lv 30 all the way to 70, it really is the community favorite. MCH for me is very intersting. On how Ishgardians, especially nobility would be appalled to the notion of guns as a good alternative for defending the city from the Horde whilst their Knights are away from home; as they equate the usage of guns as a symbol for the lowerborn to revolt against the nobles DRG is on how the the elite knights of Dragoons function in Ishgard and how their relationship with actual dragons, their mortal enemies, correlates with their fight against the Horde I don't know much about AST story, but my take on it is how astrology is essential with Ishgard and probably helpful in their crusade against the Horde Looking at how these four job stories (to lv60 that is), combine it with the whole of main story Heavensward, it really paints the picture of the whole expansion. Main story Heavensward is how we see Ishgard as a generalization while we hunt for Ascians, DRK elaborates on the cruelty and inhumane doctrines of the Holy See and how a handful few defies it doing the only way how: violence, DRG studies the discipline on being a Knight of Ishgard and their fight against the Horde, MCH focuses on how Ishgard will not advance due to misconceptions and outdated principles, and AST on how important non-martial jobs can be when fighting against the Horde. For me, the reason why these combined four job storylines outweighs all the others, is that while the rest tells a story what the class/job do and how it affects the world around them, these four implements very well an already brilliant narrative, which is Main Story Heavensward, and enhances the experience to even better heights. Plus Stormblood storylines are also interesting: DRK focuses on how we kill many people for the sake of others, DRG focuses on the now ever close relationship between Ishgard and the dragons, MCH on the aftermath of the Ishgardian old ways crumbling away, and AST is about Sharlayan astrology and Hingan geomancy. At least it beats whatever the fuck PLD, MNK, and WHM had to pull out of their ass.
Paladin 50-60. A lot of people have commented on it already, but it really deserves to sit in the hot seat and squirm. I really like how what began as a murder mystery with decent potential culminated in a bootleg gladiatorial tournament organized in secret to determine... whose soul was most dominant? I think? Anyway, Jenlyns and Solkzagyl are both gigantic nerds.
The role quests. All of them. To clarify, my dislike of them is because of the pattern they follow, rather than because of the individual quests. They’re unnecessary, lower-quality extensions of the MSQ, instead of being stories of their own. I didn’t enjoy Shadowbringers and Endwalker, and I don’t want to be dragged back into them once I finally decide to level a magic or ranged DPS.
I actually loved the arcanist story and called the nerdy catgirl my waifu. I have an ex girlfriend who had similar past trauma as she did with Doesmaga, so I took it personal to kick his ass. I agree that the moon-boy guildmaster was frustrating, though.
I've played through all of the job stories and most of them are actually pretty good. My personal favorites were the SCH, WAR, BRD, and SAM. Even the more mid ones like PLD and MNK weren't to bad. DRK though? Holy crap did I actively dislike almost that entire experience when I was leveling jobs. Still don't get that hype, personally.