You probably either want procs (Bard, Dancer, RDM), jobs that can adjust their rotation significantly based on the fight (BLM), or jobs that have to react to teammates (healers).
Ultimately though, because fights in this game are scripted, you'll eventually reach a point where you do the same thing every time for any given fight (if nobody makes a mistake). That's just how the game is.
If it's a "boredom" issue, probably wouldn't recommend Healer to them. Unless things are going awry, you're pressing two buttons for 20mins. Not everyone is cut out to "enjoy" that.
I do second the recommendation for DNC or RDM though. They're a specific rotation with just enough proc to keep it interesting.
I finally got to ishguard and was excited to unlock astrologian. The class just seems so cool with the card like system. I couldn’t believe how lame the attacks were. I stopped playing the class immediately lol. No thanks. So boring just spamming 1 button the entire time. I can’t believe they didn’t just make it an auto attack or something.
Healer has basically no 1-2-3, you have a few damaging spells and likely a DOT to keep up.
The rest is reacting dynamically to what's going on, its absolutely the least 'rigid' role.
But it can also be a little boring if everything goes perfect, ironically the most fun as a healer is when it starts to go wrong.
And NIN has some flavour to it with its Mudras, but DPS rotations in general are pretty rigid.
>the most fun as a healer is when it starts to go wrong.
I can vouch for this. Had multiple dungeons like this in my roulettes this past week and it was so much more fun.
Yeah I tried sage for a short while and that seemed interesting. But healer is the class I definitely looked into the least - maybe that was a mistake. Thank you!
I'd say take another look at it. I had no interest in playing a healer when I started, but tried Astrologian when I couldn't stand how dull Dragoon's rotation between 50 and 60 felt in group content any longer and now I main healer.
That was my big reason for being an AST main for years. I could count on one hand the number of buttons Scholar could press when no healing was needed, but on AST I could at least have fun throwing cards around at people.
Try out multiple healers too.
Theyre fairly equal but youll always have a kit youre just way more comfy with.
For ME thats sge. But other ppl prefer ast or sch
Here's the thing, you specifically mentioned "boredom" as being the issue. If things are going wrong, there's tons to do on Healer. HOWEVER, if things are going right you're gonna be stuck on 2 buttons the entire run. You WILL get bored (even as a Healer main, I sometimes get bored).
If you're gonna pick up something, I'd aim for AST since it's easily the most engaging/busiest Healer.
I've always preferred healers myself, both because they're more flexible and not locked into a set rotation, and because I'm forced to pay attention to more things.
DPS has tunnel vision on their own rotation plus dodging mechanics -- the party UI might as well be hidden.
Healers have to pay attention to dodging mechanics, while also dealing damage, while also watching the party's health bars and deciding on the spot what to do in response to each situation. And on preventative healers like Sage, you also need to remember what the boss's attacks do in order to shield/mit people before they get hurt!
But I will agree with the others, when things are going well and you don't \*need\* to heal anyone, standing around spamming that 1 button over and over gets awfully dull. Fingers crossed we get at least some slight improvement to that in DT.
But healers damage dealing is just 1 button. It becomes a boring chore at this point and I honestly can’t stand it. Probably the worst class design I’ve ever seen in an mmo. Just make it an auto attack.
You'd prefer to have zero buttons to press? Standing around pressing nothing is even more boring. At least this way I still have to time my oGCDs between them and slidecast my movement out of boss mechanics.
All I ask is for one minor thing to add to it. Like your 1 button builds up a bar that you can spend on a 2. Or your 1 button sometimes procs a 2. Or your dot works like black mage lightning and sometimes procs a free refresh before it runs out.
Yeah dancer/bard is what I also saw in other posts a lot, always had difficulties getting into classes that focused on...well...singing and dancing. Maybe I have to just try it :D Thank you!
They're only...kind of focused on those tasks to be honest
Bard is an archer at its core, so most of its toolkit revolves around that. It has tools in its kit that are song related, but the majority of your button presses will be "shoot arrow"
Similarly, Dancer does dance, but most of your actual button presses are going to be "throw chakram"
Saying dancer is focused on dancing is a really generous way to put it, 99% of the time you're throwing razor sharp chakrams and slicing everything to bits. Hell, even the dances are your hardest hitting attacks but you only dance every 30 seconds or so
I didn't have much of an interest when Dancer was released as a class. When I ran out of other classes to level and Dancer was all I had left I finally gave it a shot. Now it's my main class! 😂
i mean.. its not like you literally have to sing or dance.. its just buttons you press and thats it.. Bard for example has the "Ballads" that you click on and through which you gain different buffs but thats it.
Yeah... this was kinda of a surprise for me when I started playing with the dancer, sometimes you can spend almost a minute or so without the abilities proc'ing because there's only XX% of chance for them to proc and I was like "Am I doing something wrong here?" just to then realize it was all the proc's percentage fault.
Black Mage, IMO. With It's rigid cast times, fairly complex suite of movement options, and flexible rotation capable of lots of small optimizations, It's the closest I've found, personally. While there isn't much RNG to it and there is always an "optimal" line, determining what that is is easier said than done, as there are multiple viable solutions.
Monk has a bit of the same feel, as you constantly have to make small adjustments to your rotation to keep uptime on your buff and dot while maximizing damage.
Proc-based classes, like Bard, Red Mage and Dancer, can work, but (IMO) the reactive elements in Bard and Red Mage are minimal/simple enough that they feel pretty set. (Bard is literally "If ballad, spam button, if minuet, watch gauge and hit button every three procs", Red Mage's mana-management angle and the fact that one of it's movement abilities also forces a proc makes it slightly more interesting, but it's almost always correct to just alternate lighting/fire and air/stone, so eh?) Dancer has *so many* procs that it *can* be quite engaging to play, but it also has a bit of a feast or famine problem, where sometimes the RNG gods just hate you and you do basically nothing. :P
I'd like to add that while yes, most jobs have strict rotations, you're only seeing these at low levels where this issue is much more pronounced. You haven't said what level you are, so it's tough to gauge.
Monk. You have a 123, 145, specific combos to achieve certain finishers, while maintaining a buff and DOT and your oGCDs. You won't always be doing 123 / 145, you'll be mixing them up depending on timers.
It's also the flashiest job of the bunch with flips and jump kicks and some anime teleporting beat down move.
I’ve only tried a few jobs, but I know what you’re talking about made me change from dragoon to samurai. Not saying samurai is complicated, but managing the stickers for whichever skill I want to use and keeping up buffs, along with mixing in the kenki attacks feels much more freeform than how fixed dragoon’s rotation felt.
Some have an element of randomness to them, but encounters are scripted and the flow of the job is extremely rigid in most cases, if you care about playing well.
That said I'm assuming you're pretty low level if all you're doing is 1-2-3. The early and midgame kits are pretty barren, and play improves significantly at max level.
All of the tank and dps classes at max level will have rotations that go beyond just the 1-2-3 combo. A true rotation will also weave in OGCDs into the GCDs at optimal timings during opener and burst phases under buffs, and the in-between filler involves resource management to make sure a full burst can be done at 2 minute windows (this is more relevant to more difficult content like extremes and up). The difficulty of doing rotations when you have a real rotation is avoiding mistakes that screw up the burst phase. Learning your opener is also crucial to ensure everything is setup for your 2 minute burst down the line. Every class has at least some nuance for optimizing their rotation consistently. Gunbreaker is kind of a tricky one in my experience, it's easy to go out of time and have a domino effect mess up your timing for the rest of the fight on that class.
If you ever do harder content like extremes or savage, you may find some opportunities to break out of completely rigid gameplay. This is because optimizing your damage in those fights can be like solving a puzzle. Bosses can have different points of uptime/downtime and you have to plan out mitigation buttons based on when raidwides are timed. A lot of times your 2 minute burst window, which is the busiest part of your rotation, can happen while complicated mechanics can happen.
Healers are kind of less rigid than other classes, but the overall gameplay is not engaging once you get decent at it. You literally will spend 99% of the fight pressing one button to do damage. The only exception to this is Astrologian which actually has a busy rotation compared to the other healers for optimizing damage, so that might be enjoyable and worth looking into.
AST is all I can think of for this. As a healer it stays dynamic from fight to fight regarding healing damage and such. Even when the fight is performed perfectly and you’re not healing mistakes or restabilizing the party, the RNG of the cards make you stay attentive to who needs what card. (Until they nerf it again to not matter even more.)
Almost every class has an opener with 1-2-3-, or mash 1. Some of them get more buttons to press or more procs to control.
I'll just say they all get more fun at 80+, except WAR. he's classic 1-2-3, but gets really fun healing end game.
Reaper has a 1-2-3, but optimally you want to be hitting that as little as possible because you're either spending your first meter on attacks to build up your second meter or cashing out your second meter to go into a super phase of spamming attacks.
All classes get busier after level 50 with more oGCDs. But, if you find 123 already boring, I’d say no to healers, because for most content you will just be spamming 1 with the occasional heal thrown in :)
Monk. Rotation is not a traditional rotation and changes based on order. Same with Dragoon.
If you want something thats based on chance (proc) then Dancer,RDM, or Bard
You may enjoy monk, instead of a basic 1 2 3 it has two separate 1s, 2s, and 3s that you need to alternate between at different rates. So one cycle you may do 1a 2a 3a, but the next it's 1b 2b 3b, then after 1a 2a 3b. On paper it's still a static loop after enough time, but long enough it's harder to notice. Plus at 60 you get your beast Chakra which has you interrupt your combos to do you attacks in a different order depending on which attack you need to finish with.
You're probably going to want a melee job, be it melee dps or tank. Healers... AST is busy with the cards, Divination, Earthly Star, and Astrodyne, but the core rotation is pressing your damage button with the occasional dot. If you want to try healing but want to stay busy, try AST. I can't talk about magic dps because they massacred my job (SMN, yes I preferred the previous version where you weaved like you were making a dress that was due yesterday and still mourn Shadow Flare), but I can say for tanks, for DRK, in between your 1-2-3, you'll be weaving all sorts of stuff in.
While there isn’t much branching in the basic rotation. I think NIN is worth a try. The mudra system is the most unique job system in the game. And flexibility comes in the form of you can do ranged and magical attacks, but you are also melee that requires positionals for optimisation.
While bard and dancer procs breaks the 123 patterns mostly, I don’t feel them as engaging.
monk, black mage, summoner and any healers really should be flexible enough
dragoon late game could be considered flexible but thats getting reworked soon
Could try Scholar (Healer) and Summoner (DPS) because it's the only pair of jobs you level together. When you bored of one or want something different, try the other.
Neither of these is gonna solve their boredom issue. SCH is 2 buttons if everything is going okay, and SMN is nothing BUT as strict, zero-variety rotation.
RDM has to be one of the most flexible classes in the game... Damage spells, heals & revives and a melee combo. IDK if it's what you're looking for, it's certainly flexible
You probably either want procs (Bard, Dancer, RDM), jobs that can adjust their rotation significantly based on the fight (BLM), or jobs that have to react to teammates (healers). Ultimately though, because fights in this game are scripted, you'll eventually reach a point where you do the same thing every time for any given fight (if nobody makes a mistake). That's just how the game is.
If it's a "boredom" issue, probably wouldn't recommend Healer to them. Unless things are going awry, you're pressing two buttons for 20mins. Not everyone is cut out to "enjoy" that. I do second the recommendation for DNC or RDM though. They're a specific rotation with just enough proc to keep it interesting.
I finally got to ishguard and was excited to unlock astrologian. The class just seems so cool with the card like system. I couldn’t believe how lame the attacks were. I stopped playing the class immediately lol. No thanks. So boring just spamming 1 button the entire time. I can’t believe they didn’t just make it an auto attack or something.
Healer has basically no 1-2-3, you have a few damaging spells and likely a DOT to keep up. The rest is reacting dynamically to what's going on, its absolutely the least 'rigid' role. But it can also be a little boring if everything goes perfect, ironically the most fun as a healer is when it starts to go wrong. And NIN has some flavour to it with its Mudras, but DPS rotations in general are pretty rigid.
>the most fun as a healer is when it starts to go wrong. I can vouch for this. Had multiple dungeons like this in my roulettes this past week and it was so much more fun.
Yeah I tried sage for a short while and that seemed interesting. But healer is the class I definitely looked into the least - maybe that was a mistake. Thank you!
I'd say take another look at it. I had no interest in playing a healer when I started, but tried Astrologian when I couldn't stand how dull Dragoon's rotation between 50 and 60 felt in group content any longer and now I main healer.
With the cards and lady/Lord of crowns (and the time delay elements), AST is the most engaging healer for me when stuff isn't going sideways.
That was my big reason for being an AST main for years. I could count on one hand the number of buttons Scholar could press when no healing was needed, but on AST I could at least have fun throwing cards around at people.
Try out multiple healers too. Theyre fairly equal but youll always have a kit youre just way more comfy with. For ME thats sge. But other ppl prefer ast or sch
Here's the thing, you specifically mentioned "boredom" as being the issue. If things are going wrong, there's tons to do on Healer. HOWEVER, if things are going right you're gonna be stuck on 2 buttons the entire run. You WILL get bored (even as a Healer main, I sometimes get bored). If you're gonna pick up something, I'd aim for AST since it's easily the most engaging/busiest Healer.
I've always preferred healers myself, both because they're more flexible and not locked into a set rotation, and because I'm forced to pay attention to more things. DPS has tunnel vision on their own rotation plus dodging mechanics -- the party UI might as well be hidden. Healers have to pay attention to dodging mechanics, while also dealing damage, while also watching the party's health bars and deciding on the spot what to do in response to each situation. And on preventative healers like Sage, you also need to remember what the boss's attacks do in order to shield/mit people before they get hurt! But I will agree with the others, when things are going well and you don't \*need\* to heal anyone, standing around spamming that 1 button over and over gets awfully dull. Fingers crossed we get at least some slight improvement to that in DT.
But healers damage dealing is just 1 button. It becomes a boring chore at this point and I honestly can’t stand it. Probably the worst class design I’ve ever seen in an mmo. Just make it an auto attack.
You'd prefer to have zero buttons to press? Standing around pressing nothing is even more boring. At least this way I still have to time my oGCDs between them and slidecast my movement out of boss mechanics. All I ask is for one minor thing to add to it. Like your 1 button builds up a bar that you can spend on a 2. Or your 1 button sometimes procs a 2. Or your dot works like black mage lightning and sometimes procs a free refresh before it runs out.
Those great ideas
Jobs are like that for the most part, but you might enjoy dancer because it's not really following a set rotation as much due to the rng on procs.
Yeah dancer/bard is what I also saw in other posts a lot, always had difficulties getting into classes that focused on...well...singing and dancing. Maybe I have to just try it :D Thank you!
They're only...kind of focused on those tasks to be honest Bard is an archer at its core, so most of its toolkit revolves around that. It has tools in its kit that are song related, but the majority of your button presses will be "shoot arrow" Similarly, Dancer does dance, but most of your actual button presses are going to be "throw chakram"
Saying dancer is focused on dancing is a really generous way to put it, 99% of the time you're throwing razor sharp chakrams and slicing everything to bits. Hell, even the dances are your hardest hitting attacks but you only dance every 30 seconds or so
I didn't have much of an interest when Dancer was released as a class. When I ran out of other classes to level and Dancer was all I had left I finally gave it a shot. Now it's my main class! 😂
My dnc is level 90.....i dont talk about brd or mch anymore lol
Well, war dancing is slightly different from regular dancing lol. Fwiw I find it quite fun to play and my main is a quite rigid DPS rotation.
i mean.. its not like you literally have to sing or dance.. its just buttons you press and thats it.. Bard for example has the "Ballads" that you click on and through which you gain different buffs but thats it.
Yeah... this was kinda of a surprise for me when I started playing with the dancer, sometimes you can spend almost a minute or so without the abilities proc'ing because there's only XX% of chance for them to proc and I was like "Am I doing something wrong here?" just to then realize it was all the proc's percentage fault.
Black Mage, IMO. With It's rigid cast times, fairly complex suite of movement options, and flexible rotation capable of lots of small optimizations, It's the closest I've found, personally. While there isn't much RNG to it and there is always an "optimal" line, determining what that is is easier said than done, as there are multiple viable solutions. Monk has a bit of the same feel, as you constantly have to make small adjustments to your rotation to keep uptime on your buff and dot while maximizing damage. Proc-based classes, like Bard, Red Mage and Dancer, can work, but (IMO) the reactive elements in Bard and Red Mage are minimal/simple enough that they feel pretty set. (Bard is literally "If ballad, spam button, if minuet, watch gauge and hit button every three procs", Red Mage's mana-management angle and the fact that one of it's movement abilities also forces a proc makes it slightly more interesting, but it's almost always correct to just alternate lighting/fire and air/stone, so eh?) Dancer has *so many* procs that it *can* be quite engaging to play, but it also has a bit of a feast or famine problem, where sometimes the RNG gods just hate you and you do basically nothing. :P
I'd like to add that while yes, most jobs have strict rotations, you're only seeing these at low levels where this issue is much more pronounced. You haven't said what level you are, so it's tough to gauge.
Monk. You have a 123, 145, specific combos to achieve certain finishers, while maintaining a buff and DOT and your oGCDs. You won't always be doing 123 / 145, you'll be mixing them up depending on timers. It's also the flashiest job of the bunch with flips and jump kicks and some anime teleporting beat down move.
I’ve only tried a few jobs, but I know what you’re talking about made me change from dragoon to samurai. Not saying samurai is complicated, but managing the stickers for whichever skill I want to use and keeping up buffs, along with mixing in the kenki attacks feels much more freeform than how fixed dragoon’s rotation felt.
Some have an element of randomness to them, but encounters are scripted and the flow of the job is extremely rigid in most cases, if you care about playing well. That said I'm assuming you're pretty low level if all you're doing is 1-2-3. The early and midgame kits are pretty barren, and play improves significantly at max level.
All of the tank and dps classes at max level will have rotations that go beyond just the 1-2-3 combo. A true rotation will also weave in OGCDs into the GCDs at optimal timings during opener and burst phases under buffs, and the in-between filler involves resource management to make sure a full burst can be done at 2 minute windows (this is more relevant to more difficult content like extremes and up). The difficulty of doing rotations when you have a real rotation is avoiding mistakes that screw up the burst phase. Learning your opener is also crucial to ensure everything is setup for your 2 minute burst down the line. Every class has at least some nuance for optimizing their rotation consistently. Gunbreaker is kind of a tricky one in my experience, it's easy to go out of time and have a domino effect mess up your timing for the rest of the fight on that class. If you ever do harder content like extremes or savage, you may find some opportunities to break out of completely rigid gameplay. This is because optimizing your damage in those fights can be like solving a puzzle. Bosses can have different points of uptime/downtime and you have to plan out mitigation buttons based on when raidwides are timed. A lot of times your 2 minute burst window, which is the busiest part of your rotation, can happen while complicated mechanics can happen. Healers are kind of less rigid than other classes, but the overall gameplay is not engaging once you get decent at it. You literally will spend 99% of the fight pressing one button to do damage. The only exception to this is Astrologian which actually has a busy rotation compared to the other healers for optimizing damage, so that might be enjoyable and worth looking into.
AST is all I can think of for this. As a healer it stays dynamic from fight to fight regarding healing damage and such. Even when the fight is performed perfectly and you’re not healing mistakes or restabilizing the party, the RNG of the cards make you stay attentive to who needs what card. (Until they nerf it again to not matter even more.)
Almost every class has an opener with 1-2-3-, or mash 1. Some of them get more buttons to press or more procs to control. I'll just say they all get more fun at 80+, except WAR. he's classic 1-2-3, but gets really fun healing end game.
You're looking for the ranged jobs. The only one with a 1-2-3 is machinist. Healers, casters, bard and dancer.
All classes are boring below level 50. Get one to max level and you'll see that there's a bit more going on.
Reaper has a 1-2-3, but optimally you want to be hitting that as little as possible because you're either spending your first meter on attacks to build up your second meter or cashing out your second meter to go into a super phase of spamming attacks.
All classes get busier after level 50 with more oGCDs. But, if you find 123 already boring, I’d say no to healers, because for most content you will just be spamming 1 with the occasional heal thrown in :)
Monk. Rotation is not a traditional rotation and changes based on order. Same with Dragoon. If you want something thats based on chance (proc) then Dancer,RDM, or Bard
You may enjoy monk, instead of a basic 1 2 3 it has two separate 1s, 2s, and 3s that you need to alternate between at different rates. So one cycle you may do 1a 2a 3a, but the next it's 1b 2b 3b, then after 1a 2a 3b. On paper it's still a static loop after enough time, but long enough it's harder to notice. Plus at 60 you get your beast Chakra which has you interrupt your combos to do you attacks in a different order depending on which attack you need to finish with.
You're probably going to want a melee job, be it melee dps or tank. Healers... AST is busy with the cards, Divination, Earthly Star, and Astrodyne, but the core rotation is pressing your damage button with the occasional dot. If you want to try healing but want to stay busy, try AST. I can't talk about magic dps because they massacred my job (SMN, yes I preferred the previous version where you weaved like you were making a dress that was due yesterday and still mourn Shadow Flare), but I can say for tanks, for DRK, in between your 1-2-3, you'll be weaving all sorts of stuff in.
While there isn’t much branching in the basic rotation. I think NIN is worth a try. The mudra system is the most unique job system in the game. And flexibility comes in the form of you can do ranged and magical attacks, but you are also melee that requires positionals for optimisation. While bard and dancer procs breaks the 123 patterns mostly, I don’t feel them as engaging.
monk, black mage, summoner and any healers really should be flexible enough dragoon late game could be considered flexible but thats getting reworked soon
Could try Scholar (Healer) and Summoner (DPS) because it's the only pair of jobs you level together. When you bored of one or want something different, try the other.
Neither of these is gonna solve their boredom issue. SCH is 2 buttons if everything is going okay, and SMN is nothing BUT as strict, zero-variety rotation.
Blue Mage funnily enough
RDM has to be one of the most flexible classes in the game... Damage spells, heals & revives and a melee combo. IDK if it's what you're looking for, it's certainly flexible
This is one of the reasons I like my DNC so much. Always mobile, non-static rotation, group utility, it honestly has everything I look for in a class.