Choosing a DoM class for my characterFollow

If you're peaceful by nature and dislike war, I can't see BLM working all that well. From the "likes to work alone" part, I would think either SMN or SCH.

Second the Arcanist. Two primary characters in the storyline epitomize at least some of the qualities you have in your character, including the works alone/distrust of others bit.

Going through the storyline for ACN is actually a good way to naturally grow your character into someone who values the contributions others make, if not outright enjoy their company. So you have good rationalization for starting out the way you do and as the quest goes on your character can slowly understand the good others can do. Maybe she still prefers to keep her distance and work alone, but she also understands the necessity of sometimes working with others.

Edited, May 29th 2014 1:49am by Quor

But the thing is, aren't SCHs basically arcane-wielding versions of these guys?:
http://rift.wikia.com/wiki/Warlord
http://www.play-frugal.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/Bloefhiswyn.png

The image you have there is the Admiral, who is the unplayable Musketeer class. She is not an arcanist.

Arcanists in XIV use grimoires to help them devise tactics. Your first summons is Emerald Carbuncle, a benign blue squirrel. and then you later unlock Topaz Carbuncle, who has enmity generating capabilities to keep monsters off you. Basically, arcanist is designed to be a back line job, and when playing solo, is intended to be played in tandem with a summoned pet.

Edited, May 29th 2014 9:12am by Catwho

DoM story spoilers ahead.

SpoilerCNJ has you essentially becoming the mentor/savior for a young girl.
THM has you acting in a very altruistic way to save a young Lalafell and end a great evil.
ACN has you working in tandem with another ACN to catch a notorious pirate and bring peace to your ACN companion.

They all have moments regarding teamwork, and in all of them these moments are prominently placed, and visited often. ACN holds up the best because you have a separate companion, magical in nature, that can easily serve as your "only" trusted friend. CNJ and THM get nothing in that regard, and it's so much richer to say you trust Carbuncle than just to say you trust no one but yourself, particularly when CNJ and THM both have story lines that go counter to that line of thinking.

Edited, May 29th 2014 5:59pm by Quor

I still say arcanist. As you've pointed out, the Padjal are just as arrogant as everyone else in Gridania. Ul'Dahns only like you if you are rich. The Limsans seem to be the most accepting and equitable of the three nations - half the population was an outlaw just a few years ago, so these days they can't really discriminate too much.

The leader of the Arcanist guild is himself a loner. He is absent until some of the later arcanist quests because he, too, prefers to be alone. I think it's only one small faction of the Arcanist's guild who works for the Limsans - some of the initial quests involve paperwork and nagging others, but that fades fast as they realize you have other talents more suitable for wandering the world, like the guild master.

Classes were much less lore based, yes. Instead we had much more severe racial tensions in FFXI.

Tarutaru: Cognates to the Lalafell. Most numerous race, they bred like rabbits. Hated the Elvaan, friends with Mithra.
Mithra: Female only race. (Cat boys existed but they were so rare they didn't venture outside of the home. We got one measly male catboy NPC...) Very tribal in nature. Friends with Tarutaru.
Elvaan: Arrogant and proud. Got into a really nasty war with Tarutaru a few hundred years ago, lost, and have been bitter ever since.
Humes: Easy going to the point of apathy and laziness, although by some accounts the most advanced technologically (since they want machines to do the work.) Enslaved the Galka. Incredibly racist toward the Galka, whom they rescued from a giant ant invasion. (Really. Entire Galka civilization collapsed because of giant ants.)
Galka: Male only race, cognates of our Roegadyn. Hate Humes, but still work with them. They kind of reincarnate. Long lived, like turtles.

The Elvaan live in San d'Oria and HATE outsiders, so you'd probably end up there. Honestly your character would be a Galka in XI, but since there aren't any females, she'd probably work best as a Mithra. Her own tribe could have kicked her out since she became an adventurer, and if she moved to San d'Oria to boot, she'd be doubly outcast. Much of the racial lore around the Mithra is around controlling their own "sin."

And I'd put the character as a RDM in FFXI. Red mages had healing abilities and were the enfeebling masters of the game. A red mage could take part in a team, but they were the masters of soloing difficult fights that could otherwise take an entire party or alliance to down. (I've heard a high level RDM fight as "annoying a monster to death.") Red mages also did have a partial base in San d'Oria, although jobs in FFXI don't have formal guilds.

Well, in some sense. Your XI character is in the "happy" universe. There are several parallel universes where things are not so good and you interact with them in the expansions. In Chains of Promathia and Wings of the Goddess, you do save the world. In Abyssea, your alternate reality self lost to CoP's final boss and things went to pot pretty fast.

Your character isn't really mistreated that much though. And you become friends with some pretty important people. (The Duke of Jeuno, the pirate princess and her brother the head of the Tenshodo, the heir of Tavnazia and her immortal best friend and the Cardinal of the church, the Empress of Aht Urghan and her brother the Grand Vizier, a time traveler whose other dimension self is the Demon Queen, and lately the princess of Adoulin and her brother who is the ruler.) By the end of each expansion, the majority of the NPCs are a bit more respectful. (To the end, though, the soldiers in Sandy bark out "move along foreigner!" even though you saved the kingdom TWICE. Bleah.)

XIV is pretty dark too. Bahamut took out a good chunk of the population of Gridania and permanently altered the landscape. (The southern part of North Shroud used to be as green and lush as East Shroud is.) Many thousands of people died in the final battle itself. Ul'Dah is filled with refugees and orphans it doesn't have the room to handle. Limsa is running out of arable land and is having trouble feeding its own growing population.

Arcanist is currently the closest we have to a Red Mage, since they get DoTs as their primary offense.

I just know that whenever I've brought up this very same topic about the harsh treatment in XIV, someone has often chimed in and said that XI was just as bad, if not worse in this regard. For instance one guy said that the Elvaan are even more "arrogant" than the Wildwood Elezen in XIV, the Tarutaru and Humes are just as unscrupulous as the Syndicate/Brass Blades, etc.

By "mistreated" I mean the kind of attitude I have established my character as being resentful of, is it more frequent in XI than in XIV?

One more thing I noticed about FFXIV was that in contrast to WoW where >70% of ALL NPCs of a particular race have specific personality traits, the races themselves don't actually have that much of a personality "archetype". That is, their lore descriptions really only apply to a certain extent, and many of the NPCs you meet could easily have come from another starting city.

Is this the same for XI as well? Or do the races have more of a cookie cutter mold? (i.e is Naja Salaheem the exception or the rule when it comes to Mithras?)

Edited, May 31st 2014 1:57am by JFrombaugh

Edited, May 31st 2014 2:01am by JFrombaugh

Well, thank you for everything Catwho. Maybe at some point I'll try out the 14 day trial of XI.

Back on topic: My original plan was for my character to be a Red Mage, with both halves representing her two conflicting natures (idealism vs cynicism, peace vs independence, etc.) but unfortunately not only did Red Mages not make it into XIV, but Eorzea seems to be a universe where weilding both Black and White magic is far less possible than in other FF games where the two are treated more like simple elemental magic and healing magic respectively. For instance, it's implied in the BLM storyline and the class's web description that those who weild Black Magic run the risk of going insane from megalomania unless they actively resist the Void's corruption. Even if both arts are actually very similar and it's not impossible to be a practicioner of both, I don't think the Padjal would be fine at all with teaching a BLM the lost art of Succor.

Plus, one must always take into consideration that my character despises people who think that their position gives them the right to display contempt towards others (like Naja!). One of the worst things to be seen doing is remaining arrogant in the face of war.SpoilerIt's implied that almost no one lived in Nym at the time compared to the other city states, yet the Scholars managed to hold back repeated invasions with their knowledge of tactics and shielding spells. Also, the tonberry you meet at the end of the SCH storyline is shown to care very much for his fairy, whilst Raya-O-Senna has no problem with threatening her Moogles.

And even if the SCH you meet was an "exception", that isn't really relevant to the story, because seeing as how Nym doesn't exist anymore, we probably won't ever know for sure. Same thing with Summoner, you become kind of a rebel researcher who learns the lost art of summoning as a way of defeating the Primals.

So...Arcanist it is, I guess.