I have now moved on one more expansion in Final Fantasy XIV, having gotten through all of the Heavensward and Dragonsong main scenario quests. I'm still leveling exclusively as a healer / scholar, which I continue to really enjoy.
One of the interesting aspects of FFXIV is that completing the main storyline basically requires you to queue for a variety of dungeons and trials (sort of like smaller raids with a single boss). So having either a tank class or healer class helps a lot because DPS queues seem to be pretty long.
The Scholar job seems to be a fairly strong healer and I tend to do fairly well in most of these instances. Once I got pass the original ARR content, it's definitely more important to watch some videos on the dungeons before going in as they are a lot less forgiving on mechanics in later expansions.
With Shadowlands now being delayed, it appears extremely likely that I will be able to finish getting my character through all of the current main scenario quests and to max level before Shadowlands launches. Of course, at this point, I haven't really decided if I'm going to play anyone other than undead warlock Joar through Shadowlands, so there may be plenty of time for continuing with FFXIV even once Shadowlands is live.
The other sort of odd thing that I have noticed is that most of the Scholar gear that drops seems designed for female characters in mind. So while I've maintained the name Joar, I've switched over to a female character just so I wasn't looking completely ridiculous. I ran around for a substantial chunk of Dragonsong wearing what appeared to be a man bra. I figure Joar is like Chris or Sam - could go either way.
My current plan is once I finish getting Scholar to 80 and through the MSQ, I'll focus on leveling the various crafting and gathering jobs before starting on an alt job. Just doing some initial research, I'm thinking I may try Machinist first for the alt jobs as I generally prefer ranged dps.
Cheers,
Joar
