Jobs
Despite no longer being my main character, I have leveled every job on Reis without skips. She hit omni-90 a few months before Dawntrail came out, so if I was less lazy with leveling she'd already be well on the way to omni-100. (I'll get to it anyway, I need to be able to wear level 100 glamours!)
Summoner
As mentioned, Reis started as an arcanist. I never planned to go into scholar, though I did unlock it... and left the last few job quests sitting unfinished for a very long time. Oops. I have tried to learn how to play scholar over and over and always struggled with it, but maybe the next time will be the charm...?
In any case, I liked SMN a lot until I got past level 60. Though it's been years now and I can't remember exactly how it played, I really struggled with the lack of cohesion in Shadowbringers-era SMN. You were a dot class, but also a pet class, and also you had this absurd three-minute rotation, and the whole thing was kind of bizarre. I'm not going to say I was any good at it — I wasn't! Absolutely not! — but I also didn't try to be, because when I got closer to endgame I found the job I liked playing the most, and it wasn't SMN.
Imagine the surprise, then, when SMN was completely gutted and revamped in Endwalker. The new SMN is an acquired taste, and if you don't like it, it's really not for you. It's the simplest job in the entire game by a wide margin. It took some time to grow on me, but I ended up liking it a lot, and I spent EW raiding on it. Unfortunately it barely changed in DT and it is not as enjoyable to me anymore, so I don't play it as much, but it's still the job I pull out when I need to do a lot of burst damage. (In other words, this is my Wondrous Tails job.)
Red Mage
When I was playing through MSQ for the first time, I really liked the idea of matching my job with the story. Summoner had ended up matching very well with ARR, and I picked up Dragoon before HW and played through it that way, so for SB... uh, monk? Samurai? Yeah, maybe not.
Enter red mage. I don't remember exactly when I picked it up, or how quickly it clicked, but when it did, that was it. This was my favorite job. I have played red mage for over five years now and I couldn't be happier with it. It is the job I find the most fun in the entire game. It has only been improved over time. I love it to pieces. (I talk about it more over here.)
Also, Reis looks amazing in red, so. The only problem is that she can't wear the iconic red mage hats, which is an insult to me specifically. Give me hats.
Healers
It took a little while for me to pick up healers; I was nervous. What do you mean it's my job to keep everyone alive? Terrifying. The more I played the game and became familiar with how it played, the easier it felt, but I've still struggled with healer anxiety over the years. (In contrast, I cannot ever recall having any significant tank anxiety.)
Despite starting as an arcanist, the first healer I really clicked with was white mage, probably because it's simple... although as a sprout, I definitely had to be told by my party that Holy is an AOE attack around yourself. Me spamming it from 20 yalms away did nothing. Whoops.
Also, pour one out for ShB AST. I didn't know how good we had it, man. I still have Nocturnal Sect on my hotbar. I'll never be an expert AST player (card weaving is a special hell on controller) but aesthetically it's probably the best healer.
Tanks
I started with Dark Knight. To say I was terrible is an understatement. I have a foggy memory of a particularly terrible Dzemael run (back when you could still fall off the cliff) that I did very poorly in. Stone Vigil, also: I somehow managed to cause wipes on the final boss because I didn't know what the hell I was doing.
What made tanking click for me was actually playing Gunbreaker. Usually it's tricky to pick up a higher level job, but for some reason having more mitigation available from the start helped me figure out how I was supposed to do it. Once that clicked, tanking was simple. I have a very good visual memory, so I can easily remember the layout of any dungeon and never get lost in confusing ARR maps.
On flavor
I have a macro for each of my jobs that, along with changing my HUD (I use a different one for healers/tanks versus some DPS), changes my title and spawns a particular minion. Most of the time I keep it relevant to the job at hand, but sometimes I just want to use a particular title. Here's a short list of my favorite title/minion pairings.
- RDM: Saint of the Firmament, which I probably won't change anytime soon. Paired with Wind-up Mystel.
- SMN: Z, because getting a finished ARR relic is a rite of passage. Paired with Wind-up Tonberry, the first minion I ever got (a gift from a friend).
- MCH: Sky Pirate paired with Wind-up Ramza. Come on, I'm an Ivalice fan, of course I did this for my Viera.
My other thoughts on the jobs are over on Cálei's page; once I decided to switch mains I ended up leveling everything on him first.