Originally Posted by
StrawberryZebra
You may dislike how your Black Mage plays out at 60, however you are introduced to the important mechanics, blowing all your MP with Astral Fire then recovering it with Ice, at level 2. You get introduced to positional attacks and your combos very early on as both a Lancer and a Monk. You can decide quickly if they're going to be something you'd enjoy or not, allowing you to make a more informed decision with a minimal time investment.
I would disagree that having all your options available at your disposal immediately is dangerous. If the challenge is mastery of those mechanics then you need to be clear on what they are as early as possible. Games that do it, such as Fighting games, are based on your personal progression as a player, not your progression in game as a character. MMO's have flipped this on it's head by being Character progressed at the begining, then becoming Player progressed at the end.
Leveling, as a whole, is rather outdated in MMO's too. If it was intended as a lengthy tutorial, it misses the mark when they completely change your rotation every 5-10 levels. Until the max level, there is never a point at which the player has all of their options to work with and can get to grips with their class properly. People being bad in pugs is pretty much a universal complaint across pretty much every MMO ever, and this is why. They've spent the last 59 levels reinforcing bad playing habits and need to both unlearn them and relearn their class from scratch at 60.
An MMO like GW 2 is much easier to pick up and play correctly because you've had lots of time to get comfortable with your entire skill set and have spent 50 levels reinforcing the correct play habits for your class. Fighting games on the other hand just frontload everything and it ends up with you just button bashing and hoping for the best - Ironically enough, they could actually benefit from borrowing some of the MMO leveling system to ease players into the game. That however is a discussion for another time.
For what it's worth, I leveled as a Summoner, but switched to a Scholar for the faster Dungeon queues. I've been swapping back and forth at 60 to get things done too. Both are tied to your Arcanist level, so you can just swap your weapon and off you go. Make sure you have a Summoner book, they're different from the Scholar ones! You do still need to do both the Scholar and Summoner quests however.