Job Recommendations Are a Bloodbath
Job recommendations? Seriously?
Most people in the world still had no idea, but Lost of Fantasy was a game that only truly began once you hit the level cap.
Even in the original version, the real fun started after reaching max level—farming the Four Major Dungeons, running raids, and endlessly grinding the new raids and dungeons that kept getting released to perfect your gear. That was the true appeal.
That didn’t mean the game was boring before hitting the cap, though.
The saying “LOF starts at max level!” was always floating around, but it was the kind of game where actually reaching that point took a serious amount of time.
So people wanted real answers.
[Is it okay to start this game now? What job is good?]
[What the hell is specialization? Aren’t all mages just mages? Fuck.]
[Newbies, please level some tanks and healers. Pure DPS is dogshit boring lol]
[Does this game even have a tier list? Who the hell is the top DPS god?]
Everyone had to hit max level eventually.
LOF starts at max level.
But it took forever to get there.
In other words, since you had to invest so much time, people desperately hoped it wouldn’t turn out to be a complete waste.
That mindset existed back in my old world too. This place was actually a little worse.
[Watched that recommended jobs video on Puffy. Is it actually legit?]
There was a “not recommended” tag next to Paladin. Was that for real?
Didn’t the gallery say Knights were good? Like, the Retribution Knight or whatever—people said if your crit landed, you could one-shot elite mobs.
「Aaaargh fuck these Puffy spies, can you please just go back to YouTube already」
「Speaking as someone who actually plays the game, that video itself isn’t technically wrong lol」
『▶ Not wrong my ass lmao. Recommending a Gunner makes any sense to you?』
『▶▶ Then what, you want to recommend Shaman and Paladin to actual newbies???』
「Fact is, if you pick Mage or Warrior you’ll usually be fine」
「Just don’t play hybrid classes and you’ll be okay」
「Level a Priest. Parties take them easy lol」
『▶ You fucking ten-year-old lol. Are you gonna power-level them all the way to the point where they can actually join parties?』
Anyway, the conversation never stayed at a simple “this job is good, that job sucks.”
There were always people trying to turn it into some massive ideological war. The way they’d deliberately create rivalries, hyping one class while trashing another with insane praise and savage hate, was honestly legendary.
Normally this kind of meaningless UFC-style WWE smackdown would stay contained within the community…
“Sis, that’s why I brought them here. Can you please give my friends some job recommendations?”
The reason Im Harin had dragged three of her friends all the way to me in real life was exactly that.
“Whoa… it really is her?”
“Hello! Harin’s told us so much about you!”
“Holy crap, what’s up with your hair? Are those colored contacts?”
The three high school girls, radiating that distinct sweet-and-sour scent unique to teenage girls, were sitting neatly in front of the five-computer setup. I had to wonder if they were actually interested in Lost of Fantasy at all.
Thankfully, they’d left the center seat open for me. I almost teared up.
“So… the images you sent me earlier on KakaoTalk. This is what that was about?”
Im Harin had forwarded me the forum posts she’d seen.
“Yeah. You saw them too, right? All those recommendation threads and job discussions on the community are just total flame wars. They’re completely useless for actual new players.”
“This is gonna drive me insane…”
“Don’t worry too much, sis! These girls used to play games before!”
Wait, seriously?
She wanted me to give job recommendations to a bunch of high school girls?
“We really do play games! We used to play Dark Watch with Harin back in the day.”
“That’s right. We played Hero and the Underground Castle a little too.”
“We did Milesian as well!”
The three girls’ eyes sparkled with serious determination as they tried to show off their gaming credentials.
Well, fair enough. Even in the world I came from, Lost of Fantasy wasn’t exclusively a guy thing. There were plenty of elements that hooked female players too. For one, the graphics were genuinely beautiful.
The character customization was also surprisingly detailed, so I’d heard there were quite a few people who treated it like a dress-up doll game…
“Alright then… I’ll give you some recommendations.”
“Yesss! You’re the best, sis!”
Unlike her usual clingy self, Im Harin just clapped her hands excitedly.
“But first, I need to check something. You three don’t play as much as Harin, right?”
The three girls nodded naturally.
“Unlike me, they have to go to academies and stuff, so their playtime is probably three or four times less than mine.”
Since Im Harin could dump all her after-school hours into gaming while these “normal high school girls” couldn’t, there was naturally a huge gap in playtime.
In that case, there was no need to recommend jobs based on endgame performance.
“Then let’s do this. Since you’re just playing casually anyway, is there any job you’re interested in or already familiar with?”
They weren’t trying to become pro gamers, nor were they like Lee Siwoo chasing some money-making dream. The most important thing was personal satisfaction.
“Hmm, not really.”
“I saw Harin playing and the magic looked really cool!”
“Druid? That looked cute! Turning into bears and cats and stuff! The fat owl was adorable too!”
I could already see one of them heading down the wrong path.
Since I couldn’t explain everything with words alone, I turned on the game and clicked the “Create Character” button.
“Everyone, come sit next to me.”
At my single command, Im Harin and the three girls immediately pressed themselves right up against me.
Wait, I didn’t mean this close. Personal space, please?
“I don’t know how much Harin has already explained, but you all know there are damage dealers, tanks, and healers in this game, right?”
“Yep. Harin talks about it all the time, so we know.”
“We played Dark Watch, so we’re familiar!”
“But isn’t it a bit different? I heard this game doesn’t have barriers or anything.”
Since they’d actually played games before, it looked like I wouldn’t have to start from absolute zero. Good.
“Alright. Then I’ll explain a bit more. Have you all played Mushroom Story?”
They all nodded.
“In that game, everyone starts as the same adventurer—whether you’re a warrior or a mage—but depending on what advancement you choose, the class changes completely, right?”
“Well, not the newer jobs though?”
“Lost of Fantasy is roughly the same. At the beginning you have Paladin, Warrior, Shaman, Mage… and so on. But depending on which specialization you pick, what you can do in a party changes dramatically.”
“Oh! So sis, if I pick the wrong advancement like in Mushroom Story, do I have to delete the character and start over?”
I immediately shook my head.
“No, it’s not that strict. Unlike regular class advancement, you can change your specialization anytime you want.”
“Whoa, that’s a relief… Did you know? Ara, I mean. She once picked the wrong advancement, cried because it looked ugly, and restarted the character all by herself!”
“She didn’t restart because it was ugly. She restarted because she literally couldn’t hunt. How are you supposed to hunt as a healer anyway…”
“That’s not true~ The second you saw the advancement image you cried saying it looked super cool, didn’t you?”
It must have been a pretty funny story, because even Im Harin burst out laughing.
“Anyway, the jobs I recommend are these: Warrior, Mage, and Gunner.”
“Huh? That’s different from the video I watched. That one mentioned Rogue, Warlock, and Priest in addition to what you said.”
“The post I read said Druid, Shaman, and Paladin were the best!”
“Yeah… whoever wrote that is a bad person, so just erase it from your minds…”
Looked like there were still plenty of people recommending jobs without ever having leveled them.
“The jobs I mentioned are all easy to hunt with. They’re strong, and since they’re all pure damage dealers, you three can party up and knock out quests pretty comfortably.”
Unless you were running dungeons, there was no real need to bring a healer or tank along.
No matter how much people complained about how strong elite monsters were, three damage dealers with cooldowns up could usually melt them on the field without dying.
“Um… but is it okay for all three of us to play damage dealers? Harin always complains that she can’t find any healers or tanks.”
“Harin, you little…”
“Ehehe, sis~”
Im Harin’s face turned slightly red as she pressed her elbow firmly into my chest.
“Well, I’ll be honest with you. If the three of you are playing together, it’s better to go with something like heal-DPS-tank, DPS-DPS-tank, or DPS-DPS-heal. Having at least one tank or healer is ideal.”
“Then why didn’t you recommend any of those?”
“Because they’re fucking boring as hell…”
When I shrugged, the three high school girls burst into laughter.
“What kind of reason is thaaat~~~!!!”
“For real? Are they that unfun?”
“But you play a healer, sis! You main a healer!”
“Tanks and healers are pretty far removed from the primitive joy of smashing monsters to death.”
Both tanking and healing lacked that direct dopamine hit that tickled the peripheral nerves.
“Still, I played Valkyrie in Dark Watch. I can heal pretty well.”
“Hmm… unlike Valkyrie where you can just latch on like a straw and heal, healers in Lost of Fantasy have a lot to think about.”
I held up three fingers.
“In Dark Watch… I know every hero is different, but there aren’t really any major restrictions on healing, right?”
“Uh, no? You can’t heal infinitely with Audio Run because of the gauge…”
“I know. I’ve played it too. But that gauge fills back up over time, right? Throwing orbs has a cooldown too, but you don’t suddenly hit a point where you can never heal again, do you?”
One of the girls let out an “Ohhh~” and nodded.
“In Lost of Fantasy, healers use mana to heal. And that mana can be completely drained in just ten seconds if you’re not careful.”
“Whoa, then you can’t heal after that?”
“You have to sit there sucking on your fingers waiting for it to naturally regenerate.”
“It’s… really different from Valkyrie…”
The girl who had shown some interest in healing quickly put on a face of resignation.
“Plus, if you’re just standing there healing the whole time, it gets boring, right? That’s why there are skills to remove harmful effects from allies. You have to use those too.”
“Ugh…”
“And there are patterns that only target the healer. You have to handle those while making sure your party doesn’t die.”
“That’s why I always brag about how my sis is the best. Healing is hard, you know?”
I jabbed my elbow into Im Harin’s chest.
Please stop hyping me up in front of your friends. It’s embarrassing…
“That’s why I never recommend healers or tanks to beginners. With damage dealers, you just press the red buttons, hit 1, 2, 3, pop your cooldowns, and smash things to death. That’s it.”
“R-right?”
“But tanks and healers have completely different things they need to do. You actually have to study. And if you don’t know what you’re doing, the party wipes. That’s stressful, right? On top of that, leveling is way faster as a damage dealer.”
Once a lot more updates came out, there would probably come an era where you could just park your butt in the Demon King’s Castle and spam random dungeon matching to reach max level, but…
In the original era, leveling a healer or tank was an absolutely insane, vomit-inducing grind.
“Still, since the three of us are playing together, I think we should at least try to balance it out, sis.”
“If you really think you need a healer, look at this pretty lady here. See her? The one in the pure white cloth robe. Level a Priest.”
“Ooh… she’s so pretty!”
Well, it was true that Priests had some of the prettiest class-specific outfits.
“But sis, is Druid really that bad?”
“You… really want to play Druid that much?”
“This one really likes cats and dogs but can’t keep any at home.”
I understood the feeling, but still.
“It’s not that Druid is bad.”
“Oh, really? Then I want to play it.”
“Jobs like Druid are called hybrids, you know? And hybrids are generally all pretty bad.”
“Ehh…”
I still had a conscience. I couldn’t smile and recommend a hybrid class to high school girls who barely had any playtime.
“I like cats and dogs too, and I think turning into animals as a Druid is cute. But it’s genuinely not fun. It feels like they gave up halfway through designing the class.”
“R-really…?”
“Yeah. And if animals are what’s important to you, how about Gunner instead? This one can tame wild beasts and bring them along. There are some really cute ones too.”
“Wait, then me! Me! I want that! I’d rather have a cat next to me than turn into one myself!”
Good, good. Smart choice.
There was no need for beginners to suffer through a class like Druid.
It was nice to have one in a raid, but I didn’t want to recommend it to anyone I actually knew.
“Then sis, on the flip side, what jobs should we absolutely never play? The hybrids you mentioned earlier?”
“These ones: Paladin, Druid, and Shaman. See?”
I clicked on each one to show them, and they all nodded.
“These have a very high chance of not being fun for you, so don’t touch them.”
“But sis, isn’t Shaman a hybrid too? It can’t tank, right?”
“Ah… originally, hybrid doesn’t just mean jobs that can do all three roles. Even if it’s only damage-heal or damage-tank, we still call it a hybrid.”
Im Harin made a confused face.
“Then aren’t Warrior and Priest hybrids too? The only classes with pure damage specializations are Rogue, Mage, Warlock, and Gunner, right?”
“True, but usually when we say hybrid, we mean the specializations have synergy with each other. Look at Warrior and Priest. Does having other specializations make the character worse? No, right?”
The Void Priest of this era was so bad that raids barely accepted them, but that wasn’t the important part.
“Void Priest is still pretty helpful for leveling, and so is Warrior, right? It’s not to the point where your specialization choice actively sabotages you.”
“Hmm…”
“But look at Shaman. Elemental Shaman is ranged DPS, Restoration Shaman is healer, and Enhancement Shaman is melee DPS. There’s almost no synergy between them.”
That’s why people said it felt like the class was abandoned midway through development.
“But sis, is it really that bad? When I watch you play Paladin it just looks fun to me.”
“Haa…”
“And aren’t all the specializations usually good? I think choosing them is part of the fun.”
At Im Harin’s adorable question—from someone who had only ever leveled pure damage dealers—I unconsciously grabbed her waist and pulled her close so she couldn’t escape.
“Then let me show you. Just how trash hybrids really are.”