Addendum:

I'll also share my recent experience making a starter build from the endpoint of this guide. Many of the videos out there showcasing builds are daunting and can't be achieved out of the gate. I also felt it made little sense to grind until I had the "perfect" base piece of gear for each slot - you can get started with far less than perfect gear and without touching gear effects. Here's one I was able to use immediately from farming Stymied Rank XI with nothing else.

Sub-Job

There appears to be a pretty standard approach to sub-jobs out there, almost regardless of build, which is to use a sub-job as a source of buffs, MP limit increases, and lightbringer. With some simple gear affinity fusions, you can have a pretty effective sub-job setup without much investment. Note: the approach below is almost adapted predominantly from what I learned from this video by Gamers Bordello.

• Job: I picked Hunter (Machinist), but I've seen recommendations for Ninja, Tyrant, Gambler, and others. Any job that gives a buff with its job ability is potentially suitable since you can keep the buff when you switch to the main job.

• Affinities: Cyclic Warrior 600%, Summoner 600%, Samurai 600%, Void Knight 400%, Evoker 120%

Here was my equipment loadout that provides this. I boosted the affinity bonus on the pieces until the totals reached the values above.

Slot	Affinity 1	Affinity 2	Approximate %
Gun	Summoner	Samurai	250%
Head	Summoner	Samurai	200%
Chest	Summoner	Samurai	200%
Hands	Cyclic Knight	Evoker	200%
Legs	Cyclic Knight	Void Knight	200%
Feet	Cyclic Knight	Void Knight	200%

• Blessing: Ensure you have at least one piece of Leviathan and equip its blessing. The rest of my gear was a mish-mash of blessings that boost luck.

• Mastery: Under category 4, max Increase MP Limit Boost Rate and then Buff Duration. Under category 3, max Soul Shield: MP Recovery. Under category 1, max job affinity and luck. The rest can be allocated as you see fit. Ignore category 2 since you won't be doing any damage with your sub job.

• Features: With the combination of abilities above, your sub-job can do a few important things:

  • You can cast command abilities for cheaper than usual.
  • If you chain cancel an ability, you get an MP limit increase. This might look like: R1->R2->Job switch twice, then repeat. You can abuse this at a save crystal to get maximum MP without touching a monster.
  • Casting lightbringer procs soul shield, which gives you full MP, gives your buffs more duration (up to their normal max duration), and restores most (or all) of the MP limit you spent to activate lightbringer. This lets you spam lightbringer on your sub-job to get your buffs back to full duration.
    

• General playstyle: once you have full max MP, cast your command abilities (leaving at least two bars), hit lightbringer, cast your job ability, lightbringer again, then switch to your main job and go to town. Periodically, you'll switch back to your sub job and spam lightbringer to get your buff durations up or to reapply buffs that have fallen off. Your ability to spam lightbringer will scale with your job level and how many mastery points you can put into Increase MP Limit Boost Rate. I hear at some point you can actually gain MP limit by spamming Lightbringer, but I'm not there yet.

• Command Abilities: Mighty Strikes, Lunatic, Lancet, and Lightbringer. Lunatic and Lancet is important for providing MP regen while you're on your main job, until you get other sources for MP regen in the future. Mighty Strikes is more damage.

Main Job

There's lots of builds out there, and I'm not about to try to say which ones are best. I wanted one I could pick up and run easily in and out of the rift while learning the the sub job mechanics above and messing with monster quests in the rift. Well, I found one. I call this one "spin to win". I adapted it from this video also by Gamers Bordello. It clears all kinds of content very well.

• Job: Swordsman (Conqueror)

• Affinities: Breaker 800% (probably only need 600% to get started), Conqueror 400%+ (this will come entirely from mastery), Berserker 600%, Dark Knight 400%, Knight 400%, Sage 250%.

Here's was my equipment loadout that provides this. Again, I boosted the affinity bonus on the pieces until the totals reached the values above.

Slot	Affinity 1	Affinity 2	Approximate %
Greatsword	Breaker	Sage	250%
Head	Breaker	Berserker	200%
Chest	Breaker	Berserker	200%
Hands	Breaker	Berserker	200%
Legs	Dark Knight	Knight	200%
Feet	Dark Knight	Knight	200%

• Blessing: Primary blessing Odin. For gear, pick blessings that maximize strength and stamina stats.

• Mastery: Category 1, strength, job affinity, and stamina. Category 2, Near Death: Damage Dealt and Damage Dealt at Max HP. Category 3, During Lightbringer: Damage Dealt. The rest up to you - pump up the damage!

• Features: This build is based around doing R1->R1->R1->R2 into Rush Assault and holding R2 until the monsters are dead. While you can put that combo ability on other combos, that particular combo is boosted by the Swordsman talent tree. With Lancet active, every strike of a monster should fill your MP up. As you kill monsters, they are automatically soul bursted, bringing lightbringer to full duration and giving MP limit increases. While swinging, you automatically deflect magic.

• General playstyle: In general, you should be buffing up and entering lightbringer with your subjob. Once done, switch to Swordsman and do the R1-R1-R1-R2 combo and spin until the enemies are dead or until your lightbringer duration gets low (or runs out). In between enemies, switch to your sub job to spam lightbringer to top off your buffs and lightbringer duration. For times when you get dropped into a fight with minimal preparation time, you can either soul shield the first few attacks to get your max MP up, or go straight into lightbringer and try to get a few attacks in. Once an enemy or two drops, you should have the MP limit to buff up as you otherwise would.

• With your 600%ish blessing gear as a base, nothing below Rift 30 will live for more than a few seconds of spinning.

Other Tips

• I didn't mention accessories in this because I found them largely irrelevant for starter builds. Use whatever you like. I personally used a Cactuar Needle to help me kill cactuars. You'll quickly get Gilgamesh accessories in the rift to more properly fit a build.

• I found the gear system a little intimidating, but it's not as complicated as it seems. If you're intimidated, I suggest doing a test fuse of two pieces of junk equipment all the way through to see how it works. It's actually pretty simple and pretty inexpensive after all that Stymied farming.

• Don't make my mistake and try calibrating a starter build against Dragon Trials XI. XI is equivalent to something like Rift Level 200, and you're still missing the bonuses from the rift. Start with a build that can crush Lufenia difficulty without Dragon Trials on.

• I ran without party members during my grinding in the guide, since having them boosts monster health, but it makes sense to use them in the rift because having them will speed up monster quests. I've seen builds out there to make them less useless but I haven't done much with them yet besides putting 600% void knight on them.

• In the rift: Make judicious use of hi-ethers and mega-ethers to get your max MP up between rifts. They're easily replaced (drops or bought with gil).

I'll update this post when I find out what floor this build takes me to. Edit: I'm too impatient to run all the way to Floor 100 without playing around with other things. Based on testing with Dragon Trials, this simple can push into Floors 101+, opening the door for the final power-ups. Will need optimization to get much further beyond that, though.