Buildin a party soon?

BLM:67 WHM:54 Summoner: 32 WAR:56 THF:70

Building parties takes a lot of patience and drive. Sometimes I find people's lack of faith in waiting for appropriate party members disturbing.

In building a partyI use these basic rules for party setup: One tank, one healer, one puller and the rest DDs. This is for partys before 41. After 41, if you don't have a Bard or an RDM in there, you are gonna be hurting the exp bonus, and frankly you will see many Rank 10 ppl just plain not wanna pt and find something else to do. Bards and Red Mages help the party by providing MP regeneration, which allows the toll on mp to be less and pulling to go faster. A smart WHM will usually give the puller the option of pulling when he's at like 130 or so. And with a backup healer you can use the mp of the backup as a buffer when deciding when to pull. OK, getting off the subject here.

For the tank, you need to have his or her level be the highest. That armor is going up against the monsters hits and if it is higher level armor, along with higher level VIT from the tank having a higher level, you will be doing the party a huge favor by starting with just that simple little fact.

Next, make the pullers level also the highest. He is the one that is gonna be checking the con of the mobs and if, like me, he adds up the mobs in his head and sets them up ahead of time, he can save the really tough ones for chain 3 or 4 or even 5 as is convenient. If you get a podunk Thief at the lower levels trying to pull IT++ mobs that he doesn't know are actually IT ++++, you will be doing the party a huge disservice that will become quite possibly the puller's biggest blunder of his career, but actually it was yours.

The next guy that needs to be of a higher level is the BLM. He is your main source of damage. If he is gettnig resisted left and right, the loss in damage to the party is catastrophic compared to the damage lost to melees who may be missing more at the same level. A BLM getting his MB resisted is to a party what using a blunt sword in battle is to a fighter.

The rest is filling. Melees can be helped with Frost and Dia to allow them to hit more, esp if there is a Bard in the party, so whatever level for them is fine. Mages heal for almost the same total no matter what level they are so having a really low level WHM or RDM or BRD doesn't matter too much since they are mostly support jobs.

Finally, these are guidelines. If it's late and you can't find anybody, any level PLD will do and will probably be a better choice than say getting a high level SAM to tank. Actually, I was recently in a party with 2 BLMs and WHM and no RDM and we were still doin chain 4s and 5s pretty often, so it really does mostly depend on the people and on if you got party members that are having a good time.