FFXI: The Best Subjobs For Rune Fencer

Rune Fencers are the arcane masters at mitigating magical damage.

With their various rune and ward abilities, an enemy’s otherwise deadly attacks can be trivialized.

Since they’re naturally defensive in nature, their subjob options allow them to either focus on offense, or enhance their tanking role to be much more efficient.

Let’s take a look at some of the best choices:

5. Dancer

Let’s start with a commonly-used subjob that’s most beneficial in situations where the rune fencer is in low-man content or solo.

The Dancer’s wide range of versatility goes hand-in-hand with a rune fencer’s survivability, allowing them to heal, debuff, and buff, all at the same time.

Waltzes give some great sustainability, in addition to party healing if needed.

Divine Waltz can also double as an enmity generation tool due to its party-wide healing.

Healing Waltz will allow rune fencers to remove status ailments from themselves or others, which is especially helpful in making sure the worst ones are removed from themselves, such as Defense or Magic Defense Down.

Dancer also grants you access to Flourish abilities.

Violent Flourish is pretty helpful for rune fencers, as they’ll be paying the closest attention to enemy movement, and efficiently stunning abilities or spells which cause the most troubles enables them to tank with ease.

Additionally, Reverse Flourish is helpful for generating a burst of TP to either weapon skill with, or to use on waltzes.

The Skillchain Bonus trait also means that rune fencers gain some exceptional capabilities as skillchain closers – if they’re able to provide the damage for it.

Picking Dancer also offers dual wield, which a rune fencer may want to use with swords, but the case-uses are rather niche.

4. Samurai

Here’s a powerful hybrid DD and tanking subjob that allows rune fencer to freely switch between damage and tanking.

Samurai offers some incredible opportunities for rune fencers to build onto (and take advantage of) their already-respectable damage output.

Hasso comes with Samurai and provides a healthy boost not only to strength, but also to attack speed and accuracy when using 2-handed weapons. In addition to this, Meditate and Store TP allow rune fencers to generate TP faster than ever before, ensuring you can weapon skill as frequently as other damage-focused party members or jobs.

Zanshin will ensure that even if you miss, you’ll get another chance to attack. So TP generation has a safety net here – even in in circumstances of low accuracy.

Seigan and Third eye allow rune fencers to strategically handle large amounts of deadly single target physical attacks directed at them. A huge win for sure.

And this limits the need to heal as often, which gives rune fencers a way to shore up their defenses when combined with buffs like Stoneskin and Foil.

3. Dark Knight

Dark Knight is a fantastic subjob for rune fencers looking to push their damage as high as their defense.

The massive Attack Bonus trait provided with this job is just a testament to one thing: dark knights mean business.

You’ll also get access to Weapon Bash which can hit hard and stun enemies into paying attention.

Smite works exceptionally well on rune fencers too, thanks to their focus on 2-handed weapons. This is also embellished by the Desperate Blows trait.

The Last Resort ability lowers defense by 25% in exchange for a colossal 25% attack boost, so it can be worth looking into. In this case the loss in defense is of little consequence to rune fencers, since they already have exceptionally high defensive capabilities!

If a rune fencer wants to cap their attack, this subjob is absolutely the way to go.

Beneath all of this lies a bevy of fantastic debuff spells like Sleep, Drain, Aspir, Stun, and the Absorb series spells.

Stun works particularly well as a quick enmity generation tool, in addition to its ability to stop enemies dead in their tracks.

2. Ninja

Here’s a fantastic tanking option if the aim is to mitigate as much damage as possible, even if players do happen to be tanking.

With the rune fencer’s incredible Fast Cast emanating from their gear, casting Utsusemi has never been easier.

It’s also not uncommon to be able to alternate between the both Utsusemi: Ichi and Utsusemi: Ni near-instantly.

In situations where single target damage is both dangerous and frequent, using this subjob will help you excel considerably.

Moreover, in the chance that Utsusemi is swept away or interrupted during casting, a rune fencer’s natural defenses (in addition to their spells like Phalanx and Stoneskin) will either serve as a handy backup, or serve to keep them alive with little-to-no worry.

Either way, a great setup to have.

Ninja also offers dual wield too. So there may be situations where a rune fencer will want to swap to two swords instead of a great sword.

1. Blue Mage

More often than not, rune fencers will be tanking, and thus taking damage.

Blue mage is basically the unmatched support job when it comes to aiding in enmity. This is partly because of all the enmity spells you get with a blue mage sub, but it also possesses an incredible defensive spell:

Its claim to fame is Cocoon, which offsets a rune fencer’s otherwise naturally honed defenses in magic.

This puts their physical sturdiness on par with a paladin’s, as it offers a massive +50% defense boost at a comparatively miniscule MP and blue magic point cost.

Blue mage as support job also brings mild healing capabilities in the form of Wild Carrot. So there’s a lot going for a tank with this subjob.

In addition to all this, blue mage grants the exclusive power to generate enmity in an AoE fashion: Geist Wall, Sheep Song, and Soporific are bread-and-butter enmity generation BLU spells that a tank will be taking advantage of constantly.

It’s very easy to see the benefits of using a blue mage in content like Dynamis – Divergence. So much so that it’s considered basically essential.

Truth be told, rune fencer just doesn’t function the same without this subjob!