Well, I think this should go without saying, but I treat the various classes and jobs as gameplay concessions and the like rather than hard-and-fast rules for how people handle martial professions in Eorzea. For example, there's no reason in-universe someone can't freely switch between a spear, a bow, and daggers in combat aside from the obvious problem of where you put it all. By the same token, armor classes are there more for gameplay reasons than anything else (yes, even the glamour system being restricted is there to encourage you to level up more classes so you can wear the stuff). I believe it is entirely fair for someone to mix and match in ways that the game doesn't allow, with the caveat that few things can be considered straight upgrades and most combinations have some kind of downside (especially if you move too far into jack-of-all-trades territory).
All that said is just to drive home the point that I believe players should be free to come up with unique ways to manipulate aether. With the variety of classes present in the game, they basically give players free reign to imagine anything is possible. Just make sure you
THAT SAID, obviously "common sense" prevails here. No one should be trying to be playing at Louisoux power levels, unless it's an extremely situational, highly temporary power boost at the climax of an arc or somesuch. If I were to make a comparison, Final Fantasy heroes are pretty much at the level of legendary heroes of old, rather than demigods. Only the Primals can move towards the latter (though they could arguably be considered actual gods, despite their power being limited compared to what gods are usually depicted as being capable of). Superhuman feats should be the norm for player characters - with the assumption that player characters are usually the extraordinary individuals of the realm, and NOT ordinary people.
To elaborate, my 'ground truth', as it were, is that any player character is supposed to be an extraordinary individual in their own right, and that the NPCs that populate the world are supposed to be the more ordinary ones (obvious big players aside). The only problem with this is when the world is very small and it feels like PCs outnumber the NPCs 10:1, which obviously is not supposed to be the case in-universe. I consider that more of a game development issue and prefer NOT to allow that to dictate the reality of what we're allowed to RP. If the community collectively decided that we were only allowed to play NPC-level characters I'd just fully quit, no questions asked. That's not to deride those who decide to play such characters of their own volition. I just feel like there's a difference between that and a demand that anyone who stands out be hammered down for it.
Annnyway, to answer the thread premise, here is what I imagine the various physical jobs to be capable of:
Warriors: Self-explanatory. See the intro with the WoL knocking and throwing enemies around with wild abandon. He has absolutely no trouble throwing a fully armored (with chain!) grown man some 20 yalms away with a swing of his axe. Their "inner beast" works more as a state of mind that allows them to fully devote the aether of their body towards these incredible and devastating attacks while also shrugging off blows.
Paladins: Equally self-explanatory. That intro is very useful, isn't it? They should be able to take considerably more damage than you would think a human capable of. Stopping a blow by Behemoth, for example, should not be outside of their ability. I'm not too keen on their lore, however, because I never leveled the job to cap (unlike literally every other DoW class). They have some interesting potential due to their combination of martial prowess with a smidgen of magic.
Dragoons: They certainly do seem to have some pretty crazy and precise air control. In addition, they seem to have some way of directing all the force of their blow into their enemy and preventing any of it from damaging themselves on the landing. No matter how you look at it, they're a force to be reckoned with. They seem to be devoted specifically to using their aether in very short and explosive bursts of action - first in the acceleration (both into the air and downwards into the target), second in the impact in which they must doubly damage their foe while protecting themselves.
Monks: The only of the original five physical jobs that is not depicted in a CG trailer yet. Easiest reference: Tifa from Advent Children. Crazy fast and powerful combinations augmented by their "chakra" (re: moar aether). Blows that can send people flying, quite literally. While this is not canon, I would not think it outside of the realm of possibility for them to 'charge' their aether for ever more devastating blows, at the cost of depleting their stamina (re: TP) faster.
But mostly, they're just LIGHTNING FAST. Hence, Greased Lightning. That gap-closer they use where they practically teleport to the target? Yeah, that kind of speed.
Bards: Gods, that accuracy. And the speed at which they can let arrows fly? Absurd. That's not even considering their bardsong in the equation. That plus acrobatics makes for a powerful and slippery foe. Naturally, all of their arrows are charged with aether, allowing them to fly further and hit harder than they otherwise normally would. The best arrows, I imagine, are the ones with natural aether-conductive properties that allow a particularly skilled archer to pierce even the toughest opponents. Also, the Ironworks bow is a freakin' railgun!
Ninjas: Do I need to? Everyone knows what they're capable of. They're probably the most straightforward of all the jobs thanks to their lore being so to-the-point on this. The combination of speed, precision, stealth, and the elemental techniques granted by mudra make them very dangerous and super-effective as scouts. That being said... while Naruto ninjas may make sense as a reference, the emphasis in FFXIV is largely on their physical abilities, not their mudra, and as such I would highly advise against attempting to RP the more outrageous abilities. (I was going to say 'stuff like chidori is ok' but then I don't know how having lightning coming out of your hand would work in FFXIV so...)
Dark Knights: I probably shouldn't include the expac classes here but I will anyway because I can. From what I've seen so far, dark knights are the more offensively-oriented mirror image of paladins, and as such you can expect their combination of martial prowess and DARRRKNESSS to be similarly inclined. Much of how they function will depend on how their use of darkness actually works. Expect laz0rz. (Not really, that's just kind of my blind hope, because I'm not very interested in them otherwise.)
Machinists: The most unique of the physical DPS classes, and the ones with probably/most likely the weakest actual physical abilities. I fully expect them to be completely dependent on their technology to overcome their lack of aether-based feats of martial prowess. Fortunately, they use guns, and not just any guns, but aether-powered guns with special attachments, and as we all know, guns hit hard and are extremely lethal. Guns in Eorzea in particular are based on the Rule of Cool and, as such, ignore ammunition limitations and the like. I suspect that they work more like black mages in-universe than any of the other, more martial classes.
All that said is just to drive home the point that I believe players should be free to come up with unique ways to manipulate aether. With the variety of classes present in the game, they basically give players free reign to imagine anything is possible. Just make sure you
THAT SAID, obviously "common sense" prevails here. No one should be trying to be playing at Louisoux power levels, unless it's an extremely situational, highly temporary power boost at the climax of an arc or somesuch. If I were to make a comparison, Final Fantasy heroes are pretty much at the level of legendary heroes of old, rather than demigods. Only the Primals can move towards the latter (though they could arguably be considered actual gods, despite their power being limited compared to what gods are usually depicted as being capable of). Superhuman feats should be the norm for player characters - with the assumption that player characters are usually the extraordinary individuals of the realm, and NOT ordinary people.
To elaborate, my 'ground truth', as it were, is that any player character is supposed to be an extraordinary individual in their own right, and that the NPCs that populate the world are supposed to be the more ordinary ones (obvious big players aside). The only problem with this is when the world is very small and it feels like PCs outnumber the NPCs 10:1, which obviously is not supposed to be the case in-universe. I consider that more of a game development issue and prefer NOT to allow that to dictate the reality of what we're allowed to RP. If the community collectively decided that we were only allowed to play NPC-level characters I'd just fully quit, no questions asked. That's not to deride those who decide to play such characters of their own volition. I just feel like there's a difference between that and a demand that anyone who stands out be hammered down for it.
Annnyway, to answer the thread premise, here is what I imagine the various physical jobs to be capable of:
Warriors: Self-explanatory. See the intro with the WoL knocking and throwing enemies around with wild abandon. He has absolutely no trouble throwing a fully armored (with chain!) grown man some 20 yalms away with a swing of his axe. Their "inner beast" works more as a state of mind that allows them to fully devote the aether of their body towards these incredible and devastating attacks while also shrugging off blows.
Paladins: Equally self-explanatory. That intro is very useful, isn't it? They should be able to take considerably more damage than you would think a human capable of. Stopping a blow by Behemoth, for example, should not be outside of their ability. I'm not too keen on their lore, however, because I never leveled the job to cap (unlike literally every other DoW class). They have some interesting potential due to their combination of martial prowess with a smidgen of magic.
Dragoons: They certainly do seem to have some pretty crazy and precise air control. In addition, they seem to have some way of directing all the force of their blow into their enemy and preventing any of it from damaging themselves on the landing. No matter how you look at it, they're a force to be reckoned with. They seem to be devoted specifically to using their aether in very short and explosive bursts of action - first in the acceleration (both into the air and downwards into the target), second in the impact in which they must doubly damage their foe while protecting themselves.
Monks: The only of the original five physical jobs that is not depicted in a CG trailer yet. Easiest reference: Tifa from Advent Children. Crazy fast and powerful combinations augmented by their "chakra" (re: moar aether). Blows that can send people flying, quite literally. While this is not canon, I would not think it outside of the realm of possibility for them to 'charge' their aether for ever more devastating blows, at the cost of depleting their stamina (re: TP) faster.
But mostly, they're just LIGHTNING FAST. Hence, Greased Lightning. That gap-closer they use where they practically teleport to the target? Yeah, that kind of speed.
Bards: Gods, that accuracy. And the speed at which they can let arrows fly? Absurd. That's not even considering their bardsong in the equation. That plus acrobatics makes for a powerful and slippery foe. Naturally, all of their arrows are charged with aether, allowing them to fly further and hit harder than they otherwise normally would. The best arrows, I imagine, are the ones with natural aether-conductive properties that allow a particularly skilled archer to pierce even the toughest opponents. Also, the Ironworks bow is a freakin' railgun!
Ninjas: Do I need to? Everyone knows what they're capable of. They're probably the most straightforward of all the jobs thanks to their lore being so to-the-point on this. The combination of speed, precision, stealth, and the elemental techniques granted by mudra make them very dangerous and super-effective as scouts. That being said... while Naruto ninjas may make sense as a reference, the emphasis in FFXIV is largely on their physical abilities, not their mudra, and as such I would highly advise against attempting to RP the more outrageous abilities. (I was going to say 'stuff like chidori is ok' but then I don't know how having lightning coming out of your hand would work in FFXIV so...)
Dark Knights: I probably shouldn't include the expac classes here but I will anyway because I can. From what I've seen so far, dark knights are the more offensively-oriented mirror image of paladins, and as such you can expect their combination of martial prowess and DARRRKNESSS to be similarly inclined. Much of how they function will depend on how their use of darkness actually works. Expect laz0rz. (Not really, that's just kind of my blind hope, because I'm not very interested in them otherwise.)
Machinists: The most unique of the physical DPS classes, and the ones with probably/most likely the weakest actual physical abilities. I fully expect them to be completely dependent on their technology to overcome their lack of aether-based feats of martial prowess. Fortunately, they use guns, and not just any guns, but aether-powered guns with special attachments, and as we all know, guns hit hard and are extremely lethal. Guns in Eorzea in particular are based on the Rule of Cool and, as such, ignore ammunition limitations and the like. I suspect that they work more like black mages in-universe than any of the other, more martial classes.