[Megathread] Final Fantasy XIV

**Anzaman** · 2017-02-27, 05:42 PM

Originally Posted by Granyala

Miqo'te have a very keen sense of smell, so if any race has proper hygiene, it would be them. ;P

At least my (real life) cat keeps cleaning himself all the time.

**xerus** · 2017-02-27, 06:28 PM

**Katchii** · 2017-02-27, 06:33 PM

Originally Posted by Anzaman

At least my (real life) cat keeps cleaning himself all the time.

If I could lick myself in places cat's can I'd be clean AF all the time too....lol

That said, I prefer most of the animations for running and movement in general on the Miqo'te over the other races. The confident and playful swagger they have just comes across really well in their animation. Nothing against the other races except Lalafel...seriously I just can't wrap my head around wanting to play a character you'll need to stare at for hours on end that look like an overfed toddler wearing a sumo suit. I just prefer Miqo'te.

**Faroth** · 2017-02-27, 07:21 PM

Originally Posted by Wrecktangle

You still owe me a response >.<. Unless I'm an idiot and missed it. I just had to clear the same misconception up with Remilia.

You haven't missed it. I still have yet to reply. Am slacker.

(Actually I don't check MMO-Champ on weekends and haven't been able to come back at work recently) >_<

- - - Updated - - -

Originally Posted by Wrecktangle

Not trying to shut down conversation - you know me better than that. I just fail to see a single solitary merit of a personal DPS meter. I looked at it from every angle I could think of and I just don't see one. I'm more than willing to eat my words if someone can frame a solid argument for why it should exist over a full monty meter.

1) You can't analyze yourself against teammates to measure your performance.
2) You can't compare yourself against other people of the same job.

Sure you can test an opener using a personal meter, but you can do that with an existing tool in game.

If you're above your teammates, but you're not all playing to the potential that the devs designed for the content, does comparing yourself to them help?
Comparing to others of the same job - Yyyyyyeah, y'wanna know how often I see other Ninja in 24 man? The answer is not often. So this isn't a guarantee in any way, especially as they keep adding jobs and we're mainly doing 8 man content for progression that's really where the parser requests are.

So if Square designs encounters with the expectation that DPS does X DPS to meet requirements and you're surpassing those expectations, how crucial is it to know "oh man but I totally crushed that bard and monk." If you're in a pre-made progression group and the game is telling you that you're not meeting requirements, isn't it then a matter of acknowledging that and asking what you're doing wrong? I know that's total reverse of what people expect, to ask for help and help be given rather than everyone jumping on whoever isn't meeting demands for being fail, but if you're in a pre-made group isn't that sort of part of what everyone's there for?

The issue with this system is that you already know for a fact if you underperformed the fights dps tuning, because you wiped. If you're referring to the system being personal only, sure I'd know that I pass/failed the check, but I have no idea who didn't, I have no idea by how much, and I'd have absolutely no information as to how to suggest fixing the dps problem.

Through what mystical magic are people identifying problems with players and giving advice and tips now? Because I've seen that happen. Suggesting rotation changes, what to open with, advising what to prioritize, etc. for a class. Since we don't have parsers, this has to be impossible, so how is it happening?

The issue with that is how would it be scaled? The idea itself isn't terrible, but the implementation seems beyond difficult. Does it measure performance on pre-defined parameters (easiest)? Does it measure them based on your parties performance? Does it measure them by everyone who's ever done it overall ever?

If it was predefined you'd run into a situation where once you outscale it the data is basically meaningless. If it scales off your party you could be giving a player information that he did really well, except overall he was the 19th worst DRG ever. He just was unlucky enough that he had even worse teammates. Sure they passed the trial, not because of anything good, just that the encounter was specifically tuned for a player to play with their eyes closed and press 1 button over and over again.

Valid questions. Probably ones to pose to the dev teams when they are further in whatever they're vaguely hinting at, though. I'd love to know what content in XIV is designed for 1 button with their eyes closed considering the "lol faceroll 24 mans" have been met with tears on an ongoing basis (which goes away as soon as people *gasp* do mechanics and react appropriately). And hardcore raiders? "Wah, it's too hard....wah, it's too easy" leading Yoshida at Fan Fest to joke "I don't trust anybody anymore."

But they did ease off tight DPS requirements because the hardcore raiders, the ones hitting world first targets, said they were a bit too tight.

PF and server chat are the only 2 places you could possibly impose restrictions, and that's exactly where they're prevalent. This is where where people are discriminated against as you testified to above. I'm not saying it happens everywhere. PF is the only place that actually matters in the context of this discussion. DF is for old or trivial content that you couldn't honestly fail if you tried so largely speaking, class, ilvl, and new player bonus are irrelevant, thus they're not discriminated against here.

I've joined several PF groups before and as soon as someone saw new person bonus, the group lost members. Sometimes so many the run ended before it even started. That's the true nature of doing PF current content sometimes.

Did the Party Finder indicate it wasn't for first timers? If so, should have booted the new player. If not, that was their mistake and to me it's kinda crappy to bail instantly. It might have been their first time running it, but they had watched videos, understood it, or even had done it before but didn't finish the fight before the group disbanded. Could even be a returning player on a new account/alt that's done it before. Insta-bail won't tell you any of that. Ask a few questions, then make the decision.

I liked mine better personally, but I hear you. Humor me though. When was the last time you saw DPS meter shit talk in WoW. Just name an expansion/raid/dungeon. Just so I have an idea. For me personally, it was wotlk. Last time I ever saw it.

This might shine a lot of light on where we're seeing different experiences in different levels of content.

Last time I saw it? EVERY DAMN RUN in Cataclysm and Mists of Pandaria's LFR (didn't do any group content in WoD as I played 1 month & ran LFR once in Legion). LF freaking R where, like you said, you could bounce your face on the keyboard and still do enough DPS for the content at that time. Yet that's where the people in top raiding gear seemed to enjoy spamming DPS Meter results and shit talking anyone who didn't meet their decided minimal requirements. Were some clearly not even trying and getting carried? Sure. Justification to be a total ass? Nope.

Perhaps this could shine a light on addressing some of the concerns... hmm.

What if an in-game parser and DPS meter was added, but restricted to only be useable in pre-made groups? Probably not ideal for some, but another possible compromise? My main concern is that experience has been try hard top tier raiders like to use it in content designed for more casual players to belittle and demean people and that's what pisses me off. People are meeting mechanics, enemies are dying, nobody's dying themselves = everything is going fine in duty finder.

Savage, I understand a need to understand what's not falling into place and resulting in problems.

To be fair, I'd take a bet that 85% of the people who say they saw it all the time were probably the ones doing it or were exaggerating considerably. They probably had it happen to them once personally, and now it shapes their entire belief system around that one occurrence. That's just my .02. In my years of gaming I've found my experiences to be largely pleasant with only a VERY small handful of incidents. That's across over a decade of gaming.

You're describing my experience with pre-made groups as well, it's when you are using matchmaking/party finder/duty finder that I regularly see the assholes using every opportunity to be assholes. And then people get negative and bitter and start acting like assholes back...only then they carry it on to be assholes to others themselves and the sickness spreads from there.

Is it considered harassment if I say in a PM to you that Faroth is a smelly night elf?

He doesn't hear it or see it, and no feelings are hurt.

Oh how I want to violate forum rules and post the otter at the table "u havin' a giggle" gif.

Unrelated, and more fun, note:

Anyone recommend some movies and anime to get me more Samurhyped? I watched 13 Assassins last night.

**Remilia** · 2017-02-27, 08:08 PM

Originally Posted by Wrecktangle

2 points about this post. Before I get into them, what content do you do? Based on previous conversations between you and I recall you don't do savage, and barely do normal raiding. IIRC it was dungeons and 24m and some trials. No one needs a guide if all you do is dungeons. You can just mash your face on the keyboard to success. Hell you could AFK your way to success there too.

Last time I really bothered for FFXIV was Bahamut Turn 5 5th week in I believe. At that point gear was really scarce for everyone. To put in perspective, first team got in at 3rd week. Think about 3 or 4 got in at week 4. Just due to stress (staying up way too long) and scheduling we never really bothered afterwards.

1) If your friend wasn't running ACT you'd have 0 idea how you're performing. Therefore you're basing your skill level off what your friend told you without seeing it for yourself. You were also compared against random players that may not have been good or geared. So in essence you actually saying this proves what I have been trying to prove all along.

And if he doesn't have ACT on, I would still perform at that rate, okay? The only thing it provides is a confirmation.

2)I don't understand why people who have 0 clue how a parsing tool (DPS meter) actually works can claim its bad for a game. it's hilarious that people are saying they are bad, but then they say shit like this:

I never said they're bad. Where did I say they're bad? It's something that I've been neutral about, as I understand the arguments for both side and see the benefits and cons to it. I have no standing towards it.

A parsing tool tells you WAY more than a number. It tells you:

Deaths. How they died (what mechanic), by how much, when, Making it easy to identify if it's a player issue, or healing issue. You can see their health at the given point of time. It can tell you maybe they weren't stacked up properly to get aoe heals, maybe one of your healers is neglecting this player, etc. You can then check see if they used second wind or anything to try and mitigate the death, etc.

Buffs. You can check to see if Joe SMN is using his cooldowns when he should be. Let's say you're failing on the A3S hand piece. You look at the overall DPS and go oh Joe SMN is at the top, he's not the issue. Except if you look at the damage done during that exact time period he's not. He's dead last, by a fair margin because he blew all his cooldowns on the opener instead of when he should. Priority add not dying? Checks and sees 2 of the DPS aren't using mercy stroke, etc. Someone not using pots? What about hit chance? How would you know what hit rating you need without a parser to actively manage misses? You could do it manually by hand, but that'd be a colossal waste of time that you could be using to learn an encounter rather than learn its necessary hit chance.

Debuffs. Missing enrage timer slightly every pull. Checks and sees that the slashing/piercing debuff has only 19% uptime. Easy to identify an issue there. Check and see what happened, to cause wipe, oh healer had paralysis and didn't esuna it (or shouldn't have got it in the first place). All pertinent data that in the heat of battle someone might miss, but the meter didn't. Tank didn't have STR debuff on boss, etc.

I could go on some more, but I think this illustrates my point clearly enough. For reference I have never seen a parsing tool that didn't do most if not all of these features and more.

So for a few things. Since I pretty much just play SMN/SCH if someone doesn't know when to use CD they're not going to now any more if they see ACT. It takes someone with knowledge to point out the issues and if they don't then they're not going to know. ACT is a tool not a guide. All it gives is numbers.

Also really... all your examples come down to do the mechanics properly. As a healer I can tell if people aren't stacking up or what they're dieing to. It's called being observant. You don't need ACT to get that information.

It's funny here that you admit you're terrible at managing the mechanics of the job (or lazy, or both), yet you consistently outperform everyone you play with? (More evidence that you are doing trivial content, with exceptionally sub-par players if that's the case). That'd be like some random DRG saying he is top DPS most of the time, even though he lets BotD fall off immediately after casting Gierskogul every time. It's not him that's good, it's everyone else is hilariously bad.

Lazy more often than not. I don't want to play to be the best, I don't bother with that anymore. That's something I did during BC/LK raiding. I didn't bother with cata.

You do your own calculations? Like what precisely?

So for SMN at least. This has been my thought process for most games anyways. Damage per cast, cost, and opportunity available. Better priority since standing there all the time never works. Though SMN has the best potential to adhere to it due to Ruinra and Dots.

DoTs. All ticks add 15s during with garuda egi. Egi of course being in manual.
Bio = 240potency per cast, instant so GCD. 40p/3s tick. Highest DPS DoT but lowest per cast. Ends up being last priority cast due to that.
Miasma = 300p per cast. 2.5s cast, so inline with GCD. 20+35p/3s. 2nd highest dps DoT but still not the highest per cast.
Biora = 350p per cast. 2.5s cast. 35p/3s. Lowest DPS highest per cast. So for DoTs this gets priority cast.
Miasmra = 70p cast. 20+10/3s. Ignore due to being lower than Ruin/Ruinra unless use with dot extension totaling 120p.
Tri Disaster. Save for bahamut trance.

Direct damages.
Ruin/Ruinra, 80p cast. Use as filler, whichever depending on movement.
Ruinga, 200p cast, use as nuke when needed and during Bahamut trance.
Miasma burst, 300p per cast, cost 1 aetherflow and 1 charge to bahamut trance.
Painflare, 200p per cast. Use as needed and in places of where getting dots up takes too much time but may need the burst.
Deathflare, push button for big laser of doom. Typically at the end of the 15s unless something really has the urgency of that 15s or not.
Tri-bind sucks, use Blizzara. All it takes is two mobs to make blizzara worth over ruin.

DoTs never cast tri-disaster outside of bahamut trance
Everything plays around Bahamut trance for managing cooldowns and charges. Outside of opening and having another aetherflow cooldown ready.
Casting and maintaining the bahamut trance charges every 15-20s or so to keep it from fading and to get aetherflow cast back up to be inline with it.
Bahamut trance for 'optimal' purposes goes along this path. Miasmra > Aetherflow > Trance > Ruinra > Tri Disaster + pet dot lengthening > Miasma Burst > Ruinga spam until Miasma Burst is up again and death flare last second. Assuming done right, you'd have two bahamut trance charges at about 27s left at death flare. 45s cooldown on aetherflow. Taking that into account with 1 charge remaining, use charge with the timer at most at 10s due to aetherflow GCD cast time. This'll refresh charges for the next trance to go with aetherflow. Since tri disaster and pet dot lengthen thingy they don't really need any managing as it all lines up properly.
Tri-disaster during trance since 10% damage on dots = good damage. Even if you don't have tri-disaster up, casting dots is better than a ruinga during trance due to the fact every dot's total damage per cast is greater than 200 potency, far outweighing any damage you'd get out of ignoring dots and just casting ruinga.

In between trances is always just keeping up DoTs and just ruin/ruinra whenever needed. It's more or less a thought process or priority set up for certain things. Cause quite frankly, having a strict rotation isn't going to work for well... anything.
The above is more or less why I don't bother with playing SMN optimally though. The 10% damage increase for bahamut trance amounts to so little overall for the things I do now that I just don't want to bother. Bio for example the 10%, 240 to 264 Bio. Requires a bit less than 2 recast (33s + 36s), potential clipping depending on your mood. Clipping 1 tick for 240+200+484 = 924 or leaving it all = 964. Compared to not having it line up whatsoever of 920 potency difference or just about 4% difference for Bio with no clip. Does push back tri-disaster within bahamut trance though, but still doable if you don't clip. However you can only do that twice before having to readjust. Kind of goes for all of the casts and such that it amounts to me not giving enough fucks.

Things I don't do are stat optimizations, cause no numbers are given and I don't want to go back to WoW days where I spend hours beating on a doll finding those things out myself.

Is it that weird to see someone do their own stuff by the way? Since you seem to ask for something extremely long and annoying to type out. Or any reason you seem to need to be better than others?

**Kazgrel** · 2017-02-27, 08:26 PM

Originally Posted by Graeham

I tend to assume that it's often less about people being clueless and more about them being lazy. For the most part FFXIV boasts a fairly friendly community, especially when compared to some of the other MMO's out there. If people ask a question about the game in a populated area like Idyllshire or Limsa then typically someone will take the time to offer advice and point people in the right direction.

I also think a lot of players get lazy and put in minimal effort because they feel like they can get away with it. We all make mistakes from time to time, it's understandable that they happen. Yet when it comes to people doing very low DPS in dungeons and raids I often feel like they're doing it purposely because they're tabbed out and they're potentially looking to be carried. Plus the more players there are around them the easier it is for them to try and get away with being dead for most of a fight.

These are the folks I get as irritated with as the intentional trolls. Had such a player (the former) yesterday or Saturday in one of my A1S light farms. BRD doing barely more damage than our PLD tank. Had 1-2 caster dps, but zero foe requiem. Had a wipe at one point due to killing the first boss too fast (thus the 0.5 blew up) and at least 2 people pointed that stuff out. MNK asked "Are you dpsing using a macro?", to which the BRD replied "no".

Thankfully the bonus window ended another run or so after that. I'm as sick of A1S as anyone can be (5 weapons done, 1 left to go), yet I go in there every run trying to beat my previous run.

To end on a positive note, I've gotten a crapload of progress towards the tank mounts thanks to all this A1S farming. 83/200 on WAR, having started at 0 (so I figure it's 90 runs with bonus to complete a weapon). I had tanked Dun Scaith and a few roulette dungeons prior to the A1S grind.

- - - Updated - - -

Originally Posted by The Casualty

The 24 mans aren't so great of a benchmark, because not a lot of people are necessarily concerned about uploading parses there. Likely what you see are a lot of live uploads with the fflogs tool - maybe not even from people in your alliance.

FFlogs is neat that you can get graded based off of percentiles of specific encounters, and each encounter has a weight - so after stuff is on farm, it's a game within itself to tune your performance to get better outcomes. Some of the fights are obviously cheesed - you will see things like 90+% balance up-time, but even into the upper 90th percentiles are available without the perfect speed clear comp.

Where you will see the obviously most skewed numbers are Faust Z, with some people cheesing numbers into the 5k range. I'd still say though that with ~1m clear time, if you are doing your job right ~3.5-4k for DPS and ~2-2.5k for tanks is entirely achievable with good gear and not feeding specific people. More if you are running the optimal setup.

Was just going by that since that boss from Void Ark was given as an example. Way too many variables and such in 24 man, etc.

Better off simply looking out for lazy folks (such as the ones who happen to get locked out intentionally). 24s tend to bring out the laziest of lazy asses.

**Katchii** · 2017-02-27, 08:57 PM

I agree with @Faroth and @Remilia but understand where @Wrecktangle is coming from.

Based on a thread (may hev been this one from a while ago) Wrecktangle is a "hardcore" player who strives to be at the top of the meters, pushing high end content and is an elitist (not in a bad way, just has performance expectations and is very clear about them, excluding people who don't take them seriously which is understandable). So parsers and things like this allow for a very granular view of the battles and provide valuable information necessary to continue pushing to the upper echelons of skill.

Players like Faroth, Remilia and me still take the game seriously enough to be totally competent, learning mechanics, how to play our classes and basic gearing and really only do a few DF groups, play with friends in Ex parties without trying to push the DPS just clear it and rarely set foot in current Savage content. For this level of play, a parser or DPS meter are not even remotely required, though they could provide useful information should we want to access it but it's not required to perform and complete those duties. I'd even argue that they're not required for higher end content, but having them when min/maxing to that degree just makes things so much easier than the alternative it's not really a useful argument.

I have yet to see anyone who's arguing completely against parsers or meters, just levels of support. IMO I don't think an official parser/ meter is required. The folks who really care THAT much about it already have ACT or have a friend who uses it on them anyway, and the people that don't...don't. Aside from being a QoL improvement for some folks who need it, and are already using it to some dgree, would anything actually change for those who are already using it? Because, as remote as it may or may not be, adding an "official" meter/ parser to the game would just make it more universally available to people who don't know wtf they're doing anyway and will just use it to talk about supposed rankings in every way they can.

In WoW, even currently in Legion, it's rare for me to get into a group where a meter isn't posted at the end of the run or to have some guy requesting that it be posted. Admittedly it almost never devolves into a shit posting type thing, and nothing comes of it, it's just an FYI type thing so it's not bad. But what does that do for the game as a whole? As I already stated, the folks who really care about performing are already going to be working on it with or without a number to go alongside it and those that don't aren't likely going to change their behavior just because of a number...if they even care enough to know what the numbers mean. So I'm not trying to say a meter in FFXIV would do harm, I'm just saying it's not likely to do anything at all to the overall game. I'm not opposed to it, per se, I just don't see the point.

**StrawberryZebra** · 2017-02-27, 09:03 PM

Originally Posted by Wrecktangle

No one needs a guide if all you do is dungeons. You can just mash your face on the keyboard to success. Hell you could AFK your way to success there too.

On that note, do Dungeon bosses even have Enrage timers? I only ask because I spent a total of 65 minutes doing Baelsar's Wall at the weekend, in a group with zero wipes. When you get a group that consists of a Warrior, Black Mage, Summoner and a Scholar I tend to expect that it's going to be a lightning fast run, with trash melting in a matter of seconds. Turns out I was wrong this time, my group couldn't even break the Shackles the last boss puts on the healer before he went into doing his AoE. If I wasn't a Scholar, we'd have wiped there repeatedly.

It wouldn't have been so bad if it didn't also come with them botching all the mechanics too. The second boss especially was rough, think I was the only one who avoided activating the motion tracker. Having to be a full time healer really limits what you can do as a Scholar. It's one of those times where I really wanted to use the phrase "learn to play".

**Wrecktangle** · 2017-02-27, 10:06 PM

Originally Posted by Binaris

Assuming same gear.

Scenario one: The Monk, a class that has no group synergy is tuned to be able to create higher damage than the other classes. A Monk with lower damage than casters without a bard in in group. SHAME

Scenario two. Same concept. Shame on monk, drg floortanking?

Scenario three. DRG evasive jumped off the platform. Monk still sucks.

Being an 8 man, if this was in savage or extreme I would expect shit-talking in every situation for the monk and drg. Honestly the more concerning dps is scenario 2 and scenario 3 can only be explained by continued deaths which is a different situation entirely

Not assuming same gear, but similar gear. I don't judge people I get grouped with who are freshly geared. I judge people who are similar to me (slightly below, same, or slightly above) that are significantly underperforming (by measures of 40%+).

It's possible here you took my made up data too seriously. I haven't played the game since 3.2 so I have absolutely 0 idea what relative DPS numbers are these days or which jobs perform at what values. The point of the data was merely to exercise analysis in contribution percentage. Also you're missing the entire point of my post. I'm not concerned with perfect play. I'm merely concerned with people contributing to the best of their ability. It's ok if you're bad, but you still need to try.