[Megathread] Final Fantasy XIV

[Anzaman]

By the time tome gear is released, you will farm 1 piece of gear each week. It's going to be a lot of weeks before you're fully geared. It's going to be a lot of weeks with a lot fewer stats that you can have..

Fine, it's fully melded with V's now - hope you're happy.

[tikcol]

Fine, it's fully melded with V's now - hope you're happy.

Sorry if I came off as rude or something, it really wasn't my intention

[Wrecktangle]

I find it curious that so many people's definition of fun is DPS.

Half the general sentiment from what I've been seeing is dps. "If tanks did more dps it would be more fun". Disguised with pretty wrappings a lot of the time. "A really tough rotation that if executed properly could produce DPS like dps".

Maybe that's why so many more people like playing DPS. I guess that's exactly the point that people are trying to make... but why?

Ignoring the obvious problems, such as "wouldn't that make the ideal party just 6 neigh-invincible 'dps'?" (maybe even 7 neigh-invincible "dps", since there'd be less raid healing needed).

What is it about appearing on some silly chart with a big number that makes it so appealing? I find it really fun when I pull someone's ass out of the fire. There were plenty of times when I said to myself "I won that fight, that was on me".

I get a big smile when I see tanks use a well placed... whatever that shiny new raid protecting PLD skill is called. I've messed up big on occasion and gotten a well timed cover. "Wow, this guy is really good".

So what is it about numbers that make them so fun? The cynical side of me says "to rub in peoples faces", but the internet has made me pretty damn cynical if you couldn't tell. Is it the obviousness? 6 other people may not have noticed that perfectly timed Cover, but they can't miss the dps numbers?

Not sure if you read my posts or not, but I definitely went into a lot more depth than "DPS numbers".

• If you took ARR PLD and made it do SB PLD damage it still wouldn't be fun. The thing that generates fun for me (and likely others) is having choices to make.
• Stances aren't a choice. They're a mere on/off switch, and honestly a pretty clunky one for WAR/PLD.
• Then combine that with stale dungeon mechanics (aka no mechanics) and stale tanking swap mechanics (tank swaps are almost universally based on x stacks, never anything more exciting or organic).
• The other main issue is that tanks generally lack a "you did awesome moment" that other roles get. Oh you pressed a cooldown to take less damage is not the same as lining up all your cooldowns and hitting a big dh crit. It's not the same as having 3-4 people on the brink of death and you saved them, kept the tank up, and still pushed big damage. Oh you did a tank swap at 2 stacks cool. Sure Passage of Arms is a cool ability and fun to use, but because outgoing damage is so minuscule in current content I can reduce a raid buster that does 5k damage to 4,250. Oh how riveting. Cover is cool, but handcuffed by a long CD, stupid range limits, and the fact that for it to have any REAL value it needs to be a mo macro, which limits its queued ability which means the timing is super precise for it to actually go off due to ani locks. That's not even counting the fact that for it to have any real value I need to precast it because almost all outgoing damage is based off cast bars and not constant fluid damage I can react too when it gets to be too much on a risky target.
• Let a tank decide how much durability they need at a given time, and let them trade it for offense if they want. Let it be a range and organic, not a full on or full off switch.

Major reason I frown on DPS meters and prefer my raid teams to not use them save one or two specifically selected members I can rely on for analysis rather than epeen waving. I've found I can get a team to succeed with subpar players included in the team. DPS isn't an end all be all metric of performance and my personal team experiences have supported me on this. You take the team and you utilize their strengths rather than obsess over their weaknesses. That's not always one specific label-fits-all just because they're playing a defined class role.

Most dismiss it as I'm simply wrong, but it's worked for me and my teams, so we'll continue on with it.

You talking about regular raiding or clearing savage content? My old static's OT was pretty filthy at doing OT dps, but no matter how hard he tried he was super slow to get the A3S hand into position. His strengths don't account for the weakness that literally handcuffed our group for weeks. How would you deal with that?

I will say that I teach sub par players all the time. We were all sub-par players once, and someone once taught me too.

Gonna have to disagree with Yoshi-P on an ability that remained after all the role action pruning and whatnot: Protect.

FC leader, who mains AST, passed along a macro that he had obtained, where it swaps out Protect for Swiftcast after it casts Protect, so you have all 5 role abilities freed in use for abilities that are actually useful, vs. having one of them bogged down with a button that you have to hit every 30 minutes at best. Yes, it prevents reapplying protect mid-battle, but I'd much rather have other useful tools on hand, even if they are niche. Thanks to this macro, now I can run my normal assortment of Esuna, Lagresse, Rescue, Swiftcast, and Lucid Dreaming; before I had to omit Rescue...which, while niche and not needing to be used often, is a more interesting ability to have than a passive buff that lasts 30 mins.

Per interviews I've seen/read, the dev team was fine with dropping Protect outright, but Yoshi-P insisted on it staying. To that, I say that if it were to remain, it should've been baked into the healing jobs by default, much like they have their own versions of Raise. Course, I would also say the same applies to Esuna as well.

Agreed. I've been active in discussion about it. If it were up to me I'd have gone on to suggest passive buff that is range based. Closer is more powerful, eventually ranges out. This could create some neat awareness of being close, but not "too close" as well as identifying good places to be to benefit both mDPS and rDPS.

You would be surprised then, I have seen people argue that the tanks only job and responsibility should be to hold threat. That their life should be in the hands of the healer and damage is a DPS job only.

Yep. seen this a lot too. They want us to just sit there spamming flash (no other abilities) and pressing cooldowns. Yeah there would be a grand total of 0 tanks if that's the case.

That's pretty much what I meant. Tanking fun has to come from outside of the class as well as within.
Problem is... see above. Do all that and runs with randoms will turn into a nightmare, good tanks will run with friends only and the DF will become almost unusable.
Source? WoW 4.0, where Blizzard tried exactly that.

I thought cata dungeons were fine :-\. I don't remember anything hard about them. They were just long I thought.

Started doing stuff as static yesterday evening, one of the DPS actually asked during the fight what that glowing circle is.

LOL. see!

[Deleted]

Dunno what to meld as BLM, im guessing crit is tasty but i read get spell speed. But i have mainly SS and Crit and it feels like im in a strange place where i cant quite cast 4 xFireIV but comfortable with x3,

[Strangebrew]

Dunno what to meld as BLM, im guessing crit is tasty but i read get spell speed. But i have mainly SS and Crit and it feels like im in a strange place where i cant quite cast 4 xFireIV but comfortable with x3,

no, just no.

Crit is always, and always have been #1 stat to go with for BLM, followed by direct hit atm.

The only time you meld SS is when your gear is full on Crit and direct hit.

[Anzaman]

Sorry if I came off as rude or something, it really wasn't my intention

Eh, it's OK - quite often I growled at myself for not melding gear. Just never been fan of melding "wrong", thus I've been impatiently waiting for people to figure out what materia to put into the gear. But apparently it's going to take a while before they find out.

[Faroth]

You talking about regular raiding or clearing savage content? My old static's OT was pretty filthy at doing OT dps, but no matter how hard he tried he was super slow to get the A3S hand into position. His strengths don't account for the weakness that literally handcuffed our group for weeks. How would you deal with that?

I will say that I teach sub par players all the time. We were all sub-par players once, and someone once taught me too.

Regular raiding in WoW, Wrath/Cata primarily.

In FFXIV, I don't "lead" a raid per se as the FC is more focused on fun than progression "accomplishments."
Regular raiding, old raids, treasure maps/Aquapolis, roulette night, or getting people through things they need to catch up or raid group dissolves into crafting/running things to gear one person up. Someone started in Heavensward? Well, hell, they never got ponies, let's faceroll those a bit. Or we'd do the old Bahamut Coils to get items specifically to craft one item for one person in the FC. Or we'll do some FC crafting for airships, then break into groups for whatever. Sometimes we have 8, sometimes we have less/more and adjust for the evening.

We'll probably do some bird farming of EX Primals this time round and undersize as it's looking questionable to even have 8.

Savage isn't really an option with the wonky schedules I'm looking at (2 back to school, 1 works nights and has only 2 available evenings, add in 2 moving to another time zone and we try to weave in something for a memeber in the Netherlands). Plus we're long past the point where hardcore raiding for the sake of chest thumping that we did it has any appeal. Much more focused on just kicking back and having fun with friends these days and helping people get some goal they were hoping for. We've become filthy casuals in our "old" age, I suppose.

I mean, this is still mostly the group that was learning normal ICC and after a rough work week had a "take a shot for every wipe" night going among a few members. That raid night was.... interesting. Funny! ...but interesting.

Regarding your A3S example, I'd have to know far more about the fight, the group composition, and the situation to even pretend I could form an opinion to address it. But my approach comes from training in real world team leadership/team building/management practices we were using at work and applied it to raiding. There's a point where, yeah, you have someone that has to be let go as they're not going to work out with the team, but that's not the first option and "git gud" isn't the only solution to a lot of problems game designers put before you.

[dope_danny]

Man, the gear feels so wierd in crafting/gathering. If you had BiS at 60 you are pretty much BiS till 70. But otherwise a 10 point difference on one piece of gear is the difference between getting 58% and an easy 100% HQ rating using the same macro and mats.

Its like the stats on the items barely change, but as you level the way the stats work does instead.

[The Casualty]

Fine, it's fully melded with V's now - hope you're happy.

I just want to make sure you are aware - Tenacity, while a "meh" stat for a tank, does absolutely nothing for non-tanks.

[Kazgrel]

Man, the gear feels so wierd in crafting/gathering. If you had BiS at 60 you are pretty much BiS till 70. But otherwise a 10 point difference on one piece of gear is the difference between getting 58% and an easy 100% HQ rating using the same macro and mats.

Its like the stats on the items barely change, but as you level the way the stats work does instead.

Even a non-pentamelded set of ilvl 290 gatherer/crafter gear is a significant step up over pentamelded Ironworks. Don't have access to Garland and such currently, but it's around 200 more craftsmanship and control on crafting gear. Pentamelded, it's even less of a contest than it already is (I think I had a setup that featured just shy of 1400 craftsmanship, just over 1200 control, 462ish CP pre-food). No grade 5 overmelds; stuck to my old formula of Grade 5s in guaranteed slots only and grade 4 (and lower) for overmelds.

Figure that this gear will be worth melding based on HW's timeline; Ironworks and Carbonweave didn't show up until 3.3, so if the new BiS omnicrafter set doesn't show up until 4.3...that's basically a year from now.

[Faroth]

I just want to make sure you are aware - Tenacity, while a "meh" stat for a tank, does absolutely nothing for non-tanks.

I thought that was the joke considering the "Fine, it's melded with rank Vs, are you happy now :P " text. >_>

[Wrecktangle]

Regular raiding in WoW, Wrath/Cata primarily.

In FFXIV, I don't "lead" a raid per se as the FC is more focused on fun than progression "accomplishments."
Regular raiding, old raids, treasure maps/Aquapolis, roulette night, or getting people through things they need to catch up or raid group dissolves into crafting/running things to gear one person up. Someone started in Heavensward? Well, hell, they never got ponies, let's faceroll those a bit. Or we'd do the old Bahamut Coils to get items specifically to craft one item for one person in the FC. Or we'll do some FC crafting for airships, then break into groups for whatever. Sometimes we have 8, sometimes we have less/more and adjust for the evening.

We'll probably do some bird farming of EX Primals this time round and undersize as it's looking questionable to even have 8.

Savage isn't really an option with the wonky schedules I'm looking at (2 back to school, 1 works nights and has only 2 available evenings, add in 2 moving to another time zone and we try to weave in something for a memeber in the Netherlands). Plus we're long past the point where hardcore raiding for the sake of chest thumping that we did it has any appeal. Much more focused on just kicking back and having fun with friends these days and helping people get some goal they were hoping for. We've become filthy casuals in our "old" age, I suppose.

I mean, this is still mostly the group that was learning normal ICC and after a rough work week had a "take a shot for every wipe" night going among a few members. That raid night was.... interesting. Funny! ...but interesting.

Regarding your A3S example, I'd have to know far more about the fight, the group composition, and the situation to even pretend I could form an opinion to address it. But my approach comes from training in real world team leadership/team building/management practices we were using at work and applied it to raiding. There's a point where, yeah, you have someone that has to be let go as they're not going to work out with the team, but that's not the first option and "git gud" isn't the only solution to a lot of problems game designers put before you.

I kinda suspected that was the case. I'll say this - I have no issues with any of your raid leading statements or strategies in the context you've provided. They're fine enough for me.

That said, the reason I asked about what content specifically was because at the very high end there isn't much opportunity (honestly if any) to slide pieces around to fit better. You simply have to do x or wipe. Be at y or wipe. There's no catering to strengths and weaknesses to pass checks. There's no switching roles because you can only really gear up one class at a savage level at a time due to gated currencies.

I'll give you a real world example of when it did work though. Back in H25 ICC we were having a hard time with Putricide last phase. We kept losing healers early on, which meant we were losing DPS before we could burn him down. I came up with the idea to put the healers as far in front of us (instead of behind) to shift the responsibility off the healers who were struggling with something they shouldn't have but oh well. I catered to their weakness (and our ridiculously well tuned DPS/tank team) and it got us the clear in 2 more pulls. Mind you this was top US raiding and I wasn't a raid leader. I personally think WoW raiding design better supports this than FF14, but that's an entirely other subject.

[Granyala]

This kills the FPS
Really let's you get that synthwave feel going though.

Guess it's Re-Shade FX.
Not a fan of this preset though. You lose way too much detail with settings that aggressive.

[Faroth]

Mind you this was top US raiding and I wasn't a raid leader. I personally think WoW raiding design better supports this than FF14, but that's an entirely other subject.

From what I've read/seen, I'd agree. FFXIV is a bit tighter or stricter on design without as much flexibility for getting creative.

[Granyala]

I thought cata dungeons were fine :-\. I don't remember anything hard about them. They were just long I thought.

They were fine for people like you and me that still findly remember Shattered halls HC and SLabs HC runs.
They weren't fine for generation Wrath-faceroll though.
Wrath was cool, but with the freelootiness all around Blizzard really opened pandoras Box.

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And this is considering you're melding grade V. If you're melding grade VI it's A LOT of stats.

Secondary stats are pretty weak in this game. I doubt meld/no meld would truly matter in the grand scheme of things. 2-3 seconds of unnecessary movement or 2 miscasts will probably have a larger effect.

[tikcol]

Secondary stats are pretty weak in this game. I doubt meld/no meld would truly matter in the grand scheme of things. 2-3 seconds of unnecessary movement or 2 miscasts will probably have a larger effect.

For me it's like people without enchants in WoW. "Oh it's just 1% dps increase"

Do those people forget that on a raid there's a lot other players? And that's forgetting about the mentality side of the coin.

I can understand if you don't care about optimizing your character. That's ok. Just don't go out of your way to tell me it doesn't matter. Because it does

[Granyala]

Just wish crafting wouldn't be so boring tho, mass-producing HQ nuggets, and clicking macro #1 and #2 over and over..

Yeah, i still think that leveling those takes entirely way too much effort compared to gatherers.

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For me it's like people without enchants in WoW. "Oh it's just 1% dps increase"
Do those people forget that on a raid there's a lot other players? And that's forgetting about the mentality side of the coin.
I can understand if you don't care about optimizing your character. That's ok. Just don't go out of your way to tell me it doesn't matter. Because it does

It does not unless you raid truly cutting edge progression.
Most of us don't. Hell most of the raiding community goes into the content when they are already overgeared. Esp true for midcore Mythic/savage raidguilds.

While there certainly are close calls and sub 1% wipes, you are usually not wiping to a boss while doing everything to perfection because your raid misses 1% raw DPS/HPS.
Most raids have much bigger fish to fry in terms of practicing mechanics or optimizing general class gameplay than fretting over a few stats in intermediary gear that is quickly replaced or chomping on the most expensive consumables.

If you DON'T raid savage/Mythic, that mindset gets even more hilarious.
Source: 8.5 years of HC/M raiding experience

[Kazgrel]

Considering that I gained nearly 200 spell speed and about 100 on both direct and critical hit just going from grade 5 to grade 6 materia...I would not dismiss it entirely. Not by a long shot. All that extra SS has helped to make my rotation much smoother. Not to the level of smoothness I had at the end of HW (kinda hard to beat a 2.6 second Fire 4 cast time), but it's much better than what I had as a fresh level 70.

[tikcol]

Most raids have much bigger fish to fry in terms of practicing mechanics or optimizing general class gameplay than fretting over a few stats in intermediary gear that is quickly replaced or chomping on the most expensive consumables.

I doubt you have 8.5 years of raiding hc/mythic with that mindset whatsoever.

As a side note, what consumables are you talking about? How many stats do they actually give?

We're talking about 720stats worth of melds

[Eleccybubb]

I doubt you have 8.5 years of raiding hc/mythic with that mindset whatsoever.

As a side note, what consumables are you talking about? How many stats do they actually give?

We're talking about 720stats worth of melds

Considering Normal is meant to be cleared by everyone then yeah not having melds isn't the end of the world. For Savage/EX however you better be bringing the melds. Hell Normal raids have been shown to be doable by classes. Basically without their job stones. Even Savage raids have been done with classes.



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Considering that I gained nearly 200 spell speed and about 100 on both direct and critical hit just going from grade 5 to grade 6 materia...I would not dismiss it entirely. Not by a long shot. All that extra SS has helped to make my rotation much smoother. Not to the level of smoothness I had at the end of HW (kinda hard to beat a 2.6 second Fire 4 cast time), but it's much better than what I had as a fresh level 70.

I'm too poor to afford Grade 6 . Just spamming Experts for now to try and get Crit and Direct Hit stuff and grade 5's to throw into transmute. Although still haven't gotten a useful grade 6 from it. Mostly elemental materia and main stat stuff like Dex.