[Megathread] Final Fantasy XIV

[Graeham]

I've been playing Final Fantasy Type-0 and The Witcher 3 on the side lately. I also post on this site at the FFXIV role-player's site so there's thankfully a lot to keep me busy whilst I'm waiting on a queue. On Balmung it tends to be the high level roulette and PvP roulette queues that are the worst queues to endure. Not that they're terrible if embraced at the right hours but still...

[Anzaman]

@Anzaman: what were you queueing for? O.O I've never had queues that long while leveling, as healer.

Hmm.. think it was Gubal Library.

[Kaelwryn]

Huh, weird. Thought I guess not really since most people stick to spamming vault til 60 or fates.

[Granyala]

You easily get queues like that if you enlist for a specific dungeon during peak hours.

[Wrecktangle]

Ugh, I hate being queued up to someone that flaunts their epeen even more obvious they make it well... obvious they use a dps meter to show it. It's great you do a lot of dps, when all you do is focus on the boss and not the adds, congrats!

Some context here would be helpful. What fight did they ignore the adds and what role were they? Did they actually post the ACT parse in the chat log?

I'll commonly avoid adds (I play melee DPS) when grouped with a ranged DPS because it's significantly more efficient for them to kill adds that die in 1-2GCDs rather than obliterate my uptime. I'll even ask if they can handle it solo so I can push the boss harder. Never expect, always ask. This is a good life motto to use.

During low ilvl progression it's different. I'll follow the mechanics as necessary.

Gotta pad them meters Remilia, nothing else matters.

It's not really padding if you're doing damage to non-trivial adds. Padding is doing damage to things that are not relevant to the check/mechanic. I.e. adds on savage faust is padding, ignoring adds on final boss of fractal because boss is at 20% and won't cover the room before it dies? Not padding.

You guys can call people like me "elitists", "tryhards", etc., all you want but it doesn't change the fact sometimes you guys (as in non-raiders) are just horribly misinformed.

[Granyala]

It's not really padding if you're doing damage to non-trivial adds. Padding is doing damage to things that are not relevant to the check/mechanic. I.e. adds on savage faust is padding, ignoring adds on final boss of fractal because boss is at 20% and won't cover the room before it dies? Not padding.

You guys can call people like me "elitists", "tryhards", etc., all you want but it doesn't change the fact sometimes you guys (as in non-raiders) are just horribly misinformed.

Trust me, 8 years of raiding HC & mythic is enough to distinguish padding and not padding.
Generally as a DPS your job is not "Do max DPS at all costs". Esp not in encounters that spawn craploads of adds that pose the main problem and need to die fast.
Will you do more DEEPZ by focusing on the boss instead of constant target switching and potentially losing GCDs because the add dies right the moment your long ass 3s cast was going to go? Probably.
Will that help your raid defeat the boss if it gets overwhelmed by the adds? Nope.

Morale of the story: Dude tried to pad meters and caused a wipe.

DPS is a tool. Big numbers aren't the sole target, often in raiding you actually have to do stuff that sacrifices DPS in order to kill a boss. Balance is key.

(I don't know the FF bosses, so a specific discussion about Alexander would be pointless. I'm talking big picture here.)

[Graeham]

I'm so happy that they adding last year's Halloween barding to the Mog Station. I missed out on it last year so I bought it this time around. I can't complain about it being expensive - £4 is a lot less than certain other MMO's would charge.

[Granyala]

I'm so happy that they adding last year's Halloween barding to the Mog Station. I missed out on it last year so I bought it this time around. I can't complain about it being expensive - £4 is a lot less than certain other MMO's would charge.

Oh, so they did design new gear this time around? Cool.

[Graeham]

Oh, so they did design new gear this time around? Cool.

From what I've heard we're due to get a minion, some furniture and a flying broom mount for this year's event as well as some new gear. I predict the event will start around 13th and last until just after Halloween if they follow the standard 'two week' formula. Then we get 3.1 early November.

[Wrecktangle]

Trust me, 8 years of raiding HC & mythic is enough to distinguish padding and not padding. Morale of the story: Dude tried to pad meters and caused a wipe.

The above 2 sentences directly contradict each other. If you know the difference, why did you still state it incorrectly? Only damage that is not needed is considered padding. If the damage is effective (and note Remilia's example is effective damage) it is not padding.

The dude did not try to pad meters nor did he directly cause a wipe. He tunneled and ignored adds and CONTRIBUTED to a wipe. Why didn't the other DPS pick up the slack? Why didn't the healer or tank pick up the slack after he realized the DPS were braindead? The point of this is that people seem to think "it's not my job". Well if it's not getting done, SOMEONE has to do it.

There is at least one other person capable of killing those adds in an optimal manner, and 2 others who can do it in a sub-optimal manner.

[Granyala]

The dude did not try to pad meters nor did he directly cause a wipe. He tunneled and ignored adds and CONTRIBUTED to a wipe. Why didn't the other DPS pick up the slack? Why didn't the healer or tank pick up the slack after he realized the DPS were braindead?

Yeah lol. I'm done with this discussion if that is your argument.

If you tunnel so you get "biggar numbarz", that IS padding the meter. Because you hinder your raid just as much as if you do damage to trivial adds that don't need to die.

[Tazila]

90% of the time, from my experience in FF, a DPS that tunnels a boss and ignores adds usually can't execute their rotation out that well anyways, much less "pad the meters".

It's also usually these same people who put out awful damage to where even if they had gone on the add, they would have been minimally effective, and would have most likely been a waste of over all dps for them to run to the add (again we don't know the class or anything), then to stand there and look silly and run back to the boss, when they could have stayed on the boss.

As for Wreck's healer or tank could help, on the last boss of fractal, if we have a melee I always DPS the adds. There's no reason not too. It keeps uptime on the boss for the melee and the adds still die. If it's a ranged class, I see if they need help, and if they do then I'll help. But more often than not, it's a melee staying on the boss over a ranged staying on the boss.

I also think that Wreck is looking at it as you're a group of four, not a group of the one bad dps. If you wipe and you had tools to use that could have prevented the wipe (healer dps/tank dps) then they should have been used. Yes, the strain would have been from the one bad dps, but there are other people in the group than just the one person. As everyone's talking about raider mentality, that's one of them. MOST of the time, ONE single raider does NOT wipe the raid unless it's a mechanic that is weird, but MOST of the time at least one or two other people in that raid come up with ways to say "Oh man I shoulda done this!".

Either way, I don't use ACT, if the mobs die then that's all that matters. If they aren't dying and I can help, I'll help, and if they still aren't dying, then we try something else or maybe the person doesn't know their class or fight. /shrug

[Deleted]

Yeah lol. I'm done with this discussion if that is your argument.

If you tunnel so you get "biggar numbarz", that IS padding the meter. Because you hinder your raid just as much as if you do damage to trivial adds that don't need to die.

he probably relied on you doing something, which is a mistake - because they can't rely on you... or anyone in a PuG. Shame though but that's just how it goes.
His mistake though. Question is, why did no one help? I mean when I realize it, I end up saying (in my mind) "oh god...... oh maaan... let me get that for you - there, you fu*** c**t" And... we don't wipe, if I can help it.

[Wrecktangle]

Yeah lol. I'm done with this discussion if that is your argument.

If you tunnel so you get "biggar numbarz", that IS padding the meter. Because you hinder your raid just as much as if you do damage to trivial adds that don't need to die.

My argument has been consistent this entire time and you have yet to actually refute my position. I already showed you that your grasp of the term padding is inaccurate. I do however wholeheartedly agree that tunneling can be just as detrimental, often more so than padding is to the success of a run.

1) Padding: Is when a player is doing damage to adds that are trivial to the encounter. I.e. Savage Faust adds are ignored, but some players notably SMNs/SCHs will occasionally bane DoTs onto them. That is padding. That is useless damage that could have been placed onto Faust instead.

2) Tunneling: Tunneling is when a DPS is too focused on their timers/CDs/rotation that they fail to respond/react or contribute to mechanics as recommended/required.

3) The function of a DPS is to as much DPS as possible given the constraints of the encounter and your composition. If your composition consists of say a DRG, BRD, WHM, PLD in a Fractal last boss it is optimal to have the BRD focus his attention to adds and let the DRG turret. That is what is the most optimal scenario the group should do. If you want to get really technical, it's also optimal to ignore the first add completely because you'll still have an enormous amount of space in the room, and it will eventually go away, thus increasing DPS even further.

4) The last point was that if you as the healer/tank saw that you had brain dead dps and didn't try to kill the adds you yourselves then failed as well. If I was the tank in that run, I would have ran the boss over there (making sure not to cleave anyone and killed the adds myself. If that didn't say anything to the DPS then nothing will save their apathy. I'm not saying it's optimal, fun, or what "should" be done, but if you had the ability/resources to do it and didn't, you share in the blame.

If a tank gets knocked off titan's edge. You can't res him. There's absolutely nothing you can do about it. If he gets hit by WOTL stack and dies, you could have done something about it. You can res him. You might try and fail, that's ok. You tried. If you did nothing though? That's part your fault too.

5) I'll give another example for you. If I get a double melee dungeon comp and the other dude is either under-geared or just god awful, I'll specifically ask him to do the LB's. I do this because it's significantly more damage having me maintain up-time and having him LB, versus me doing it.

[Granyala]

he probably relied on you doing something, which is a mistake - because they can't rely on you... or anyone in a PuG. Shame though but that's just how it goes.
His mistake though. Question is, why did no one help? I mean when I realize it, I end up saying (in my mind) "oh god...... oh maaan... let me get that for you - there, you fu*** c**t" And... we don't wipe, if I can help it.

Well as I said: I was talking big picture, a.k.a. with encounters in mind where you CANNOT pick up the slack just like that.
No clue if that is applicable to FFs raid bosses but some of WoWs mythic bosses are that way. You simply cannot compensate some tunneling retard.

90% of the time, from my experience in FF, a DPS that tunnels a boss and ignores adds usually can't execute their rotation out that well anyways, much less "pad the meters".

If it is a strong single target DPS class, it will do nice DPS when ignoring the adds. Seen it countless times in my WoW raids. Recount at a glance looks fine and you ask "why are we overwhelmed when we seem to have the raw DPS?" only when you start looking at who DPS'd whom do you get it that e.g. your mage or your lock did diddly squat on the adds, causing them to live way too long.

@Wrecktangle: I think we are lost in arguing semantics (English is not my native language, so mistakes on my part are likely)
This is what I call it "padding": "Hindering/burdening the raid to do more personal E-peen DPS"
Maybe not the dictionary definition of the word.

4) The last point was that if you as the healer/tank saw that you had brain dead dps and didn't try to kill the adds you yourselves then failed as well. If I was the tank in that run, I would have ran the boss over there (making sure not to cleave anyone and killed the adds myself. If that didn't say anything to the DPS then nothing will save their apathy. I'm not saying it's optimal, fun, or what "should" be done, but if you had the ability/resources to do it and didn't, you share in the blame.

Yeah that sounds much more reasonable.
I do that as well if I can somehow manage.
Mostly ends in desperate attempts of salvaging a situation that cannot be salvaged though. :/

[FobManX]

I'll occasionally tunnel vision when I'm DPSing in a dungeon, but I'd say I've gotten much better at it. Like Neverreap 2nd boss, I'll just ignore the totem and just tunnel boss if I have my Ley Lines and Raging Strikes up. Its just...soo...much...damage. :P

DRK tanking is pretty cool but I looked online and man they have a ton of abilities. Quite a few of them seem redundant too.

[Remilia]

Some context here would be helpful. What fight did they ignore the adds and what role were they? Did they actually post the ACT parse in the chat log?

Person bitches about not getting an astrologer buff and posts that hes doing more damage than the other dps and tank where as said other dps (SMN) is swapping between adds in the whatever it's called in fractal continuum last boss. Yeah, a SMN is going to do jack shit dps with adds, that's their biggest weakness.

Best ones though are in A4, especially as one of the healer I just explode because the add was glued onto me.

[chesder]

I'll occasionally tunnel vision when I'm DPSing in a dungeon, but I'd say I've gotten much better at it. Like Neverreap 2nd boss, I'll just ignore the totem and just tunnel boss if I have my Ley Lines and Raging Strikes up. Its just...soo...much...damage. :P

DRK tanking is pretty cool but I looked online and man they have a ton of abilities. Quite a few of them seem redundant too.

I have two modes. The Attentive tank and the stands in everything tank. Really just depends on my groups gear level. As for abilities, you only need Unleash.

Unleash for DAYS

[Granyala]

I'll occasionally tunnel vision when I'm DPSing in a dungeon, but I'd say I've gotten much better at it. Like Neverreap 2nd boss, I'll just ignore the totem and just tunnel boss if I have my Ley Lines and Raging Strikes up. Its just...soo...much...damage. :P

DRK tanking is pretty cool but I looked online and man they have a ton of abilities. Quite a few of them seem redundant too.

Not really. You get a ton of CDs so you can rotate them nicely.

You get 2 combos, one with self healing at the end and another that does a bit more damage.
Considering that you are almost permanently in "Dark Side", you'll use it rather rarely, since you'll need the mana regen.

- - - Updated - - -

I have two modes. The Attentive tank and the stands in everything tank. Really just depends on my groups gear level.

This is dumb.
I'm always in attentive mode, because the less Damage I take the more freedom a healer has to DPS himself.
I hate well geared tanks that stand in everything and force me to heal them like a freshman.

[Usagi Senshi]

On my monk I switch to whatever needs to die ASAP. Its not that hard you usually have some GL leeway since they added a couple seconds onto it. I usually get back to my target with 2-3 seconds to spare for the most part. Only time I rarely switched to adds was on my enhance shaman in WoW before they buffed our aoe to god level in WoD. Enhance shaman aoe, now that be some straight meter padding!